Hi Mike,

> >Are you planning on running the games as Live Action Role Playing
> >games or pure fighting and Lazer Tag combat?
>
> So far we have only been doing the martial arts side of it, because
that's our main background. I played in a LARP game once here in NZ
but I have lost contact with the guys who were organising them.

It's probably best to sort out the rules for the bit you are best at
and then get some other people involved that can add on LARP rules if
you want to go that way.

I'm sure that you will be able to find people that play LARP and do
martial arts in NZ. I suggest you go and look for some online NZ LARP
communities and have a nose around.

Check out the Lazer Tag and Live Action Role Playing Groups links on
the VE groups links page:

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links

I don't have direct links to any NZ pages yet, but the sites I've got
so far could point you in the right direction. (Feel free to add any
Kiwi LARPs or Tagging groups you know about to the correct folders.)

Here are some things to think about if you have a chat with some
martial arts/LARP people:

One of the most important rules of LARP are the combat/damage rules
that govern how many times you can be hit/shot/zapped with magic
before you fall over. I bet that you could work a lot of the martial
arts 'damage' rules out yourself and as for guns Lazer Tag Team Ops
should handle that side itself. However, if you did decide to go back
to squirt guns or switch to some other type of gun, you would need to
take that into account.

Other rules you might want to think about are what happens if someone
wears protective equipment (like a bullet proof vest) during one a
Gun Sau based LARP game. Most LARP games require players to have a
physical representation (phys-rep in the LARP slang) of something
that their character owns, so you could try to borrow some of this
stuff and decide if it is safe to do martial arts while wearing it.
Fantasy fans might even like to wear something like the old fashioned
samari armour.

If you do get in touch with some fantasy LARP players then you might
want to check out some low powered crossbows as an
addition/alternative to guns. Most of these fire corks, but to be
honest with you I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good idea to
use a projectile smaller than an eye socket unless everyone is
wearing goggles. (I don't like to mix BB guns or paintball guns with
LARP - if someone gets shot in the temple or takes off their eye
protection you have the potential for an accident.)

Back to crossbows - I've seen some LARP people make crossbow bolts
with latex ends for these crossbows. If you can get in touch with
some LARPers who have made these you can look at what they have got
(and more importantly try getting someone to shoot you with one) so
you can see how you feel about the safety aspect of using them in
your game.

I've also seen LARP arrows (again arrow heads larger than eye sockets
are safest) used with low powered bows. Maybe you could use some of
the martial arts arrow deflecting/catching skills. It must be safer
to practise these skills with LARP arrows than real ones!

Mixing LARP styles could complecate the combat system, as fantasy
games tend to give you hit points (often area specific) that you
loose when someone hits you, but sci-fi games tend to use Lazer Tag
(especially the old Worlds of Wonder system in the UK and USA) which
has the combat system (take 6 hits and you fall over) built into it.

However if you are going to bring in martial arts stuff you might
also want to think about having 'old fashioned' weapons as well. It
could be really cool for someone who runs out of bullets to pull out
a samari sword and try to cut down an opponant. With your style, you
could probably bring sword disarms into the game.

I've actually heard of people that do LARP with re-enactment weapons!
However, in my opinion the safest way to go would be to use standard
LARP latex weapons. Don't forget that latex swords are not 100% safe
as they are *not* toys and you would need to remind any players that
you bring in from the martial arts side to pull their blows, but I
think that generally they would be a safe thing for you to add to
martial arts combat.

All this is a little bit off track from your original project, but
could be options that might attract people to play.

> >If you are going to run it as a LARP, are you going to use
> >Equilibrium as your background or come up with your own background?
>
> I think it would work either way. I'm not qualified to run a LARP
game myself but I reckon a game based on Equilibrium would be
awesome! Some of the other guys on the Gun Sau forum are thinking or
ways to do the whole Gun Fu/John Woo/Matrix style of combat as a
game/sport.

The sport is probably a lot easier to set up than the LARP. However,
if you did go down the LARP route you could set up your own in game
organisations and allow players that keep their characters alive to
advance them in some way.

You could even bring in a few special abilities if you go down the
Matrix route.

> >I would think that if someone had a gun kicked out of their hand
in >a
> >Gun Sau game it could break.
>
> Gun Sau disarms generally involve leverage grips that remove the
gun from the other player's hand without dropping either weapon.
Honestly I doubt that someone would be able to kick a gun out of
someone else's had during a Gun Sau match, but stranger things have
happened I guess. Anyway although you can disarm in Gun Sau it isn't
required.

I wasn't specifically thinking of intentional disarms. In our Virtual
Eclipse LARP games we often have Lazer Tag combats outdoors at night.
We usually keep our distance, as there is no advantage for being
close up when you don't have unarmed combat in your game.

If someone holding a gun falls over in a combat, there is a chance
they could drop it and some of the Lazer Tag guns out there are a bit
fragile. Do you allow Judo throws? I bet someone would drop their gun
if they were thrown.

> >My only question, apart from those above is what do you do about
>the
> >martial arts side of the game? Will you only allow martial artists
>to
> >play or are you developing a game for LARP players (read unskilled
> >people) to join in with?
>
> We haven't really thought about using Gun Sau in LARPing per se but
it would be fun if we could figure it all out. One thing I should
mention is that Gun Sau is a pretty skilled style (I have 10 years
martial arts training with my dad who is a MA instructor) so if you
were going to use it in a LARP it would probably work best if the
players had quite a lot of training in the style. Players with a MA
background would probably be able to pick it up faster.

I can't see myself doing Gun Sau then! I did a bit of Judo as a kid
and wouldn't know anything about how to punch or kick someone without
hurting them.

I actually got turned off of Judo by a person similar to the jerks
that you met in the airsoft community. He was a much higer level than
me and just threw me down before I could get back up, so I couldn't
learn anything when I was against him. I do think that martial arts
are cool, now I've grown up, but don't have the time and dedication
to learn them. (If I did have the time, I'd probably be doing
medieval re-enactment with real swords and armour, as a lot of my
frieds do that. All I've done is a bit of fighting with staffs. That
is fun.)

> >"Every body was GunFu fighting! Hah!"
>
> Doo-doo-doo doo-doo doo doo!

"In fact it was a little bit frightning"