Up close and personal. Eye to eye. Man to man.
The worst part of this is that the nearest one is hundreds of miles away from me. Otherwise it looks damn cool! You still active in it?
That's unfortunate.
I'm not now, because my hours at work make it prohibitive. But I was relatively active, even attending Gulf Wars one year. They have three big "wars" each year in the US, the southern one is a state away from me in Lumberton, Mississippi. I think ~10,000 people show up on average to Gulf Wars.
I almost exclusively did fencing, but I was interested in a lot of other stuff too, but time and other concerns made it hard to engage in more than just the fencing stuff. But it was pretty fun. I do still have all my gear, at least.
How about a fight where you can respawn and fight again?
It's not quite the "rolling in the mud" style - we're not so rough - but you can at least use big wooden sticks to whack your friends with.
Although I preferred the rapier stuff; I never got the license for heavy combat, although I was kind of interested, but looked a little pricey (for the gear) and hard-hitting for my taste.