Dagorhir
It is combat-oriented, with full-contact melee fighting and ranged combat as its primary focus. Fighters typically use foam weapons such as swords, flails, spears, bows and arrows, javelins, hammers, axes, and other dark age weapons.
Unlike some other LARPs there is no use of “magic".
Participants wear period costume and are expected to stay in-character during events - although the amount of seriousness the role-playing aspect receives varies greatly by unit and chapter.
Description
Dagorhir is a combat-driven battlegame, and combatants engage each other in battle with boffer weapons and foam-padded shields. In order to keep battles organized, realistic, and safe, the three main tenets of The Dagorhir Manual of Arms - safety, playability, and realism - are enforced by heralds (referees) during battles.
The rules of the manual of arms, as well as those pertaining to combat, are upheld by an effective honor system which applies to all players.
All weapons used during combat are inspected for safety prior to each battle, to ensure that they comply with rules regarding weapon safety. Although early Dagorhir weapons were typically constructed from crude materials such as couch foam and broomsticks when the organization was in its infancy, modern-day weapons are usually made from combinations of both open and closed-cell foam bonded to a fiberglass or PVC pipe core.
Participants may also elect to wear protective armor, which gives users an advantage in battle. Fighters are organized into units of various sizes, organized along social lines and that generally fight and socialize together and are a club or fraternity of sorts.
Units typically adopt a particular historical or fantastical race or nationality and dress, act, and fight according to interpretation of the group. Due to this melding of both dark ages history and Tolkein-esque fantasy, it is not uncommon for a Dagohir battle to involve Roman Legionnaires and Norse Warriors battling against Black Orc soldiers and Shady Mercenaries.
Unlike other LARP organizations, Dagorhir is strictly a weapon combat game.
Dagorhir also eschews the use of character classes in combat, instead allowing fighters to create and define their own styles of combat. Therefore, fighters are not shoehorned into class stereotypes and are free to fight unrestricted in types of armor, picks of garb, choices of weaponry, and styles of play.
Realms and Chapters are organized by geography, and can range from between a handful of participants to several hundred.
The largest annual Dagorhir gathering is known as Ragnarok and is held in Cambridge, Ohio during mid-to-late June. Ragnarok is an annual Dagorhir tradition and in years of late, it has reached heights of approximately 1,500 attendees during its weeklong duration.
The original chapter of Dagorhir, founded in 1977, is based in the Washington, D.C. area, and is known as "Dagorhir Aratari" after the founder's persona, Aratar.
History
Bryan Wiese watched the movie Robin and Marion while reading The Lord of the Rings by J.
He had never heard of medieval reenactment, Live Action Role Playing Games or even Dungeons and Dragons but he wanted something to capture the spirit and adventure that could only come from wielding sword and bow. As 1977 rolled by, Brian ran ads on the local radio station WGTB.
Brian, who had coined the game as “Dagorhir Outdoor Improvisational Dark Age Battle Games”, had a more theatrical bend to his dream. The new flood of players had an attitude that was more sport like.
Then in 1983, PM Magazine broadcast the TV episode to a national audience. Dagorhir began to spread throughout the Mid Western U.S, and inspired numerous spin off organizations, including Belegarth Medieval Combat Society and Amtgard.
Dagorhir has enjoyed extensive nationwide growth in recent years, expanding to an international membership of over a hundred Chapters consisting of a total membership in the thousands.
On January 20th, 2009, the Discovery Channel show, Wreckreation Nation, featured Dagorhir in its episode, "Demolition Derby."
Membership
Dagorhir is open to the public, membership is free of charge (though each event often has a nominal fee) and participation requires only a small start-up cost to obtain weapons and garb.
Sometimes veteran members will give old, unused weapons to the new players. As a project on the Dagorhir forums, people began counting and listing active Dagorhir members.
More recently, Ragnarok XXIII in June 2008 had more than 1,400 attendees, with over 650 actually fighting at the height of the event. While all local battles are open to any participant, there are battles such as a Crown War, that decide the "king" or "queen" of a realm.