And then there's stone age paintball with paint soaked sponges on the end of sticks simulating stone hammers and just plain paint soaked sponges to simulate rocks. No language may be used. Just grunts and howls. Winners may eat losers, uncooked.

These ideas are abundant at summer camps. Great stuff.

sand - that was an uncharacteristically bad comment. TNM's idea represents an actual paradigm shift, from paintballing (ranged/projectile combat) to... um, paintswording, I guess (melee combat).

TNM - For your personal benefit: something similar to what you are talking about exists, if you've ever heard of LARPing. There are rules for what types of weapons do how much damage, armor and shields, etc. I've always stayed far, far away from that stuff myself for social reasons, but hey, maybe you'll dig it.

Of course, if you're seriously interested in learning a martial art, you could sign up for a kumdo class :)

However, none of this sounds to me like what you're describing; I'm thinking something more like what goes on with Nerf products. Something like a scaled-down version of electronic scoring with fencing. There might be a market for it. I'd probably dig it; my brothers and I used to smack each other with cardboard tubes for years.

And finally, you might get a kick out of this: Mazu Kan

the problem which occurs to me is that in close combat, you traditionally gain the ability to block, as combared to projectile combat. so this means that the swords must be made such that people may clash the blades together, and they must be strong enough to push against one another, but they must also be made soft enough, or with some sort of impact absorbing material so that people dont just beat eachother to a bloody mess. this is going to be a hard balance to achieve, considering that everyone will have a different hitting strength.