Author: Wulf Corbett (---.co.uk)
Date: 09-09-2002 13:13
I'm just back from another weekend's LARP, including some heavy combats (3-4 hundred a side), and I really appreciate the differences in combat to the table-top experience. I've done many years of re-enactment combat before I started LARP 5 years ago, but a newcomer I took with me last weekend said these were the real problems he had:
1) NOISE - he was totally confused 90% of the time by the constant yelling and screaming almost EVERYONE was doing - LARP adds to the problem since you have to yell a spell loud enough for the target to hear it, but even standing next to our commander he didn't understand what the commands were. 10-12 yards away I did - you get used to it, and filter it out.
2) Identification - even I suffer from this, where there are no uniforms, who is who? I ended up back to back with an enemy commander, before someone else on his side realised I was wearing the 'monster' sackcloth tabbard...
3) Overwhelming blows - You can get in a LOT more than one blow per 6 seconds... and so can they! This is, of course, exaggerated GREATLY by the featherweight latex weapons at LARP, but I also saw the same problem with blunt steel weapons in re-enactment. You can easily get 'lost' defending yourself and 'forget' to attack, and if you have more than one opponent, even if you're in a battle line and neither can get behind you, it's pretty much mandatory...
4) Weapon superiority - many systems place insufficient significance to comparing weapons. I HATE having to fight against polearms (one on one is OK, but they're not that stupid...), this year was the Year Of The Mass Archery Barrage, etc. If you haven't got a shield, you better be DAMN fast!
Anyone interested can check out our style of LARP here:
http://www.firesong.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Renewal02/index_renewal02.html
not my site, but probably the best one around.
Note that I am NOT a 'LARP is better than tabletop' type, LARP is too limited in scope (strangely enough, most of our opposition is roughly humanoid...), severely exhausting, and, worst of all, it rains every so often...
Wulf
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