LARP Weaponry

[Nicole Tienter]

Greetings! My name is Nicole. I apologize because I accidentally posted this in the 'New Player Discussion' at first but then I found this thread which is much more relevant.

I'm reaching out to all of you in hopes of getting feedback and spreading the word on a project for the LARP community. We are hoping this can become part of the LARP weaponry.

Here is the low-down:
Basically, we decided to integrate technology and 'magic' to create a Magic Wizard Staff. My friend (Mechanical Engineer) and his buddy built three Magic Wizard Staff prototypes, and we now need to get feedback so that we can begin designing the next phase of even more advanced staffs.

Check out one of the staffs in the video below:

<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/221679753" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="

">Magic Wizard Staff: Fog Staff</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user67669562">Brian Krohn</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

Is this a LARP weapon that interests you? If so, here is a link to our website:
http://magicwizardstaff.com.

It would be great if we could get people to fill out the questionnaire under the "We Need Your Help!" section.

 

[Nicole Tienter]

For anyone not interested, would you be willing to tell me why? In all honesty, just curious and will not argue your point whatsoever!

 

[CaptainYork]

Hi Nicole,

I know that our Southern Minnesota Chapter has been reached out to in the past both on these forums and on facebook and it didn't look like you guys really got a response.

I figured I can at least explain a little why that might be. Our game has a contact combat system, meaning we actually hit each other. While we don't hit as hard as some other games do we still get the occasional bruise and are very concerned with safety. In our system we primarily use "boffers" which are padded safety weapons. Usually a PVC or kite spar core with pipe insulation foam around it with duct tape or cloth covering the whole thing.

So the Wizard staffs that you make are not, from what I can see, usable as staff weapons in our game. For safety reasons you wouldn't even be able to use them for blocking to avoid destroying the padding on other weapons and to avoid the possibility of reflexively swinging. So unfortunately your staffs, in our game, would be really large props.

One of the coolest feature I've seen for your staffs is the ability to create fire. While this is super cool it is another safety hazard. Besides the occasional campfire we tend to avoid open flames for everyone's safety.

For the staff that lights up, again pretty cool but for most of us glowsticks and other smaller light up props serve the same purpose and are smaller and less cumbersome.

Smoke and Vortex staffs, look pretty cool and would be neat props but low visibility is another safety hazard that limits it's use and would fill a pretty niche use that is often needed in our game.

I guess in my opinion these staffs are in general filling a need that our game doesn't really have. That's not to say no one here would be interested but hopefully the above helps a bit to understand why you may not see a lot of responses to this for our game in particular.

 

[Nicole Tienter]

Thank you so much for your response. It is great to get a unfiltered, detailed insight into the thoughts of those in the community. Your response will be taken into great consideration. Very helpful and much appreciated. Thank you!

 

[Krystina F]

I did the survey posted on the forums a while back regarding these staves. While they look amazing, I recall mentioning that due to how our LARP works they wouldn't really work due to safety concerns. There may be other LARPs out there that they may work in, but to me, they seem geared more towards Cosplay. And I do not mean that in a negative way, it's just that there's no combat involved at most Cosplay events and there's more opportunity to use the special FX there then there would be on a battlefield setting.
But basically everything said above by CaptainYork is exactly what I would have said. I wish you and your group the best of luck with the staves. They really are awesome.

 

[Draven]

Can confirm.

Would use for ritual casting prop.

Would not use for anything else.

Would not spend what I expect this prop would cost on ritual prop, though I expect there are people who would.