Anyone ever heard of SCA

[Will Wood]

It's a group of people reenacting the medieval times.. doing events like fencing other aspects which I am not familuar with. I had fencing for a couple months about a year ago, and only knew fencing exsisted as a competition, tournament style sport. All in white, on a set line, with all these rules.

Well upon joining my schools fencing club, I learned of a whole new aspect of fencing, and it sounds so much cooler. Rules still exist, but they are are a totaly different perspective. You're recreating medieval times. You must dress up in that times garbs. You can weild two weapons, or a weapon and an off hand .. anything.. as long as the saftey marshell deems it ok, and you ok to weild it. Beer mugs, whip, anything. although they will only be used to block/parry attacks, you cannot attack with them.
In addition, you no longer have to be on a set line that is a certion width and length. You're in a circle now and and move all around. It really sounds fun, I'm going to an event at Fort Knox this weekend, just to help out though, I have to pass saftey things first before I can fence in it.

It may sound like one of those geeky kinds of things to do.. but I think it sounds kick ***! There' all these different events and stuff in addition to fencing..but all I know about is fencing. I'll have to wait to I get there to learn about the other stuff.

They even have rules regaurding seige weapons, which two trebuchets will be firing pumpkins.

As a person who loves history, and these times are my favorite, it makes it even cooler.

[Steelrat]

SCA is the Society for Creative Anachronism. They like to recreate medievil and renaissance events. I saw an even in New Mexico years ago, two groups duking it out in a park. They were wearing whatever armor they could make, from neat chain-mail getups to banded armor made from stolen traffic cones. It looked interested, but after the match they started a hearty round of pot smoking. That ended my interest right there.

On a side note, I fenced for about 2 years a while back. I would love to get started again. I really only did foil, with a bit of sabre tossed in because it was fun SMACK! Never really got into epee.

[Trick]

Their fencing style sounds like fun, and is... until you realize that even the smallest tap is deemed a hit.

It's really pathetic, I was at an event and this guy lunged at me. I stuck my blade out and let him fall into it, and even then I BARELY hit this guy by strip fencing terms, the blade barely bent. He starts yelling out, "Too hard! Too hard!" like I had rammed the blade clean through him.

After the match, a couple of guy confronted me about it saying that I needed to calm down, even though the guy lunged at me full force.

Never went back after that.

[Will Wood]

Umm.. Well the smallest tap thing is nothing new lol...I've been playing that the smallest tap anywhere on the target area ELIMINATES you completely. It's called fencing according the the rule! So.. yea.. no biggy there.

[bofh]

Their fencing style sounds like fun, and is... until you realize that even the smallest tap is deemed a hit.

In the east, and each kingdom's rules can be different, the rule is, a touch you can feel, that doesn't get caught in a fold of cloth.

There are also lots of other fun types of SCA fencing, shlager (however's it's spelt) is interesting.

[Thordic]

SCA tends to attract some of hte oddest weirdos I've ever seen.

Its somewhere in line with LARPers on the scale-of-geekiness-and-weirndness.

IE, to be avoided at all costs.

[Will Wood]

Yea, I'm thought it would be full of weirdos.. but all the SCA fencers in the club are normal.. so I am hoping that they might stand for the norm and everyone else will be semi normal.

[Jeffy-CanCon]

The SCA is basically LARP, as Thordic says. I had some friends who did it in university, and I went to one of their feasts. They are more concerned with dressing up and having fun than anything else. Their swordfighting and fencing can't really be considered as sports or martial arts. It did look like fun, though.

If you look around, you can probably find a more serious group practicing non-olympic fencing as a martial art. I have friends who do full-armoured swordfighting as a martial art. They don't use anything as lightweight as fencing weapons, but I'm sure someone must.

[Will Wood]

I don't care what it is.. I'm just trying to find an organized armed fighting style to participate in. Since this SCA stuff was more relaxed than competition fencing, which in a way is kinda boring, it looked interesting to me. And the dressing up part made it seem more fun.

As for the martial arts things, yea I want to get into that. I REALLY would love to learn staffs, I want to learn that so bad, but I don't know anyone around here that teaches that. I havn't done much research on it.. I should get around to it though.

[ASDadam]

I used to do AmtGard. NOW That was a mans sport. We'd take PVP pipe, add pipe foam around it, wrap duct tape around it and make them look like flails, maces, swords, spears, everything you could imagine, we even had archers and javelins. It was awesome. I'm a huge guy so i'd carry around a 6 ft sword and a 7 ft sword. Things weighed probably 15 lbs if not more apiece. Back in the day if you got hit, you had a bruise to prove it. Now you can only use Bambo or Graphite wrapped with Funnoodle, took the fun when they took the pain out of the game. Plus the whole "Fireball fireball fireball" thing got on my nerves. If some geek hit me with a foam ball and expects me to act like i'm dead....no way.

We had real armor as well, just like SCA, i had leather and chainmail. It was cool back in the day. Amtgard is HUGE worldwide so if you're interested check amtgard.com or net to see if there is a shire near you.

[Will Wood]

Heh... I'm not sure about the levels of SCA.. but that sounds a little too geeky for me. All the levels and stuff, meh.. I just want to fight. I don't want to have to deal with magic spells and classes and stuff.

[Thordic]

I don't know anything about it, but theres also Darkon. I've heard of it, I know they do foam combat (like what ASDadam was talking about).

Form your own club. I'm sure you can find some crazy people willing to beat each other half to death with semi-blunt weapons.

And for the record, my problem with SCA isn't that they dress up and fight and whatnot. Its that almost every single person I meet who is in it creeps me the hell out. And you are talking to someone who spend a good portion of his time in HS playing D&D.

[FatMan]

I prefer the real thing

I tend to agree with Thordic - the SCA stuff is OK, but kindof weird. I saw a demo one time and was
actually kind of impressed with their system, but I couldn't get that serious about it.

Me, I have REAL swords - My main one being a 48" bastard sword (by Angus Trim, if that means
anything to you). I've cut some targets with it, but I wouldn't begin to swing it near a person, it
could take off an arm easy!

Just remember than when next we meet!

FatMan

[Load SM5]

SCA tends to attract some of hte oddest weirdos I've ever seen.

Its somewhere in line with LARPers on the scale-of-geekiness-and-weirndness.

IE, to be avoided at all costs.

Hehe, to help Thor's case out, I was a member of the SCA for about 10 years before I gave it up for tournament paintball. And I'm definately odd.

I fought heavy weapons (anything but fencing) and believe me, there is a skill to it. I got nastier bruises than I'll ever get playing paintball but it was fun as hell when I got good enough to give them back. The larger war type fights were really great. Imagine 400+ guys to a side charging across a field or attacking a fort with catapults and archers firing back in forth. It's a pretty impressive rush.

Some of the SCA members are true geeky Tolkien nerds who see it as a live action D&D group. Like Thor said, I met some of the oddest freaks in the SCA. Others, like me, who are actually interested in medieval history, took it more seriously and tried to look the part. Basically you can play it on whatever level you want to. If you just want to hit people with sticks then fine. if you want to get more involved, there are some pretty impressive amateur historians in the society. Could'nt hurt to give it a look.

[bofh]

Its that almost every single person I meet who is in it creeps me the hell out.

WOOHOO! The bofhwife and I are on Thordic's creepy person list!

Seriously, there are some weird people in the SCA, but there are weird people in every group...

I know a few people that actually make their living from SCA related activities, ie. historical recreation.

Historical Glassworks as an example.