New Player Guide

Combat

No story would be complete without a little action. With a traditional play, the author gets to dictate who wins a fight — but we're not a traditional play! We don't know the outcome of a conflict beforehand, so we have to have a system for modeling conflict and let the players' actions decide the outcome.

Quest uses padded ("boffer") weapons to simulate medieval combat. These weapons are made from closed-cell foam with a fiberglass core, and are covered with duct tape and cloth. They are very safe — safer than the weapons used by most other live-action groups. (Previous players who have done fencing say they get bruises from fencing, but none from Quest.) Along with swords, there are padded daggers, spears, axes, maces, arrows — just about any medieval weapon you can imagine! There are also shields and armor (usually made of cloth, plastic or leather.)

The basic principle of combat is pretty simple: "whatever gets hit is wounded." If your arm takes a blow, your arm is wounded and you cannot use it. A leg wound means you can't walk on that leg; a torso wound knocks you unconscious. Take enough wounds, and you'll start bleeding to death. There's no counting of "hit points" or "damage modifiers" — or anything else that forces you to do fancy math in your head when you get hit!

Quest further ensures safety by giving training in our safety rules and conventions. Before each event, all participants will be checked to make sure they engage in combat safely.