The final Bal Pourpre! Any hints on what may take its place in 1026?

In La Grande Bataille of 1024, the piece of gear I was most thankful for were my trusty boots. I fought in a battle or skirmish all but one day of La Grande Bataille, and those boots were amazing in the woods on the plains.
Shout out to Son of Sandlar. Your old short merchant boots are amazing.

I agree that a good latex sword is just as safe as a good boffer. As for the rest, it seems pretty clear that you have a much higher diversity of games available to you than I do.

6/6 The word boffer not only has the baggage of "lightning-bolt!", now it is also associated with budget-friendly larp. The internet isn't very friendly to folks with fewer means, and so games that use cheaper foam boffers come off as lower quality from a distance. "Latex weapon" may be the move.

5/? Latex weapons are being adopted by less accessible games with higher budgets, where players are expected to fit into "decorum" at the cost of time and money.
Those games look better on social media, and often have larger budgets which allow for more staff to handle plots.

4/? I think part of the divide between bulky boffers and latex weapons in recent years seems to be that boffers are great in more accessible games, which tend to have fewer staff and smaller budgets. Players can make their owm weapons in an afternoon with no experience.

3/? I usually refer to the latex-covered boffers as "latex swords" or "latex weapons" instead of using the b-word.

In my mind, latex games like Bicolline, Twin Mask, etc. are a different beast than the boffer games that seem to be coloring your academic experience (Amtgard, Bel, Dag, Jugger, etc.)

2/? With the rise of commercially available safe foam swords that look like swords, there is definitely a subset of games that are moving away from the improved pool-noodle boffers that look more like swords. Very few leave any wiggle room for the nicer cloth covered ones (a la B3 whacky bats).

1/? Interesting that you say that. I don't know if this difference comes from a particular era of larp or if it's regional, but I consider the old-school safety-forward pool noodle foam weapons to be in a different category of larp combat than carved foam and injection molded latex-covered weapons.

3/3 I like the idea of a word for foam omni-bats without all the "lightning-bolt!" baggage attached, but ditching the useful connotations might be tough for the larp community.
We're so disparate that finding a common language is tough to begin with.

2/? If someone mentions "boffers", regardless of rp level, I get a general starting point for the physicality and safety needs I can expect from a new game.

1/? I have found that referencing the material/construction of the weapons in a larp involving physical combat is pretty helpful in introducing a larp to new folks. I usually place it somewhere on the spectrum of VtM rock-paper-scissors to Buhurt steel.