The central and pretty much only plot revolves around students at a college campus who are involved in a role-playing game called TAG which is an acronym for "The Assassination Game". The game is fairly straightforward, each player is assigned another player who they must assassinate by shooting him or her with a spring loaded dart gun. At the outset of the game each player is given a document called a Tag Victim Profile that contains a photo, the name, address, phone and class schedule of the player who he/she must kill. After a player completes the assignment he/she then takes over the assignment of the person who he/she killed and then notifies the game organizer, Nick Carpenter, of the kill so he can plot the kill on his game progress chart. Play continues in this manner until only one player remains at which point he or she is declared the winner.The movie follows the exploits of 2 TAG players, Susan Swayze who is playing for the first time and Loren Gersh who is the 5 time undefeated TAG champion looking to repeat yet again. He doesn't have much of a life besides playing TAG and devotes all his time to following players around and taking them out. At least one of these two characters is in every scene except for a few isolated occasions where the camera is concentrating on Alex Marsh. The only time other TAG players are shown is when they are interacting with Susan or Gersh.The movie opens with Gersh standing in a dorm hallway wearing a Get Smart style hat and trench coat while hiding behind a newspaper with eye holes cut out. His target approaches but then the target sees him and slowly backs away as he draws his dart gun but for some reason he is carrying an empty gun. When his target realizes he has no darts he turns and runs away as Gersh casually strolls after him Pepe' le Pew fashion. The target goes down a set of stairs and hides under a grate. On the sidewalk above footsteps are heard approaching and then leaving. Suddenly Gersh appears out of the dark, greets him, loads his dart gun and fires. The dart sticks to the forehead of the target and he then utters an expletive as he pulls it off.The next scene features Susan walking outside of a dorm as the clock tower strikes 9pm. While she is looking at the profile of her target, Shooster, she notices a car signaling somone in a dorm room by flashing its headlights then the person in dorm room responds by turning the room lights on and off. In the meantime someone else is in a phone booth in front of the dorm and says, "she's right here I can't talk". Susan brushes the signaling off and enters the dorm anyway. Shooster makes sure that Susan sees him then walks down the stairs to the laundry room with a laundry basket in his hands. She follows him and enters the laundry room but it appears to be empty. She doesn't see that he is hiding in a dark corner behind a dryer. As she is about to leave she hears him move and opens a washing machine door just in time for it to block a dart that was headed for her. They proceed to shoot at one another until she can't find another dart at which point she runs away. He finds a dart, loads his gun and follows. To escape Susan ducks into Alex Marsh's dorm room to hide. Alex tries to talk to her but she shushes him. Susan leaves almost as abruptly as she entered. Alex gets out of bed and opens his door to see where she went. Susan walks down the hall as Shooster and Charlie, another player, suddenly pop out of different doors with Susan in the middle of them. As they fire Alex tells Susan to look out, she ducks and they end up shooting one another instead. The three players walk away together laughing as Alex stands speechless in his underwear. Alex finds Susan extremely attractive so he is determined to find her to try to get to know her. Alex writes for the school paper and plans to use the pretext of writing an article about TAG to meet Susan and follow her around. He visits the office of Nick Carpenter, the game organizer, locates Susan's file and discovers where she lives.Susan's roomate Nancy is also playing TAG and in fact it is made clear later that she is the one who got Susan involved in the game. Nancy and Susan realize they are being followed by Nancy's assassin, Randy, so Nancy decides to use a trick to get rid of him. Susan observes while Nancy goes to the pool, changes into her bathing suit, hides a mini-dart gun in her bikini bottom and then pretends to drown in the pool. Randy jumps in with his clothes on to save her but after he lifts her out of the pool she shoots him with a dart.In the meantime another TAG player, Swanson, is heading to the bathroom to take a shower. He has his dart gun with him and places it on the soap dish in the shower stall. Gersh is hiding in a stall with his feet on the toilet so that Swanson doesn't know he is in the bathroom. Gersh opens the shower curtain and while lecturing him about not being careful enough, Swanson knocks his dart gun on the floor. The gun hits the floor, fires and the dart hits Gersh. Gersh is extremely upset at being hit for the first time and protests that it doesn't count because it was an accident. He then unsuccessfully tries to bribe Swanson to start over as if nothing had happened. To preventSwanson from reporting him dead to Carpenter, he retrieves a real Beretta 92 from his dorm room, returns to the shower and murders him. He then uses a laundry cart to wheel the corpse to his dorm room closet.Alex goes to visit Susan and tells her that he is writing an article about TAG and needs to follow a player around in order to learn about the game. Susan agrees to let him accompany her only if he helps her win, he agrees and she gives him his first assignment, to go warm up her car. In the meantime, after contemplating his actions, Gersh is somewhat depressed and calls Carpenter to tell him he killed Swanson as if asking for guidance. Carpenter doesn't realize he means he killed Swanson for real, he thinks he meant he shot him with a dart. So Carpenter notes the kill on his progress chart and tells Gersh to keep up the good work. Carpenter's encouragement cheers Gersh up and at that point the limited remaining grasp he had on reality vanishes. Though he has no need to use the real Beretta to silence anyone else, he proceeds to use it to murder the remaining contestants unlucky enough to become one of his assigned kills and also dumps their bodies in his closet.Next Alex starts Susan's car as some girls, who are obviously out to get Susan, are snickering in the background. Susan yells for him to drive and pick her up. As he does the girls come out of the dark giving chase on foot but the car pulls away too fast for them to get a shot off. Susan has Alex park in the Delta House fraternity lot next to the car of her target. Alex questions Susan while they wait for her target to come out. Susan loses track of time and realizes he closed his room light and is approaching. She kisses Alex just as her victim reaches her car with his gun drawn. He figures they are just making out so he turns around to get in his car. Susan then shoots him in the back through her window which was rolled down.In the next scene Nancy and Susan are in class. Nancy tells Susan she is dating Randy and that she is not playing TAG anymore because instead she going to Randy's track practice then she is going away with Randy to his Parent's beach house and the following day to a concert together. Gersh is seen in the widow spying on them. It shortly becomes clear that Nancy is the one he is targeting. He tails her to the track meet and sneaks under the bleachers right behind her. Gersh shoots and kills her at the same exact time the coach fires a blank to start the race. Gersh then reports the kill to Carpenter and transports her body to his room.Frank, who is apparently an editor at the school paper, approaches Alex and tells him that there are two missing students and tries to convince him to write an article about it but Alex tells him he is still busy with his TAG feature. At first blush it appears that the second missing student was Nancy. However, it is implied that both are males because not even their "girlfriends" know where they are and is later revealed that this second missing student was a different TAG player who Gersh killed. The second kill was never shown on film nor does Gersh report it to Carpenter anywhere in the movie, which would have cleared things up sooner. Thus the audience is not aware of it and most assume the report was referring to Nancy. This makes one wonder why Susan is not worried. Randy eventually reports Nancy missing towards the end of the movie and since Nancy told her that she was going away Susan never suspects anything is wrong by her absence.Alex goes to meet Susan but can't find her at first. Susan calls the Campus Information desk and asks to speak to Alex. She tells him that she is hiding in the nearby phone booth and needs his help because she is out of darts and her assigned assassin, Wallace, is waiting outside the phone booth to get her. He makes an announcement over the loudspeaker that there is a free concert in a different hall and a large crowd including Wallace run to the location of the alleged concert. This permits Susan to escape and they spend the day together.Later that evening while Susan and Alex are spying on Gowdy, her assigned target, she notices that Wallace is again tracking her. She tells Marsh to keep an eye on Gowdy while she goes off to get rid of Wallace. She goes to the pool locker room and changes into her bathing suit, planning to try the same drowning trick that Nancy demonstrated to her. In the meantime Alex sees Gersh lurking about and asks him if he is looking for Wallace. Gersh answers yes and Alex tells him to go to the pool to find him. While Susan is under the water Gersh shoots and kills Wallace. Susan exits the pool perplexed and while searching for Wallace encounters Alex who tells her he took care of Wallace but lost Gowdy. They run to the athletic building and again part company as she says she will take the front and he should take the back.While lying in wait Susan shoots Alex as he walks through the door thinking he is Gowdy. Alex then proceeds to step on the dart breaking it. Susan states that she had only one dart for her mini dart gun and asks Alex to go back to her locker to get her primary weapon while she spies on Gowdy. Gowdy returns and starts searching rooms, the last room is where Susan is hiding. Alex is unable to remember the locker combination and thus fails to get her gun. He sees Gersh and runs up to him and asks if he got Wallace. Then he said he did Gersh a favor and in return wants to borrow Gersh's gun. Gersh gives him the dart gun and Alex tosses it to Susan just in time for her to shoot Gowdy before he found her. Naturally the final two players left at this point are Gersh and Susan.Game rules dictate that a party be held before the final round between the two remaining players can commence so a party is scheduled the next evening and play is suspended for a 21 hour period until after the party ends. Susan and Alex use the break to spend the night together in her room. Alex leaves in the morning but proceeds to smother her throughout the day with flowers and notes professing his love. Susan is put off and tries to avoid him and refuses to answer her phone. When he approaches her at the party she tells him she needs space and is not sure when and if she wants to see him again. She tells him that she wants to handle the final round on her own rather than with his help, despite telling him the previous night that she wanted his help.After the party the final round commences. At 9pm Gersh calls Susan and challenges her to meet him in the quad. During the course of playing cat and mouse Susan hides in Gersh's room to try a sneak attack when he returns but she finds the corpses in the closet and runs away screaming in panic. Interestingly only 3 bodies are shown, Nancy, Swanson and Wallace, despite the fact it is later implied that he murdered 5. Gersh sees her running from his room and tries to get her before she can tell anyone. She runs screaming to the College rent-a-cop but as he loads a round into his revolver Gersh shoots and kills him. He proceeds to chase her to the roof of a building.In the meantime Alex drowns his sorrows with journalistic work, specifically investigating the rash of missing college students. He visits campus security as Randy is reporting Nancy missing. At this point it becomes clear that Nancy was not the second missing student, another player was. Apparently 2 players never shown in the film were killed offscreen, one named M. Homes and the other we are simply given the last name March. Alex recognizes Wallace and pieces together that all the missing students played TAG and were taken out by Gersh. He surmises that Gersh harmed them for real and then sets out in search of Susan to warn her. Alex finds the dead security guard and picks up the gun not realizing there was only 1 round in it. Then he hears the sound of glass breaking coming from the rooftop and runs to investigate. Gersh is about to shoot Susan when Alex appears. Alex fires at Gersh but nothing happens and then fires 4 more times to no avail. Gersh is amused by this and at first simply laughs but after the 5th click he takes aim at Alex. Alex pulls the trigger one final time and at last a bullet fires hitting Gersh who then falls off the roof to his death. The movie ends with Alex consoling Susan.
Output: Question: Who does Gersh transform?, Answer: He transforms himself from a avid player to a cold blooded killer