His first copy.

He asked for it. I tried to talk him out of it...his mother tried to warn him. But he thinks its cool, and it looks like fun. I fear, my choice to give in to his wishes may have ultimately doomed him...


Merry Christmas.

From a trip to the museum this year

I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art this autumn. I spent some time in the armory, and found that they had a copy of Agrippa's manual on display.

"MANUSCRIPT FOR A FIGHTING BOOK c. 1553 Brown Ink & pen, brown wash on paper. France or Italy. This is an incomplete manuscript of Camillo Agrippa's Tratto di Scientia d'Arme con un Dialgo di Filosofia (published in Rome 1553), one of the most influential printed Renaissance treatises on personal armed combat."

Ideas from my drive

I have a long drive to work. Some of the ideas I've come up with on my drive:

1: Burnt Stars: a Star Wars RPG set in the "far future" of the Star Wars universe. A mixture of sword-and-sorcery and Star Wars. Barbarians with lightsabers. Sith sorcerers.

2: Gutter Memory: a game of Wraith: the Oblivion. Spirits of the homeless overwhelm the streets of Newark, NJ in 1978.

3: Place of Forgetting: story for the 7th Sea RPG. Political enemies are held in a remote prison, on an island far from civilization. They fight to survive.

Good advice.

"The period of the rapier was, in good truth, the most quarrelsome period in history; the "point of honour" was carried to such an extreme point that men would fight to the death for almost any trivial reason, and sometimes even without any at all, but from pure light-heartedness, for the mere fun of the thing and for nothing else."

Alfred Hutton. The Sword and the Centuries.

"Do not upon Every tryfle make an Action of revenge, or of Defyance."

George Silver. Brief Instructions Upon My Paradoxes of Defence.

"For we all acknowledge that it is with the sword that Kingdoms are protected, Religions are defended, injuries are avenged and Nations achieve peace and happiness."

Salvator Fabris. As taken from Tommaso Leoni's translation, Art of Dueling.

Warmachine!

Here are a couple of shots from a Warmachine game at All Things Fun in Berlin, NJ:



Terror was this thing.



"C'mon, guys...lets sneak through the creepy cemetery!"

Best D&D game ever!

My son and I often pull out my D&D or Star Wars minis and play a little game. We play a skirmish-style Star Wars game, where one of us gets clones, or stormtroopers, or droids, or Rebel troopers, plus a couple of heroes. The object of the game is to get to a particular door, or blow up a console, or destroy the attackers. If we pull out the D&D minis, we play a quick little dungeon-crawl, no more than 3 or four rooms, and my boy gets to beat on some goblins or skeletons, or whatever monsters strike his fancy at that moment.

Today, we tried something a little different. I pulled out the Microlite D20 rules, had him create a character, and we played a little more sincerely. The adventure began with an old wizard coming to the home of his character ("Knight Smith"), asking for help to recover a crystal ball from an old castle. What happened next was gaming gold.

I described the approach to an old, ruined castle; there was a drawbridge, a dry moat, and an open doorway to the castle. I described a gnoll ("dog-man") sitting just beyond the doorway, eating soup at a ramshackle table, with an axe at his feet. My son told me his character would talk to him, asking him if he knew where the crystal ball was. He and the gnoll talked for a little while and, once the gnoll was convinced that my son's character wouldn't try to fight him, led him to the door to the dungeon. The gonll even offered some useful advice..."The goblins downstairs aren't really bright." My son thanked him and moved on.

One trapped hallway later (my son's character got through it by going back up and asking the gnoll if he was good at tripping traps), he made his way to a door. He heard goblins beyond. His solution to the problem...style:italic;">go back to town and get help!

Smart kid, this one.

One hired-gun cleric added to the party, and they went back into the dungeon. My kid's plan...knock on the door to the goblin lair and tell them, "Hey, we're a couple of goblins looking to join up!"

Once the goblins let them in...my we put down the minis and drew the dungeon on the battle-map. Things went really smoothly...the kid took well to the Microlite rules :)

Later in the game, the boy's character and his cleric-helper encountered the Goblin Chieftan and his bodyguards. Nearby was the magical crystal ball. The boy's plan went flawlessly: knock out the chieftain, and then declare to the bodyguards: "Your chief has been defeated! Give us the crystal ball, and we spare the rest of you!" he also made a proposal to them: let him leave, and promise never to attack the village, the the goblins could live in the abandoned castle. On top of that, he would tell the cleric to heal all the goblins that had been defeated!

So, by the time we were finished, the boy's character had made allies of a gnoll, added a cleric to his adventuring party, recovered a magical artifact, and gave a home to a tribe of goblins.

Eight years old, this kid.

Microlite D20: http://microlite20.net/

Different definitions of victory

Does studying an historically accurate fighting style in the SCA mean that you have to abandon winning tournaments?

Alot of people I talk to have a misconception about me when it comes to SCA combat...that I don't care about whether or not I win or loose. That's not entirely true. The Don I study with put it into my head that when you're on the tournament field, you're there to do a job. Do the job, maintain honor, treat your opponent with respect. This is basic sportsmanship, and its the core of how I feel about competition.

That being said, I think I take a slightly different approach to SCA tournament fighting than other people. I go into competition with a few objectives:

1: Keep perspective. Have fun. This is the obvious one, don't you think? These are friends we're fighting. The best prize is being told you gave a good fight, and knowing that everyone acted with honor. If everyone walked out feeling good about the fight, then its a win.

2: Have an additional objective than simple victory. I participated in a tournament in which we were expected to display historical technique. The participants were concerned with how they displayed their technique, much more than they were concerned with whether they won or lost. The question wasn't so much, "What could I have done to won," as much as it was, "Did I do this right?"

3: Use each victory and defeat to help with the details. How is your timing or your distance? What details of the technique that you're using helped? Its helpful having someone you study with watching from the sidelines. Ask them what they saw. Discuss it with them. Use every defeat to hone the technique.

Although some of us practice historical swordsmanship as an art form, it is still a martial activity. The ultimate objective of the period masters is victory. In the SCA, we have the opportunity to take our time to practice every detail with intensity and passion. We aren't fettered by a seasonal tournament schedule; we can take time to grow in our technique, using every fight as a learning exercise.