LARPs?

[Baron Opal]

does anyone else have any ideas for boffer weapons as I said in my earlier post?

Right, sorry.

Here is how I made my last sword.

The Blade

I bought two fiberglass kite poles from a local kite shop. These are available by mail order. One is about 3/8 in diameter, with the second pole able to snugly fit inside the first. These run about $5 a piece. This allows you to have a thinner core while still cutting down on the whip. Use some closed cell foam for the blade edges. I use some blue foam camping sheets. They are about 3' x 6' and are normally used under your sleeping bag. You can get several sword's worth of foam for about $6-10. Cut two strips about 1.5 inches wide and 38 inches long. Cut two more 1 inch wide and 37 inches long. Run some sports tape along one side of the 1 inch faom strips.

Put the two kite poles together and cut to a comfortable length. I like 36 inches for the blade, an inch for the hilt-space, and 6-10 inches for the grip. Put the wide foam strips to either side to form the edges of the blade. Tape together just enough to brace. Put the narrow strips above and below to cover the fiberglass core. There should be a couple of inches of foam at the tip to form a thrusting tip. Find a large needle and some waxed thread and sew the two narrow strips together, making sure that the thread passes through the wide strips. This will tie the strips together around the core. Sewing makes the sword stronger than if the pieces were glued together. When the foam is stressed, it will tear around the glued pieces, but stretch around the stiching. The paper tape gives the foam a bit more integrity so that it is easier to sew and the stitching doesn't tear through. Sculpt the blade as desired.

Cover the blade with some lycra swimsuit material of your choice. This is kind of expensive, but long lasting and it seems to have a lot less air resistance than other fabrics. You sew a sock that fits over the blade.

Avoid duct tape for use in the blade. It makes the blade foam stiffer, which is not desireable.

Part Two later

 

[jester47]

Try using carbon fiber rods for the core, then glueing thin layers of closed cell foam to build up the blade shape, then covering it with a cloth sock. That's what we mostly do. You can get the carbon rods at a kite store.


And yes, LARPing can be a hell of a lot of fun. I'm partial to the IFGS system, because that's what I started in, and besides we have some fun stuff in our games. Anyone want to hear about the time we made the PCs crawl through a dead giant worm?

If you must LARP, the IFGS is your best bet. You will not feel like it was a waste of time because it is more production oriented rather than being a bunch of dudes hitting people in a park. (they do that sometimes too, but that is not the reason for existng).

 

[rushlight]

does anyone else have any ideas for boffer weapons as I said in my earlier post?

There are many different instruction sets for creating your own weapon.

However, if you're lazy like me, then you should check out: http://www.edhellen.com

There you'll find ready-made weapons of all variety! They produce high quality stuff. I've got four of them, and I'm ordering more soon! Also, they have unbuilt sets for construct-your-own, and group sets!

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

One of the game store owners in my city helped to write a LARP rule set for a D&D like Live Action game with padded weapons: Havok

I played in many sessions and had a decent amount of fun. However, my problem was mostly with the magic portions of the game as they made wizards insanely weak compared to everyone else. Mainly due to only being able to cast a couple of spells per day, having to throw something and hit someone for the spell to work, them doing less damage than a single sword strike and the biggest one, the fact that the non wizards in the game had to have read the magic section to know what they were supposed to do when hit by a spell and none of them had, so they ignored it.

Either way, there was a problem with the organization as well. This is my issue with LARPs in general. You have 80 people in a room or in a forest. Now what? You need an interesting story that somehow significantly involves all 80 people so they aren't sitting around doing nothing. Either that or you need a significant number of players who can sit around and entertain themselves. Some people are good at that, they can sit around just role playing for the sake of role playing. Their "characters" will be able to ramble for 2 hours on a story about how their great cousin saved the kingdom of BLAH from a great dragon or about how their sire, the great Count DOOM suspects the Tremere Primogen of foul play.

Most of the time, the stories they are telling are entirely out of their own imaginations, don't involve the rest of the players or game at all, except that they hope to inspire OTHER people to make up stories. When I'm stuck in these situations, I can't help but think "Why do I care about your character's grandfather who doesn't really exist, and has nothing to do with this game, no relevance to me OR my character and really is just wasting time until something having to do with the plot or some action happens." So, I tend to drop out of character during the downtimes.

With our particular LARP, the organizer tended to make up plots that only involved a couple of people at a time and revolved around them and they were always his friends. So, the plot would take all of them into the forest on some grand quest while the rest of us were to "guard base camp and wait for something to happen". Which normally ended up with my friends and I sitting around discussing our last D&D session and trying to avoid my ex-gf who insisted on continuing to come after we broke up.

Either way, LARPs normally end up as too much freeform for me. I need a plot, a structure. Something to point me towards what I'm "supposed" to be doing in the game. Without it, it gets boring quickly.

 

[jester47]

This is my issue with LARPs in general. You have 80 people in a room or in a forest. Now what? You need an interesting story that somehow significantly involves all 80 people so they aren't sitting around doing nothing. Either that or you need a significant number of players who can sit around and entertain themselves.

...

Either way, LARPs normally end up as too much freeform for me. I need a plot, a structure. Something to point me towards what I'm "supposed" to be doing in the game. Without it, it gets boring quickly.

IFGS. At an event, abou a third are production crew, about a third are NPCs, and a third are on the teams that run in a linear adventure. Thus you don't have the freeform that you get with most larps. And thats why I actually respect them. IFGS events are like big hikes with fantasy elements and a story.

 

[painandgreed]

I've started doing WW2 re-enactment. It seems very much like a LARP. You're out in the woods camping while using only the equipment that the real thing had available to them at the time. You're out in the woods creeping around trying to follow a senario that was developed, and shooting at Germans with real guns firing blanks who are shooting back. then you go back to camp and eat and the germans let you shoot their machineguns! Both I and a freind of mine who is in the same unit are gamers and agree that the only real difference between us and fantasy gamers is that there are actual real gernades but not lightning bolts, however the actual mechanics are the same (you yell "gernade" and throw it at the person you wish to blow up). Given some of the guys penchant for authenticity, if I gave myself a British name (I play a British paratrooper.) and only acted in character and talked with a fake accent, nobody would care.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I played in three Legend of the Five Rings LARPs written by members of my university's gaming group. The first was kind of lackluster and spurred my friend to write a pair of linked games that ran over one year, one in each semester. They were spectacular - combat was a bit slow and awkward, involving drawing cards and the like, but the plot and intrigue were awesomely good. Very memorable even for those who weren't central to the action.

 

[Hellefire]

When I was in college at USC in 89-91 we used shanai(bamboo swords), along with tennis balls for magic missiles, and slingshots with duct-tape wrapped cotton balls for ammo. We used flour wrapped in paper towels for fireballs. There were a couple other props but that was mainly it. Newbies had to bring their own helmets. We played in a park on saturdays, and in a campus parking structure on....wednesday nights I think it was. LAPD helicopters would sometimes fly over and spotlight us and our fights, had some pretty cool pictures from that. Had to explain to them a couple times a month what was going on, directly or through 'SC security. Was a ton of fun though.

Aaron