Page 1 of 1

Business Operations and Waiver

Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2015 8:26 pm
by Kiel Reid
Greetings everyone.

We recently reached out to a lawyer for advice on our operations. As much as we love LARP as a hobby it is also a business. Businesses need to make sure that they are doing things the right way. Not only to protect themselves but also their customers.

With that in mind we have recently revised our waiver to better disclose the risks of participating in a LARP event.

One point of contention amongst our players was allowing pregnant people to participate in combat. We made sure to get as much information on this as possible.

The first thing our lawyer did was looked up case law on any cases that pertained to LARP and liability suits. With the exception of Joe V of NERO sueing people for copyright infringement, there are none that could be found.

Then we looked into if we can restrict pregnant people from participating in combat or in the game itself. Legally we can. We can refuse service to anyone at our discretion.

However that's NOT what we will be doing. Pregnant people can play the game in whatever way they feel comfortable.

So the next order of business was "Black Sashing" or as we will now refer to it as "Advanced Combat". You will see new things in our waiver to address this. If you play Final/Winter Haven you should know Advanced Combat is NOT being permitted in these places. Waypoint players and NPC's will now need to certify once a year in order to participate in Advanced Combat. This is a one hour process.

So as a summary.

New waivers to better disclose the risks of LARP. These will be made available at the next event. (We apologize about the inconvenience)

Pregnant people are allowed to participate in any capacity they see fit.

Advanced Combat is OK at Waypoint but you need to certify.

If you have questions please let us know. Thanks!

Re: Business Operations and Waiver

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 4:11 am
by Ark
even though FH/WH/Waypoint are free of liability under the new wavers, can individual players still take other individual players to court?

Re: Business Operations and Waiver

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 9:06 am
by Kiel Reid
Anybody can sue anyone. A waiver cannot stop someone from pursuing legal action. What the waiver does is shows that everyone understood the risks. This means the suit will most likely be unsuccessful unless there is gross negligence. Like if Bob runs up to John and attacks him with a real knife or purposely pushes him into a fire. In those cases John has a good chance of suing Bob successfully.

Now if John and Bob are fighting. John trips over a log running away from Bob breaking his leg. John tries to sue Bob but the court will most likely side with Bob since everyone understood the risks.

Re: Business Operations and Waiver

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 12:00 pm
by GM-Mike
Just so we're clear, Final Haven has taken the position where we come out strongly against attacking people with real knives or purposefully pushing people into fires. I assume this is true of Waypoint even with "Advanced Fighting."