Foam Dart Weapon Larp Rules - Feedback Please!

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[size=130]This is a long post, but I would really appreciate it if you read the whole thing and gave your feedback![/size]

Ever since it dawned on me that Nerf guns could potentially be used as larp projectile weapons, I have been conceptualising a system which could be used for a campaign game (although this could also be used in a variety of one-off games). I searched the net, and found that other people had used Nerf guns in larps successfully.

It is, perhaps, important to note that there are some rules in this system that limit the possible equipment a player can use. These rules were put in the system to allow a more paced combat between players and NPCs who are all wielding foam dart guns. There are several scenarios in which these restrictions could be dropped for pacing reasons; e.g. a zombie apocalypse (yes, I have taken a look at the ZombieLARP thread and website).

Pros of using foam dart guns as larp weapons;
[ul][li]Less dangerous than foam melee weapons (the force generated by most foam dart guns is less than generally used to hit people with swords in a larp)[/li]
[li]The distance most guns throw their darts (up to 10m) is about the same distance that combat calls can be heard and that spell packets are accurate.[/li]
[li]The average time between shots is about 1 - 2 seconds, which is the acceptable recommendation for timing between melee weapon hits in most boffer games[/li][/ul]
Cons of using foam dart guns as larp weapons;
[ul][li]Most dart guns are weak enough that it can be difficult to feel a hit when wearing heavy clothing.[/li]
[li]At close range a shot to the eye can be damaging, although the same can be said for being hit in the face with a sword.[/li][/ul]

[size=130]Dealing Damage[/size]

Basic Damage
Damage is dealt when someone is hit by a foam dart or melee weapon. Standard small darts and all melee weapons deal 1 HP damage (or a suitable damage amount depending on how much default HP the players have).

"Mobbed"
When combat gets to the point where you cannot keep track of all the darts coming at you, or you have been fired at with a shotgun with more than 2 darts at once, semi-auto or full-auto weapon, you are “mobbed” and reduced to 0HP or the equivalent for incapacitation.

Damage Calls
When you think someone you are targeting has not seen you (this includes when your target is in the middle of a skirmish), especially if you are attacking them from behind with a gun, make sure you call out “Bang!” as you fire to make sure that they know they’ve been fired at and that if you hit, they know the pressure they felt was actually a bullet (sometimes it’s difficult to tell in the heat of battle).

The “Bang!” call is also used when shooting someone at point-blank range (closer than 1m). Instead of firing a dart at them, call “Bang!”.

Valid Targets
Common sense is a must when engaging in combat where you’re actually hitting people and throwing objects at people. As such, a very standard and well known rule applies in this system as well; No firing at/hitting peoples heads or genitals. Such actions are likely to get a person punished by GMs for such unsafe behaviour, although it is understood that such things happen by accident on occasion, at which point appropriate apologies must be made.

[size=130]Ammunition[/size]

Ammo Types
Standard ammo (aka the stuff that you buy which is compatible with your gun) is the only ammo allowed in the game. All darts and missiles used in this system must be smooth-tipped (i.e. no velcro tipped darts). This is to mitigate potential eye injury.

Home Made Ammo
Home made darts and missiles are not allowed. The main risks are that, while most of your darts may be very good quality, some of them might not be and may come apart, resulting in whatever you used as an end cap and/or a weight causing potential injury (especially to peoples eyes). Outlawing all home made ammo is the easiest way to avoid the risk of potentially dangerous darts.

Ammo Marking
Players are encouraged to name/mark their darts so that they can collect them after skirmishes (see Ammo Collection section for more details). All unmarked darts will be collected at the end of skirmishes and returned to the collective dart pool held by the GMs.

Ammo Capacity
All clips, magazines, cartridges, or built in gun ammo capacity must be 18 darts or below. I.E. no more than 18 darts in a gun at a time. This limits the number of shots that someone can fire during a skirmish in quick succession.

Your Ammo
The only darts or missiles you are allowed to use in your weapon are your own, those provided for you by the GMs (unmarked game darts), or those of a friend you have an agreement with to use each others darts. Any fired darts or missiles on the ground during a skirmish are considered “spent” and unusable until properly collected (see the Ammo Collection section below).

[size=130]Ammo Collection[/size]

When To Collect Ammo
The only time darts or missiles may be collected from the battlefield by players is after a fight is over, not during a fight in progress. If you run out of darts during a fight, that’s all your ammunition spent until after the fight. The end of a fight is considered to be when all enemies are dead, incapacitated or have fled the scene of the fight.

How To Collect Ammo Safely
There will be at least one “Safe Point” in the game, if not several, which players can sign in at to say that their character is at the Safe Point restocking their ammunition. This is achieved by the player writing their real name, character name, and the time and date they are signing in at. When a player signs in at a Safe Point, they are given a red strip of cloth to tie around their heads; this signifies that they are out of character and do not exist in the game world. Once a player has signed in to a Safe Point they are free to go back to the scene of the fight at which they expended their ammunition and collect it again without fear of their character getting attacked.

Once a player has collected their ammunition, they must return to the Safe Point they signed in at and sign out. This is achieved by the player striking out their previous sign in entry and returning the OOC red strip of cloth to the NPC or GM who is taking care of the Safe Point.

[size=130]Guns[/size]

Player Guns
All player guns must have a priming mechanism that must be used before every shot fired. I.E. No automatic or semi-automatic weapons (nothing you can hold the trigger down on and watch the clip empty) may be used by the players.

All player weapons must only be able to shoot no more than 2 darts at a time. I.E. No shotgun/multi-shot weapons that can fire more than 2 darts at a time may be used by players.

Home Made Guns
Homemade projectile weapons will be assessed for approval on a case-by-case basis and in comparison to already approved commercial projectile weapons. This excludes modified commercial projectile weapons, which are dealt with in the next section.

[size=130]Gun Modifications[/size] (these rules are for safety reasons, although can conceivably be dropped on player and GM agreement)

Nature of Modifications
All modifications must be aesthetic in nature only and must not alter the functionality or performance of the commercial projectile weapon in a significant or dangerous way. Most functional or performance enhancing modifications increase the force with which the dart exits the gun, thus increasing range. The main problem with this is the greater risk of injury, especially to a persons eyes, if they are hit with darts from these modified weapons. Another problem is that some of the modifications increase the dart firing rate, which brings the weapon too close to being on par with automatic or semi-automatic weapons.

Checking for Modifications
Before a game starts, all weapons should be tested in comparison to their unmodified counterparts to ensure that no performance or functionality modifications have been made to the players’ weapons. This is a simple measure to avoid cheating. It may also be a good idea to do occasional random checks on people’s weapons to ensure that no one has made modifications to their weapons since getting into the game approved.

If you have any feedback, comments, questions, or advice on these ideas I would really appreciate it!

Makes sense to me and sounds good, actually perfect for something I’m thinking of working on…

Well, that depends on how common guns are, how many crew you have (i.e. whether you can just swarm the gun), and whether you want to recreate Indiana Jones or not.

The amount of damage dealt will obviously need to be scaled to the number of HPs in the game and the desired effectiveness of firearms. If you want guns to be more effective, you up their damage, or let them ignore armour. Some games do the latter for bows, but they have serious safety standards and require training, whereas a nerf is far more of a “point and shoot” weapon.

There should be some emphasis on nerfs looking the part for the setting. A C16th pirate shouldn’t be carrying a pair of Mavericks in the place of their brace of wheel-locks, though a C19th Adventurer could use a Longshot in place of their “elephant gun”.

(I understand nerf used to sell “flintlock” pistols; I’d love to get a bunch, because they’re cool)

And in some games, it may be possible to limit ammunition for characters with firearms. “You’ve got your pistol and a bag of shot, and that’s it; once its gone, its gone, unless you find more”.

Just as a matter of style, this is too prescriptive. Its enough to echo the zombielarp, and say that “if you want your darts back you should mark them, otherwise we’ll stick them in the common pool.” Are you really going to say that someone can’t use a weapon because they can’t tell their ammo from other people’s?

Well, that depends on how common guns are, how many crew you have (i.e. whether you can just swarm the gun), and whether you want to recreate Indiana Jones or not.

The amount of damage dealt will obviously need to be scaled to the number of HPs in the game and the desired effectiveness of firearms. If you want guns to be more effective, you up their damage, or let them ignore armour. Some games do the latter for bows, but they have serious safety standards and require training, whereas a nerf is far more of a “point and shoot” weapon.

There should be some emphasis on nerfs looking the part for the setting. A C16th pirate shouldn’t be carrying a pair of Mavericks in the place of their brace of wheel-locks, though a C19th Adventurer could use a Longshot in place of their “elephant gun”.

(I understand nerf used to sell “flintlock” pistols; I’d love to get a bunch, because they’re cool)[/quote]

I agree with you about using appropriate weapons for the time period, I’m all for that. Although in this particular instance I’m not trying to make recommendations on which guns should be used for which potential history periods; that’s up to the GMs who want to allow nerf guns in their games.

I agree that limiting the amount of ammo people have can certainly increase the challenge for players, and may in some cases be a good idea. With the objective of setting pacing and balance that is easy to follow in a weekend long game, I imagine a limit of 50 darts (2 extended clips) would be reasonable if the players are being attacked by NPCs who are also armed with nerf guns.

Just as a matter of style, this is too prescriptive. Its enough to echo the zombielarp, and say that “if you want your darts back you should mark them, otherwise we’ll stick them in the common pool.” Are you really going to say that someone can’t use a weapon because they can’t tell their ammo from other people’s?[/quote]

You have a fair point, I will amend the rules to read as such.

I thought a ‘con’ not listed is the potential injury to eyes. The other safety stuff I recall for LARP items is that weapons should not be able to fit the eye socket - I forget the dimensions people have mentioned 30mm?. Not having actually bought a nerf gun, I can only recall a set my nephews got given at Christmas, which I’m pretty sure comes with glasses, and the warning that they should be worn at all times the guns are being used.

Do you envision that the players in a game would be wearing glasses or not - this doesn’t seem to be addressed at all from what I can see.

Nerfs aren’t really a danger there,; a dart doesn’t have a lot of force behind it, certainly a lot less than an average sword (which we’re happy to mitigate with a “don’t hit people in the head” rule).

The dart tag sets include glasses as an arse-covering strategy for the manufacturer, similar to the “never hit people” warnings on their swords (WTF?)

There is a particular subset of NERF that comes with “safety glasses” - their Dart Tag products. I’m not certain, but I suspect this may have something to do with the darts incorporating velcro on their tips, but don’t quote me on it, as I haven’t closely examined any of those products.

That said, the level of safety-goggling required for NERF is pretty low, so it really should be that head for everyone to have some basic eye protection, if that is a concern. Conversely, I’ve spent many hours with my friends firing NERF weapons at each other, and we’ve yet to hit someone in the eye - but of course, I’m sure it does happen. So it probably comes down to a safety call on the part of the event organisers, and something all the players should be made aware of regardless of eye protection, even considering the relatively low risk.

If you’re wanting to approximate flintlock (or other single-shot) pistols, the Nite Finder EX-3 is an excellent single shot NERF balster, and if you keep an eye out, you can regularly get them on special for $10-$15 from Farmers, http://www.fishpond.co.nz, or http://www.mightyape.co.nz. They are also the most accurate & powerful NERF weapons I’ve encountered, if you’re talking unmodified blasters.

Obviously Mavericks are your revolver analog. (And for that extra nasty boss - give them a Barricade - full auto 10 shot revolver >:-)

Recon, Longstrike, Longshot, Deploy, Raider (although that has a 35-shot drum mag) are your rifles, and all have interchangeable magazines. The Longstrike, in particular, has a very nice “bolt action” style cocking mechanism (as well as being good and long like a proper battle rifle), which could make it a good choice for old fashioned rifles - the downsides being that they are expensive.

There’s a bunch of new blasters being released this year which look rather shiny, but I’m unsure as to how many of them have arrived in NZ yet - I’ve only encountered the Stampede and Barricade so far, although I know you can order the Barrel Break.

For an extensive reference of every NERF gun that ever there was, see http://nerfguns.org/

A couple of points

The biggest con you have clearly pointed out. Its not too hard when people are shooting you in the front but its the scenario of multiples which make things tricky. Adding some basic calls might help when it is unclear. So you might identify a target when you shoot them from behind so that they know that that slight pressure they felt is actually an impact.

It all goes to custard if you are trying to track 2 different gunmen and a guy waving a sword at you. At which point I pull out my “mobbed” guideline, which states if you can’t keep count of the hits you have been mobbed. You are on 0HP. Unless you have some cheese armour which protects you, you’re stuffed. This is just common sense, a hail of bullets puts you down. It also goes with the forgotten HP rule, which is, if you lose track take another one off your total and play on (or alternatively you have 0HP and fall over).

A few nerf guns are semi or fully automatic. You can exclude them or you can work with them. For instance if you’re looking at different levels of damage.
1 and 2 are good as it is simple. Then they (the autos) can be put in the higher damage category and say that being hit by a burst fire weapon is more damaging mostly because there are more bullets in the air. So regardless of whether you are hit by 1 or 7 from the same burst the damage will be 2 from a single source. A shotgun works on the same principle.

You might need a call which alerts the target and the damage type “burst =2” etc. Its immersion breaking yes but not the worst.

And then just encourage people to use the mobbed rule if they get overwhelmed.

As to nerf bullets in the eye… yep they sting (I have been shot in the eye and also shot my stepsons in the eye in various nerf battles with no lasting injury). And point blank they might cause injury (We don’t shoot point blank, we put the gun at their head and go “bang”). You would want to limit the dart types to those with a smooth head. Some have velcro and those could scratch eyes etc. And even with no head shot rules in place they will still happen. Wearing any kind of glasses would mitigate this.

Lastly, most nerf modders take out the air restrictors. If there is any safety issue there then you need a solution. Paintballs and airsoft are magnitudes more dangerous yet the proper safety gear makes it safe enough that you can do it as a hobby. In comparison using nerf should be easy.

Nerfs aren’t really a danger there,; a dart doesn’t have a lot of force behind it, certainly a lot less than an average sword (which we’re happy to mitigate with a “don’t hit people in the head” rule).

The dart tag sets include glasses as an arse-covering strategy for the manufacturer, similar to the “never hit people” warnings on their swords (WTF?)[/quote]

I concur with other comments made by Idiot and Ignifluous about the danger inherent in using nerf guns as larp weapons. Certainly, there is a possibility that you could hit someone in the eye with a dart, but unmodified nerf guns use very little force and there is a lot less risk involved than getting hit in the head with the tip of a larp safe sword, which we only mitigate by saying “don’t hit people in the head”.

As for a list of approved player weapons and non-player weapons, they are as follows based on this rule set;

Approved Nerf guns:
Alpha Trooper
Ball Reactor Blaster
Barrel Break
Barricade
Big Bad Bow
Buzzsaw
Crossfire
Deploy
Element
Firefly
Furyfire
Hyperfire
Longshot
Longstrike
Maverick
Microblaster
Nite Finder
Raider (with smaller clip)
Recon
Reflex
Scout
Spectre
Speedload
Stealth
Stormfire
Strikefire
Switch Shot
Titan (2-3 damage?)

Non-player guns:
Blastfire (semi-auto)
Hornet (semi-auto)
Magstrike (semi-auto)
Powerclip (semi-auto)
Quick 16
Rapidfire
Stampede
SuperMaxx (all guns in series, force is too great)
Wildfire

[quote=“Jared”]Its not too hard when people are shooting you in the front but its the scenario of multiples which make things tricky. Adding some basic calls might help when it is unclear. So you might identify a target when you shoot them from behind so that they know that that slight pressure they felt is actually an impact.

It all goes to custard if you are trying to track 2 different gunmen and a guy waving a sword at you. At which point I pull out my “mobbed” guideline, which states if you can’t keep count of the hits you have been mobbed. You are on 0HP. Unless you have some cheese armour which protects you, you’re stuffed. This is just common sense, a hail of bullets puts you down. It also goes with the forgotten HP rule, which is, if you lose track take another one off your total and play on (or alternatively you have 0HP and fall over).[/quote]

I like the mobbed rule, and will add it to the system. It is also a fair point about shooting someone in the back, and I will add a guideline for this as well.

[quote=“Jared”]A few nerf guns are semi or fully automatic. You can exclude them or you can work with them. For instance if you’re looking at different levels of damage.
1 and 2 are good as it is simple. Then they (the autos) can be put in the higher damage category and say that being hit by a burst fire weapon is more damaging mostly because there are more bullets in the air. So regardless of whether you are hit by 1 or 7 from the same burst the damage will be 2 from a single source. A shotgun works on the same principle.

You might need a call which alerts the target and the damage type “burst =2” etc. Its immersion breaking yes but not the worst.

And then just encourage people to use the mobbed rule if they get overwhelmed.[/quote]

The mobbed rule can certainly apply when players are being hit by such weapons, but I have banned players from using semi and full-automatics in this system as it is a far too easy kill.

You have a fair point. I will add a limit on ammo types in regards to this.

I’m aware of the problem with modding. I have addressed this by banning functionally modded guns and recommended testing of all player weapons in parallel to their unmodded equivalents.

[quote=“Tetrajak”]As for a list of approved player weapons and non-player weapons, they are as follows based on this rule set;

Approved Nerf guns:[/quote]

You might want to add non-branded nerfs as well e.g. the Buzz Bee range (I love my Buzz Bee double-shot)

buzzbeetoys.com/USglobal/Air … dexAB.html

Personaly not a fan of Nerf guns…I prefer the old “Cap and Call” but thats me.

[quote=“IdiotSavant”]You might want to add non-branded nerfs as well e.g. the Buzz Bee range (I love my Buzz Bee double-shot)

buzzbeetoys.com/USglobal/Air … dexAB.html[/quote]

The lists I posted admittedly only address the currently available nerf guns, but all foam dart guns can be judged based on the rules already listed in the system.

I agree it has its merits, but in a large-scale game where a lot of people are firing guns, how do you keep track of who got shot?

In the states when we used nerf guns we would cover the ends with chalk so it left a mark, then depending on the call and other circumstances it would help determine how badly your were injured…

That is a very intriguing technique. Although I admit, I’m trying to look for a very simple system in this game that can keep pace with the gun-fire. I’d really love to end up with something that took no time at all for people to learn and served the purpose of a foam dart gun game elegantly. While special weapons are intriguing and interesting, it would mean that people need to remember which guns do what, and if they’re not carrying one then they’re less likely to remember what each one does.

It came from too many “you didn’t hit me” arguments that ruined events… so if you had chalk your hit the GM would know your skills and the shooter’s skills(we tried to all used different coloured chalk) and that would mean how well of shot it was and if you were dead or not… worked really well

If you were going to try that, you could chalk the ends of the nerf darts with different colours depending on damage … however you may not want too much chalk dust getting into the blasters’ internals.

I can see that it would be an exceptionally useful tool to solve arguments. However, I’m hoping to have some decently fair and mature people playing in the campaign that I hope to use this system for (hush! It’s a secret!).

That is a minor worry, but I wont use chalk unless players and NPCs actually start breaking out into arguments about whether people were hit or not. I think different damage types complicate the system somewhat more than I’d like.

Having one hit do one point of damage, regardless of whether the hit is ranged or melee, has a lot going for it

It’s reasonably believable (being stabbing with a sword will mess you up, and so will being shot), reasonably balanced (so long as fire rate and ammo is limited), and massively simple. It doesn’t require any distracting calls or observations in combat, is easy to calculate, and works even if you’re not sure what hit you.

For super-duper weapons, I’d suggest having an effect rather than extra damage. For example, a super-powered ranged weapon could do 1 damage and knockout (for 1 minute, or whatever period the system uses for knockout in general). Being knocked out is fairly disastrous in most combats, but not always deadly. Knockout may seem too cartoony though, in which case for more realism such weapons could instantly incapacitate - straight to 0 HP. You get hit with the rocket, you’re down and massively wounded.

I think you can reasonably expect to help start a culture of how Nerf weapons are used in larp locally (much like latex weapons have become the defacto standard for melee). But don’t expect to be laying down a standard that larps must follow, especially in regard to system effects like amounts of damage. Each larp writer will come to their own conclusions about that, so what you’re mostly doing is deciding how your larp will use Nerf weapons, and if people appreciate your reasoning and how it works in play then they’ll replicate the approach.

[quote=“Ryan Paddy”]Having one hit do one point of damage, regardless of whether the hit is ranged or melee, has a lot going for it

It’s reasonably believable (being stabbing with a sword will mess you up, and so will being shot), reasonably balanced (so long as fire rate and ammo is limited), and massively simple. It doesn’t require any distracting calls or observations in combat, is easy to calculate, and works even if you’re not sure what hit you.

For super-duper weapons, I’d suggest having an effect rather than extra damage. For example, a super-powered ranged weapon could do 1 damage and knockout (for 1 minute, or whatever period the system uses for knockout in general). Being knocked out is fairly disastrous in most combats, but not always deadly. Knockout may seem too cartoony though, in which case for more realism such weapons could instantly incapacitate - straight to 0 HP. You get hit with the rocket, you’re down and massively wounded.

I think you can reasonably expect to help start a culture of how Nerf weapons are used in larp locally (much like latex weapons have become the defacto standard for melee). But don’t expect to be laying down a standard that larps must follow, especially in regard to system effects like amounts of damage. Each larp writer will come to their own conclusions about that, so what you’re mostly doing is deciding how your larp will use Nerf weapons, and if people appreciate your reasoning and how it works in play then they’ll replicate the approach.[/quote]

Thank you for the advice. You have good points about melee vs ranged, as well as heavy weapons. I will incorporate these into the rules of the system.

I’m not expecting to set down rules that people must follow, I’m looking to create a system that has pacing people can follow in large scale gun battles in larp. I plan on using the final version of this system for a campaign game that I have yet to formulate (kind of distracted by getting things ready for the cyberpunk larp). I fully anticipate that if people like something about the system, they’ll use it, and if not, they wont. I recognise and understand this.

EDIT: Rules have been revised (23/02/2011).