Did you ever play “assassin” in college or at camp, where you have to hit a randomly-assigned person with a squirt gun? In today’s terror-fearful and nervous-security-guard times, that’s a bad idea in a city, so Cruel 2 B Kind has morphed the weapons into… random kindness.

Your weapons may be serenades, compliments, or friendly greetings. A crowd cheer may catch players unaware. You never know when you’ll face the smile that has your name on it.

Your targets are unknown to you. Players have no uniform, know the terrain as well as you do, and can blend in seamlessly. The only way to tell a bystander from another player is by bringing your kindness to bear against them. An innocent will be charmed; an assassin, slain.

Innocents will be caught in the crossfire, but when the weapons are random acts of kindness, the only collateral damages are smiling bystanders.

Here’s Cruel 2 B Kind in San Francisco:

DC’s is Saturday, October 18th, on the Mall. Register here.

P.S.: Ironically, I played a more traditional game of Assassin against this game’s DC organizers back in the spring of 1999.

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Tagged: dc, events, public spaces, the mall

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.