Second post of the day...click here to read about Assessments.

1) What drew you to the SCA and what keeps you playing?

I love epic stories. Ones that end after the "hero" faces trials beyond what the average Joe must face. I guess that's what initially drew me to role-playing games in my early teens. The exercising of the imagination was a wonderful thing. It also made me ask a lot of questions as to the "what" and "why" of various disciplines such as science, history, and fighting. When in high school, if I wasn't spending time with a girl friend or doing after school sports, I was over at a friend's house in the back yard with homemade epees, padded great swords, spear, and other assorted weapons. We'd knock around for several hour with no armor and no instruction. We'd try to catch blunted arrows out of the air and experimented with various style shields and padded cross hilted "swords." I actually eventually created my own set of carpet grieves and chest protection after seeing them at an SCA demo. Anyway, we'd practice till we were tired or it was too dark to see and then move inside for a bit of D&D or Champions gaming. Yeah, I was a geek. Still am I guess.

So time passes and I never really am fully "introduced" to the SCA but my background has been primed. I head off to college where I meet my future wife, get married, move to Virginia, and simply continue role-playing for weekend entertainment. That until the day two of Pavla's old friends showed back up in Richmond and invited us to go to one of the local weekly fighter practices at an elementary school to meet people and see what it was all about. Those two friends were Aradd and Eadan. Aradd had his armor and seemed to be having a great time. It didn't look too different from what I'd been doing for year banging around at a friends house. And since we didn't have a real time-sink hobby at that moment and had already been attending the occasional reinfairs, we decided to go to a couple of events.

I'm going to skip ahead awhile and simply say that without Corby and Thjora's help and encouragement, I doubt I would have been as eager to keep going as I was. Corby helped me put together my first set of leg armor but made me actually do all the cutting and hammering. Thjora helped me make my first Aketon but made me do almost all the cutting, stuffing, and sewing. I felt like I owed them much for the time they spent helping me and the best way I could replay their kindness was to go at it full force and show I hadn't wasted their time.

But that isn't really what "makes me stay." While it was what got me going, what makes me stay is twofold. First is this is what my friends do. If there was nothing else, that would be enough hands down. The second thing is, as I mention above, I love epic stories. The first peerage ceremony I witnessed was William the Stout's Knighting. I was too young in the Society to appreciate what I was witnessing (first event). The first peerage ceremony I "experienced" was Robert de Rath's Knighting. I knew the story, the background, and had been fighting him for months. I had been recently squired to Sir Corby and had the privilege to stand guard at Robert's vigil on the battle field at Pennsic, late into the night, with Byrum, Neil, and others singing song after song surrounded by torch light with spirits in hand, laughing and singing not only in celebration but also in rememberence of two lost but cherished souls. It was an excellent story.

The SCA offers up the opportunity for each of us to experience such an epic tale. With each one's different cast of characters, paths, trials, failures, and adversities overcome, there is a wealth of stories just waiting to be experience and re-told in the age old style of "once upon a time" or "no shit, there I was." People complain a lot about the politics and the drama in the Society. Hell, you'd get that in the Shriners, Knight of Columbus, the Thursday night Bingo parlor, or the Women's Knitting Circle. All these minor annoyances and difficulties in communication are a part of the story, not interfering with it. The Society provides us all with an opportunity to be "noble" and to find our own "story."

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