As I'm Not Allowed To Be This Divisive On The Boards...

[magicaddict]

...I'll say it here.

Out of interest, what's it going to take? A broken limb? Someone being knocked unconscious? Brain damage?

Or just someone more influential's eye almost being put out?

We are, as a society, not safe enough with our fighting. We need a strategy to improve it across the board, from the most experienced players to the least, and we need it now. Simply assuming people will know what to do from five minutes of conversation and thirty seconds of practical demonstration, then being shocked and shouting at them when they demonstrate they don't, is not enough. It's being demonstrated over and over again.

I am not willing to wait until someone is permanently blinded before climbing on my soapbox. It's everyone's responsibility, it's everyone's lookout, and positive action needs to be taken, not dragging of feet at the prospect of actually having to do something, or indignance at the idea that you might be part of the problem. I am, and you are too. We all bloody well are. Get over it.

Safety workshops and weapons practice is one idea, and I think it has merit. I also think it should be mandatory until you can demonstrate that with each weapon type, in a range of different situations, you aren't going to have a brain fart that causes someone else to collapse while clutching something important of theirs. I also think that until you can demonstrate this, what right do you have to be swinging what has, over the past twelve months, proven to the world and their spouse to be a weapon perfectly capable of doing really unpleasant damage to the human body when wielded unsafely?

I don't care that I'm crap, I just want to be safe. Sign me up, every day until I am accepted as good enough not to hurt other people.

Anyone else? Any other ideas?

Comments

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the particular incident is, but have been thinking about this stuff recently.

Basically, fighting with weapons is dangerous. If you do it properly, people die. But, of course, we don't want people to die.

So we try to reduce the risks. There are broadly 4 ways to do that, dealing with the 4 main areas of risk - make the weapons safer, make the attacker safer, make the defender safer, or make the environment safer.

One approach, often the one chosen by re-enactment, blunts the weapons, does lots of training & weapon competancy tests, insists on helmets & padded gloves and normally fights on flat open ground.
One approach, from the SCA, is to use wooden weapons, train lots, wear lots of protective armour including full face protection and normally fight on flat ground.
The LARP approach sometimes focusses on reducing the weapon risk but not on dealing with the other 3 areas - we fight with foam weapons but the attackers often don't know how to fight, the defenders aren't wearing decent armour, and we're skirmishing in trees... This means that if a weapon is unsafe but no one picks up on that, there sometimes isn't anything that's stopping it becoming a complete clusterfuck. The other approaches have tried to tackle multiple areas of risks, so there's more redundancy?

I think all of them have something to learn from each other, but ultimately each system has to decide where the acceptable risk line is.

I've seen many more injuries from people tripping over in re-enactment and larp battles than from being hit, though - I think that terrain is the real risk to tackle if we want to reduce dangers. But woodland is so pretty and atmospheric to fight in, I'd hate to lose it.
And the risk of tripping on top of a dead person, battlefield awareness risks, would still be high.

[xanthipe]

You also need to take into account, as the above has said, that people don't defend as well as they should 'because it's not a real weapon' and because they're not trained to react right.

There is just as much truth in the idea that people need to be aware of how to dodge or parry, how not to stand so their head is the prime target of wild swings, how to react sensibly if someone runs in from the edge of vision - and I'm trying to get that organised, but I'm not going to be able to do much until June because, y'know, wedding and shit.

And our terrain is lethal, but I love it anyway.

[helbling.livejournal.com]

Being fair, we don't tend to throw newbies in at the deep end unless they turn up mid year (which is unusual, and most of the time when that happens, its because they're existing larpers who have moved to the area, not people who have never picked up a weapon before). The campaign normally does start off slow, with lots of talking and just a few slow fights against unskilled (or they're supposed to be unskilled - I know faster fighters like Warren normally go to the effort of slowing themselves down, if anyone isn't, they need a -ve) opponents in the first games, and it gets ramped up from there.

Other ideas, and potential issues:
1) More practise.
Run practise/warm up sessions before games? It doesn't have to be a long time or structured, it just has to be practise - play war games, put people through endless games of Rabbit, or circles of treachery, the sort of shit we used to do with the CP weapons practise for an hour or so. And be strict about it. No, you may not come along to chat. No, there will be no spectating. You are there, you pick up a weapon, and you swing. If you do not wish to do the latters, get your arse back to the carpark. End of point.
Issues with this: Chances of getting people to turn up earlier on a Sunday morning? Minimal. You'll probably only get those who are keen already, and if they're that keen, chances are they aren't the ones to worry about. You also risk alienating people if you insist on it for new people, as one of the reasons start time for games is set when it is is so people can easily get there by public transport. Arriving earlier, especially if you come from out of the city, might not be doable. And making it mandatory for people who persistantly cause problems is all good and well but if no one else is there for them to practise against - or worse, only people as dangerous as they are turn up because they're made to - then there's no point as they won't improve.

2) Negatives anytime you cause an incident.
We don't care if it was an accident. We don't care if it was a one off. We don't care if your weapon was harder than you thought/you got carried away/your hand slipped. You caused it, you get a negative. If it was a genuine accident, then it shouldn't happen too often, and everyone will end up with about the same number of negatives. If you're getting more negatives than you like, maybe its time to start thinking about the situations in which you have these 'accidents' and avoiding them.
Issues with this: It might lead to a hostile environment as people become more defensive about blame or insist it wasn't them, which will lead to blow up arguements. There also is the potential for blaming the wrong person, as it's not always the person with the weapon who is being unsafe - example situation, a scout has snuck back to the party and steps into a skirmish having concealed themselves previously. Due to their actions, their party is not aware they're there, and they get caught by a backswing as they do so. At that point, it's the scout's fault for not having more battle awareness, not the weapon wielder, because they'd been as aware as they could be. You could cut across this by having a general rule of 'involved in a safety incident? Get a negative' regardless, but the idea of handing punishments to people like Weeza who are injured as a result of others doesn't sit well with me.

(continued)

[appyamy.livejournal.com]

Having thought about it, what if we did something as simple as have someone observe a group fighting and then take them aside to give pointers?

It could even be done by a monster during game time or something like that.

Knowing just what your individual strengths and weaknesses are might make a world of difference in this case?