Zombie apocalypse and swords

So I’ve been watching the Walking Dead episodes and rediscovering my love for the zombie genre, but one thing has always bugged me in every zombie movie: Why not swords? Now I know, I know, the films are always about the average person using mundane things found around the house to defend themselves from the hordes of zombies, but they rely so heavily on guns that always run out of ammo at the critical moment.

We have been killing one another for millennia, yet it is only recently that we have started using guns. There are plenty of other ways to kill someone without using a gun. You see melee in zombie movies quite frequently, but it is usually with some object not designed for that purpose, like a baseball bat or the lid of a toilet.

Ideally, if you were going to engage in melee combat with zombies, would it not be wise to use am instrument perfected for the task? An instrument that was at its height right before firearms made it obsolete?

It never runs out of ammo and can remove zombie heads and limbs with ease. Much faster and less unwieldy than a fire ax, and guaranteed to get the job done the first time, unlike a baseball bat that might require a second swing.

I know, I know, not many people have longswords just lying around the house, hence why they don’t show up in zombie movies.

“But GP! Melee is a last resort because that means the zombie horde is on top of you! You need to keep your distance! It doesn’t matter if you have a sword and they swarm you from all sides, you’ll still get bitten!”

True, but that’s why if you have the sword, you should also have the second bit of the equation:

Again, not your average household item, but man would you be set if you had it. (Mine’s not as shiny or nice looking as this one, but it would do the job) The human mouth cannot bite through steel. Zombies also wouldn’t have the fine motor skills needed to undo the straps. While it’s best not to get completely swamped by the horde, wearing a suit of armor would make you a walking tank. Wrap yourself up in some plastic trash bags underneath to prevent the infected blood from seeping in and oozing on you and you’re good to go.

I know this is just begging to get some nerd hatemail, but their is no way the zombies could hurt you if you were wearing a suit of armor. Deal with it. And don’t even bring up the idea that it would make it too hard for you to move or escape because that just shows how little you know about armor. I can move perfectly fine in mine. I can run, roll, fall down and get back up in a heartbeak; so no, it would not be a problem.

I would love to see a zombie movie where somebody in the full gear just waded through the horde in the street. They’re zombies, soft flesh and bone, not rhinoceri. It would be a piece of cake, though probably not as entertaining or heart-pounding as a bunch of people trying to defend themselves from zombies with the useless crap they found in the mall.

Military Through the Ages, recap

So I’m finally home where I was able to soak in the shower and wash off all the dirt, sweat, and wood smoke smell that accumulated from this past weekend at MTA.

I had an ok time. The best part was getting to hang out with some readers and watch WW2 Germans charge a British Zulu encampment.

As for the rest of the weekend, I had some issues. They are not very coherent, so I will try and put them in bullet points.

• Egos are really making living history in my group not fun:

I’m not sure how this is in other groups, but it seems that in my group and the other late medieval groups near us that everything is just a giant dick waving contest. The hierarchy in the group seems to be determined by “stuff”. Who has bought the most stuff? Who’s stuff is the best and most expensive? I’m at the bottom of the hierarchy despite being in the group for several years because I don’t have very much “stuff”.

• My gear is never good enough:

If I make something, it’s rarely ok to use in camp, and everyone else wants to display their things over mine. I often run into the problem of making something under the direction of one of the other members in the group, or buying something, and then soon after I get the item, they decide that it’s not right for the period. This is so frustrating! The only things I can use in the camp tend to be things that other people make for me.

• I am never physically comfortable:

This has been true of just about every event I’ve gone to, but it was really bad this event. My clothes are horrible. The shirt I have is too big and the pants are too small. It all just ends up being this hot sweaty mess. My feet also end up extremely sore at the end of every event.

• I never have a space of my own:

In my old group I had my own tent. It was a nice little area where I could set my stuff down and hang out. In the group I’m currently in I have no space of my own. I always have to put my stuff in other people’s tents, and I hate that. (I don’t think they like it either)

• I always have to borrow:

This ties into space, and my gear never being good enough. I always end up having to borrow items from one person or another. I hate having to borrow from them. I feel it puts me in a position of inferiority, which then ties into the whole “this is all about egos” thing.

• I am not your servant!:

This is perhaps the biggest bone I have to pick. I might just be paranoid, and this could all just be in my head, but I feel like other people in camp think I’m their to serve them. Yes, I know it’s important to help out in camp, and I do, but I feel people expect me to constantly be doing all the chores while they stand around and talk. For example, I was asked a couple of times to run and fill up the water pitchers. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but it was the way I was asked. “Hey, could you run and fill these up?” would be fine, but instead I got the “Since you’re just sitting around, could you go fill the water pitchers?” The tone doesn’t come over in text, but what I’m trying to get across is that in the second way the request was phrased was the hidden assertion that I need to be always doing work. Since I was not doing work at that time, they found some work for me to do in the form of filling the pitchers.

• No one ever offers to help me setup/take down

For the longest time I’ve always put other people first. I show up as soon as I possibly can, and spend the rest of the daylight helping to put up other people’s tents, and then fill those tents with other people’s stuff. Does anyone offer to help me carry all my stuff in from the car? No. I end up making multiple trips, sometimes in the dark, to get my gear. The same thing happens when the event is over! I try to be one of the last to leave, helping everyone else take down their tents and pack their stuff. Does anyone offer to help carry my stuff back to the car? No. I end up having to do that by myself after I’m already exhausted from helping others. It’s all about them! (The ego and servant stuff ties back in)

• Paying for food:

I got away with not paying for food this weekend, but in the past I have shelled out $20-30 to help pay for food stuffs. When the meals are cooked the food is just put out on tables for people to pick at. A little here, a little there. I end up feeling guilty about eating and so I buy extra food for myself on top of paying $20-30. If the cost of food was split evenly and everyone got an even split things would be fine, but it ends up that some pay a lot and others pay nothing. Some get a lot to eat, and others eat very little. I often end up in the “paying a lot, eating a little” category. Sure it helps cover the costs for the people who buy the food, but then I feel mooched off of.

• I don’t feel like I belong

I grew up with my old group. I just joined this group a few years back. All the people in this group have been together for a while. They’re their own little click. They’re nice to me an all, but I just don’t get the feeling that I’m one of them. Most of them are friends outside of the group as well. (Or at least were, there is a lot of political infighting and passive aggressive bullshit going on between all of them now that luckily I’m not a part of) When I sit around the fire with them I’m usually very quiet, I don’t know what to say and I feel a bit like a stranger.

• Is it worth it?

Well I was sitting there this weekend in the middle of the event and decided to analyze my situation and how I was feeling:

1. I’m hot, sweaty, and very uncomfortable in shitty clothes that do not fit
2. I feel like they want me to constantly be serving them while others sit around and do nothing
3. I have no space of my own and I have to borrow almost everything because my stuff is never good enough
4. I often end up paying for stuff for others

Basically it’s become a job that I go pay to spend my time at. While I’m there I feel alone, unappreciated, and uncomfortable. Because of this I’ve decided that I’m going to take a break from doing living history.

I think a lot of the problems I have stems from not having enough “stuff”. It’s not that I want to compete in their dick waving contests (I couldn’t care less about that) but it’s that I just do not have the time or money at this point in my life to keep up with the hobby. If I had more of both I could afford clothes that actually fit me and felt great. I could buy my own tent where I could put things. I could get really nice and expensive gear that they couldn’t bitch about. All this would elevate my status in the group and I don’t think they’d be asking me to run around doing bitch work for them while they sit on their beds in their big fancy tents. I don’t want to quit because there are aspects that can still be fun, but I need to step back until I’m on sounder economic footing.

Dante’s inferno, a comparison

EA and Visceral games are putting out a new game, Dante’s Inferno, supposedly based on the work “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri. In the game you play as Dante, on a mission through hell to rescue your hot wife Beatrice Portinari. So how does the game match up with the actual Dante’s Inferno?

Take Dante in the game:

He’s a hardcore soldier with a giant battle scythe, covered head to toe in stylized plate armor.

Dante in real life:

He’s a hardcore poet with a giant battle quill, covered head to toe in…well…pajamas.

What about hell?

In the game hell is an action packed demon strong hold, full of bad guys that stand between you and your love.

In Dante’s book, hell is more like a scary guided tour given at Disney on Halloween.

And your love, Beatrice?

In game:

In real life:

Lastly, what about story wise?

Well here the game and the book continue to radically differ. In the book Dante starts off in a forest and is given a tour of hell by Virgil. He goes down, sees the 9 circles of hell, sees various famous people, and then climbs out the other end and into the second book, Purgatorio. There is no fighting and no Beatrice. The most dramatic seat of you pants thing that happens to him is he faints. (Don’t go to hell if you have low blood sugar) She shows up in the second book. Also Beatrice was never Dante’s wife. He first meet her when she was 8 and fell in love with her, but she married some other dude and died at the age of 24.

Here is what the game has to say for itself:

“At the midpoint on the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest, for the clear path was lost” (opening line of The Divine Comedy). In the game, Dante goes on a spectacular journey through the afterlife to save his beloved Beatrice from the clutches of evil. But what starts out as a rescue mission quickly changes into a redemption story, where Dante must confront his own dark past and the sins he carries with him into Hell. He faces the epic inhospitable terrain of the underworld, huge monsters and guardians, sinister demons, the people and sins of his past, and the ultimate traitor: Lucifer himself.”

Sounds cool. A little heavy on the “go save the helpless white woman”, but still cool none the less. The game developers also have this to say:

“Inspired by the real Dante Alighieri, but adapted for a new generation and a new medium, the hero of the game is a soldier who defies death and fights for love against impossible odds. The Italian mercenary Dante returns home from the wars to find that his beloved Beatrice has been murdered, and her soul pulled down into Hell by a dark force. He gives chase, and vows to get her back. For weapons, he wields Death’s soul-reaping scythe, and commands holy powers of the cross, given to him by Beatrice.”

If by “inspired” they mean “hey, we took his name” then yeah it’s inspired, because that’s about it. Everything else but the names is changed, including the plot and characters. As for the “for a new generation” yeah, we play video games much more than we read, but if you ever get the time, check out the books, they are pretty cool. Maybe Riddley Scott could make a movie about it :-p

I really miss living history

I first started doing living history when I was 12 years old. I always had the next even marked on my calendar, and was constantly thinking of new things to build for the events. I loved going to our weekly meetings, getting together at friend’s houses and doing crafts nights, and sword practice on Sundays. I had somewhere I felt I belonged.

Well the group I was so fond of growing up fell apart, and some of my treasured bridges burned. I joined a new group that I was ok, but I hadn’t grown up with them. Plus they were mainly based 4 hours away, so I couldn’t go see them regularly. What really put a kink in my hobby was college. I suddenly had almost no time to work on medieval things, let alone the space and money to do so. My re-enacting fell to one event a year, and I lost myself.

I didn’t have sword practice regularly, and so I started to forget. I had my suit of armor, but it stood solemnly collecting dust in my bedroom. I no longer spent evenings in the living room, with a mug of hot chocolate, a fire roaring in the hearth, and my favorite medieval movies on while I sat there and sewed together whatever item I was working on for the upcoming event. That was my childhood, and now it’s really depressing.

I feel like over the years of not really doing anything, I lost a burning passion, a passion that set me apart from other people. I had something I loved and could talk for hours about, but now that’s gone. My girlfriend has a passion like that for gaming, and while I listen intently to her lectures on the subject, and even participate in games with her, that is and always will be her passion, not mine.

I want my passion back. This all peaked my senior year in college. Right before I am to graduate I come to startling realization that I no longer have a passion for anything. I had always wanted to be an archaeologist working in castles. I wanted to find things that re-enactors would then research when trying to create things for their camp. I spent years preparing to pursue that career, worked in internships, field schools, weekends, even traveled to England for a month, only to decide that I had lost my love for it.

Now I’m afraid of becoming just another cog. Another bland slice of bread. Nothing special about me when I put on my dress shirt and tie to go into work.  I really feel I’ve lost something unique and defining about myself. I want it back.

I hope that now I’m going to graduate and get a job, I’ll have some more time, and money for that matter, to pursue my hobby. I want to become more involved in my living history group, perhaps join others as well. I want to go to events more, get more connected. I want to find another western martial arts group to train with, get back in shape. I want the excitement from my childhood back.

Hit points

Hitpoints have always been a curious invention by gaming. I guess the frailty of our bodies is not very fun, and so to make gaming fun, we need to invent hitpoints.

Can you imagine if games were like real life in terms of total damage a body can sustain? You wouldn’t get three feet in a shooter game. The first bullet you took would shatter and shred your internal organs, leading you to bleed out all over the floor while going into shock. Not exactly stuff that would make a game like Gears of War a hit.

Huge battles in RTS games would be over in a few seconds. All your expensive units would die after being hit once, it would suck, but then so does war in real life.

One game that I must point out that does this differently is the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. In the game you are not a human tank. Bullets will deplete your health much faster, and even after you’ve been hit you will bleed, depleting your health further. While the damage is “more” realistic, it isn’t perfect. A bullet to the stomach would pretty much put you out of action. Still, the game is commendable for going the extra mile.

(Here is a really good and funny video review of it by Zero Punctuation)

What I find really interesting in games is how some weapons do more damage than others. Sure, if you want to talk physics a bullet has more joules behind it than an arrow, but both will still kill you. The total energy is different, but the end result is the same.

Perhaps the idea that some weapons are “superior” to others in games stems from the existence of hitpoints instead of the fact that weapons evolved for efficiency reasons and not because newer ones “killed you more”.

Weapon effectiveness

So today I was playing around with Empire Earth II. I was having a great time and then a swarm of enemy pikemen surrounded one of my tanks and killed it. I was like “Hey…wait a second….” Let me see, how I can best put this? Oh, I know!

I know how the game calculates damage. X unit has Y hitpoints and does Z damage. If enough of unit A gangs up on unit B, then eventually the damage done by unit A is going to deplete unit B’s hitpoints. Simple. Unfortunately, in this case that scenario is totally impossible. A bunch of guys with pikes could never destroy an active tank. Maybe if it was left in a field and they had a few weekends to take the nuts and bolts off, but not if it was manned, moving, and shooting.

Now this is a computer game, and so it’s rather trivial, but it would be nice to make it as realistic as possible. Unfortunately, that would require a lot more code to be written about what the computer should or shouldn’t do when 2 units fight. Production times and costs are already so enormous, this issue will definitely be on the back burner for a long long time.

This is an area where I think table top gaming has an edge over computer gaming. D&D and its many spin offs have AC “armor class”. AC determines if, when attacked, a player takes any damage. The better your armor, the better your AC, and thus the less likely you are to take damage. Now the system is not perfect for every possible weapon/armor combination, but it really helps in trying to make the game more realistic.

Female armor

Sexy female armor is ridiculous. Plain and simple. To quote Savage Garden, it’s like swimming in a raincoat.

The whole point of wearing armor is to protect your body, especially vital organs. As you can see, all three women have their sexy stomachs exposed. Often sexy armor covers even less.

As sexy as this armor is, It offers you almost no protection from weapons. It’s like the idea is that a force field of sexyness is supposed to protect the wearer from harm.

But on second thought, maybe the strength in sexy armor is not physical, perhaps it’s mental. Maybe the idea behind it is to make a male opponent falter, if only for a split second. If I turned around in a fight and was confronted by a woman wearing this, I would surely stop to admire. Every guy would, it’s automatic and we can’t help it. It would only take a second, but anyone who spars knows that a second is all that’s needed. On the bright side, I’m sure plenty of guys would love to die at the hands of such a beautiful enemy… ^_^

D&D Armor and Weapon Weights

Like I said in my earlier post on my ship dungeon, I’m new to this whole table-top gaming thing, so forgive any ignorance. (My DM girlfriend loves lecturing me about roleplaying at the drop of a hat  ~_^)

When I first flipped through her game books well over a year ago, one of the things that drove me crazy was the armor and weapons section. Having done medieval living history for almost a decade, studied Western martial arts for 5 years in ARMA, and owning a full suit of armor (the real stuff, not bullshit leather, plastic, or stainless steel) I think I can pretty well say that I know weapon and armor weights, and what you can do with both.

For example, the buckler is a small shield that can be used defensively and offensively. It has a small hand grip and is in no way “strapped” to your arm.

The hypertext 3E SRD describes a buckler as: This small metal shield is worn strapped to your forearm.” Another thing that drove me crazy was the idea of a “locked gauntlet.” Again, the SRD describes this as: “This armored gauntlet has small chains and braces that allow the wearer to attach a weapon to the gauntlet so that it cannot be dropped easily. It provides a +10 bonus on any roll made to keep from being disarmed in combat.”

Small chains? You know why real knights never wore horns on their armor? Because horns, just like chains, give the enemy something perfect to grab at and hook you on to let them pull you down. That’s why real armor is always smooth and flowing, so there is nothing that can be caught. Chains defeats the whole point. But that’s not my biggest objection. My biggest problem with this idea is that very often in real combat you want to be able to drop your weapon.

Look at this video, at around 1:30 they start to do some techniques that are part of what is called “half-swording.” Many times, when your opponent starts to “wind” his blade the only thing you can do if you can’t out wind him is to drop your blade and grapple him.

Lastly, the other thing that drove me up the wall was the weights. Let me start with shield weights.  Again, the buckler, the 3E SRD says a buckler weighs 5lbs. I’m holding mine in my hand right now and it only weighs about a pound. Here’s a picture of me with my buckler:

But perhaps the most ridiculous shield weight has to be that of a tower shield. 3E SRD says it is 45lbs. Now something like that would unpractical to carry into battle. Even these huge judicial shields weren’t that heavy, the guys can still swing them around easily.

I also know Roman re-enactors and their tower Shields aren’t that heavy either, and they have to sometimes form a testudo:

Now on to armor:

I must say, the 3E SRD does a good job when it comes to armor weights. They have padded armor at 10lbs, which is accurate.  A padded jack like this one:

is pretty darn heavy for just a bunch of cloth. Mine has 25 layer of linen and weighs about that much dry. I don’t ever want to see how heavy it is if wet.

3E SRD has full plate at 50lbs,  Swords and Wizardry core rules has it at 70, 4E player’s handbook has it also at 50. I must say that I am surprised how close to accurate they came.  The true weights are somewhere between 60lbs and 80lbs. It depends on the time period really. Here, look at this picture:

My friend is the guy on the left, I’m the guy on the right. My suit of armor is 1370’s ish, his is 1470’s ish. His weighs about 60lbs, mine weighs about 75lbs. The difference is the chainmaile. As you can see, I have a LOT more maile than him. As the armor got better and stronger, the knights started to ditch the maile, hence why his is lighter.

Weapons:

This is the part of roleplaying that I think is most egregious and epitomised by this clip from the 13th Warrior:

Lets take my favorite weapon, the longsword:

This particular sword happens to be called “The Agincourt“, made by Albion Swords (one of the finest places to buy a real sword, period) and weighs 3lbs 7oz. Swords and Wizardry has the longsword at 10lbs! 4E is closer with a weight of 4lbs, but then gives a greatsword a weight of 8lbs!

Ask any re-enactors in Das TeufelsAlpdrücken Fähnlein how heavy their two-handers are, and they’ll tell you not more than 4-5lbs.

All these horrible weights make me think D&D is trying to tell you all swords handle like this:

D&D Glaive weight: 10lbs, real weight, 3-4lbs, D&D Halberd weight 12lbs, real weight 5lbs. D&D dagger weight 1lbs, real weight .7 (Ok, so now I’m getting picky :-p)

My DM girlfriend tries to tell me that these weights are an attempt to signify weight + volume, or how difficult it is to carry something. I don’t know if I buy that. Maybe. But it then leaves people with this horrible idea that the real weapons weigh that much, which as a re-enactor, is my duty to dispel.

Archetypes

This post will differ completely from the normal topic of my blog. This post is about game/sci-fi/fantasy archetypes. Now I’m not a hardcore gamer, nor do I play World of Warcraft, or Dungeons and Dragons, so forgive me if I over simplify your favorite race/whatever.

It seems to me that there are usually in fantasy three main classes, with lots of differentiations flowing from those classes. I’m talking about elves, wizards/mages, and fighters. Elves usually are all about stealth, speed, agility, and ranged attack. Wizards/mages usually just have ridiculous colorful spells that defy the laws of nature (it is magic after all), and fighters usually beat the shit out of things. Here are some typical representations:

You see variations of these three archetypes everywhere. I personally LOVE the third. I love a fighter, covered head to toe in armor, charging into the center of the fight causing as much damage as possible, and just soaking up the damage in return. It’s manly and a force to be reckoned with.

Elves and mages piss me off, and so do their variants. To me they’re just a bunch of wimps.  I’m not a real man so I’m going to dance around over here with my tights and my bow, hiding in the bushes shooting arrows at you! Or the mage who is the over educated nerd that can’t build muscle to save his life. All he has is a cloak and if you hit him with a stick you’d probably break his arm. Instead he just waves his staff and does something messed up with pretty, colorful magic. He has to rely on that to fight his battles for him.

Two games that have sort of these dynamics are Starcraft and Warhammer 40k. (regular Warhammer would fit better, but I haven’t played those yet)

As for Starcraft, we have Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. Protoss are basically advanced space elves. Along with the Eldar in Warhammer 40k:

The Zerg bring up another archetype that I hate, the gooey, spikey, organ like thing. It’s just a disgusting bug covered in spikes.

Yes, it might be a bad ass bug, but it doesn’t fit my personal tastes. Along the same vain (pun intended) as the spike theme are things like Chaos from Warhammer 40k:

These guys bug me too. I’m just not into the whole dirty, demonic, spikey horde thing. This includes Orks! The idiots in haphazard armor with shit that’s practically duct-taped together. Sorry. It’s just barbaric spikes, blood, and more spikes. Yet luckily for me, in both games there are human like bad asses covered in armor.

These guys are well armored, carry a shitload of firepower, and are clean. (well, clean in the sense that they don’t have spikes and shit) I just love the imperial/knight aspect to them.

I guess this bias towards this type of archetype is the combination of me growing up doing 100 years war living history, where I was building a suit of plate armor, and watching Gundam Wing Zero as a kid. I just love Gundam. The mech suits just seemed to exemplify the archetype that I love.

The Armored Core serries is also kick ass for this reason.

It’s just something about the raw power behind these things. It’s extremely hard to explain. If you ever get to wear a full suit of plate armor, and I’m talking real armor, not wussy plastic, leather, or rubber, you just get this feeling that you can take on anything. You’re a juggernaut. I guess that’s the word I’ve been looking for, juggernaut.

There are a few things in real life that I think this archetype draws its inspiration from:

The downside to being accurate

When does being as historically accurate as possible become a negative in living history? I think it’s a grey area between not having fun, and hampering your interactions with the public.

I love the middle ages, and I love being in a late medieval living history group, but the big downside to doing the middle ages is the social structure. When the group members are hanging out, not doing an event, we’re all equal, tax paying adults, yet the situation changes when we’re at an event.

As it is in most living history groups (I’d guess) the people with the most money and stuff are at the top of the group, and everyone else falls down below to make up the pyramid.  (Reenacting wise, not talking about group politics) This pyramid then comprises the rigid medieval social structure.

I’m a jobless college student, who can barely afford the gas it costs to get to an event, so needless to say I’m towards the bottom of this social structure. I have an ok archer kit, but it’s not the $10,000 + suits of armor 3 other guys in the group have. As such, they’re the “gentlemen” and I’m a mere yeoman. I have to serve them at the table. They get to wear nice clothes, eat fancy food, and tell me what to do around camp.

While it’s ok, it’s not nearly as much fun as it would to be one of those gentlemen, dressed head to toe in steel, the stars of the show. The sad thing is, I know how much fun it is, I did 100 years war living history with another group for 6 years before my current one where I had my own suit of armor. I got to dress up and be the badass one, running around doing demonstrations, pretending to be a statue just to scare little kids, etc… It was amazing! But now I’m just an archer. My lower standing in the camp is historically accurate. I can afford less stuff, and so the people who have more stuff order me around.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still really fun to dress up and stand around in camp. My favorite part is acting as camp sentry, that way I get to put on some armor, wield a big pole ax, and look intimidating.

As for hampering your ability to talk to the public, I think there is some point when being perfectly accurate is ridiculous. If I wanted to really show how a yeoman plucked from the 15th century would act if suddenly dropped in a 21st century event I’d be running around freaking out and killing people because he wouldn’t know what was going on.

But that’s an extreme example. How about this one, I can’t see shit. I wear glasses normally, I can read things up close fine, but get more than 6 feet away and you become blurry. (Not much of an archer am I? ~_^) I just recently got contact lenses. For the first time in 9 years I will actually be able to see at an event! But then, contact lenses aren’t historically accurate. Should I not wear them despite the fact that nobody can tell and I’d be having trouble getting around camp?

What about deodorant? This is one I’ve often thought about. Should I not wear deodorant? Even if it’s unscented? Am I trying to replicate an authentic smell of a lower class medieval yeomen archer, who’s in the field on campaign? How do I even explain that to the public? “Hi,….. don’t walk away! I smell like shit for a reason!” Erm…yeah….

Should I stay in character, try to fake an accent? Speak in middle English or Latin? How will the public understand me then? They won’t learn anything. I also can’t scream at the women in camp, or hit them, even though a male in the middle ages probably would have gotten away with that no sweat. (Not that I’d want to)

While I do think trying to being as historically accurate as possible is a good thing, there are limits. Lets face it. Life back then sucked. People got sick, died, were underfed and over worked. You were trapped in an extremely rigid social class while the people at the top milked you for all your worth. History is often romanticised by the movies and in books, when in reality it was hell.

Reenactors are in the wonderful position of being able to dress up, go play, and come home to a hot shower, tv, Nyquil, and the Bill of Rights. I guess that’s what makes the past fun. The fact that you can go and experience it, but in the back of your mind you know that if anything goes wrong, you have the safety net of modern society to catch you.