Dear Edgy Exchange recipient of mine, the item is in the mail. Postie said it should reach you within three to four days. I very very much apologize for it being so late, but things sddenly heaped up. You know the saying, when it rains, it pours...
Dear Edgy Exchange donor of mine, Angela Donaldson, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You very much for that great gift!
A pair of felted bowls, just what I needed for my multiplying WIPs. Three skeins of Rowanspun 4ply for my collection too! A very generous gift. The work that must have gone into it. Especially on the one with the bobbles. I myself hate knitting bobbles, find them tedious and stride-breaking, so when I saw all those on the red bowl, I was stunned.
They have a very interesting edge too. You can just see that little nook in their rim. That is where the Moebius Strip that makes up the top rim crosses. Just a little bit of science too.
So again, Angela, Thank You.
Well, what was I so busy with? Most of the time was taken by the LARP (LiveActionRolePlaying) event Khypris IV. Most of you reading my blog will know that I play a lot of RPGs in my spare time. LARPs take the idea of role-playing a bit further. You do not just talk about your role/your character sitting at a table with your friends, acting on a scenario presented by your GameMaster. I mostly play D'n'D these days, but other games are pressing on too.
There isn't no knitting in the next part, so just scroll to the bottom if you're looking for that. Sorry.
In a LARP you become your role for the time it goes on. Think of it as improvisational theatre with some 300 actors and no director. There may be (as in Khypris) a very broadly formulated frame, there may be a very narrow plotline, or it may be without a plot. As for rules, there was one simple one, you can do, what you can do.
Khypris IV was based on the Warhammer universe, so I played a scribe-priest, Theoderich Schreiber, follower of Verena, the Goddess of Truth, Learning and Justice, accompanying a group of diplomats on a peace mission. Khypris is a small town in the Border Princes region, a rather anarchic, not-quite-civilized area where the old Empire families send 3rd and 4th sons to make their fortune or to get rid of them. You get the idea, Wild West fromtier spirit set in a renaissance setting. Khypris had some years earlier won a war against Cabanal, another town in the Border Princes, and that was where the diplomats came from. I played my role along the lines of Friar Carl (played by David Wenham) from the movie 'Van Helsing', just so have an idea if you've seen that film. Friendly, nosy, learned in his own weird way, slightly clumsy, not the bravest except when it counts.
However, when we arrived, a day before official game start, my group and I began by building the town. Literally. The organizers had rented a large area belonging to the Danish Scouts so there was a mixed terrain available. Buildings were built of denuded fir tree trunks lashed together with strong ropes and then covered with fibretex, a non-woven man-made fibre felt. Under the roof there was a simple plastic sheet to make it water-proof.
While my diplomat friends built the two guest houses they were supposed to stay in, I helped at the Verena Temple. A large structure actually, easily the largest in town. Basilica-style, three aisles, double-high central aisle with a library apse. 9 metres wide, 10 metres long overall and 6 metres high in the central aisle, even clerestory windows. A German/Austrian-group was assigned to build it and somehow, mostly because I spoke the languages to translate between builders and organizers, I got appointed foreman. As I don't see myself climbing around on 6 metre high, rather thin and wobbly tree trunks when enthusiastic free-hand climbers are around, my job was mostly organisational, i.e. I got the materials, I got the water, I got the sun screen. Oh yeah, those days were the hottests, sunniest days yet recorded this year. I had shaved my head so I slathered my scalp liberally with sun screen. In the days ahead I got very glad for my white cowl, as it was light enough to let the air in, but kept the sun and some heat out. I wore as little as possible under my priest's tunic as well (pictures of me in costume later, on another player's camera).
I was very happy with the temple though, especially as I was supposed to sleep there as a visiting priest from another temple of the same goddess. The temple even withstood that explosive thunder storm cell on day three in-game releasing a half hour hail storm on the city. While it was welcome to cool us all at the time, several houses collapsed under the weight of the marble-size ice balls and the rain that came down. Only one temple room got wet, mine of course, but as I wisely had hung all my stuff on hangers suspended from a crossbeam, not touching the ground, only my sleeping pad got wet. And that I just dragged outside, where it steamed dry in a few minutes in the hot sun.
It was fun to see how the people in-game reacted to the hail. Several of the inns paid street kids some brass pennies to collect as much as possible to either cool their drinks or to actually use it in an old-fashioned ice cream maker.
Well, I digress. The real game started and problems began. My group was there as diplomats to get a peace treaty renewed. However, the local prince would not receive us. His court would not receive us. His officials would not receive us. We were stalled at every turn and point. We did everything we could., but all we got was a 'no', nobody would talk to us. At one time the most aggressive members of our groups even organized an armed popular uprising by the townspeople and the farmers against the prince, only to get that nixed by an organizing GM.
I was glad that I had a more seeking, less noble personae, I could go around and talk to everybody, try to make contact. I did so quite a lot. I had a most fabulous 'professional' conversation with the pigment trader/scribe in one of the trading houses about pigments, glues, sizes, writing materials. The others being unrecognized nobles and diplomats (ah yes, those lettre diplomatique I had calligraphed, describing our status and errand, were also declined, unread and unsigned) could do little more than stay in the guest house and keep their escorting soldiers close.
Finally we got fed up and left a day early.
A few days later we were told by one of the 'other nobles' in town, that before we 'in-game' arrived the prince had sent out his herold to every noble family and trading house in town and had him announce that anyone talking to us, the diplomats, would be arrested and executed to final character death.
That was when we got really angry. Nevermind that the Prince's Court wouldn't play with us. But that they exploited their in-game status to tell a lot of other groups not to play with us, that really got our gall. Especially since it were only those groups that we, being nobles and diplomats, would also be talking to realistically in-game. Frankly, they sabotaged any chance our group had to get into play.
We had a very long after-game evaluation with one of the organizers, Karsten, where this also came up. It turned out that the Prince's Court group normally plays 'socio-realistic medieval re-enactments' and that they somehow had allied with some of the other organizers to remove elements from the game they didn't like, i.e. elves, dwarves, halfling, divine and arcane magic, etc. And that in a highly fantastic setting like Warhammer where all that exists and is a part of daily life. They had received bundles of back-ground info on the world and the city, but had chosen to ignore it.
One girl in our group, Line, has played a lot of theatre sports as it is called here, improvisational theatre. She was especially angry. The prince's court group had said sorry with the words that they hadn't realized not everybody role-played as hard as they did. At that she exploded. In her theatrical training there is one thing hammered into her at all times: You Do Not Say 'No' In Role-Playing. Saying 'no' stops your opposite's game. It effectively ends the game for them. And that group not only told us 'no', but commanded everybody else to say 'no' to us.
I've played RPG's for nearly 20 years now. I was angry too. As a GM, I have had to deal with the most curious situations imaginable. Players get the wildest and weirdest ideas at times. While you think the problem you've put before them to be fairly easy and straightforward and you've put up some easy, simple and accessible clues for them to gently guide them in the right direction, they suddenly speed of in all directions but the one they are supposed to go to. They want to talk to the King's third cousin twice removed (living in another city on another continent) about his birthmark, instead of his old retired nanny to whose daughter you have so laboriously introduced them. They summon a demon from the darkest netherworlds to gain some ancient lore instead of visiting the old museum next to the inn you've finally convinced them to take room and board at.
What do I do in such situations? I allow it of course. The players make the game. I may be marginally involved as the one creating the scenario they play in, filling it with people they can talk to, coming up with the problem-of-the-day they can solve (often in the most roundabout fashion imaginable), keeping out-game talk to a minimum, all those background things I don't tell them. I allow it, because it are the players that run my games and they are there to have fun. Being told 'no' isn't fun. I get my fun from presenting those things, from playing the different persons they meet, from having to improvise rapidly when they get some new idea, from simply being with my friends and having a good time with them.
So I think I know a bit about role-playing or two. I think I know how to improvise. I think I know how to tell someone utterly convincingly 'yes' while really saying 'no'. I played the scribe-priest Theoderich Schreiber to the best of my abilities. I tried to stay in-game as much possible, frankly a bit hard when you turn a corner and see a city guard in full plate armour smoking a cig while chatting on his cell phone. So my reaction to that 'hard role-playing' nonsense was to tell them that if they wanted to play such 'hard role-playing' as they had done here, they could frankly do it alone at home and with an X-rated movie on the TV, because essentially the result for everyone but them would be the same.
After all that loud discussion with Karsten however we were told that our group was seen as one of the best by the other players. We had played our characters well, we had done our best, we had both been looking our part in costume and played our part to great enjoyment of the others.
We were a bit less enthusiatic. We had had a few first-timers along as soldiers who instead of just being 'for show' while we did the diplomatic negotiations and they enjoyed town, now suddenly had to do real guard duty to prevent an attack by the more violent members of the prince's court. We had spent a lot of our spare time of the last half-year together to create our costumes, our gear and accessories like full chain and plate armours for the high nobles, several dresses for the lady diplomat and her companion, etc. We had spent a lot of money on the preparations too, an estimated 4-5000DKR per person over 6 months. We had spent several days of our allotted holidays from work so we could be there*. So we told Karsten that if the prince's court group ever got to play a leading role in another LARP scenario, he could count us out.
OK, enough of that. What else has happened?
My grandmother, Gudrun, the last of my grandparents still living, had her 95th birthday lately with some 40+ guests coming together at the summerhouse. I had a long talk with her over the phone. Mum had told me it would not be the greatest idea for me not to come, as the house would be full with guests and my younger brother and his girl-friend were there.
I'm still knitting on the Tennessee Rose shawl, but I will not turn it in to the TN State Fair this year. I have asked Ann to instead register the Ann'n'Kay shawl instead. Polly has asked me about the differences between inside-out shawl knitting vs. outside-in shawl knitting in a comment and I'm composing an answer to that to be published either tomorrow or day after here.
More traditional pen&paper RPG. Alderac Entertainment Group has published the third edition of my favorite rpg, The Legend of the Five Rings. This game is a major reason I now watch a lot of Japanese anime, samurai movies and am learning Japanese. It isn't one of the big mainstream games despite having been around for ten years. I've played it with some of my friends and they are now pestering me to start a new campaign.
Oh yes, finally, I managed to break one off one nose support from my glasses, so I ordered some new ones today. Also got the optician to check my eyesight. Turns out my current glasses were a bit too strong as my near-sightedness is diminishing with age.
I've started a blanket using the Shetland Wool I've had lying around. I'm using the modular knitting technique described by Vivian Høxbro, so a lot of mitered squares in nine colours coming together in a throw/afghan. Yes, another WIP, but it will grow a square at a time.
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* About those holiday days taken. Even I had to do so. Under current Danish law, I'm unemployed, but as such I'm 'employed' by the Unemployment Agency and as such an employee I have an allotted number of holidays I can take where I'm not supposed to spend all my energy on job-finding. Curious, but very typically Danish.
