Dream: Kidnapper's Tag

This dream took place on my undergrad campus, UC Davis. I actually dreamed this before when I was a student there, and I had forgotten about it until the rerun dream last night.

In this dream Kidnapper's Tag is a game that my friends and I invented. There were 20 people playing, split into two teams of 10. Basically the point of the game is for the team that is "it" to kidnap someone from the other team. You are safe when you are in your own apartment, or in a classroom, but nowhere else. You are allowed to gang up on people, even ambushing someone of the other team using all 10 of your teammates.

When someone is kidnapped, they are taken back to the designated kidnapping area, which was the garage of a non-participating friend of ours. All 20 players had keys to the garage. The kidnapped person would be left tied up, (usually with duct tape). The kidnappers had to leave them one of two means of escape:
1. a knife with which they can cut themselves free, or
2. Their phone within reach.
If they have their phone, they can dial one of their teammates for help. (This was the more popular option. It was a good idea to have all your teammates on speed-dial.)


Once the kidnapped person frees themselves, they have to send a mass text to all 20 players that they were kidnapped, and therefore their team is now "it."


Gameplay was fun, but frightening. You had to be in stealth mode all the time, keeping an eye out for the other team. Sometimes you missed classes because you were kidnapped as you tried to get to school. If you were not 'it,' and you saw members of the other team, RUN! Get in your apartment, or a classroom asap. Especially if you are a smaller person, and you see someone who can physically overpower you. You are allowed to struggle/fight back when people are trying to kidnap you, as long as no one is actually hurt. This is why it's a good idea to gang up on the victims.


In my dream, they ambushed me. Sometimes you got calls from teammates who had been kidnapped, and you have to go untie them. Sometimes those teammates are gagged, so when you get a gagged-sounding person calling you on the phone, it's easy to assume what happened. The other team used this idea to their advantage. They got lucky and found the phone of one of my teammates. They used it to call me, talking with a gag in their mouth to make me think my teammate was calling for a rescue. They got me when I was almost all the way to the garage. Five of them jumped out of a van and snatched me off the street.
Tricky bastards!