Safety

Quest values safety above all else!

We use foam-covered prop weapons to simulate combat, but we swing them with only moderate force — for instance, we don't allow you to lock your elbow for a "baseball bat" full-force swing. Every player at every game goes through "calibration" before the event to make sure they aren't swinging too hard. To be extra sure, we forbid shots to the head or groin. Quest players who have done fencing say they get bruises from fencing, but none from Quest!

Accidents can happen and shots might go wild, but we minimize this by prohibiting combat in dimly-lit areas, or on dangerous ground such as cliffs or tall staircases. For multi-day events, we stop combat for eight hours overnight so that lack of sleep doesn't impede anyone's ability to fight safely.

Our Prop Weapons

We're so concerned about keeping you from injury that we don't allow the latex-covered prop weapons used by most LARP groups... because we don't think they're safe enough!

Our prop swords are made of fiberglass cores (stable but flexible), covered in soft, closed-cell foam. The edges of the "blades" have two and a half inches of foam between the core and the edge, to protect you from harm. The "blades" are then covered in a layer of cloth, to smooth out the edges of the foam and present a soft striking surface.

Smaller weapons such as daggers may contain no fiberglass core at all — they're all foam!

For archery, we permit only low-strength, basic bows (not the high-tension modern kind). We require archers to use a weak draw, and to pass a safety inspection to make sure they are drawing with a sufficiently low strength. Our arrows have their real tips removed; we replace them with a disc of thin plastic topped with 2.5 inches of foam, then covered in white cloth, giving them a "marshmallow" appearance. The "marshmallow" is wider than your eye socket, so even if a shot goes wild and hits you in the head, the bones around your eye socket (rather than your eye) will take the hit.