Getting It Handed To You - How to Loose with Grace

“But how do you stop somone from cheating?”

“We count on their honor.”

“Does it work?”

“No comment.”

This past weekend, I went and fought in Eldaraenth’s biggest annual Tournament. I’ve been boffer fighting now for about 12 years. I practice less often than I should, but I think I’ve managed to maintain a modicum of skill. I never expected to do extremely well in the tournament, after all my body just can’t keep up with some of the younger guys anymore. I also didn’t expect to get what I got.

I got beat like a pell.

Boffer combat is a big part of a lot of LARP games. It is the cornerstone of conflict resolution, and there are multiple players out there that only come to events to beat on each other with foam swords. It is an aspect of play that I encourage people to get into for a dozen reasons ranging from looking like a badass to the health benefits. It can also be the aspect of the game that is the most frustrating.

We Aren’t All Bad Asses

Dragons, Feared-Men, Billy Badass. Call them by a dozen different names, and you still have the same thing, the guys on the field that you know are going to hand you, your friends, and your friends’ grandmother their ass. Sometimes we dread fighting them. Sometimes we seek them out on the field so that we can test our metal against them. No matter what, everyone at your game knows who they are and knows those are the guys to fight.

Most of us aren’t one of those guys.

Nobody likes to loose, though. It sucks to be rolled over by an unstoppable juggernaut of foam combat, and it can be even worse if you used to be that guy but your age and apathy towards training have moved you to the sideline.

Add that frustration into the adrenaline and passion of the moment, and it’s easy to let yourself slide into throwing swings that are too wild, or ignoring shots that you know you should have taken.

We’ve all been there.

It’s important to remember, though, that when we’re down in the dirt, getting kicked around by a guy that is ten years (or more) our junior and feeling like we’re absolute pieces of garbage, all we have left is the most important thing to any boffer fighter.

Our Honor.

So, I’ve decided that I am going to make a conscious effort to shift gears in my boffer fighting. I intend to fully keep training myself, pushing myself to get back to where I was in my prime ten years ago, but I’m no longer going to worry about winning or loosing. I swing foam swords because I love doing it. It is fun.

I can have just as much fun with loosing as I can have by smacking a guy down.

I just need to get better at my melodramatic deaths. It seams to me that screaming in agony and writing in pain on the ground before finally succumbing to my wounds will be a great way for me to remind myself that I need to make sure I’m not taking it all too seriously.

When you take it too seriously, that’s when you start to jeopardize your honor.

In the grand scheme of things is one boffer fight, one match in a tournament, really worth loosing that?

I don’t think so.