ES - Re: response to role playing

[forvalaka at juno.com]

On Tue, 15 Aug 2000 16:43:38 GMT "Karie Mitchell"
<allessandre at hotmail.com> writes:
> >From: "Mordock von Rugen" <mordockvonrugen at hotmail.com>

[snip]

> >By adopting this sort of standard, we endanger the historical
recreation 
> >aspects of our society by moving into the realm of fantasy.  The  two
must 
> >be very carefully balanced.
>
> I agree; there must be balance.  One of the ways that I have found 
> most 
> useful is to believe that I am not at "home" in Milan, but I am in 
> Ansteorra, a far off country that has many strange and wonderous 
> things!  My 
> heritage is from there, and I "grew up" there, but "somehow" I was 
> transplanted to Ansteorra to live.
> 
> In a way, we are doing fantasy and not history, because we admit so 
> many 
> different cultures.  

[snip]

In my persona story, I left home after a rebelliion left the crown on the
wrong head (not the rebel, but the wrong head none the less).  I decided
to see Rome, since I had heard tales of it all my life.  After Rome, I
just kept going.  I have been through many kindoms.  It is a wide world,
there is plenty of room for places like Meridies and Ansteorra.  Plenty
of room for people who dress and act "funny."  And the medieval  person
was not immune to a bit of fantasy, I could just as easily claim to have
been to the Kingdom of Prester John.  Mandeville did.

I think of wars as wars.  If you think of them as grand melees, that's
fine with me.  We'll both fall down when we get hit.  I play the part of
my persona as non-intrusively as possible.  I research my times, I try to
keep my look consistent.  If others are playing the game a bit
differently, it doesn't affect my game too much.  I like the period
campsites, and I want to get a period tent myself.  But I understand that
the expense involved can be prohibitive and I don't mind all the nylon
domes sprouting like mushrooms.  If people need eyeglasses and watches,
but want to be 8th cetnury Saxons, that's okay wth me.  I can overlook
it.

The only real difference between our historical recreation group and
other more focused ones is that of scope.  We embrace a wider time frame
than most others.  I can be my early period self and still can get along
wth the rapier players.  But when I get ready to do rapier fighting, I'll
create a persona with a look consistent with rapier fighting.  In the
end, it's really about the ideals and the attitudes, not the trappings. 
It is the spirit of the chivalrc age that we recreate, not the minutae.  
We make the clothes, the clothes do not make us.

Everything will be fine, as long as the jam boxes aren't blasting White
Zombie tunes...
  :-)


Charles O. Baucum Jr.

                Mortuus non est quod in aeternum insiditur
                et aetate ignota mors ipsas finiretur



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