[Artemisia]

Time to be brave and join the fray with you LARP heavyweights (one year experience against a collective century?)

Do we need guidelines on acceptable contact?  Personally I hope not, different aspects of larp are actual skills we can learn and improve through experience.  Judgement of a given situation has to be one of those skills surely?

How can you set out what is reasonable or acceptable force?
I look forward to my fortnightly top up of interesting bruises, the origins of most I can recall, the rest remain mysterious. As my husband fences epee, we competitively compare wounds. Surely you soon learn that even latex weapons hurt and opt to either take a limited part in any combat or start training. Having selected the latter over the last few months, now I can sustain much longer bouts and have increased my real skill level. Being fitter and more agile has also meant that monstering as a weasily skaven I can scurry under, and over, objects more successfully and keep the plot and fun going. Creeping up on someone silently with the anticipation that at any moment you might have to leg it (ahh - when I was a kid, scrumping apples...) seems more satisfying than calling on bought skills and arguing rules.
Wasn't this originally why LARP groups were set up - actually hit each other rather than roll dice.
But how far to let combat go? I have yet to experience other LARP forms and am heavily influenced by the system at the Wolf. I train with a fencing rapier and role play with a latex one. With the fencing rapier I have a fencing mask, for role play none. Yet both run the risk of broken tips and injury through piercing. I'm not sure where that leads us. But during the flow of role play as the Darklord says,

Judgement of a given situation has to be one of those skills surely?

Explain please - What is The Heroic combat system (TM)?
Regarding skills, as the resident artist in the Inn, my drawing skills have been steadily regaining lost heights through sheer bloody hard work and perseverance.
Back to you experienced people.

[The Darklord]

Ok easy bit first:  The Heroic combat system was introduced (although others may have had similar ideas going as well) by a group called the Knights of Ancalime, a bunch of larp nutters we met at the gathering.  They ran several sanctioned LT events and some of them are in the process of setting up a semi proffessional (possibly even fully if it works out) larp busieness these days.  The heroic combat system was used at their events and basically dictated that there had to be a reasonable amount of movement for any weapon to actually deal any damage.  They emphasised that this was to make combat more realistic and more enjoyable for people who dont like to yell "sharp" at 200mph.  There was probably a little more to it than that but thats the gist of it.  So for a normal 1 hand sword you would be looking at a 30" minimum blow to be doing anything with it (they did specify that calls of "ref thats only a 28" blow" would lead to people getting thumped  )

Ok, what I meant about judgement of a given situation:  Its dark, you are in the middle a nasty skirmish, things are coming out of the dark from every side and you are litteraly fighting for your characters life.  Now we all know that larp is just a game but if you don't have any adrenaline going at this point why are you playing?  Combats in situations like this demand a fine judgement about your fighting because they are liable to lead you into acting dangerously - I've done it and without naming names I can think of several people in the group who have too.  Things like swinging way too hard, not really looking at what you are going for etc.  Its something you have to judge and hopefully with experience that judgement will get better (not that we cant all make mistakes though).  One caveat - I have met people who seem incapable of accepting this and either wont accept larp is a potentially dangerous hobby and equally those who just dont seem capable of judging the amount of force that is appropriate no matter how long they have been involved