*hangs the Colander Banner in the reception hall*

*looks at Ceywren*

...
You know, it's for your saftey that you don't turnt he flash on, cuz... he likes to eat flashy people.

Hence, "flashy people."

Hmmm...
*wonders about porting old museum from the archives*
*contemplates heroes and villains to put in the Tower*
*contamplates what might be in the dungeon*
*explodes*

Huzzah!

Fighter's League Official Rules

Basics:

* You have five vunerable areas on your body: Right and Left Arms, Right and Left Legs, Torso.

* If you take a clean hit to an arm, you must hold it behind you back, or use it in a way in which doesn't interfere with combat. (ie: you cannot use the stump of your arm to block) If you lose both arms, you die.

* If you take a hit to a leg, you must hop/balance on one foot, or you must go to one knee. You can use the side of a lost foot for balance, but a general rule of thumb is that you cannot put the bottom of your foot on the ground. If you loose both legs, you die (however, we are thinking of adopting the SCA rule in which a fighter would sit down and have to crawl on the battle feild).

* A torso hit kills.

* Note that you can touch the flat of a blade or the haft of a weapon without taking damage (ie: if that part of the weapon causes no damage, it deals no damage). You cannot grab a weapon unless it is a part of the weapon which could normally be grabbed (like the haft of a spear).

* No blows to the head or groin are legal, because we do not require helmets or cups.

* A rule that is commonly overlooked is the fact the bottom of your foot is invulnerable, so you could kick away weapons if you were on the ground or such.

* Provisional rule - Unarmed kill: if you have no weapons, you can touch both hands to an enemy's shoulders (at the same time) and "break their neck." This can be hard to do, and if you happen to loose an arm, you're screwed...

Yep.
I'll get a few more detailed sets of rules out soon, too.

More Rules!

Fighter's League Rules Supplements

These are a collection of rules which can be added to a normal game to change the flavor of the game.

Black Knight: Instead of the normal kill rules, torso shots no longer count. To die, a fighter must lose all four limbs. If left with no arms, the fighter may tap another fighter in a vulnerable area with his foot to get a hit.
Usually, this results in a grand melee, with people rolling around on the ground, trying to stay alive.

Puce Knight: A single hit kills, to any vulnerable part of the body!

Vampire: With this rule, fighters gain back limbs whenever they take limbs from an opponent. An arm for an arm, a leg for a leg, and no player may have more than two of each.
This is usually use with Black Knight rules, meaning that only limb shots count, but lost limbs can be stolen back... Note that initially, when combat starts, limbs can only be lost, as no one is missing limbs yet...

Six Feet Under: a simple rule meaning that players have 6 lives with which to fight, and then they are dead for good. Alternately can be X Feet under, where X is any number...

Six Scalp Necklace: the opposite of Six Feet Under, the fighters are going for a certain number of kills (totalled within the team, if playing with teams). Players have infinite lives, and are trying to accumulate points. As with Six Feet Under, the number can be changed.

Goldeneye: Weapons are strewn across the battlefeild, but fighters are unarmed! The fighters must go find a weapon before they are killed! This is usually played with Six Feet Under, and upon death the fighter must drop all weapons and go back to a central respawn point.
This rule is named for the old N64 game, in which players never started with weapons ;)

A note on respawning: it is usually set to 10 or 15, and the respawner must count in "Dead Bodies" (ie: "one dead body, two dead body, etc.").

What I've done over the past year or two is simply hold the game at the same time in the same place every week (Saturdays at 1 in the park), and now I'm starting to get regular players to finally come. It only meets for about an hour or two, usually. And despite the fact that we call it the LARP (Live-Action Rolepleying) we don't ever actually Roleplay; we just fight each other and train ourselves.

So it takes a minimum of dedication, and all you need to effectively start it is a group of five or six friends. Once they understand the game, they'll branch out and bring their friends, and it will slowly grow.

*goes into the deep, dark dungeon with a bag of small, furry objects*

Here's your food, big guy!

The Tower of Valhalla:

Greatest Warriors I have seen in fiction:

**********potential spoilers**********
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Sephiroth - Final Fantasy VII
The greatest villain ever made, he is introduced as an enigmatic force which has killed nearly everone in the building you were in, trailing a massive swath of blood behind, leading up to the top floor, where the enemy that had captured you lay impaled upon a giant sword. Is he helping you? Or is he just manipulating you?
Remorseless and cold as ice, mortal lives are nothing to him and he will destroy everyone who gets in his way. He pits the party against itself and even mangages to convince the main character to serve him for a short period of time. As a being who can stay alive solely through force of will (and has appeared variously in other games and stories, always leaving a swath of devastation behind), Sephiroth is the ultimate villain.

Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion Saga
The exiled king of a dead land, Elric is a bitter and haunted character whom a tremendous burden is thrust upon: Stormbringer, the ultimate sword, which many claim is the utmost evil as well. As an albino who suffers from life-threatening physical weakness, this comes as a boon to him, as when the black sword slays, it gives the wielder energy and power... but at a price. The sword rips souls out of mortals and feeds on them, devouring them and giving its wielder power, but the sword also has a mind of its own and it always hungering. It tries to leap out of Elric's hands at spontaneous moments or control his motions to slay all around him.
His dilemma is this: he cannot survive for long without the energy the sword provides, but when the sword starts to feed, it is nearly impossible to stop. Slowly, over the years, he has gained control over the urges of the sword, but more than once he has slaughtered an entire city, including his own kingdom, Melnibone...
He searches for the mythical city of Tanelon, the place where peace reigns and where his soul can finally be at rest.


That's it for today...

Successful tranfer of LARPing down to ABQ. It's fun doing it with my old buddies, though a slight bit more painful (they hit harder). Maybe I'll do a full report later...

We're gonna be Light Warriors!
*glee*

Ok, Nan Desu Kan 2004 report:

It began on thursday, september 16, around 7pm. That's when I went over to my friend's house to begin takeoff preparations and I found out that one of the people we were going with was actually someone I knew! Imagine that.

Well, then ensued the Long Drive up, eight hours of driving, starting around 1am and, after watching the sun rise (well, it was more of a "sleeping-through" than a "watching") and arriving around 9, we found that we didn't get to check into our hotel until 2.

...

So we waited about an hour, then tried again, with a little more... insistence. So we got the room (which was an incredibly nice suite which my friends paid for; much thanks to them), then prepared for the Long Wait in line to get our badges. I was the only one not preregistered, so I had to go wait in the Other Line. I began walking across the parking lot, in front of all the lines--

It may be worthwhile to note that i was wearing about 70% of a full suit of armor and was carrying something that looked like cloud's buster sword and was as tall as I am.

-- and I heard several people comment on how big my sword was. I was flattered. While I was in line, I met several cool people (who wanted to know who I was, to which I responded, "I'm a disco ball.") and had my picture taken four times. I was impressed.

So I was waiting in line for the newregs, and my friends were waiting in line for their prereg badges. I got in a half hour before they did. I was amused.

The only mentionable event of the first day was the webcomic panel I attended. I met a few artists from my area. Fun stuff.

The next day we actually succeeded in doing stuff, to my suprise. I met a girl (!!!) and we watched the AMV (anime music video) contest together.

Notes on Girl: She was dressed as Death from the Sandman comics. I took this as Fate, because I essentially went as War, second Horseman of the Apocalypse. And it was awesome.

Notes on the AMVs: I was imresssed with a few of them, having seen some pretty bad AMVs before. My friends, who entered three different videos and had two shown, won an award! And it was awesome.

My friend was dressed as Black Mage, and it was shortly after that I came across the realizaton that I needed to be Fighter. I didn't want to be Fighter, I needed to be him. This is because no other character so simply describes me like the way Fighter is portrayed in 8-bit Theater, and if all goes well, we'll have a full Final Fantasy I hero cast (and I'll have Swordchucks! did I mention I like swords?). And that will come to be awesome.

There wasn't much else to report, other than the fact that I found a Sephiroth pin, a Sephiroth action figure, a nice, original sketch of Sephiroth and a shirt. Did I mention Sephiroth (or Sephy-poo, as I like to call him) is my hero?

Oh! We watched some MST3K style anime (as in, three guys making fun of horrible anime). It was awesome (except for the craptacular sound, but hey).

On the final day I found out I had lost my badge, but since everyone either didn't care or didn't notice, I wasn't harassed about it.

Oh! Here's my friend which paid for the hotel room. Praise her.

I'm sad because I can't find any pics of me. Oh well.

The most entertaining bit of the trip had to be the drive back, oddly enough. We were going up the onramp in our Huge Van of Doom (AKA the Shaggin' Wagon), a pidgeon decided it was a good time to insult me, but unfortunately had the bad luck of doing it in front of our windshield. Poor rat of the sky.

"It called you a dick, so I had to hit it!" said Kirby (Black Mage). I believed him.

Anyways, Kirby, who is driving, gets tired and lets me drive. I know a shortcut through a mountain pass which my family always takes, so I decide to take it.

It begins to rain. Really friggin hard.

All around us is darkness, with the occasional passing car whose headlights reflect off the inch of water on the ground (which isn't helped at all by the windshield which liked to diffuse the light across itself and make it even harder to see).

Someone makes a comment about how this could be the beginning of a slasher movie.

Then, as we cross the peak of the pass, we pass a large truck parked under a lone streetlight, haloed in orange by illuminated rain. Out in front of it is a small girl, about the age of eight or so, staring at us.

"FLOOR IT!" screams the guy behind me.

I oblige.

We made it back home okay, but the image has stuck with me.

Dude, you need to post pics of yourself. *g*

Sounds like you had a blast. :)