My family invented a great outdoor game yesterday. We had a blast. It was so good that I have to write down how to play it. A good game balances a lot of issues and I think this game has the best balance of all of the games we've invented.

Use a large area. My parents' half-acre yard with a house in the middle was great. Divide into two teams (we played three versus three, adding a fourth to one of the teams later.) Each team has a base and a flag placed visibly at the base. Any flag will do--we used a sprinkler head and an old rag. Each player has a very soft ball (or wad of socks bound by rubber bands.) The object is to capture the other team's flag and bring it back to your own base. Stop opponents by hitting them with your ball.

When you hit a player's limb, that limb becomes disabled and the player can continue without the use of that limb. The player can heal by returning to base. Healing is instantaneous. If you hit the torso, the player dies and must return to base to heal. Hits to the head do not count. If a player dies three times, the player switches teams.

You can't touch anyone's ball but your own. (Note that each ball has to look different.) This means you often lose your weapon and other players can try to stop you from retrieving it. You can't grab your own flag and you can't hold or trip other players. You can trick players with threatening expressions or by not revealing information such as the fact that you've only been partially injured.

We called the game "Limball" because of the partial injuries to limbs. You run often and you can find a lot of interesting strategies. The best thing is that everyone can play at their own energy level; people who are in great shape end up just as tired as the people who aren't in great shape. There is no jail, so no one needs to stand guard; there is no designated territory, so there are no boundary disputes; and you can only stop people with a soft ball, so there is little contact.

At first we didn't have any healing concept, so people were limping all over the field and we added a rule. When my daughter Esther came onto the field, we decided she was a neutral who was able to retrieve balls for people. Once I tried to hold our flag so the other team couldn't take it, but we didn't like what happened, so we decided you can't hold your own flag. Most rounds lasted about 10 minutes, but in the second-to-last round, my team ambushed the other team and got a quick victory. We mixed up the teams every round using paper-rock-scissors matches. In the last round we played boys versus girls and the girls won.

We don't know yet whether the game can support large or small teams. Maybe three or more teams would work, too. We'll just have to play to find out!