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PVC staves? No loud contact? Where are you playing at?
Now, I've not been active for a few years, but my friends still are, and things have not changed hereabouts. The local/regional mentality is that any strike must be sufficient to have penetrated chainmail. From the work that the leading fighter in the overall region has done has produced the Bowling Ball Test. In this test, you put a bowling ball (pref 16lb) on top of a handy pell, and swat it. If it is sufficient to knock said bowling ball off the top of the pell, it is hard enough, generally, to punch chainmail. Not a scientific test by any stretch of the imagination, but it works.
Given this mentality, armorcraft is taken serious, with 14ga mild or 16ga stainless being the norm, and noone with any ability to feel pain wearing leather. Additionally, it means that fights are heavy and fairly rough, with the big guys generally doing better, the exception being the tall fellows what generate tremendous leverage via technique.
A good friend of mine, of mediocre ability like myself, moved from my area (SE VA) to Texas, and took up with the locals. When they had to move him from fighting against men-at-arm to squires, and then to their knights, they started to ask questions. They also thought he was silly for basing his choice of armour from the Borrow Bin on what was heaviest. Sure, he nearly collapsed from heat exhaustion his first day out, but boy did he kick much butt (yes, the fact that he didn't have his own armor should tell you that he wasn't a serious player).
We did not use PVC staves. They would not have stood up to local standards. Furniture-grade rattan was the order of the day, and no full-crank power shot, please. The half-crank shots that the guys what were good would use were sufficient enough to lift you up off the ground. Shinai weren't used unless you really were just training someone to use a two-hander, and it was done with gambeson only so that you could properly feel it. In actual play, it was more furniture grade rattan, 2.25"-2.5" diameter or so.
Upon reflection, it is a wonder no one gets hurt, and I boggle at why I played with these obviously insane people for as long as I did.
I do recall one day where we had some new-ish guy not wanting to call shots properly. I'd swatted him three times in the steel pot and he kept calling light. One of our squires was watching, and I could see him starting to grimace. I got over it after I gonged him solidly and he called light, only to leg me moderately hard. I went down to one knee as prescribed in such case, and were told to lay on. Frank, the squire, had a look of concern, as he saw me getting serious. Denius, the rhino-hider in question, starts to try and step over my guard, so I pull back and cranked him hard right across the side of his left thigh (downward angle to, mean of me). He fell to the ground hollering because I'd dished his 14ga wrap-plate on the backside of his thigh and it hurt an ickle bit. Dished his actual greave as well, and wrecked the buckles on his straps (who puts their buckles close to the plate? Stupid!)
I felt bad when they had to cut the straps to get it off of him. Fully expected to get bitched out for hammering him like that, but Frank's only comment was to tell him, "Next time, you might not want to say 'light' on those bell-ringers".
Lemme tell you, wearing 80lbs of steel and padding, and then swinging 7lbs of sword and 18lbs of shield, all the while some 300lb gorilla (like me) is trying to take your head off with a mildly padded poleaxe is good exercise! In the end, my favorite weapon was the axe. We had a galvanized rubber headed axe ona short rattan shaft. I caught some ribbing for using such a weedy looking weapon. The deal is that the first shot you take is a full power shot to the center of you opponents shield. When they feel that rubber axehead crash into the shield arm, and the arm is slammed into their body, they begin to be a bit nervous. You have to play more of a head-game when you give up as much weapon mobility to a swaord-wielder when you tote an axe. Fun though.
*showing his barbarian roots*
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