Disability in LARP

Community Larp discussion
#21

I’ve done many years of SCA fighting and they have a similar mechanic for participants that you’re not meant to hit with melee weapons; we used plumes on helmets. On the SCA battlefield archers will usually wear plumes and this opens up an otherwise rough sport to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to participate. In large wars as many as half the people on the battlefield will be archers and you get pretty used to making a judgement call on who can and cannot be hit.

SCA combat is far more regemented than LARP combat in that all combatants must pass authorization tests before they’re allowed onto the field of combat and so you can expect that 100% of people will know and remember the plume rule.

In all my years of SCA combat I’ve accidentally struck two plumed combatants:

  1. In the first instance a plumed archer decided to compete for a flag in a capture the flag scenerio. I smacked him hard in the helmet before I noticed the plume. After the battle I found him and apologised for the mistake but he decided it was his own fault for putting himself in harms way.

  2. In the second instance a fellow knight decided to be a plumed crossbowman for the day and I hit him because I was so used to hitting him. He also shot at me from point blank range with a crossbow. We laughed about it over beers afterwards.

With SCA combat I don’t believe that the plumes really get noticed as much as you’d hope. I believe that we mostly recognise a valid target by what they’re carrying. If they have shields and/or melee weapons, we hit them. If they have a bow or crossbow, we don’t.

The thing that mostly determines if people hit people in combat is what weapons they are carrying and what they’re doing.

I don’t think pink headbands will work IN combat but I think they will work BEFORE combat as a ‘please don’t attack me’ reminder.

I think in combat we should look at non-combatants raising their hands (the universal sign for surrendering) and heading for a safe spot out of harms way.

I agree completely. But even in rugby you don’t tackle the referee. Non-coms (like referees) need to take responsibility for getting themselves out of the harms way. And (just like referees) they need to accept that from time to time they’re going to get hit.

You can’t write down rules that will keep people safe but you can provide a structure that allows them to participate with reduced risk.

Statistically speaking non-combatants WILL get struck if they end up on battlefields. But, like all other participants, they need to determine if the risk is an acceptable one for them.

#22

I think Kara has put it quite well.

I would Hate to hurt someone by accident in the heat of an encounter and spend the rest of my life with the guilt of having taken away someones ability to see or walk or just function properly.

#23

The SCA has what they call “The Rules of The Lists”. It’s what all participants agree to before they are allowed onto the field. This is the first rule of the lists; the bold emphasis is mine

http://mol.aethelmearc.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/rules_of_the_list.pdf

#24

I’ve broken people in SCA combat and the guilt does linger. I’m sure there are other reenactors who have similar experiences. Even though they were an adult who chose to participate in a risky activity the fact that you are involved in their injury feels bad.

#25

This. This x 100.

[quote]Statistically speaking non-combatants WILL get struck if they end up on battlefields. But, like all other participants, they need to determine if the risk is an acceptable one for them.
[/quote]

This is my biggest concern. Headbands, timeouts, hands on heads, it’s all very well and good, but accidents happen, and in boffer larps, without fixed battlegrounds and with untrained combatants on both sides, they happen a lot. Hands up if you’d like to be the person to permanently damage a friend.

#26

I do activities other than larp which could kill or maim me if I got them wrong. I could easily drown myself or break my legs or spine on any of my canyoning trips. I could freeze to death on a mountain. I could get broken bones or lose an eye doing reenactment combat. Nobody makes me do this; I’m an adult. I spend money on appropriate safety gear and I am conservative in the risks I take.

I take actions to mitigate all these risks but I cannot remove them completely.

I wouldn’t want someone to miss out on the joy of participation just because they have a physical disability that makes larp more dangerous for them than somebody else. But I suggest that they need to take the personal risk seriously and not rely just on some words in a rulebook to protect them.

#27

Let me say right here.

I’m glad for people to participate who for OOC reasons can’t take part in pitched battles. I’m glad to mime any combat, or quietly have a word about welfare. I’m glad to help get them out of the way.

BUT I have to be assured that they will not be damaged by ACCIDENTAL things that happen in LARP from other players.

The REASON someone has a pink headband is not my business unless they choose to tell me. Someone may just want to participate who is deeply uncomfortable with being hit by padded weapons.

But as far as reasonable, there should be knowledge within the GM team for the reasons. If the GM’s sign off on it, then I’m OK with that. After that, it’s the player’s responsibility to be safe. And other players responsibility to respect those boundaries. And find fun roleplaying ways to work with it.

#28

[quote=“theotherphoenix”]I’m going to be devil’s advocate here, it seems.

Being “inclusive” surely means that everyone has options to be involved in the hobby they love. There are many different styles of larp. From combatless theatreforms like many Con games to abstract resolution campaigns like the WoD, to boffer campaigns like Crucible, to full contact, physically and mentally challenging larps like Witch House and 1001 Nights. Why must everybody be able to play every game?[/quote]

Firstly, I agree with everything people have said about the need for people to know the risks and their own limits, and take appropriate steps to ensure their own safety at games. But as for this broader question, there’s a simple answer: because its the law.

The Human Rights Act 1993 outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods and services on the grounds of disability. This isn’t absolute - there is an exception around “reasonable accomodation” (there’s also one around “competititve sport”, but I shudder at that description, and it has questionable application) - but the general push is for inclusiveness. Where we can make reasonable accomodations to allow people with disabilities to participate, we’re expected to. Safety rules which enable such participation while managing risk are reasonable, and likely to be found as such by the courts (or rather, their absence is likely to be found to be unreasonable). The shape of such rules is up for debate, but the broad outline isn’t (at least, not by us): we need to be looking at ways of including people, not excluding them.

It is also in NZLARPS’ constitution: the caveat to being able to control attendance is that projects “may not exclude anyone for reasons that would be unlawful under the Human Rights Act 1993”. If a project set out to explicitly exclude people with disabilities, then NZLARPS would not be able to fund it.

#29

So, what we’re basically discussing now is inclusiveness versus player comfort?

One of the big problems of just telling people with disabilities they’re not allowed to join, is that some of them will join without stating their disabilities because they WANT to play so badly, a campaign like the Crucible for examle is massive, and there’s no non-boffer campaign of that scale and type, furthermore your friends might be in there and you might want to join because of that.

I think the most GMs can do, is make a recommendation, 'cause frankly, if someone wants to join a game, they will, so might just as well make some common rules for people with disabilities to make it safer and to prevent people from permanently hurting other people ('Cause that will happen even more likely if people go “underground”.)

Generally, if there are just general standard rules for people with disabilities, it will make it easier for GMs to implement, not taking too much effort and time and make it easier for the players, as it’s the same as the other games.

And in the application forms GMs could enter a text telling that there are definitive risks, what the risks are, and to think of the other players if you have a disability, to think about what would happen to other players if you get wounded by their mistake, 'cause there is a definitive chance of it happening, and at some point in time, it will happen unfortunately.

#30

The “exception in relation to sport” clause would seem to cover this pretty well.

It shall not be a breach of section 44 to exclude any person from any competitive sporting event or activity if that person’s disability is such that there would be a risk of harm to that person or to others, including the risk of infecting others with an illness, if that person were to take part in that competitive sporting event or activity and it is not reasonable to take that risk.

After all we’re not providing wheelchair ramps here; people have essentially said “the risk of harm is too high can you mitigate it for us?”

Inclusion or exclusion in the NZLARPS’ constitution is a bit of a red herring. The NZLARPS’ constitution lacks the legal authority to decide which laws it does and doesn’t decide to follow. We get to follow them all regardless of whether we list them in the constitution.

I think we’re legally fine.

But I think we should try and include people anyway if it doesn’t break the game for other people.

#31

I think the general principle that Dave expressed in the first post is a good one:

[ul][li]Anyone should be able to play in a game.[/li][/ul]

There are also other principles at work:

[ul]
[li]Risk of injury should be kept to an acceptable level.[/li]
[li]Risk mitigation strategies to allow people to play should not unduly negatively reduce other’s enjoyment of the game.[/li][/ul]

Exactly what level of risk is “acceptable”, and which risk mitigation strategies would unduly impact enjoyment, comes down to a consensus between the organisers and participants.

Which is why this topic about inclusiveness keeps turning into discussion of implementation options.

Inclusiveness of people with health concerns is a good principle and one we may not have taken into account sufficiently in the past, so this topic is a good reminder of it. But when discussing how to implement it for a given game, there is really no avoiding discussion between the participants of how it will be implemented, including both minimising risk and keeping a game as enjoyable as possible for everyone.

Depending on the game and the participants, enjoyment can depend a sense of fairness in regards to affects characters can have on each other, and a sense of believability and consistency in the setting.

It’s inaccurate to call discussion of safety and enjoyment considerations “discriminatory”. We would all like for everyone to be able to play in all games. Discussion of minimising risk and reduction of enjoyment isn’t discriminatory.

From what I’ve read of the discussions to date there is no obvious agreement over the details of the most fair and fun way to implement systems for including people with health concerns in larps with live combat. So discussion of these details is necessary for a larp’s participants to deliberate towards a consensus on the game they want to play.

#32

I don’t believe anybody can offer this assurance.

#33

[quote]It shall not be a breach of section 44 to exclude any person from any competitive sporting event or activity if that person’s disability is such that there would be a risk of harm to that person or to others, including the risk of infecting others with an illness, if that person were to take part in that competitive sporting event or activity and it is not reasonable to take that risk.

After all we’re not providing wheelchair ramps here; people have essentially said “the risk of harm is too high can you mitigate it for us?”[/quote]

Thank you Derek. It’s a LIVE COMBAT larp. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all, especially given the nature of the discussion, to regard it as a sport.

#34

You’re eliding a very imporant word there: the exclusion only applies to “competitive” sports. We don’t generally describe our hobby that way, and have spent years stressing the co-operative, non-competitive aspects against traditional gamism. As a result, I do not share Derek’s confidence that it applies.

But note that even if it does: its still down to questions of how much risk is “reasonable”. A position of “no people with disabilities” (as you advocate upthread) is not reasonable, especially when there are easy and obvious risk mitigation strategies available.

#35

No, because a lot of larp styles are not, but live combat larps probably should be. Have you read the rules for Crucible? It’s PVP. Please tell me how that’s not ‘competitive’.

Some of the ‘obvious and easy’ methods espoused stop the game entirely, ruin carefully planned surprises that the crew/gms have spent time setting up and still don’t eliminate the risk of non-com people being hit by accident, because it’s not possible to do so in a live combat larp.

Here’s what I would like to ask you, then, Malcolm. Who’s fault is it if the disabled person gets hurt in spite of whatever ‘reasonable accommodations’ are made. And when they do get hurt, who decides whether or not those accommodations were good enough?

And to the people asking for risk-mitigation in the games being run now, would a doctor, given the information about the style of larp you want to play in, write a letter saying that you are not taking unreasonable risks with health/brain/limb/sight? Obviously that’s an individual thing, given all disabilities are different, but something to think about.

#36

I believe that if someone lacks the social courage to call a hold in a combat situation when they perceive they are in danger that they should not be at the game.

Being shy is one thing. Being stupid is something completely different.

#37

Oh, safety might ruin your in-game ambush. My heart bleeds.

We already have safety rules in live-combat larp, which involve stopping combats to manage environmental risks (bad ground, a nearby firepit, tents, or even too many “corpses” who might be stood on). I don’t see this as any different.

As for accidents: who is at fault depends entirely on the circumstances. All I can say is that risk cannot be eliminated, it can only be managed. It is up to every player to decide for themselves the degree of risk they are willing to accept, and manage themselves appropriately. But if you are not willing to accept the risk that you might severely injure someone unintentionally through pure bad luck while taking all appropriate care, I’d suggest that it is you who need to manage that risk - not your hypothetical, also taking all appropriate care victim.

#38

If you’re going to behave so apathetically then so will I.

Oh, you can’t participate in combat, my heart bleeds.

#39

Safety is also compromised by the inclusion of live combat in the first place. Should we remove it entirely? Is this something the majority will think is a “fun” idea? It’s hardly a black and white issue and your bleeding heart is irrelevant.

So what you’re saying is, given I do my best not to hurt anyone (which I have always done and always will), and play within the decided rules (which I have always done and always will), if I permanently damage a friend, I shouldn’t feel bad about it? I did my best? Nice.

#40

I’d suggest that you’ve probably never badly injured one of your friends if you can say something like that. Because regardless of who is at fault on paper most people who badly injure a friend will feel lasting guilt. Them not being physically suited to the activity really isn’t a balm for that kind of feeling.

As a slight aside – Larp weapons really aren’t very dangerous – I honestly believe you’re more at risk from someone running in to you in the dark or from slipping over on a dark forest path than you are from being injured by an actual weapon.

Pink headbands are all and good but I suspect you’ll find that more people have been injured with twisted knees and ankles than any larp weapon related injuries.

The “live action” part of larp isn’t just the bit with rubber swords.