Hello.
Sebastian Kempkens wrote:Ivo,
agreed. Lots of LARP armour is too thin and some it is badly finished. Then again I have always managed to get my unrolled edges passed, and so have my customers (my LARP customers that is, it's not that much of stink for my others)
One honestly meant piece of advice: No reason to bash though. You know this is what makes most people stop listening, you know. No game is perfect, but there are methods that are more constructive and less degrading. There are a lot of good people in the German medievalist scene who have started as LARPers or still do it. Do not make the mistake of lumping 30000 people or even a majority of them in one large pot. You would not want the reverse to happen to you, like say being lumped together with the average booth-owner/trinket saleman at a typical market?
Sebastian, please note:
I wrote "most LARP armourers I am aware of"...not "all"!
Quite a few people told me that any open edge had to be rolled for safety or foam rubber reasons. An article in the LARPZEIT magazine said the same (which actually was merely an advert from a thin- sheet armourer, disguised as a neutral press article, like so many in publications like the magazine mentioned).
According to this, most armour on sale aimed at the LARP community actually is made of thin metal, with rolled edges and "crafted" like mentioned above, and many a LARP organizer felt urged to put a rolled edge paragraph into his book of rules. I have seen quite a few armour bits of this type, with elbow or knee articulations that did not allow for more bending than, say 45 to 60 degrees. Several I saw had not even hammer marks on the inside of the thin metal, so most obviously have been shaped by bending and welding alone, and have been stabilized by the rolled edges.
The only thing I am bashing is the use of tinfoil for armour and generalizing rules for the period improper manufacture of the same, just because some armourers are not capable of proper craftsmanship or even just deburring an edge- or even only use tools that won´t work with more than 1.2mm thickness.
And no, I am not in the armour business, trying to put the competition down (besides, there are plenty of platforms on German websites to do so more effectively
). I am just about to get started to deform some metal for myself. I just love historic armour and hate this sort of re- invention of things that worked pretty well the way things were done back in history. Plus I don´t like the idea that some thin- sheet tinker´s work should become the benchmark for LARP rules as to how armour should be made "the right way".
I´ve been through quite some discussions with self- appointed armour buffs in the LARP community already, and the opinions held there were horrifying, to say the least. To think of peole like this writing the rules is a nightmare.
I am definitely not Dr Knowitall, and I am learning new things every day, so basically I am quite humble, but what I had to "learn" by several people especially from the LARP community gave me the creeps.
And no, I am not generalizingly bashing the LARP community. I started my medieval carreer with LARP as well and went all the way through "market- medieval" to LH, and am still playing LARPs if time and money allow. Just that I recently am spending my allowance on armouring tools which cleans out my wallet substantially.
Regards
Ivo
), and, lastly
