THE GAME OF THRONES
In the SCA, we play the Game of Thrones. It's what we do. The SCA is literally a game of thrones. As I wrote in my book (see sidebar), the SCA is a more-or-less accidental recreation of the medieval "King Game," a peasant game in which a contest is held for a mock king to reign over a mock court (king of fools, boy bishop, mock mayor, and May king are all examples). So, what happens in GoT is an interesting reflection on what we do in, and how we might play, the SCA. As such, last week's finale has a bit of a message for us. I won't go into all the flaming details. I was not nearly as disappointed in the ending as so many others were. I agree that it was rushed, but I thought they got to the right place on nearly all the story lines. Dany was always going to turn into a tyrant, Jon was always a well-meaning idiot, and Bran was being groomed to be king in the first episode. No big surprise. But there are two ways in which the last episode intersects with the SCA.
First, with how to deal with a tyrant. Our tyrants don't burn cities to the ground. They are merely assholes, and they have a sunset clause. My personal philosophy has always been closely aligned with fighting: just as anybody I face has the right to decide none of my blows was good, every king has the right to be a tyrant. I put myself in danger, submit myself to another's control over me, in fighting and in serving the king. It is an act of trust. If I am let down there is no real harm. He's not going to take away my birthday, after all. I like our way. I am a big one for giving people the opportunity to easily be assholes, because only then do you actually give them the opportunity to shine and be heroes. But I know people who wish regicide were an option in our game.
The second thing is what to do with our kings when they are no longer king. Jon was crowned King in the North, and he is actually the rightful king of Westeros. In this case he is sent off to the Night's Watch (another way the show has come full circle), and then is (sort of) released to go off into the True North with the Wildlings (Ken Mondschein and I will be working on a paper on this topic later in the year). In the SCA, our ex kings get a county, or maybe a Dukedom. That's not too different from what happened to Jon. It is a good convention.
I think we do it right.
NUTLEY
Getting back into armor after Crown is always a bit difficult. What, exactly do I wok on. Staying with my plan? Power generation? Having no plan? Thrusts? What *didn't* I do at Crown that I need to do next time. The zen answer, of course, is "win."
The dangers of Nutley last week was getting lost, which, in a way, is what I did. It was the best Nutley practice in a long time. There were several out of towners, and 24 fighters in armor. I wanted to fight people I don't fight a lot, but in that crowd it wasn't easy. I only got five opponents, one of them was brand new, two were regulars. I worked with Dwight, who lives near me in Brooklyn. I fought great swords against Jonathan, and I warmed up with Galvin. I managed to get my set with Victor, which is the thing I wanted most. With the new, lighter sword, I was having trouble with power, but I was also firing too much into his shield which, with pell work every single day, should not be a problem. I'm very disappointed in that. But with so many to choose from, I did not get in as good (read rough) a night as I should have.
HOW TO RUN A PRACTICE
We had a practice last weekend, with me, three brand new fighters,and one fairly new fighter. Two were left handed, two were right handed. It gave me an opportunity to run an actual class, as opposed to bashing practice, again. The curriculum this time was as follows:
(unarmored)
- Footwork drills
- Structured slow work (I worked with each of them individually, critiquing their form)
(armored)
- Slow work warm up.
- Striking and moving: I drilled each one individually, having them strike and move, with the goal of keeping their shields in place as they did so. I'd occasionally lightly tap them if they let their shield drift too far.
- Sparing with each other -- righty on righty/lefty on lefty, then switch, with me critiquing
- Circle drill, (ie bear pit) in which one person holds the field against each of the others, in turn. I didn't hold the field but I did enter it to fight them. I used a small (22" round) shield for this, as a handicap, and I did get hit a couple of times. This last part is so people have fun and feel they've gotten enough fighting in, which is always important.
It was a good practice. My most satisfying part is seeing how, even though I didn't work with him much at all last year, Austin, the more experienced fighter, was employing the footwork I had taught him effectively.
HOW TO RUN A DEMO
I've harped on this before.
We all do demos a bit differently, and for different audiences. A lot of the early demos I was involved in were simply that--demonstrations of how our combat works for a lay audience. It would be mostly built around pairs. They'd fight. Someone would win. Emphasis was put on explaining to the audience our conventions of combat and the armor and weapons being used. Effort would be made to demonstrate lots of different weapons forms. It's not about medieval history, it's about SCA fighting.
The next step is often to emphasize the entertainment value of the violence. People take on "villain" rolls. There's lots of playing to the crowd. Some fighters do things (ignore blows, back stab) that are against the rules, but are entertaining to an audience not familiar with what we do.
Another variety is to purposely fight in a more medieval fashion. This also breaks our rules through the addition of grappling, punching with shields, etc. We used to do a fighting show at the Renaissance Faire in Black Point. It had started out, years before, as an "SCA Demo," with SCA rules. It evolved into a show that was not a demo really at all, because we never mentioned the SCA. It was a tournament in which we used, basically, the conventions currently employed by ACL and BOTN. We fought to submission or to three point contact with the ground. I suffered a couple of concussions in those fights.
I've always thought the best way to run a demo is to run a structured fighting event. Either a small SCA tournament, fought with SCA rules, or a challenge event of some kind. A pas d'armes with a barrier is great for this, because it requires less space, and because it does away with fighting from the knees. Another similar way is to do the event as a series of challenges.
So, last weekend we also had a demo for the Brooklyn's Viking Day festival. As usual, the SCA set up on one side of a concrete path, and the MSR SET up on the other. In years past, we've gone back and forth between each other's spaces. This year, however, we each only had one fighter. The SCA had me. MSR had Douglas Henry, who is both an SCA knight (one of the top four or five fighters in the kingdom) and the Crown Prince of Acre in the MSR. He and I decided to fight a passage of arms with SCA rules using 5 different weapon forms: arming sword, great sword, two weapon, dagger, abd sword and shield. It's more or less the finals of Crown Tourney. Here is how it looked (thanks to the Vicereign for the videos):
We split even, two each and a double kill, but actually I thrust him in the face in the two sword fight, which he acknowledged, and kept fighting, so I won three of the five. This doesn't mean I'd have won in a tourney, but it does mean that every blow I killed him with was to the face, three thrusts and a cut with the great sword. Doug needs to improve his face defense.
The real point is that this is a fun way to do a demo if you only have two fighters. A passage of arms like this one is described in Hutton's The Sword And The Centuries. It allows us to teach a bit about SCA fighting, a bit about 14th Century fighting, and put on a good show.
There are 62 days until Pennsic (yikes!).
