Restrooms should be available nearby. Water fountains and places to buy food are optional, but recommended. Cover for people to hide behind. Almost any location besides an open field will have this. You can also bring some barrels or even inflatable cover if you have a portable air compressor.

Some public spaces can be reserved in advance through your local community center or school, but this is not always possible.

Remember to include meal breaks if necessary. Allow at least half an hour if people are bringing their own lunches, and at least an hour if people plan to eat at restaurants or hold a potluck picnic. Pick a time to start wrapping up, at least fifteen minutes before the official end of the war. This lets everyone help gather darts and clean up together, and avoids irritating parents who don’t want to wait around for this to happen.

Be aware that Nerf players you find online may be used to a strict set of rules, and will often show up with modified Nerf guns and homemade ammo that can shoot farther and faster than regular Nerf darts. Make rules clear when you post online, but don’t ban mods, since people would find loopholes around it and bring blasters like the Nexus Pro. FPS caps are a much better way of limiting power. 130 FPS is a good low-powered cap, 160 starts getting into high-powered blasters, 200-250 is in the “hyperstock” category, and 300 FPS is known as Dartsoft, since extremely powerful blasters are allowed, such as the Caliburn.

”West Coast rules”: Each player has five lives. When someone is hit, they loses one life. They then walks to a pre-designated respawn point with their blaster in the air. When they’re in the respawn point, they can get back in the game when they leave. They can’t camp the respawn point, and if you’re alive and enter the respawn point, you loose a life. They leave the game permanently if he is down to zero hit points. “East Coast rules”: Each player has ten lives, and loses one each time they are hit. There is no respawn point, but if several darts from the same blaster hit you at the same time, this typically only counts as one hit. You leave the game once you are out of hit points.

Homemade ammo must be tested and must not have a solid tip. Blasters that shoot BBs or paintballs are banned (but some wars allow gel blasters). Blasters must have an orange or red tip and must not look like a real firearm (no black/silver/gray/camo). Nerf Hyper ammo is banned for environmental and safety reasons. #teamseas Blasters that shoot over X FPS are banned.

You don’t need to figure out an order to play these in in advance. Sometimes it’s best to see whether everyone is enjoying themselves, and suggest a switch to a new type of game once people seem bored.

If you have a good sense of which players are better than others (or have better equipment), you can divide the group into two equal teams. Otherwise, make the teams at random, and switch the teams after each game.

Use a bandana to easily identify team members. Humans wear bandannas on their arm, while Zombies tie it around their head. Zombies are not allowed to use blasters even if they steal one.

Instead of using the usual rules you decided on, when you’re hit, return to your base and count for 20 seconds before returning to the game. Consider a 20-minute time limit to avoid the game dragging on too long. Whichever team gets the enemy flag closest to its base by the end of the time limit wins. For an alternative without flags, divide candy among the players. When a player is hit, they must drop any candy they are holding and return to base. Once one team has all the candy, it wins.

Optionally, you can have a Defender leave the fort and become an Attacker once he is hit three times. This may be a good idea if the Fort is especially easy to defend.

Golden Gun is this taken to its fullest extent, with one-dart-capacity blasters and one life each. A spray-painted Jolt would be a good idea for this. It would be a good idea to have multiple rounds, due to the quick round speed.