Red Rover (also known as The King's Run and Forcing the City Gates) is a team game played primarily by children on playgrounds, requiring 10+ players. The game has changed over several decades, evolving from a regular "running across" game, with one single catcher in the center of the playground, to a combat game with two opposing teams. The change basically consisted of merging pre-existing rules from other games with those of the original Red Rover. The original Red Rover Origin of the game Originally, Red Rover was a regular tag and running game with several players on one side and one person (the "Red Rover") placed in the center of the playing field. The person in the center calls "Red Rover, Red Rover, let [player's name] come over!" to challenge and catch one of the players who tries to reach the other side of the playing area. If the Red Rover succeeds they both return to the center. Each player tagged joins the center and helps tag the others. These initial rules match those of the older "How Many Miles to Babylon?" singing game. According to Katherine Barber, the name of the game could be based on the novel of The Red Rover by New York author James Fenimore Cooper. It should be of no surprise that – for a chasing game – children prefer the name of a pirate who ravages the British seas. The game was first recorded in New York in 1891 in Stewart Culin's publication Street Games of Boys in Brooklyn, N. Y.. Until the 1940s, various descriptions of this version of Red Rover have been published, e. g. in 1907 in Dorothea Frances Canfield's book What Shall We Do Now? Five Hundred Games and Pastimes. In the book Canfield compared Red Rover with the German game of Black Man. In 1903, Red Rover has been mentioned in Some London Street Amusements by Edwin Pugh, published in George Robert Sims' book Living London – Vol. III. It also appeared in 1916 in London Street Games, a book by Norman Douglas, although British folklorists Iona and Peter Opie stated that no record of Red Rover has been found in the United Kingdom before 1922. The game of Red Rover was sometimes confused with the British game of Warning!, and in the U.S. with a game called Red Lion, which are both tag games but with different