As Real As I Ever Wanted It To Get
So what would it be like to actually be on the walls of a castle in an all-out medieval battle? Would you survive? Would you be able to to fight off the attacking horde, save the beautiful maiden (well, if you are trying to be the macho male warrior), and protect the castle as you were charged? Or would you be numbered among the nameless dead after your enemy raises their own flag over your fortress?

Well, once upon a time, I discovered that I would probably be in the latter category. I probably wouldn't survive long enough to become an Aragorn or Conan.

At the age of sixteen, I joined a medievalist group and was able to experience an event that was as close as I ever wanted it to get to the real thing. I flirted with sexy women dressed in revealing fantasy costumes, bled on the battlefield (mostly from getting ripped up by thorns while foraging for materials to build our fortress), felt the physical exhaustion from battle, and inhaled a lot of dust and dirt as I lay 'dying' next to the fair maiden I'd failed inside the ruins of our fortress.

And it was incredibly freakin' cool. Well, by an uber-geek's definition of "cool."

Once again, I managed to con the editorial staff at The Escapist into letting me write for them. My rough draft - which lacked a ton of detail and skipped several major (to me) points, clocked in at over 5,000 words, and they limited me to only 1600. So I ended up with sort of a summary of a Reader's Digest version of the story I meant to write. But it's probably a lot more interesting than the meandering crap I would have written.

So go check it out. If ya got any questions about it, feel free to post it here or in the Rampant Games forums or The Escapist forums or something.

Weekend Warrior at The Escapist

Vaguely related meandering crap:
* Game Design: Do Not Want!
* Mainstream Devs Going Indie!
* Wizardry 8: Old School Goes Old School
.

Labels: Geek Life

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:12 AM (Permalink)