Is there another place called Auckland I’m not aware of?
How long ago was that?
Dunno who that was either. Be curious to know. Bear in mind that it’s a pretty wide community up here. Lots of folks who played at Lateral Worlds, for example, never played at Mordavia.
I won’t try to sell you any latex weapons then! 
What’s the construction of your weapons, and what did you find dangerous about the latex ones?
I was wondering this in the head-shot topic too. If your weapons are heavier than the latex ones, I definitely wouldn’t push for light head shots with them. I wouldn’t suggest it with the heavier weapons we used to make ourselves either. But I think the Paddywhack/Ex-Caliber latex weapons are so light that the occaisional fully pulled head shot is unlikely to be dangerous.
[quote=“Derek”]Is there another place called Auckland I’m not aware of?
How long ago was that?[/quote]
If my memory serves me correctly that would have been around 1993.
We’ve had regular Auckland players between 1993 and 2003. After that we have been a bit sporadic and therfore have seen less Auclanders. We have had a few of the Mordavia crowd over the years. We haven’t seen any this year though.
Oh yes. Ryan, nothing personal about the latex weapons.
Yeah, no worries. I don’t take much personally, and especially not when it comes to LRP/LARP.
But what is it specifically that is different about them that you find dangerous? Bear in mind that I have no idea what sort of weapons you’re using.
Do you allow thrusting? That’s one area where most latex weapons aren’t as safe as weapons with better padded tips. They’re not intended for stabbing, although in my experience they’re not dangerous for it if the thrust is gentle and lacks follow-through.
In terms of construction, the so-called “latex” weapons are built around a core of fibreglass rod around 8mm in diameter. Over that is a sandwich of three layers of closed-cell foam. It’s all held together with contact adhesive, and carved/shaped using blades and sanders. Painted over the foam is a thin layer of rubber latex, which is just a surface. Max diameter of a sword is around 4-5cm, length is 1m, and they weigh around 300mg.
Those are the specs for the Ex-Caliber ones I sell, other latex weapons have different specs. But that general design is now the standard one for in LRP/LARP weapons in the UK and Europe. Most events over there don’t allow thrusting. We use pretty much the same construction for our home-made weapons in Auckland, although we don’t always paint them with latex.
We’re still using first generation weapons. PVC and pipe lagging with a bit of duct tape. Newspaper quillions for blocking. Solid, reliable, cheap, fairly safe. we’ve been using them since 98/99.
The ones that you are describing, we refer to as 2cnd generation weapons or flats. They have caused extensive and widespread bruising to our players over the years. Partly I think it is that they are so light that people go, ‘This couldn’t hurt anyone.’ Also the players get frustrated, they have their pretty flats and they are faster than our weapons, but they are still not scoring many hits and they feel they should be doing better so they hit as hard and as fast as they can, then suddenly that poor dryad wearing the greenbody paint is bruised.
We have looked at third generation weapons, but are settling for ‘flat rounds’. Using the latex technology on PVC weapons. These would not be supplied by the group as general use gear, but can be bought by players with a proven track record in combat.
And yes, we do allow thrusts and butt strikes in Quest. It is not really Live Role Play if you don’t have these.
Cane 32mm thick, padded with one layer of fibre tape and one layer of gaffa tape. Weight, about 1kg/m
Sorry, couldn’t resist. 
It’s not as manly as the steel weapon people. Steel, not padded (but blunted)…
Could be. Sounds like it’s the way they have been used that’s the problem. Nothing is safe when used incorrectly.
So the hundred-thousand-odd people in the UK and Europe playing LRPs that don’t allow these strikes aren’t really doing Live Role Play. Someone should go over there and tell them.
We’ve tried. We have tried. But they were having to much fun.
I used to build a lot of padded weapons. Weight is the friend of pain. Heavy weapons generally hurt more.
To make tips safe, I would use 8mm fibreglass rod for the weapon and attach 100mm of garden hose to the end (half on the fibreglass rob and half sticking off the end. This stopped punch through and made the weapons pretty much safe for thrusts.
I also recommend not just wrapping more tape around the end when the tips begins to wear out. Either replace the whole tip or bif the whole weapon.
EDIT: Oh, we padded the weapons as well. Not all campmats are equal. Some don’t bounce back very well.
Often I’d use a fabric covering rather than tape because it was tougher, lighter and lasted better.
Don’t worry, we know how to make swords.
We find weighting the swords helps reduce damage. It also makes the weapon weigh close to the real thing.
Question about LRP/LARP in Auckland.
From our experiences of numbers of players and things and taking into account that you have 10 times our population and three times the universities, your regular player turn out is somewhere between 100-200 right?
Largest event size I’ve seen was 80. That was Mordavia: The Hollow Kingdom, although there was also an event called The Gathering in Auckland in around 1996 that had similar numbers. In both cases a fair number were “roped in” and whether they were actually larping at the events is questionable.
I think Auckland larp has a lot to learn when it comes to recruitment and large events. There’s definitely scope here for events with hundreds of people, but for whatever reasons it hasn’t happened. Or not in my memory - it might have happened before my time. I remember hearing about some larp public events on North Head a long time back.
Apart from recruitment, I think larger events require better management. When an event creeps over around 60/70 people you need real strategies for managing all of them. It’s not just a thirty-person event times two, it’s qualitatively different.
Yeah, it’s funny. You can get masses of people to fork out $100+ each to play paintball, but mention larp for next-to-nothing, and they aren’t into it.
But I reckon there is huge potentional to grow larp in Auckland, and the Grand Battle project should result in more players.
Grand Battle Project ?
We have had a couple of battles down here over the years, but mainly it has been our club. We tried to get something going with Auckland a few years ago, but it didn’t seem to work out. Might try again.
Grand Battle is a large-scale medieval battle day that the society is planning to run, using larp weapons. Not intended to require a lot of roleplaying from players.
The plan for the first run is to recruit as many high-schoolers aged 16+ from the Auckland area as possible. That’s a large and well-networked market. I estimate we might get something like 500-2000 people if we do a half-decent job of recruitment.
Later events would be aimed at the general public.
Cool, Let us know when it is and I’ll see if we can’t bring up a carload or two.
A little worried about the snottlings. We always found it to much trouble with the consent forms and the cheating and so on, but maybe your lot are better than ours.
All the high-schoolers will be over 16, so we’ve got no intention to get parental consent forms. ACC covers sporting injuries, so we’ve no intention to get any other sort of form signed either. Waivers aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I imagine there will be the odd bruise from people bouncing off each other or the ground, but no more than you’d get in a game of touch rugby.
As for cheating, I’m sure some will happen and there’s little to be done about it. But in a hundreds-a-side battle, a bit of cheating here and there won’t make a massive difference to the results. There will be numerous marshalls looking for unsafe play and obvious cheating, which should be easier to spot in a one-hit-you’re-down combat system. I reckon the general public will cheat just as much as the 16-18s.
No dates set yet. The High School Grand Battle will come first and only be open to high schoolers, but we’ll definitely be looking for volunteers to marshall.
In our case the waivers weren’t for ACC. As you point out a waiver isn’t worth the paper it is written on in this country. We used to have the munckins. Then we had a module that ran late and half the players were grounded. We lost interest after that. The module was a damn good module though. One of our 'Alice inWonderland" modules.