by Big King Jimmy » Thu Sep 05, 2013 7:13 pm
Every year the realm of Rhun run the boffer room at Geek kon (or con, can't remember). I've gone to help the last 4 years in a row. This year we had over 350 people fight (which is recorded in signed waivers). We're no Forged Foam at Gen con, but we've been doing very very solid.
First of all, we don't use bel gear for the con peeps. It's just too expensive, time consuming, etc. We just make PVC and noodle boffers. Each one costs about $3, and if it breaks, who gives a ****. We have about 40 for the convention, we usually have a couple of times a con that we run out.
We have a whole room to ourselves, each year the size of the room varies. I'd say it's usually... and I'm awful at judging sizes like this, 30x30 feet or so. This year we started off in something closer to 45x30, and it shrunk on Saturday, the most popular day of the con.
We dress up in garb, not great garb, not awful garb. We have a display available of Bel gear, everything. Missles, poles, spears, javs, flails, everything.
We bring all the **** shields we have, it's usually about 8 at the most. It's okay, all the cool kids want to Florentine. The only fighting styles we allow are single blue, Florentine and S&B. Unless a con person requests it, vets only usually fight single blue, and we focus on fighting eachother. Unless your Bo, he can't help it, he loves the kills.
We don't hold tournaments for one simple reason, con kids are cheating ****.
We allow any age.
We set up a table with waivers, and stickers. Dots, stars, weapons check type stickers.
If people have their own gear, we can check it, and then mark it with orange electrical tape. As far as we know, no game system uses orange. This marks that they can use it all weekend.
THE VERY **** SECOND someone pokes their head in the room, the sales pitch starts. You have a very short amount of time to push them towards sword fighting. I usually lead with "Hey man! WANT TO SWORD FIGHT!?!" in my best "THIS IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD DO IT" voice. If I get any hesitation, or even worse, if they say no it's "Wait... what? Dude that wasn't a real question, I have no idea how to respond to that answer. You DON'T want to sword fight? Who DOESN'T WANT to SWORD FIGHT?" They're bat **** insane for not wanting to sword fight, make them feel that way. Yell out to the rest of the room "Who doesn't want to sword fight? Anyone?" Turn back to the person "Name me a bad * person in history who didn't sword fight? TRICK QUESTION, THERE AREN'T ANY." Continue to Badger people until they sword fight or leave.
Speaking of, just don't use the word boffer. I know, it's a con thing, just **** ignore it. You're not boffering, that sounds like a word for beating of when your 15. You're **** SWORD FIGHTING. You can feel the hair on your chest growing as you do it.
Once the person agrees, they fill out a waiver, hopefully someone else pops their head in "HEY MAN, YOU WANT TO SWORD FIGHT LIKE THIS **** BAD *!?!" etc.
Once we have a lull in waivers, you run them through the rules. The first thing I do is thank them, and explain my credentials. "Hey guys I'm Big Jimmy, I've been sword fighting for 13 years, I'm not from Madison, I run a group down near Chicago, thanks for coming out."
Then rules. MAKE THEM FUNNY. Be entertaining. I go through hit locations, 2 limb = death, hand on weapon, foot on ground, head, hold. I go pretty fast, they'll pick it up. I change 2 things 1) If you get hit in the arm, and you're holding something in each hand, and this arm is holding a sword, put the sword and your arm behind your back, instead of dropping it. Boffers are round, and a tripping hazard in a hotel. 2) We don't go down on a knee, we post the leg.
After the rules I go into something like this "If you think to yourself "MAN! SELF! In a few short days con will be over! And then I CAN'T SWORD FIGHT!!!" Self you are WRONG! You CAN sword fight! There are sword fighting groups EVERYWHERE! Talk to any of us ::motion to the group:: and we can help you find a SWORD FIGHTING group in your area!!! I'm a member of the BMCS. We don't fight with these pieces of garbage, we have examples of our actual equipment over there! :: point :: But these are cheap, and if they break we don't care. Now comes the best part! You get to pick YOUR FAVORITE SWORD from all of these swords that are EXACTLY THE SAME! That one!?! ARE YOU SURE!??!"
Have fun, ALL THE TIME. If you're not having fun sit the **** down and let someone else do your job until your ready to have fun again. It should be constantly high energy.
Once they know the rules, as long as there's less than 10 people we basically go out and let them do whatever the hell they want. After we get to about 10, we split people up for two big teams, and just run that over and over.
During two big teams, I do 2 things, 1) Give them silly team names and reasons to be fighting. "Your the.... EVIL team! And you guys over there, that makes you........ THE EVIL TEAM! And everyone knows 2 evil groups can't let each other live!!! FIGHT TO THE DEATH!" I spend most of my time orating while others are fighting. "KILL MAIM BURN! DEATH TO THE ENEMY!" All my favorite 40kisms. 2) Every 15 minutes or so, I stop the fight. I let people know that they can talk to me for any questions, I ask them if this would be more awesome if there were 400 people out, I yell a lot, I remind people not to do (that rule I've seen people breaking.)
It's a blast, it's super fun, and it's super rewarding. It's also super exhausting. But I've seen how other people do cons, and how we do cons, and I believe bar none that our way is the best. We have a huge crowd fighting pretty much all weekend, we get people out to other realms. We recruit for Bel, Dag, Amtgard, everyone. We do what we do for the benefit of all of sword fighting.
King of Dunharrow
Commander of Clan of the Hydra
Biggy Biggy J
Rather Large James
James of Enviable Girth
Jimmington