The Armour Archive

There are two sides to any media relations campaign. Our side and the Media Side.

Do not think that for one minute the Media cares about anything but ratings. They will put what they think will give them the best ratings on screen. They will not go out of their way to paint us in a good light and will often go out of their way to show the dorkiest worst members of the SCA because the News Director believes that is what people want to see.

As I have stated before, media relations should be handled by normal people with normal jobs and normal relationships and in regular clothes.

Don't feed the beast.

g-

JvR wrote:=
While I dont want office or award (seriously, my persona would never be addressed as "lord" anyway)Having local events with hundreds in attendance will be reward enough. I do hope to still help the SCA and my local Shire grow. I am not organized or active enough to keep it up, but I can certainly find stuff for us and give it to the outstanding Hospitaller and his deputy. I know if I find us a golden opportiny, they will work it right.

Johannes

Johannes, your persona doesn't matter for the awards. They are recognition of what you (real name) have done in and for the SCA. You can change your persona tomorrow and your awards still go with YOU, you don't have to re-earn them.

Remember this and it will help you on your path.

g-

DukeAlaric (George S.) wrote:There are two sides to any media relations campaign. Our side and the Media Side.

Do not think that for one minute the Media cares about anything but ratings. They will put what they think will give them the best ratings on screen. They will not go out of their way to paint us in a good light and will often go out of their way to show the dorkiest worst members of the SCA because the News Director believes that is what people want to see.

As I have stated before, media relations should be handled by normal people with normal jobs and normal relationships and in regular clothes.

Don't feed the beast.

g-

Thats too bad. seems to work well with other other like minded groups. We cant be constantly paranoid of the media. The local Adria group here has had some good newspaper articles written about it and I have seen a few SCA TV Spots online and they were done very well.

How many examples are out there that show the SCA being shredded by the media intentionally? I can find good positive articles and news stories and videos. Where are the bad ones that everyone makes it seem is the norm?

Put the right people in charge of it, I agree. But it needs to be done much more often than it is. The reporters need to be qualified first of course. Look at their other article and get a sense for their style and the style of who they write for and such.

Kilkenny wrote:The SCA is Calahan's Cross-Time Saloon for the middle ages and renaissance. It can be muddled and confusing, but it can also be brilliant. But - fundamentally what it is is a broad spectrum of world history, with occasional peaks of really intense focus in a time and place, that provides a vast array of people with multiple skills and interests a place to share their passion.

And we have the bad puns, too.

Sasha_Khan wrote:If I die to an archer, it means that **I** was not paying enough attention - especially since most of them aren't very good shots at range.

If I die to an archer, it usually means I misread the schedule.

Regards

Avery

DukeAlaric (George S.) wrote:
Johannes, your persona doesn't matter for the awards. They are recognition of what you (real name) have done in and for the SCA. You can change your persona tomorrow and your awards still go with YOU, you don't have to re-earn them.

Remember this and it will help you on your path.

g-

Not worried about re-earning them or changing my persona.

Honestly, I am afraid of them. If I ever got one, I would get sucked in even more. LOL
I would feel tremendously obligated for to step it up and it would no longer be from my heart but out of obligation. That's just my twisted way of thinking. Mind you I don't think those who have them are operating out of obligation.

Its just a weird quirk of mine.
To me, its easier to just avoid it. I do like to put in others for awards and really enjoy seeing them get them. I really dont mind working under the radar, in fact, I prefer it.

Kilkenny wrote:
Giovanni, serious question. How much time in SCA harness do you have?

'Bout eight years now - I proposed to my wife at a Pennsic. I served in Midrealm Royals encampment last year. I know a few Midrealm kings personally.

What it boils down to is that I'm a happy participant at the SCA, but I feel like I'm a bit more cognizant of what goes on in the SCA alternatives than the "old timers" who never explored outside the SCA. The SCA is a choice for me, but I also know that I can choose a LARP, or a Renfaire, and I know what the costs and benefits of each are.

I'm well aware that it's a big tent - I'm having fun with rapier right now. But when you look at any media story about the SCA, the accompanying photo is almost never a laurel. It's a picture of the heavies. Heavy fighting has been the face of the SCA for a very, very long time, and it probably always will be.

Please, nobody take away from this that I'm suggesting that the rules for heavy fighting been to become more bofferish. But I also want people to stop pretending that heavy fighting is the best looking or most realistic form of mock combat out there. Heavy fighting is a terrific combat sport, no more or no less. It may well be to the Society's benefit to rethink how we build our equipment - I think that the polypropylene experiment was part of that.

What am I suggesting? My "king of the World" suggestions - Either embrace the steel and ditch the plastic, or find a way to make the plastic look like the real thing instead of hiding it under a tunic. Find some way to get it into people's heads that the "king" of the SCA has only marginally more power than King Henry the VIII at the local Renfaire, so that we behave like a big tent instead of a stick-jock society. Force every baron and baroness to learn exactly what happened to the Camarilla (White Wolf's "official" LARP society, before White Wolf killed it due to over politicized behavior), so they learn not to get too cliquish.

Most of all, realize that the SCA is in competition with a lot of other groups for entertainment, and needs to define itself in the face of "The Knights of Badassdom", ARMA, WoW, Civil War Re-eanctors, Renfaires, and more. You're absolutely right - the big-tent parts of the SCA are how we do that. But that's not what the casual observer sees when they come to the SCA, and some of that is our own fault, and if we want to change the census numbers we should start thinking about how.

Easy, right?

I thought I'd put together why I haven't tried it, despite knowing several SCA members who're great people, and having overlapping interests sufficient to keep me browsing here.

Politics – why I'm not re-enacting at the moment is because I got fed up with cliques and abusive people who hide behind fictional titles to demand respect they'd never earned. I don't know to what extent the internet is affecting how it looks on this form, but the SCA doesn't seem to be much healthier.

Accuracy – I love the thought of multi-period medieval/renaissance events, and of mass combats. Then I look at SCA photos, and see trainers, neon polyester, and enormous appliquéd dragons on “Viking” t shirts. A lot of the talk here seems to suggest people are intent on re-enacting the SCA, circa whenever they think the golden years were, and want to sideline anyone who tries to get closer to historical accuracy.

Combat – likewise, SCA combat seems to be warped by a desire to avoid improvement. I see so many threads criticising making sticks look more like actual weapons, varying combat rules to help make it look more historically accurate, even bringing archers to battle or allowing people to thrust with swords.

The alternatives, in the UK, are re-enactment combat, in which case I can join a large scale battle in much more accurate kit, with archers and cavalry, using steel weapons, or HEMA. Moreover, it often looks like the defence of why SCA combat cannot improve is that the current rules have let the current top dogs get on top, and they won't allow anything to threaten that. See also: Politics and Accuracy.

Expense – the SCA also looks expensive. I'll need a lot more kit than I would for HEMA or some period reenactment, and it would be SCA only. In particular, unless I wanted to go full plate, I'd be forced to have a helmet with ugly anachronistic retaining straps, bar grilles and so on, and get ugly basket hilts on shields and swords. I wouldn't even get to look like a historical warrior. Even if I wanted to go full plate, I'd be forced to get inaccurately heavy and thick armour, because SCA combat and rules demands it to compensate for the inaccurate power insisted on in swings. This also ties in to accuracy and combat, in terms of how SCA combat is it's own special genus which doesn't represent any historical combat well.

Support – from the outside, it looks like for anything except SCA combat, the SCA doesn't provide much support. If I want to do historical crafts, all the SCA seems to provide is a venue to show them off. I'm guessing (or hoping) this isn't true, but from the outside all you see is combat and getting to call yourself Sir (like Elton John, except he earned a real knighthood, rather than ass kissing the heaviest of the heavy fighters).

JvR wrote:

maxntropy wrote:If you want to look like a supreme badass on the field... but lack the skill, talent, and training to back-up the threat implied by your kit... then you're gonna be a very unhappy well-armoured individual.

What if you don't plan on winning anything and don't mind getting killed a lot? I figured I will never play enough to get good but I still wanted a decent looking kit.

I heard my kit is pretty nice. Not "supreme badass" but still nice. If I showed up as a new fighter in a good looking kit, what do older more experienced fighters think? I dont want to be a dick.

I did this. I joined the game in my late 20's and waited till I had a good kit together. I did a couple fighter practices in loaner gear, and figured out what I wanted, and then got it together before coming back. I'm not sure if this was the ideal way to go about things, but its what I did. My first tournament I received a ton of compliments on my kit, got my ass kicked, and just as Killkenny said, a bunch of people asked where I was in from. I explained that I was new, but had done allot of research and figured out what I wanted, etc. and was roundly welcomed. No one seemed offended by my completely clueless manner of fighting.

Like most things, I think reception most people will find will reflect the attitude they present. If you show up in a $2,000.00 kit telling everyone about your unstoppable offense combined with your impenetrable defense, you'll find some combination of skepticism, curtness, and some outright hostility. If you show up in a $2,000.00 kit with a reasonable amount of self awareness and open attitude, generally you find the same thing you would if you were in the average First Kit.

So that this post retains some relevance to the thread, I have a couple of questions. What is the true meaning of reward inflation? Is this the creation of the GoA level awards? (I'd never heard of the term before this thread. I'm Scottish, and have been rural, so please forgive me if I'm a bit behind the times.)

The whole notion that people should not strive for rewards is all nice and zen, but really does fly in the face of what we know about human behavior. Behavioral modification science tells us that the #1 reinforcer available for behavior modification and maintenance plans is social reward. To restate, science has determined that social acknowledgement is a better reinforcement than any token or reward, (eg: money, material good, activity restriction/availability). In our game, rewards are both social rewards and tokens, so that makes them a bit more complex. To distill it, your local group recognizes you to be a good fighter, and an active participant, and they nominate you for an AoA. The AoA becomes a token acknowledgment of social acknowledgment. As people progress through their SCA careers, continued social reward becomes apparent through greater tokens. So, if everyone is telling someone they're an Awesome Fighter, etc. but they do not get the token that ratifies that feedback, it creates dissonance for that person. Or at the very least, it has the real potential to. Basically, science tells us most people do not strive to be better fighters for that simple state of being, but to be acknowledged as being better. Its why we test ourselves against one another, and it is why accolades exist. People that seek rewards outside the system find their social reward elsewhere, but it is most likely still there in some way or another. Those able to act completely outside of this paradigm are most likely in the 3rd sigma of standard deviations.

All this is to say, that telling people that awards should not matter is generally a dishonest plattitude. Anecdoteally , It seems like its always people who have awards, or people very close to them, (eg: knights and their squires) that tout this sort of advice.

Cheers!

Cailin

I would say that it isn't that awards don't matter, we are human. If they don't matter then why do they exist? Being upset about an award is a natural thing, it is reasonable to compare ourselves to those around us. But worrying about the award won't make you happy and it won't get you the award.

Cailin wrote:Like most things, I think reception most people will find will reflect the attitude they present. If you show up in a $2,000.00 kit telling everyone about your unstoppable offense combined with your impenetrable defense, you'll find some combination of skepticism, curtness, and some outright hostility. If you show up in a $2,000.00 kit with a reasonable amount of self awareness and open attitude, generally you find the same thing you would if you were in the average First Kit.

Spot-on and what I was trying to convey. At the newcomer's tournament at Pennsic I am literally flabbergasted at the quality of gear being worn by almost all the newcomers with less than 2-years experience. I believe this represents the general up-scaling of the Society... but still. Reception is dependent on the humility-to-braggadocio ratio presented.

Cailin wrote:So that this post retains some relevance to the thread, I have a couple of questions. What is the true meaning of reward inflation? Is this the creation of the GoA level awards?

Award inflation (at least as I've coined it here) refers both to the tendency over the years to increase our emphasis on the importance of awards as ends in themselves as opposed to complements to activities that are rewards for their own sake in and of themselves; as well as to the reduction in value of "lower-end" awards as we generate more and more higher-end awards (as with money, when there are too many people chasing too few awards, the perceived value of the awards tends to get inflated). If too few of a class of awards per populace are provided (whatever that "natural rate of recognition" might be...), then the perceived value will increase and become inflated.

Cailin wrote:Behavioral modification science tells us that the #1 reinforcer available for behavior modification and maintenance plans is social reward. To restate, science has determined that social acknowledgement is a better reinforcement than any token or reward, (eg: money, material good, activity restriction/availability). In our game, rewards are both social rewards and tokens, so that makes them a bit more complex. To distill it, your local group recognizes you to be a good fighter, and an active participant, and they nominate you for an AoA. The AoA becomes a token acknowledgment of social acknowledgment. As people progress through their SCA careers, continued social reward becomes apparent through greater tokens. So, if everyone is telling someone they're an Awesome Fighter, etc. but they do not get the token that ratifies that feedback, it creates dissonance for that person. Or at the very least, it has the real potential to. Basically, science tells us most people do not strive to be better fighters for that simple state of being, but to be acknowledged as being better. Its why we test ourselves against one another, and it is why accolades exist. People that seek rewards outside the system find their social reward elsewhere, but it is most likely still there in some way or another. Those able to act completely outside of this paradigm are most likely in the 3rd sigma of standard deviations.

Excellent but incomplete analysis. There are MULTIPLE social reward "acknowledgement" pathways in the SCA -- and official award recognition is only one of them. Victory on the practice and/or tourney field is another. Interpersonal comments and largesse from ones' cohort, consort, and mentors is another. Our award system is a subjective guideline-based political decision system. Decisions made to recognize individuals are made subjectively by royalty within an explicit (order pollings) or implicit ("Peer" pressure) political context based on understandings of award merit guidelines. Thus, there are both objective (guidelines), subjective (Royal prerogative) and political (decision context) forces at play. PROPERLY understanding the reality of award recognition system allows one to appropriately understand and process who does and does not get awards when they do or don't get them -- which can help not only work to deflate the increasingly great importance that is placed on this single social reward pathway, but also help to minimize the probability of "bitterness" by providing greater balance with the alternative (and much more frequent and often much more powerful) social reward pathways (i.e., largess, pats-on-the-back by mentors, pride of consort, etc...).

I don't believe anybody has been arguing that awards don't matter and that people should be solely motivated by the "noble" pursuit of martial progress for its own sake. Instead, we are arguing that we have been insufficiently using and emphasizing the alternative reward pathways as behavior motivators and over-emphasizing the official award recognition pathway without providing a realistic understanding of the process and its context.

I hope that made sense.

Max Von Halstern

maxntropy wrote:
Excellent but incomplete analysis.... PROPERLY understanding the reality of award recognition system allows one to appropriately understand and process who does and does not get awards when they do or don't get them -- which can help not only work to deflate the increasingly great importance that is placed on this single social reward pathway, but also help to minimize the probability of "bitterness" by providing greater balance with the alternative (and much more frequent and often much more powerful) social reward pathways (i.e., largess, pats-on-the-back by mentors, pride of consort, etc...).

I don't believe anybody has been arguing that awards don't matter and that people should be solely motivated by the "noble" pursuit of martial progress for its own sake. Instead, we are arguing that we have been insufficiently using and emphasizing the alternative reward pathways as behavior motivators and over-emphasizing the official award recognition pathway without providing a realistic understanding of the process and its context.

I hope that made sense.

Max Von Halstern

It did, and it gives me what I hope is an opportunity to contribute further, though I may be reinforcing things other people have already said and that I have failed to grasp their meaning. My analysis is incomplete because I was dealing with what I have experienced in my five years of playing within the SCA. I suppose that my experience serves as some sort of example of your principal of award inflation. I've received one Royal Pat On The Back as a member of a unit, and as a member of that same unit, one piece of lagresse, (Thank you Sir Bryce!) and one society award, my AoA. One thing that stands out to me, and was done in a tournament came before the William Thomas was Sir William Thomas. He fought a particularly hard fought round in a tourney against Duke Valhalric. After the round, His Grace called for everyone's attention and publicly praised him for his efforts in that fight, in Epic Fashion. It is the only time I have seen something like that in person.

As you say, proper understanding of how things are supposed to work would be helpful both to my analysis and my experience in the SCA. I'm not sure what conclusions I should draw from the fact that in five years of SCA, I did not pick all of this up implicitly. Here's what I did come up with in regards to member retention: We (someone) needs to train those that can to put greater emphasis on the non-token rewards (AoA,GoA, Peerage). This can be done through the grass roots, but I have no idea how much someone would care for a bit of lagresse from Lord Cailin the relatively Un-Known. If we were in a business enviornment, I'd talk to the training department about a top down initiative to train our managers at all levels about the value of social acknowledgement. I'm really not sure about how to do that in the SCA, or how to tell people who have never seen it, that this is how you're rewarded for what you do. Given context, people's perceptions can change, but if you can't glean that perspective from experience, it can be frustrating when the only metric you have is the awards you can find on the website. For example, when I look at Aethelmarc's website detailing presedence, the only thing I see is awards given. So up until reading your post, it is largely the only metric I've had a tacit grasp of. Can a retention initiative include training for royals, peers, and others on the value of social praise? I think there would be value in such a thing.

At the local level, I think that social rewards flow much more naturally. You get the immediate feed back if you run a class, hold a workshop, volunteer, etc. because relationships exist in a group of friends, etc. At the regional and kingdom levels, I think you have to have something in place to give you the interplay between the larger bodies and the person. Perhaps this is why the value of rewards has been inflated over time. I think my experience might be telling since I have never know court to be anything other than awards roll call, with occasional bits of role play between groups and the crown, (the paying of taxes, etc.)

My apologies if I'm re-chewing meat that has already been swallowed.

Cailin

Hi Max,

I think the SCA is stuck between the LARPers and the LH/WMA folks, and the squeeze play is going to hurt.

LARPer Advantages:
1. Not confined by history
2. Ease of entry
3. Low cost on armour and weapons (but even a LARPer should wear a cup, as seen below):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPTakHX ... re=related
4. Their foam weapons can look more realistic than our rattan weapons, as do the armour. Look at the combat archery below with NO face protection for the people targeted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j11mrIkh ... re=related
5. Fun is the main objective


LH/WMA Advantages:
1. Minimal social hierarchy structure
2. Scholarly application of historical research is the main objective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJuNgXUi ... re=related
3. Fight with steel or at least with analogs that look really close to the real weapons, as seen below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEqyqeKfoSQ
4. The fights can look really cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJz99Kt ... re=related

The best stuff is coming out of Europe IMO, where the SCA foothold is very weak right now.

In this squeeze play, the SCA can offer something of a mix of LARP and LH/WMA. To have the SCA survive I think C&T and rapier will need to be encouraged to muscle in on the LH/WMA turf. I would like to see C&T with pollaxe come out sometime.

Just looking at the trailer to The Knights of Badassdom I saw a lot of what we do in the SCA. And I meant “we” in that one…I think I could point out five odd things that I’ve done in that video as well.

Have a great day everyone,

-Aaron

Kilkenny wrote:The whole thing with the big tent is that the people who fight with sticks accept the people who fight with car antennae accept the people who don't fight at all accept the people who shoot things and vice versa all the way around. The people who make fantastic clothing accept the people who make "an attempt" accept the people who redact recipes from manuscripts in the original language accept the people who bring a snack tray from the grocery store, etc. The 10th century Saxons accept the 16th century Bolognese accept the 14th century French accept the 12th century Burgundian.

The SCA is Calahan's Cross-Time Saloon for the middle ages and renaissance. It can be muddled and confusing, but it can also be brilliant. But - fundamentally what it is is a broad spectrum of world history, with occasional peaks of really intense focus in a time and place, that provides a vast array of people with multiple skills and interests a place to share their passion.

And as long as we share, instead of trying to tell those whose passions differ from ours that they should leave, it works fantastically well.

What Killkenny said, because he expressed it far better than I could have.

Aaron wrote: To have the SCA survive I think C&T and rapier will need to be encouraged to muscle in on the LH/WMA turf. I would like to see C&T with pollaxe come out sometime.

There is a lot of crossover here already, especially with C&T. I could go to a WMA rapier class and feel right at home, and someone doing WMA could learn rapier from me without a problem. The historical qualities of combat plus the romantic aspects of the SCA are a very appealing combination. There's a WMA-in-SCA group at Pennsic that has a lot of these people involved.

I'd love to do C&T with proper polearms. I think it'll happen sooner or later, within the next 5 years.

IMO, C&T with armor-as-worn and tournaments with maximum armor allowed (so a cap-a-pie max tournament could happen alongside a shirt max tournament) would be the ideal rule system. Heck, I've done C&T armor-as-worn in just my normal linen garb and taken down people in plate who had open-faced helmets. Tons of fun.

Cailin wrote:[
All this is to say, that telling people that awards should not matter is generally a dishonest plattitude. Anecdoteally , It seems like its always people who have awards, or people very close to them, (eg: knights and their squires) that tout this sort of advice.

Cheers!

Cailin

I generally agree regarding recognition as encouragement. The thing about "awards" is that people begin to chase them for themselves, rather than for what they mean. That is the sense in which many people speak of them "not mattering" or they should not matter.

If you pursue excellence, or just knowledge, or you work to make some desired event happen, without thought of what kind of recognition or award you may receive, then you will be much happier than if you do these things with the intent of getting an award.

The award should be incidental to your goal, not a goal in and of itself.

Too many people miss this fact, work hard at getting their ticket punched and collecting box-tops to receive their Dangly - and grow bitter if they don't get it in what they consider proper time.

OTOH, if they had been doing something they enjoyed doing, for the pleasure of doing it, then if an award happened to come along - bonus, thanks for noticing that I was doing this, mind if I get back to it ?

I think you have a good point Duke Gavin. Few of us (myself included) think of "And then?" What happens after the award or title or other thing is given? The award has become the destination and the journey is done for some. Yet, the destination is just a scrap of paper or cloth. The journey was the exciting time IMO.

O.K, then why have the awards at all?

Aaron wrote:Hi Max,

I think the SCA is stuck between the LARPers and the LH/WMA folks, and the squeeze play is going to hurt.

LARPer Advantages:
1. Not confined by history
2. Ease of entry
3. Low cost on armour and weapons (but even a LARPer should wear a cup, as seen below):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPTakHX ... re=related
4. Their foam weapons can look more realistic than our rattan weapons, as do the armour. Look at the combat archery below with NO face protection for the people targeted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j11mrIkh ... re=related
5. Fun is the main objective


LH/WMA Advantages:
1. Minimal social hierarchy structure
2. Scholarly application of historical research is the main objective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJuNgXUi ... re=related
3. Fight with steel or at least with analogs that look really close to the real weapons, as seen below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEqyqeKfoSQ
4. The fights can look really cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJz99Kt ... re=related

The best stuff is coming out of Europe IMO, where the SCA foothold is very weak right now.

In this squeeze play, the SCA can offer something of a mix of LARP and LH/WMA. To have the SCA survive I think C&T and rapier will need to be encouraged to muscle in on the LH/WMA turf. I would like to see C&T with pollaxe come out sometime.

Just looking at the trailer to The Knights of Badassdom I saw a lot of what we do in the SCA. And I meant “we” in that one…I think I could point out five odd things that I’ve done in that video as well.

Have a great day everyone,

-Aaron

Couple of things:
Some of your "advantages" for other groups are quite arguably "disadvantages" vis a vis the SCA. For example "not confined by history" - The SCA has, as one of its core defining characteristics, a restriction to a (very broad) portion of history. That's one of its positives, an attractant, and without it then we absolutely abandon being the SCA. From my perspective, it's a strong Advantage the SCA has over many LARPs.

Abandoning a defining characteristic - part of the mission statement of the non-profit corporation, really cannot be on the table for discussion.

Fun is the main objective - no difference there. Just different avenues of pursuing fun.

HEMA and social heirarchy. I think you may be looking at the greener grass without knowing it's astroturf there;) HEMA has its own politics, and the various entities have ranking systems (or don't, but divisions between groups that have and groups that have not are another social heirarchy;) )

The fights can look really cool. Yep. So can SCA fights, but some people see a sword and it's automatically cool, see a stick and it's automatically dorky - no matter which fight is actually better. Some of the steel fighting I see scares me because people are visibly, obviously, out of control and flailing. Some of it is really magnificent and scary for entirely different reasons

Narrow perspective that forgets fighting is only a piece of the picture. You seem to lose track of all the other activities that are part of the SCA, Aaron. Just because for you it is all about the fighting does not mean the fighting is what it is all about

Big Tent = recognition of the enormous breadth of what the SCA does and working to incorporate, encourage and maximize all of its aspects.


Honestly, the SCA doesn't need to change to compete with other games. It just needs to clean up some aspects of its own game and continue doing what it is that it does. None of the other groups do it.

Too true, I am a fighter at the core. It was only after someone mentioned there may be an event where I would need to do something other than fighting that I even THOUGHT about garb. I do have garb, but I wear it rarely. I'm quite happy right now just going to fighter practices, and I don't really miss the events.

And a strength can be a weakness and vice versa. True here too.

And sometimes the grass is always greener over the leaking septic tank.

-Aaron

Kilkenny wrote: Honestly, the SCA doesn't need to change to compete with other games. It just needs to clean up some aspects of its own game and continue doing what it is that it does.

I agree with this.

Kilkenny wrote:Too many people miss this fact, work hard at getting their ticket punched and collecting box-tops to receive their Dangly - and grow bitter if they don't get it in what they consider proper time.

Victim. Blame.

I don't think we have to give up what we do. But could we do the "big tent" and let in the boffer and steel weapons? We could even end up with a WMA arm of the SCA under the historical study section of our combats. C&T could evolve into polearms, etc..and done as safely as SCA heavy combat is done now.

Can we open our big tent further? I know that this is self-interest on my part because the SCA is everywhere I've lived, but WMA seems to be less common and MUCH more expensive. Maybe if there was a monthly fee for WMA in the SCA?

-Aaron

Kilkenny wrote: Honestly, the SCA doesn't need to change to compete with other games. It just needs to clean up some aspects of its own game and continue doing what it is that it does.

Gavin,

Can you honestly think of many people who have not gotten a peerage level Order who deserved it? Some might take longer than others, but honestly, I can't think of anyone who has gotten "passed over" who didn't know why they were getting "passed over."

Some of the lower level awards, I think get missed because they don't have regalia, and people don't realize that someone never got their AoA, OTC, Pearl, Golden Dolphin, or whatever.

g-

Aaron wrote:I don't think we have to give up what we do. But could we do the "big tent" and let in the boffer and steel weapons? We could even end up with a WMA arm of the SCA under the historical study section of our combats. C&T could evolve into polearms, etc..and done as safely as SCA heavy combat is done now.

Can we open our big tent further? I know that this is self-interest on my part because the SCA is everywhere I've lived, but WMA seems to be less common and MUCH more expensive. Maybe if there was a monthly fee for WMA in the SCA?

-Aaron

None of those activities are prohibited unless some officer decides to prohibit them. There are no rules at the Society level which prohibit the study of WMA and people did it without problem for years until a Marshal of the Society decided to take issue with it. We don't need to expand the scope of the SCA, we just need to let people move forward with their ideas and stop shooting them down.

Now, those people should also bear the burden of providing the support required for those activities. If you want WMA, then find some space and start organizing. If the Society needs written documentation that such an activity is covered under our liablity insurance then it's up to you to do the leg work and coordinate with BoD members or Society officers. Telling people 'this is what we need to go forward with this' is a lot better than saying 'we don't do that so you should go play someplace else'.

Saritor wrote:

Kilkenny wrote:Too many people miss this fact, work hard at getting their ticket punched and collecting box-tops to receive their Dangly - and grow bitter if they don't get it in what they consider proper time.

Victim. Blame.

Not a chance. Not on your life. No Way.

That is your baggage talking and not my words.

The people I am talking about are self-promoting types who are not doing anything unless it gets them recognition and then get upset about not receiving something that they have not earned and do not deserve - except in their own minds.

They absolutely are not victims. They're the people everyone complains about if they do get an award, because everyone is pretty sure it was for sucking up and making sure the right people saw it every time they did anything positive, and the only times they did anything positive were when the right people were looking.

They're people trying to game the system. If you don't think they exist, then either you have had the blessing of living in an area that doesn't have them (my pessimism says it's darned unlikely) or for whatever reason you've failed to recognize them for what they are.

I'm not blaming victims, but I am pointing out a type of "criminal".

Funny how that's only permitted in one direction.

Aaron wrote:I don't think we have to give up what we do. But could we do the "big tent" and let in the boffer and steel weapons? We could even end up with a WMA arm of the SCA under the historical study section of our combats. C&T could evolve into polearms, etc..and done as safely as SCA heavy combat is done now.

Can we open our big tent further? I know that this is self-interest on my part because the SCA is everywhere I've lived, but WMA seems to be less common and MUCH more expensive. Maybe if there was a monthly fee for WMA in the SCA?

-Aaron

Cut and Thrust is an evolving element of the SCA. We shall see how far it develops.

It's behind the current generation of WMA, and likely to stay there for some time.

And please, let's not start trying to make the SCA a pay a la carte menu. That way lies madness. Serious madness. Different than our current madness, but nonetheless madness

Kilkenny wrote:Not a chance.

That is your baggage talking and not my words.

The people I am talking about are self-promoting types who are not doing anything unless it gets them recognition and then get upset about not receiving something that they have not earned and do not deserve - except in their own minds.

Funny how that's only permitted in one direction.

I think it's funny that you've spent a good deal of this thread and others talking about how negative stereotypes of various things peer-related don't exist and people are wrong...but negative stereotypes of others exist, and should be dealt with?

That you say there's no "victim blame" going on, but that it must be my baggage? Can you stop shouting long enough to hear what I'm saying?

jester wrote:Now, those people should also bear the burden of providing the support required for those activities. If you want WMA, then find some space and start organizing. If the Society needs written documentation that such an activity is covered under our liablity insurance then it's up to you to do the leg work and coordinate with BoD members or Society officers. Telling people 'this is what we need to go forward with this' is a lot better than saying 'we don't do that so you should go play someplace else'.

I can definitely get on board with that.

Saritor wrote:

Kilkenny wrote:Not a chance.

That is your baggage talking and not my words.

The people I am talking about are self-promoting types who are not doing anything unless it gets them recognition and then get upset about not receiving something that they have not earned and do not deserve - except in their own minds.

Funny how that's only permitted in one direction.

I think it's funny that you've spent a good deal of this thread and others talking about how negative stereotypes of various things peer-related don't exist and people are wrong...but negative stereotypes of others exist, and should be dealt with?

That you say there's no "victim blame" going on, but that it must be my baggage? Can you stop shouting long enough to hear what I'm saying?

You mean like.. pet friend of the once and future king gets awards out the ass, but the people who bust their ass for a decade get nothing? That doesn't HAPPEN man.. except when it happens over and over again. But that's an anomaly, and therefore, not accepted into the statistical analysis, therefore, statistically, that doesn't happen.

Our recent curia isn't by any way an example of a fast-track on how to do that with peerages or anything..

(No offense to our King.. but that's sure as hell how it READS, even if that wasn't the intent)

As far as award hunters go...it's not exclusive to the SCA. If you have an awards system, and you have a group of people over X, you will have people that do things to get awards, solely to have the awards and get recognition. I saw it in the BSA and JROTC.* The only way to do away with these types of people is to get rid of the awards system...then you'll have people who's noses are an odd shade of brown. The only way to get rid of them is to get rid of any hierarchy. Social hierarchy's are included, so best of luck doing that.

Seriously, it's an unsolvable problem you want to fix, when there's things that are solvable that are EDIT: (worth everyone's time).

*- I was trying to find the term for these types of people, and discovered they even exist with gaming systems like PS3s and Xbox 360s.

Saritor wrote:

Kilkenny wrote:Not a chance.

That is your baggage talking and not my words.

The people I am talking about are self-promoting types who are not doing anything unless it gets them recognition and then get upset about not receiving something that they have not earned and do not deserve - except in their own minds.

Funny how that's only permitted in one direction.

I think it's funny that you've spent a good deal of this thread and others talking about how negative stereotypes of various things peer-related don't exist and people are wrong...but negative stereotypes of others exist, and should be dealt with?

That you say there's no "victim blame" going on, but that it must be my baggage? Can you stop shouting long enough to hear what I'm saying?

Apparently you have not been hearing me. Still are not. But Maeryk got to tell you what I was saying and you bought his lies. that would be why I was so adamant about denying the falsehoods he represented as my views.

I have NEVER denied the peer-related negative stereotypes and stating that I've spent a good deal of this thread doing so is a gross misrepresentation. But I have been body slammed repeatedly for suggesting that there are people without awards who are constantly badmouthing those who have them - yet we've got at least two voices in this thread speaking from that perspective and doing just exactly that.

I will not be condemned for positions I have not taken and do not hold.

Absolutely will not stand for it.

I have no tolerance for mud-slingers.

Kilkenny wrote:Apparently you have not been hearing me. Still are not. But Maeryk got to tell you what I was saying and you bought his lies. that would be why I was so adamant about denying the falsehoods he represented as my views.

I have NEVER denied the peer-related negative stereotypes and stating that I've spent a good deal of this thread doing so is a gross misrepresentation. But I have been body slammed repeatedly for suggesting that there are people without awards who are constantly badmouthing those who have them - yet we've got at least two voices in this thread speaking from that perspective and doing just exactly that.

I will not be condemned for positions I have not taken and do not hold.

Absolutely will not stand for it.

I have no tolerance for mud-slingers.

See the bolded first sentence. I could copy and paste, but you've already said it once.

Maeryk hasn't told me anything about what you're saying. I'm not really caring about whether Maeryk has reasons to take pot-shots at you, and I don't even care if you think I'm "slinging mud". I'm not from the East. I don't plan on ever BEING from the East, and thus could generally care less about East politics.

What I *do* care about is that you're using, regularly, inductive reasoning to short-hand people's intent and conversation and chalking it up to people who are bitter about not having gotten danglies they shouldn't have been coveting in the first place because they were obviously not doing it out of enjoyment.

Which is utter tripe. Like any stereotype, in either direction, there are people who fulfill that stereotype. Not everyone is a rhino, even when it looks obvious that they are -- but have there been guys dancing around in a circle pounding each other's legs such that they can't walk the next day while calling "Light!"? Yep. Are there people who go out of their way to trash the hard work of another person because they have personal problems from outside the SCA to bring to bear? Yep. Do I think that's always the case? No.

If you cannot stand people slinging mud, neither can I stand inconsistency, hypocrisy and inconsideration due people in this game. Stereotyping people as bitter or whingers, as you do EVERY time a thread comes up on the topic, is something I'm tired of standing by and watching. So I tried to politely point it out and make a plea to quit doing it. Then I pointed out, twice, where you were making assumptions about motivations based on inductive reasoning.

Hell, I don't even think you do it all the time. I'm willing to bet that, were I going to Pennsic, I could sit down, buy you a couple of beers (or whatever...someone up that way owes me a nice bottle of Scotch that I won't kill by myself), and have this reasonably hashed out in a short amount of time, and move on to more pleasant subjects.

Your opinions on the matter come across much like your comments on the negative stereotypes of the peerage. "It doesn't happen as often as people think!" And, yet, the default assumption presented therein is that it's mostly just bitter whingers, and maybe a few legitimate issues. That's still victim blame.

Maeryk wrote:You mean like.. pet friend of the once and future king gets awards out the ass, but the people who bust their ass for a decade get nothing? That doesn't HAPPEN man.. except when it happens over and over again. But that's an anomaly, and therefore, not accepted into the statistical analysis, therefore, statistically, that doesn't happen.

You know there is one significant issue with what you are mentioning, and that is that in reality the people closest to the King and Queen get the most awards, because TRM's generally know more about them.

All too often on the throne, I asked for people to give us recommendations, and we simply did not receive them. So there were people who continued to fall through the cracks or whatever because we didn't know who they were or they didn't have certain awards.

When we did find out about this we went out of our way to fix the problem.

g-

You know, I'm done arguing this in this thread.

You Grace, you have the right to give me reply publicly, as I have started this publicly, and you should do so. Thereafter, I will happily take it to pms, give you my direct email address, or phone number to continue the argument as you so choose (or not to, either or).

Your last reply to me shall stand, regardless, since it would be cowardly of me to handle it otherwise.