Conflict and Combat

Hi Wastelander. Stay a while and listen to how we want to resolve conflict and combat at our outpost. First of all, please leave your winning mentality at home. This larp is not centered around combat even though conflict might happen. The world is a hard and dangerous place, after all. We are here to experience and tell a story with each other. You win the larp by coming home with loads of great memories.

With that we want to push for the concept “Play to lose”. 

TLDR;
– Play to lose.
– No bb’s or ammo, no batteries, no gas, no projectiles. Melee weapons are boffer/latex/foam only.
– No hand to hand or grabbing without consent.
– Melee weapons are trumped by guns, bigger is better, more is better, most guns win.

Play To Lose
A technique or concept used by a player to create better drama by not trying to win, instead allowing their character to lose if that’s a fun outcome. It’s a collaborative rather than a competitive playform. By putting your character in situations where they might get in trouble and not get out unscathed, you will create room for more verbal conflict and verbal ways of getting out of a situation. All in all creating a better larp and character interaction.

What does that mean? I can’t rob anyone?
Of course you can. But instead of shooting someone dead on the street as we usually do in a post-apocalyptic airsoft larp, we now have the opportunity to be that big, scary, threatening person instead, or that sneaky, conniving person, or that charismatic figure that no one can say no to.

This way, we play up our fellow larpers into the character they want to be and put the conflict in the backseat for use later, when we have the upper hand or a moment or motive to be the one that gets revenge.

Armed conflict – Mine is bigger
So, how do we actually solve armed conflict? We use a technique we call “Mine is bigger!” The general rule is as follows.

If I go into conflict with someone, I start by having a lively and aggressive discussion/argument with the person. No weapons are involved at this point and there is a short battle of words. In this exchange of heated words (or before), players sync with each other if this conflict is to escalate or they want to use any of the other ways to solve conflict in the outpost.

If the conflict is moving beyond words then the next step is that someone draws a weapon. There is no hand to hand combat in the form of grabbing or pulling another player without this being agreed upon by the parties beforehand. The natural step in the conflict is to draw a melee weapon. A knife or any other form of melee weapon will suffice (boffer/latex/foam only, we don’t want any blank steel or real sharp tools in any form of conflict).

The person who draws the weapon controls the situation until they are either trumped by more antagonists with other melee weapons or if someone pulls a gun. A gun can be any form of airsoft or nerfgun or any “home built” contraption that could work and look like some form of ranged weapon that shoots at persons and inflicts damage. A gun trumps a knife or melee weapon and a reasonable amount of aggressors. What’s reasonable? Well, how many bullets does your gun carry? How many do you have left? How good are your bluffing skills?

So, if someone draws a weapon in a combat situation they control the scene until it is resolved or anyone else shows up with a gun.  Whoever draws a gun in a conflict last is the one that controls the outcome. Or if another gun appears and it’s +1 gun on either side.

This is a way to prolong a conflict, give players time to taunt and discuss, to act out their character’s fears and quirks, beg or threaten, bargain or wiggle out of the conflict with their life intact.

The world of quick and fast death and resurrection is not a thing at Outpost Elysium.
But remember that no one can kill your character without your own consent anyway. If defeated you are just that, defeated and return to your camp or the bar and whine about how awful you feel.

You can always ask an organizer during the larp if anything is unclear.