Capture the Flag with Stuff

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Carnegie Mellon KGB
Capture the Flag with Stuff

The Spring 2024 game is Friday, February 16th at 7:00pm in DH 2315.


A somewhat psychotic variation on a classic game
By Andrew Plotkin
Revised 2/7/2001 by Sean "Teki" Dobbs
Revised 11/14/2002 by David "dkitchin" Kitchin
Revised 3/10/2003, 11/7/2003, 3/25/2004, 11/19/2004, 3/24/2005, 3/30/2006 by Benjamin "Hey You" Gilbert
Revised 3/2008 by edanaher, csjackso, ddagradi, cmartens, jgg, csawyer, ehohenst, mglisson...
Revised 8/10/2008, 2/8/2009, 11/5/2009 by edanaher
Revised 2/20/2012 by tbroman, kharring, mjsulliv, eforney, aleibowi…
Revised 9/21/2014 by mwoolfor, jlareau, sguertin, egarbade, afrieder, ssharera, cmorey, bwachowi, jnemes...
Revised 11/4/2015, 2/8/2016 by briedel, egarbade, tparenti, mwoolfor, cmorey, eeb, jlareau, jpdoyle, sctoor
Revised 9/29/2016 by ssharera, briedel, egarbade, tparenti, mjmurphy, hfernand, jpdoyle, sctoor
Revised 2/16/2017 by briedel, mjmurphy
Revised 2/22/2022 by kmcarpen, spalsen, mwmccoy, jamesbyr, yicheng3, kdulla, kevinson, kgurusha
A partial change history of these rules lives on GitHub.
Classic rules may be found here.
A timer / scoreboard for the game lives here.

These are the revised rules for Capture the Flag with Stuff Version Too Point Eau.


In Fall of '94, KGB ran a game of Capture-the-Flag, using the labyrinthine corridors of Wean and Doherty Halls at CMU. It was quite successful (modulo a few sprained ankles); a good time was had by all. But deep nasty things in my brain began whispering that perhaps more fun might be made available... by the addition of Stuff.

Stuff is a key concept in game design. Pong plus Stuff makes Arkanoid. Risk plus Stuff makes Cosmic Encounter. Rock-Scissors-Paper plus Stuff makes Magic: the Gathering. Capture-the-Flag plus Stuff makes... Capture-the-Flag With Stuff.

In Fall of '07, Randall Munroe came to speak at CMU, on the very night of that semester's Capture-the-Flag with Stuff. Ed Ryan publicly invited him to play, and this led to by far the largest game ever played, with over 250 people playing. This led to discussion on how to adapt the game to its ever-growing size, out of which came several new idea. And thus, Capture the Flag with Stuff Version Too Point Eau was born.

In Spring of '21, due to a relentless onslaught of paninis, CtFwS was held in Minecraft, with a scale model of Wean and Doherty built by members of the KGB.

Screenshot of Wean and Doherty exterior in Minecraft

In an attempt to make the game more understandable to those not willing to spend hours understanding every nuance of the rules, there are now three different rules pages:

  • Useful - These are (hopefully) what you need to know to play. They are written is normal English with the intent of clearly giving the important information. Some fiddly details are missing, but you probably don't care about those anyway.
  • Full - These are the Official Rules. They are numbered, attempt to define every term fairly rigorously, and are hopefully sound and complete. If you love reading complicated documents that attempt to make a cohesive, fully consistent system out of a collection of fun ideas, this is the place for you.
  • Presentation - This is the rules presentation. It is probably not useful unless you are presenting rules.


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