Combat 101

Announcements

• March topic: March Expedition — the Trials (quest-heavy, new roleplay elements).
• Sherwood pub crawl & show trip on Sunday of March event — support local Faire performers.
• Tickets: April & May 20% off until 30 days prior — helps with planning.
• May: 4 days, payment plan available; arrive Thu — leave Tue for a longer adventure.

Tonight’s Focus

• Combat readiness: how battlefield play works, safety, expectations, and prep.

Required Learning & Training

• Combat video + Safety test on https://hynafol.com/learn
• Passing the test + attending onsite orientations is required; archives will be checked.

Combat Trainings

• In-person battle orientation Saturday morning at each expedition.
• Practice opportunities Sunday/Monday before the first big battle at Grand Gathering.
• Do the orientations — don’t show up to the big battle unprepared.

Guiding Principles for Combat

1. Safety — top priority.
2. Fun — competitive but must be fun for everyone.
3. Candor — open, honest play (take hits, be frank about outcomes).

Combat Modes (two kinds)

• Skirmishes & Battles: competitive, objective-based, follow battlefield rules.
• Town / Roleplay Fights: story-focused, different tone — prioritize good story and fun.

Core Mechanics (very short)

• All weapons = 1 damage.
• Body parts: head, torso, arms, legs = 1 HP each. Head/torso hit = dead.
• Monsters = instant death on touch.
• No face hits; no back-of-head; no groin hits. Armor modifies HP.

Mandatory Safety Rules (highlights)

• Weapons inspection every event — mandatory (weapons, arrows, bows, crossbows).
• Safety briefings mandatory.
• Follow steward directions (orange/green vests) — their call is final on the field.
• No shield bashing (no using shield to push/force people over).
• No grappling, grabbing, or restraining weapons (limited batting okay).
• No thrusting to the head / eyes — protect eye safety.
• Wear eye protection (recommended; any safety glasses are fine).
• No excessive force — hits don’t need to be hard.

Equipment & Weapons

• Buy from approved vendors (recommended). Homemade weapons OK but not recommended — most fail inspection, no product liability insurance.
• Helmets recommended — protect your brain.

Armor & Heat

• Armor helps survivability but is hot, heavy, and costly.
• Texas heat can still be an issue in November; train in your armor if you plan to wear it.
• Layering (gambeson + armor) requires conditioning.

Physical Preparation

• Expect to walk 15–20 miles over an event; 12–13 hour days on your feet.
• Battlefield: run/fight ~30–60 seconds, die → 2-minute dead timer → walk back to respawn → repeat.
• Train with cardio & walking on uneven terrain (grass, trails, woods).
• Break in boots/shoes — do not wear brand-new boots. Buy good socks and many of them.

Battlefield Etiquette

• When dead: turn weapon upside down and go to one knee if safe.
• Dead = no talking, no tactical communication, and dead people walk (no running).
• Stay dead for the allotted time to give the opposing side advantage.

Final Reminders

• Take the combat test now; archives will be checked.
• Prepare physically, protect your gear/feet, and train if you plan to wear armor.
• Follow safety briefings and steward directions.
• Aim to make combat fun for everyone and be candid in play.

Combat 101 Transcript

#Opening and Overview

Jordan Gwyther: All right, welcome to the Hynafol Zoom call on February 25th. I’ve already lost track of which number of Zoom call it is. I think this is like number 4 or 5, something like that. We’ve done a bunch already. if you’re behind, don’t worry. If you are new, I want to go over some stuff, in case you’re new, and I’ll do this every single time. So, if, in the future you don’t want to listen to this, you can mute me or do silly things. it is recorded, so I can see your hand puppets and your chat is recorded forever. But, if you are new, I want to welcome you to Hynafol and make sure that you know what this is, before, we, jump into. A bunch of specific things and leave you with a bunch of questions. So if you’re new, welcome. this is an immersive medieval fantasy experience. And so these calls are designed, to be held every week, so that I can answer all of your questions. We can build a little community, and of course do some fun announcements and stuff. But what is Hynafol? So

I want you to, if you, if you’re new, imagine stepping into a living, breathing, medieval fantasy, town. Sometimes that town is made of tents, but it is a, a village, a town, it’s not a stage, it’s not a convention, it is a place that you will live in, whether that’s for a week, during the grand gathering, we do, we’re gonna do 7 full days this year. Or just for a weekend, and everybody that is there is in, medieval fantasy costuming and clothing. So everybody is a part of the overarching narrative. Everybody helps bring it alive, and you are just as much a part of that story as everybody else. So you’ll wear the cloth. Most people sleep in tents. There are markets to trade in. There are arguments to be had. There are allies to be recruited, there are quests to go on, and then of course, there are large, mock battles, with foam swords, which is what we’re actually going to talk about tonight. That all matter to the narrative, to the story. so that’s what Hynafol is. It is an immersive medieval fantasy world built around long form collaborative storytelling, and then of course, simulated medieval combat. So, if you have ever wanted to live and breathe your favorite

Fantasy story, then that is what we are here to do, and we do it all the time. Not quite monthly, but just about. And then, of course, our big Crown Jewel event is the Grand Gathering in November, and we would love to have you there. So Our whole story is driven around an ongoing, saga. So it is a an Arthurian inspired, fantasy world. We, have taken Arthurian lore, and we have loosely based Hynafol on that, and then we have taken it all kinds of fun places and added our own twists and turns to it. But that is, that is, that is the, the story. So there are 5 courts, there are kingdoms within those, or underneath those courts, there are houses underneath them, there are religions, there are guilds, which are your The, there are, are, sorry, I’m, I got a phone call and it messed me up, but we have guilds, which are your day to day, jobs or things to do where you can actually make money, and, that all makes up part of the story. The big picture is, is that everybody participates, in character, so everybody plays a character. we went over that last week, how to make a very simple Hynafol character, and then you live out the story.

And we want the experience to be as immersive as possible. So we, we use that term, immersion is basically, we want to forget the modern world exists as much as is humanly possible. So we don’t talk about real world politics. Religion, and stuff as much as possible. Instead, we talk about made up politics that have to do with the world of Hynafol and made up religions, that have all been invented by people at Hynafol and, and then all of the craziness that goes along with that. And then And then what will you, what will you actually do?, there is no one way to play, play, right, play Hynafoll to approach it. So, some people like to fight all the time, some people don’t like to fight at all. Some people want to do a lot of politics, some people want to just do their guild activities and hang out with their friends. we have tried to make this thing as accessible and interesting to as many people and different kinds of play styles as possible, and so there’s lots and lots to do. So this is not an ex.

List, but there are, quests to go on and scenes to, see and, and, and be a part of. So every Hynafol event, starts and ends the same. So we have an opening ceremony that kind of frames what the narrative is for the weekend, and then there’s a closing ceremony that, sums up what happened. There’s almost always something in the middle that you, the players decide on, and that determines what the closing ceremony will result in, and then the consequences of that are played out in subsequent events. so for instance, this year at the Grand. Gathering, there was an evil, big bad guy called the Devourer, and the players had to decide at the round table. The knights of the roundtable had to decide what would we do with the Devour, and a vote was taken, and it was decided that he would be destroyed once and for all. And then that was shown in the closing ceremony. So that, that is, that is how it works. So there’s, there’s scenes, meaning these opening and closing ceremony, and then there are quests that get tied into that.

There are skirmishes and battles and lots of combat. so skirmishes are like smaller fights, usually between less than 25 or 50 people on each side. there are big large scale battles at the Grand Gathering in particular, where as many people as can fit on either side will be in them. There are tournaments of all shapes and sizes, so we have fencing tournaments and full armor tournaments, and we have archery tournaments, but then we also have a chess tournament. And many different other things, but as far as the combat goes, and then there’s, of course, combat in the town, so things are wild and crazy, and you can be assassinated. You can be stolen from, you can fight monsters in the town. There are creepy shades lurking about, all kinds of things. There’s lots of ceremonies and social play, so, the, the courts will every, event, the courts will have a court meeting, and they’ll kind of help further frame the story and give you, a little bit more insight into how your court views the particular problem in the opening ceremony. There are rituals that the religions and the mages hold.

And then, of course, there’s lots and lots of social things to do. There are people in the market selling things. there’s live music put on by our bards, and then we, at a lot of the events, but particularly at the grand gathering, we have live music every night. there’s lots of taverns to go to and You know, enjoy your libations and camaraderie, and then there are all kinds of other things to do. And then, you’ll hear, hear a couple of other words. So we call our weekend events where we go out and camp and fight and quest and roleplay, we call those expeditions,. And then, we also have, a courtly night, which is a politics event, and then we have a reverty Ball, which is our fantasy medieval styled ball that will be held this summer. More on that in the future. so, that is in general what Hynafol is, and then When you come to the event, the first and only thing you need to do, well, you really need to do just two things. Number 1, you need to pick a name for your character. I love that you guys are all, wearing your helmets. That’s awesome. I think you should all wear helmets. It’s very important for your safety. And then, number 2, you have to pick a court. so you can pick a court from the home page at Hynafol, you just fill out a form, and then you show up to the meeting.

And, and that’s that. But your court is really designed to help you, do two things. Number 1, choose an alignment, so kind of figuring out where does your character align with the narrative that’s going on, and number 2, to help you meet some people as soon as you get to the event. So if you’re new, that is what the courts are intended to do, so they will give you a little bit of narrative, help you with your alignment. And help you meet some people. If you are a veteran player and you’ve been coming for a while, you should think to yourself, Uh-huh, I should go to court meetings and meet new people that are in my court that I don’t know yet, cause I could recruit them to my house and my religion, and my guilt. Just throwing that out there as a little pro tip,. And so, you will, do that, and then after that, the event is free form for you to play. We have some tips and some tricks and some things that we have designed the event for you to do it, but it is really up to you to, enjoy the event the way that you want. Our recommendation would be that, number one, you join a guild. Like I said, guilds are the, kind of like your job or your vocation in Hynafol. It’s where you can

Meet more people, you can do a particular task and earn either resources or some of the Hynafol currency. you don’t have to join a house, or I’m sorry, a guild, but it is a good way to get started. And then you will meet people in houses. Houses are the building blocks of Hynafol society. So they are kind of what, everything is built on in Hynafol, if you haven’t noticed yet, is a group event. So we’re trying to give you as many on-ramps to find a group and join a group, and houses are the main building block of that. So they are our main political organization, in the game, in the experience, and then, of course, there are kingdoms above that, which are many of the. Not all of them are a part of. And so we didn’t, we’d implore you to join some of those, and then you will go on quests. There are always battles to join in on, and almost every single battle is always recruiting people. So if you want to fight, you will be in good company. Next, a little note on community, and one of the reasons we do these calls is that, the community is the most important part. So I’m gonna tell you on these calls, lots of stuff about

You know, how the game is played. Tonight we’re gonna talk about combat. Last week we talked about roleplay. We’re gonna talk about camping, and we’re gonna talk about the ins and outs of all of the guilds and how different things work, and there’s lots of intricacies. But the main number one most important thing is the community. Hynafol is really the friends you made along the way. The, the endgame destination of the best way to have fun at Hynafol is not to know all the rules, know all the lore, and, win at the Carter Arcanum. That’s not what it is. It is the friends you made along the way. So, we are a community-based event, people pitch in, we put a large emphasis on volunteering. You’ll hear us talk about it all of the time. If you ever wonder how, all the people that are on staff or have been, are, are in, lead volunteer positions or some of that, we have become such good friends. It’s cause we all volunteered together to make either this or another event go, and then we became friends. that is

How it goes. So, if you were looking for a place to get to know more people and be more deeply involved with the hind and fall experience, or if it’s just your first time, you’re like, man, I don’t know anybody, I don’t know what to do with my hands, and I’m kind of socially anxious, volunteering is a great way to help yourself get over that, because you will have something to do. You will be given a Small piece of authority, even if it’s just directing cars in a parking lot, but you will meet a lot of people and you will see some friendly faces. but more than that, we, put a large emphasis on our code of conduct because we know that people come from now all over the world, and we want them to get along and we want everybody to be treated equally, fairly, and kindly. so Treat the community well, and the community will treat you well. We also put a large emphasis on safety, which is something we’re gonna talk about a lot tonight, especially when it comes to, fighting with foam-covered sticks, cause that’s essentially what LARP weapons are. we want everybody to have fun and not walk away injured in any way.

So we talk about it all the time, we make you go to safety briefings, we give demonstrations all of the time. We have a really extensive combat rulebook, but we want you to be safe, and the only way that we can do that is if you guys help us make everybody be safe. So, please follow the rules And then, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. if you, are already signed up and good to go, that’s wonderful. If you are not, and you have more questions about ticketing or anything like that, I would love to answer those for you on this call. Once I’m done telling everybody about everything tonight, I will stay right here in the main room, and I’ll send everybody else to breakout rooms, and then I will sit here and I will answer all of your questions about ticketing and packages. And all of that good stuff, so that I can help get you up to speed, and help you make the right decision for the right kind of packaging event for you. So that’s my general spiel. Does anybody have any questions on that, before I move on to other things? Nobody. Not even a little. Oh no, I’m out of water.

OK, great. Well then I’ll move on. so we had, an amazing time this last weekend for the February expedition. The siege was a great success. We, if you weren’t here before the call started, I’ll give you a little update. We moved to a new location, to the future home of Hynafol. it was awesome. I thought, our team had 8 days to prepare what was essentially just Texas forested. Earth, and turn it into a medieval tent village, and we did. there are pictures that have already been going out, so you can see those on our social media and on our smug mug. it looked really amazing. We had 5 battles. Normally we only do 4 at expeditions, but we stretched it, to a 5th 1, and the last one was 40 minutes long. It was a slog, and the goal was was to pick up a, battering ram and smash it through a real door. Which was not able to be done in the normal game rules, but then we had a little bit of a, modified, ending and gave the, the attackers a little bit of an advantage so that they could do it, and they did. They were able to smash into the wall. The door busted open with great success, and it was a ton of fun.

We had just under 200 people there, so, the place was rocking and rolling, and, that is also where we will be hosting March and April. So if you’re coming to either of those events, we will see you there. We’re gonna continue to work on the property, make lots of changes, so, but I think for 8 days, it went exceedingly. Smooth and was a lot, a lot of fun. in a future call, I will walk you through, what the march event will look like in totality, but, March is going to be called the Trials, and it is a quest-based event where you will put together, your adventuring squad or your adventuring party. it will be 5 people. You will have to register that squad, and then you will go on many different quests and skirmishes and adventures together. All, under the guise, or not guys, guys isn’t the right word, but, for the Court of Ambition, and Mordred, I have it on good authority that Mordred will indeed be there. he, the guy who plays Mordred lives very far away and not in Texas, but he is going to be there, which is very exciting. Everybody loves Levi, and you’ll have a good time role playing with him if you get to meet him.

So that’s kind of our updates, for what happened, and then tonight we are going to, talk about combat at Hynafol, and so I want to show you, some fun stuff that, we have prepared for you. so first I this new handy dandy learn page that I have begun to put together for everybody, and I have broken it down into these four categories. There will be more categories, fret not. so this is live right now. these 3, roleplay, decorum, and social, do not work yet. I need to link them to more awesome pages, but the combat one definitely does. So we’re gonna look at that. So if you click this link, it goes to this handy page that starts up here. And we put together this amazing video for you, which I’m going to show you, and I’ll tell you why. we do combat, training every event, and we ask everybody to come to it, but there still are some missing things, that not everybody is picking up on, and so we made this video, and a guide, and a handy test, a handy test. I bet you didn’t think you’d have to take a test tonight.

But here it is. and so this is on here, and I’m going to show this video, and then I’m going to walk you through the documents, and then if you are so brave, and you’ve paid attention, you can take the test. right now, the test is live, and we will be making it mandatory at future events. So everybody will have to do it. And the reason for this is, we want to make Haina fall as safe as humanly possible. we want to give everybody the tools that they need to learn on how this works. And now I have to remember how to make audio, and I think it’s in here somewhere, so that you can hear it. One second. How do I do it? Maybe it’s under audio. I know there’s a way to share audio, share screen. I think that’s where it is. . Under advanced maybe. No, I’m failing. Sorry everyone. Apparently I am a boomer. Audio. Can somebody tell me in the chat, because I know that I’m missing it, and I’m sure that it is right there. You did call it. Good job. Does anybody know how I, when I share this video that you guys can actually hear it at the same time? . No, no one knows. OK, great. Sorry everyone, hold on one second. . There it is All righty. Back to the video. Thank you for your patience. And my boomerness My apologies to boomers, we love you. No, not my whole desktop.

Just, I will get this right. There we go, ta da, all right.

#Embedded Combat Training Video

Embedded training video (AWS identifies this section as featuring Jack Fletcher and Orvan): If you’re looking forward to taking part in combat at Hainefold, then you are in the right place as we’re gonna be taking you through everything you need to know about how to fight safely and even the combat rules themselves. My name is Jack Fletcher and I’m Orvan, and we’re gonna take you through it right now. Now, the most important part. About understanding weapon safety is this is not a real sword. That one’s not a real sword either. Did you know that? Yes, it isn’t. No, it is in fact a rod that will be either glass fiber or carbon fiber wrapped in foam or latex or some other similar kind of material. The most dangerous part of the weapon is in fact. The rod, that is it, the rod in the center, as it’s a similar kind of rods that they would use for golf clubs or even a a smaller version of what they use for whitewater rafting. It is incredibly dangerous and so the most important thing that we understand is I do not at any point want to put you at risk of getting in danger of getting hurt by this rod.

The most important part about combat at Hynafol is the safety of my opponent. I don’t wanna hurt them, even if it means that I lose. I’m willing to lose instead of hurting you. You cool with that? Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. So, let’s understand first of all, how do we do a basic hit? Well, understanding that the rod is the most dangerous part of the weapon, an arm is kind of built in a similar kind of way. If you hold out your arm here, we have the. Bone structure wrapped in flesh and skin, similar to the foam and latex covering on some swords. If I wanted to hurt your arm, all I would have to do is if you hold it out here, is swing all the way through. The the foam and rubber would compress to the rod, the flesh would compress the bone, and it would essentially be the same as having a rod strike a bone, which would cause bruising.

Or worse, and so what we want to do is we want to make sure that on the point of impact, we are bouncing off, and we do that by pulling the blow before the strike. So, and another key point of Hynafol is obviously we’re all about consent, so are you OK with me whacking your arm? Yes, perfect. so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna strike and bounce off the arm. Did that hurt? No. There we go, and that’s the whole point. Now you can really role play a hit, I can put a lot of energy into this, so I can do something like. Did it hurt? No? No, it didn’t hurt because I was role playing the activity of a, of a violent attack, but the goal was still to bounce off of him and make sure he wasn’t hurt. Now before you take part in Hynafol combat, it is important that you actually practice striking yourself so you can get a feel for it. So what we recommend is actually striking your own leg, and the way you do this is you just repeatedly bounce the weapon on your leg a few times just to get a feeling of what it’s like, and if you’re hurting yourself, you’re going.

Too hard. Now, the other benefit of doing a light touch, which is what we have here at Hynafol, it’s a light touch LARP, is that we want to make sure that the speed of our blows can actually be used because we can bounce off of one location into another. So not only is it good for safety, it’s also actually really nice for combat as it gives you a little bit of an edge because we’re not trying to hurt the other person, we’re just trying to strike as quick as possible. Now, there are some people in some LARPs that believe if a blow isn’t hard enough, it shouldn’t be counted. Here at Hynafol, we believe the most important thing is safety, and so we’re what’s called a lightest touch combat LARP, which means only the lightest touch needs to to happen in order for it to count as a hit. That means if I was fighting against Orban here and I were to graze his armor just like that, that would still count as a hit. And believe it or not, some of the experts that we have who take part in the combat at Heinef, we have booh champions, fencing champions, they will also.

Automatically aim at the lightest part of you so that it does minimal damage to you to ensure your safety, and that doesn’t mean that, you know, it was a grazing blow, it means they chose to hit you softly. As I assure you, Booh fighters are more than capable of causing serious injury if they really wanted to. So bear that in mind, it’s not an ego battle. We’re trying to hit each other lightly, although there is the most important thing to control, which is if I feel like I’m going to get a hard blow, it’s very important, like I said earlier. That we pull it back at the last moment to make sure that we don’t injure our opponent. Now, understanding that about weapon safety, we’re gonna talk a little bit about thrusting. We are allowing thrusts at Hynafol, however, only certain weapons are approved for thrusting. It’s not us that’s making the call. We’ve contacted the weapon manufacturers and we’ve asked them which weapons do they approve for thrusting, as at the end of the day, they’re the ones that manufacture the weapons and they know what goes inside it. The only way we would know would be to cut one open and have a look.

And the full list of weapons that are approved and are not approved, you’ll be able to find updated either in our combat document or somewhere on the website, or you can always reach out to us and ask, and our stewards will be able to help you with that. Now, with that being said, when I’m thrusting at somebody, I have to understand that I’m doing possibly one of the most dangerous actions in the game as I am pushing the rod forwards towards my opponent. In this situation, it is. Even more important that it is a lightest touch. I don’t want any power, and the moment I feel that I’m about to create impact is when I’m gonna wanna pull away. We just want a light touch to confirm that there was a thrust that’s happened. Now, as long as you understand that you’ve got the basics of how to strike, but the next question is, where do we strike? Do you remember all the different locations, Orvan? I do. What are they? They are the left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg, torso, and head. Absolutely. Now within that there are certain regions that are no no zones that you never strike and they never count as a hit. They are this area.

The face, the side and back of the head. These are areas that are absolute no no’s, you cannot strike them and they do not count as a strike. And in fact, if you strike one of those zones on your opponent by accident, you yourself are defeated. You have to consider yourself dead and you leave the combat as you have committed a heinous act and you should remove yourself after apologizing to your opponent. More importantly, we wanna make sure that you don’t target those areas so you never hit them in the first place. Lastly, the only place on the head that you are allowed to strike is the top of the head, and you cannot thrust the top of the head as I would need some kind of downward blow, and that would be completely inappropriate. Now all of the strikes that you give in Heinefal need to be controlled and measured. So what that means is before striking, I need to know that I’m in full control of my weapon and that I’m under I understand the distance so that when I strike, I’m not in danger of doing something like this, which would be really bad. So you have to make sure that you’re in control of your blows. So we don’t wanna see anything like this.

That is obviously completely unsafe and something you don’t want to be doing. We want controlled blows where I understand where my strikes are gonna go and at any point I can stop. And I’m in no danger of striking my opponent in an unsafe place. So with that being said, let’s talk a little bit about combat and what are the rules. So we’ve got 6 locations, as Orban said, and if I strike a location, that location is disabled. A strike to the head. Or the torso. Renders my opponent defeated, dead, yes, that’s correct. they collapse there, different rules and different skirmishes are gonna have, different, guidelines on what happens once you die, but most of the time you collapse to the ground, and then you await a healer, or you will go to a respawn point in order to rejoin the game or battle. things get a little bit more interesting when we strike a limb. So for example, if Orvi’s holding his sword in his hand, yep, there we go, and I strike the arm. The arm has lost its point and the weapon must drop to the ground. What can we not do, Orvan? What is the one thing we cannot do? You are not a ninja.

You cannot throw your weapon because with a missing arm, you don’t have the ability to, to throw it to the other hand. we do see these people with deceased, thing like ninja arms that can like throw it to the other side. That doesn’t count, the weapon must hit the ground before we pick it up again. What happens if I were to strike your leg here, Orvan? I would go down on my knee. You would go down on one knee and we would continue fighting in this position. Now if I were to try and position around you, what are you allowed to do with one leg? While I have one leg still active, I am allowed to rotate and pivot, and if I want to stop that pivoting so I can get behind him, I need to strike the other leg, ha ha, and now I can run behind him and I can Get him in the back and he can’t rotate, so taking out two legs is the way that we stop somebody from rotating around. Now what happens if I were to say take out a limb. And then I were to strike the same limb again, what happens? Well then, the hit would move to the torso as there’s no longer a limb there. Absolutely. So if a leg is gone, so if it goes down to one leg, and I was to strike the dead leg, it counts as a.

Strike to the torso, so your missing limbs don’t become impervious shields that can make sure that you know, you can take as many hits as possible because the limb’s already dead. No, you are going to continue bleeding as we continue to strike the damaged limb, and that is absolutely going to take you out. Now You do have more than one hit per location if you wear armor. This suit of armor that Orvan is wearing is a nice suit of plate mail. This particular plate mail is actually made out of a polyurethane plastic. It looks like metal, but it isn’t, and we do allow this kind of armor. In the game, we also allow chainmail, we allow full plate metal armor, which of course gives you the most hit points, and strikes on armor do give you extra hits. If you have soft leather like these gloves that I have, you’ll get one extra hit point. That would be the same for a padded gambison or this soft leather jerkin that I’ve got. These give me one extra.

If you have chainmail, or if you have this kind of plate which, you know, looks like metal but isn’t, or hard leather, you’ll get a second extra hit point giving you a total of 3 hits, and pure metal plate, the most powerful you can have, and the heaviest, gives you 3 extra hits for a total of 4. Extra hits for a total of 4. But accuracy matters at Hynafold, which means if I were to strike Orban in the chest Twice, he still has one more hit to the chest. However, if I could strike his arm just below the armor plate or even inside the armor plate. It would bypass the armor count as a single hit to his actual arm and that location would be removed. So it’s really important that when you’re designing your armor that you’re covering all the areas that you wanna make sure are protected, and you think carefully about the armor that you’re bringing into battle, as well as paying attention when somebody hits you to ensure that, you know, if a hit did manage to get underneath the glove, then that would count as a hit and I would lose my arm. Now lastly, this is a game where we adjudicate our own hits. So what that means is, if I strike Orban 3 times, 123, which should be enough to take him out.

If Orban decides that maybe one of those hits didn’t count because, you know, maybe it was a maybe too quick of a tap, he’s got the option to choose that that hit didn’t count and can keep playing. Now it’s important that we understand in the the spirit of being fair that he doesn’t cheat and that you don’t say, the one thing you can’t say is it didn’t hit me hard enough. Because it is a lightest-touch LARP. But if he feels that maybe it was a glancing blow and it didn’t count as 2, he gets to choose that didn’t count. And what that really means is we don’t police other people’s hits. I can’t sit and have an argument and say I hit you 3 times, and he says, no, yeah, no, yeah, no, you hit me once. No, I hit the glaze because it ruins the game. Instead, my. Job is simple, I just keep striking him. Also, I may not know, potentially it’s a plastic coating over actual metal, which means he’s got the weight and therefore it would be more hits. So in order to keep the game flowing, we don’t adjudicate our hits. However, if we notice someone who is repeatedly not taking their hits, somebody who has what we call ego armor.

You can report them to a steward, to one of the, the refs of the game, and what they will do is they will just keep an eye out on the person, make sure they’re not cheating, and make sure that they take their hits correctly. Now, are there any other rules about close combat that I’ve missed that you can think of? I think that probably covers everything. There is one safety exception we make. Please tell me, if you would be legged and have to go down on a knee, you do have the option to take a death if you’d rather not sit on your knees because the terrain is unsafe sometimes. That’s a great call. And also there is no obligation to just stay dead where you are. You can always just get up and go and respawn, but that does mean once you begin. In that walk to go and respawn, you can’t then get stopped and healed. You are technically a spirit and you’re off into the, the nether realm, waiting to go, to an actual respawn point. You can’t stop halfway because you meet a buddy of yours and chat and get healed. Now, something that we are gonna cover here, quite briefly as we don’t actually have any with us, is combat archery.

We do allow archery in our game, and combat archery is very simple. You cannot shoot somebody within 10 ft of you. So if I’m in this range, I, and I’ve got a bow and arrow, I need to turn and run and not shoot this person. we also make sure that we don’t volley shots, which means firing a shot where you don’t know where it’s gonna hit. I just like, fighting with a weapon, I’ve gotta pick and choose my targets and make sure that I know what I’m shooting. And with arrows, head hits do not count at all, as once again. There’s no hitting the top of their head because you’d have to be directly above them. so it’s very important that you understand arrows do not hit heads, and so we really want people to aim at the nipples down, avoiding this area. and I think that’s pretty much about it when it comes down to it. Now you are gonna get a test at the end of this video to make sure that you understand. All of the rules of HO. We do have a combat document as well that we recommend you read, as it does govern some of the individual characteristics of different weapons, things you can and can’t do with them. For example, like spears, that are over a certain length can only be used for thrusting, because obviously they’re a much larger weapon, and so you can’t use that for swing.

And so there’s little individual rules about how you can hold two-handed weapons, and it’s really important that you read that combat document and that you understand it, as that will also be part of the test. you’ll find that document somewhere outside this video, in case you want to read it. And again, you don’t have to read every single weapon, but you should definitely read the weapons that you’re going to be using. From myself, Jack Fletcher, and from Orvan, I think that’s about it, correct? Yes, I believe so. Thanks ever so much for watching our video, and we look forward to seeing you at the various Hynafol events throughout the year.

#Post-Video Discussion

Jordan Gwyther: Yes, somebody is in trouble for the subtitle there. Anyway, any questions on the video? Some things I am going to, cover in the documents that is right here, but any questions before I jump into this? I know some of you have now already taken the quiz or the test. Hope you passed. Questions, comments, concerns? Things you’re curious about? Nope. Nobody. All right, cool. So, we’ve already gone over most of it. But I did want to show a few things. so there is a nice written overview here. we are putting, or I’m putting together, a plain text document, cause I know that this, older PDF style is hard for some of you to read, so we’re getting that fixed. But just to cover a few things, again, a hit is just making contact. You don’t have to hit hard. we expect that your, striking would be intentional and thoughtful, that you’d use a balanced amount of force, and, and that you would maintain control of your weapons at all times. And then, there are, some, some definitely like diving into.

The specifics of the hits, I think these are important for you to know, especially so you can adjudicate things, things, some invalid strike types, meaning glancing blows or brushes, swords and shields, how excessive force works and what it means, making sure that you are acknowledging your hits when possible, and that you are Keeping safety first. somebody asked about, thrown weapons. we don’t do throwing weapons at Hynafol, so the only thing that should fly through the air are arrows. We don’t do the small, throwing daggers or anything else like that, and you should never throw your sword or your dagger or anything like that. The reason for that being is that the back end of, most our weapons are not designed. To be hit, and the smaller weapons, they fly through the air very unpredictably and poke eyes out, so we don’t do them. and then, yeah, this is a nice diagram of, the allowed targeting areas,. Another, let me get down here a little bit. so this is a big thing, that we’ve discussed in previous calls, but the thrusting.

And Adam mentioned this in the call or in the video, but we basically just, not basically, we definitely do just follow the manufacturer’s recommendations. So, if they either say on their website or they have confirmed to us in writing that their weapons are designed for thrusting, then we allow it. If they don’t, then we don’t. We also do always check all weapons, and we will be getting tighter and tighter on that. So, even if a weapon is You know, marked as thrusting, but the particular one that is in a steward’s hand that is checking weapons, says that it can’t be used for thrusting, then we won’t allow it. And we always want to err on the side of safety. we get into the actual weapons, so this is handy, and I wanted to point this out in particular, if, so that when you get a weapon, you can look at your weapon and know which part of the weapon is designed. For hitting, so we have, you know, bladed weapons such as swords and daggers. Here, we have axes, we have maces and hammers,.

We have some spears, we have pole arms, and we even have staves and quarterstaves. We have directions for flails, and, and then we get to the bows and crossbow rules. so those are all here. We get this question a lot. what is the maximum draw strength for bows? So it’s 30 pounds at a 28 inch draw, crossbows is 22 pounds at 10 inches. Arrows in particular, we only allow flat-tipped arrows from, IDV, which is the main arrow brand from Epic Armory, and B3. those are the only two that we allow currently. they’ve been safety tested, and, for a number of factors, we only allow those. So yeah, so make sure you read through this. there are lots and lots of things in here that are, you know, we really dive deep into the nitty gritty of it, so I’m not gonna Laboriously go through it, page by page. We’ve done that before in other calls, but it is all here for your, perusing. Any questions on any of that? Let me check the chat here. What about bar fight weapons?, so bar fight weapons, yeah, those, all should still be safety checked, but those are only used generally for

Specific scenarios, right? So that we do bar fights, that’s kind of a silly fight where we mock role play fight as if we’re having a, a, a brawl. they’re very fun. some of those weapons would be allowed, right? Like, thinking like the baguette, stuff like that from Telo Nemesis, they make a really cool baguette. There’s some stuff like that, but then some things we just wouldn’t allow. let’s see, if you lose an arm, do you lose the ability to use a two-handed sword? Yes, you do. Same thing goes with spears, and I don’t know what you’d use a gold bar for, maybe armor. What armor rating would arm jack, would jack’s armor maybe, is that what it is, count as?, it looks like you guys discussed it here, so hopefully that’s good. What else is in here?, crossbows are back. Crossbows never left. They’ve been here the whole time. shields, ah, yes, so shields, everybody gets one indestructible shield, that is the rule. So shields are indestructible. if it is in your arm and your arm dies, then you can no longer do it and you have to put it down and pick it up with the other arm, just like always, but everybody gets, one shield.

If I have arrow loss fletching, can I fix it and use it the next fight? Yes, you can, just make sure that it is fixed. And then, do you allow the arrows from the Flesh? We do not allow the arrows from the flesh. Not right now. it is something that we could look into in the future, but right now we don’t. someone said crossbows weren’t allowed anymore cause one dude was using it before and they had to stop. I’m not sure what the story is there on why they would need to, but they have been allowed and have been in the rules since the beginning. OK. Anybody got questions, you can do the react button and raise your hand. It be much easier than going over the chat. Uh-huh, we got somebody.

#Q&A

Jordan Gwyther: Javon, what you got?

Javon: My question is: can we use both a bow and a sword, or are we restricted to using one weapon at a time?

Jordan Gwyther: You get to use one weapon at a time. You could be getting charged, which happens all the time when you’re an archer, and you can reach down, take out a dagger or sword, and defend yourself. What you cannot do is use your bow to defend in any way or have it get in the way of your fighting. You can’t use it to block or anything like that. That is a no-go, because it’s dangerous, and bows aren’t made to strike or block with. Make sense?

Javon: I kind of don’t follow.

Jordan Gwyther: If I’m fighting and this were my bow, and I was shooting you with arrows, then you’re running at me and trying to hit me, I can’t block with my bow. I’m not trying to hit you and then hit you with my sword.

Javon: Would I be able to drop the bow and then switch to the sword from there?

Jordan Gwyther: Okay, but just no bow here. Like you said, you can’t use the bow as a shield to shield yourself.

Javon: You got it. That was my thank you.

Jordan Gwyther: Yeah, absolutely. A couple questions in the chat real quick, just because I saw them: somebody said something about dual wielding. You absolutely can dual wield, so it’s one weapon per hand. Dual wielding is totally fine. You can also use sword and shield. That’s not a problem. And then somebody asked about asking or buying weapons off Amazon. You can, but we don’t recommend it unless it is from one of the approved brands, simply because there is a lot of very cheap and unsafe stuff for sale on there that we would not pass, and I wouldn’t want you to spend money. We have a weapon shop available at every Hynafol event with the vast majority of our approved brands all there. You can pick them up, feel them, touch them, duel somebody, practice with them for a sec, and then buy the one that works for you best. All right, JP.

JP: There has been mention of daggers. In what context are daggers allowed to be used? I’ve heard mention of assassinations and stuff like that. If you have a dagger, how does one safely use it and still do a whole “the Lannisters send their regards” type of moment? How do you dare I say it, shank somebody safely?

Jordan Gwyther: Okay, I understand. That’s funny. The assassination rules, I believe, say that you have to just make contact on their back. I have not reviewed those in a bit, and there’s probably somebody on here that has, but you would not, for instance, go up behind them, surprise them, and put it across their neck. That would be a bad idea. All you would have to do is make contact, usually in the center of their back, and that would count as an assassination, and you would be good to go. In normal skirmishing-type combat and in the big battles, you can take out a dagger and use it normally.

JP: Okay, all right, so basically just don’t do something that could make people think for a moment, “Oh wait, am I in real danger right now?”

Jordan Gwyther: Yeah. I’ll give you an example. I was once fighting in a battle, and I walked by a large pine tree in the middle of the forest. A guy came up behind me. I did not hear him coming whatsoever, and I had a helmet on that had chainmail that went down. He came up behind me and put the sword across my neck like that and across the chainmail. It did not hurt me at all. He killed me. It was amazing. I dropped dead right there. My friends who were all behind me, because I was walking out front of them, saw it all happen, and I thought it was incredible. It was one of the best deaths I ever took on the battlefield. He whispered in my ear, “You’re dead,” or something like that, and then bolted off into this field. It was incredible. But my friends were freaking out because they thought that this guy had actually hurt me, because the way it looked, he came up behind me and did that. I was like, “No, no, it’s fine, he didn’t do anything bad to me.” I wasn’t upset, but it looked bad. So don’t do that. If you’re assassinating somebody and they’re in town and not expecting it, you wouldn’t want to be bonked on the top of the head either if you’re not expecting it at all. It’s different when you’re in combat and you know it’s going to happen, and that’s why we have rules in the assassination document that cover exactly how to do it.

JP: Makes sense, thank you.

Jordan Gwyther: You’re welcome. Mr. Anthony?

Anthony: Hi, Jordan. Three questions. First one, just to confirm: bows and crossbows aren’t allowed to be used in town, even if you’re being attacked by goblins?

Jordan Gwyther: Correct.

Anthony: Got you. So for any new players, if you’re walking in town and you’re afraid of goblins or monsters, especially at night, carry a melee weapon. It’s going to save your life, trust me, or you just show something shiny. Second thing: cross-quivers. If you have a hard leather or a soft leather quiver on your back, does it count as equipment or armor due to the material if it gets hit once?

Jordan Gwyther: I believe it is equipment, so it would transfer to your torso. I believe so, yes.

Anthony: Okay. And then third one: when it comes to crossbows, I’ve looked at them before and I’ve seen that there are different sizes. I know with a regular longbow it’s usually two hands, but with a crossbow there are some that are borderline hand crossbows that could be one-handed, and others that are two-handed. Is there any way to delineate that, or is it always two hands, or if it’s small enough could it be one-handed? How does that work with crossbows of different sizes?

Jordan Gwyther: I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about that, but I don’t know that it matters, because I think it’s about the draw weight, not about how you mechanically use it. It needs to be under the draw weight, and obviously you need to wield it safely.

Anthony: Yes, but if it can be wielded with one hand and it meets the requirements, can you use it with one hand, unlike a bow, which you can never use with one hand?

Jordan Gwyther: I mean, I saw someone shoot it with their feet before, but I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s wild. But same thing with a crossbow: you might be able to shoot it with one hand, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it.

Anthony: Got you. Okay, cool. Perfect. Thank you, Jordan.

Jordan Gwyther: You’re welcome. Dahlia Wolf. It’s a cool name. I dig it, by the way.

Dahlia Wolf: Thank you. Please talk about the colors of weapons, because my family got me this really cool blade, and then I took it to GG and I couldn’t use it because red is for magic weapons, and I did not know that.

Jordan Gwyther: That is a pretty dope sword, and we do need to make that more apparent, and we shall in the future, that red weapons are scary, yes. So that is the rule. You are correct, and I’m sorry that you didn’t know that and got that rad weapon.

Dahlia Wolf: I’m not sure if other colors of weapons are similar, but is it just red? It would be nice if that was in the rulebook.

Jordan Gwyther: Yes, it should be, and I appreciate you giving me the reminder, and I will make sure that it gets in there.

Dahlia Wolf: All right, thank you. And also thank you for the compliment. That thing was—I do not know where they found that, but best birthday present ever.

Jordan Gwyther: It is pretty rad, yeah. You could still have it and use it and walk around with it. I suppose it would be fine, but technically red weapons are supposed to be reserved for monsters.

Dahlia Wolf: Yeah, well, I want to follow the rules and be good.

Jordan Gwyther: Appreciate it. Appreciate your flexibility. All right, Angel?

Angel: Yeah, hi. I have two questions.

Jordan Gwyther: You are muted, my friend.

Angel: Can you hear me now? Okay, so I currently have a setup where I have a sort of Rob Stark-esque brigandine that I would consider very light leather, and I wear a chainmail hauberk under that. Would the brigandine then count as like a surcoat, basically?

Jordan Gwyther: The way armor works is that it doesn’t stack. So you can’t have, let’s say for instance, full plate and chainmail underneath it. It doesn’t matter. It’s just whatever can be struck—that’s what counts, because I don’t know what you’re wearing underneath your armor. The second thing is that when you have armor, the armor and how many points it has is for you to keep track of. I’ll give you an example: if I had plates of metal but then had cloth covering it, I know that’s plate, but you don’t. So I can treat it as plate, because it is, and I’m not cheating, but to you it’s going to look like it every time. I don’t know if that’s what you’re asking, but it seems like maybe it is.

Angel: Yeah, that answers my question. Second question is about shades. Are they also like monsters where it’s one shot, one kill?

Jordan Gwyther: Depends on the shade. Can’t tell you that. They’re monsters and they’re terrifying. Who knows? They come out of the mist, my friend. Who knows when they come out of the mist. So we’re going to have to be careful. You’ve got to be careful.

Angel: Okay, well, thanks for answering my question.

Jordan Gwyther: Yep, no problem. Any other questions? Here is the test, if you haven’t already gone and checked it out. Give us your name, your character name, and then answer some handy-dandy questions, and you will get a score, and I believe in you. So yeah, that is combat in a nutshell, and he’s got a question, fantastic.

Unidentified participant: I asked in the chat: if you’re doing a bow, can you be in a tree and shoot from a tree, or is there some rule against that?

Jordan Gwyther: There’s no rule in the document, I can tell you that. I would not recommend it, for many reasons. Technically it says you’re not supposed to climb on any buildings or structures. Maybe we would count trees as a structure. There aren’t many trees you can do that in at any place that we go, and I would be very afraid that you’d fall out and break your neck. So I would probably say no, don’t do it.

Unidentified participant: That’s fair.

Jordan Gwyther: Plus, as Adam said in the video, if you’re up high in a tree and you’re shooting down, you’re much more likely to hit somebody in the head. Just be sneaky and hide behind the tree, I guess.

Unidentified participant: Thank you.

Jordan Gwyther: No problem. Gatt. Did I pronounce it right?

Gatt: You got it perfect. A quick question on the fletching earlier: you’d answered the question that we were allowed to re-fletch our arrows. Are there specific fletchings or nocks that we can use for our arrows instead?

Jordan Gwyther: No. There are very nice ones for sale on Epic Armory that I’ve used for years. I’d probably recommend those, but there are lots of nice nocks, as long as they’re not pointy. Rounded ones would be preferred.

Gatt: Wonderful. That was all I really wanted to know.

Jordan Gwyther: Cool. Okay. Mariah?

Mariah: Hello. I have a question about the red magic weapon situation. Is that any accent of red on a weapon, or if the weapon is majority red? Like if I were to get something that has a color on a hilt, would that be a problem?

Jordan Gwyther: That’s totally fine. The blade in particular. Feel free to have a weapon with a red hilt.

Jordan Gwyther: Right, I just saw the chat. “If I failed, does that mean I can never come to Hynafol again?” No, you just have to—you in particular—go to detention. That’s all that means. Sorry.

Jordan Gwyther: Any other questions about combat? Going once. Going twice? Sold. Like I said at the beginning, if you have questions about combat or ticketing, stay right here. Otherwise, I’ll do breakout rooms, and you guys can go socialize and hopefully make a new friend. So I’ll do that now, and we’ll do a couple of breakout rooms. Thanks for being here tonight. Appreciate y’all, and I’ll bounce from room to room afterwards. Bye-bye.