(TFT) Reality testing

["David Michael Grouchy II" <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>]

Reality Testing

    'Surely,' he cried, 'this is the greatest jest
in all the history of Gondor: that we should ride
with seven thousands, scarce as many as the vanguard
of its army in the days of its power, to assail the
mountains, and the impenetrable gate of the Black
Land!  So might a child threaten a mail-clad knight
with a bow of string and green willow!  If the Dark
Lord knows so much as you say, Mithrandir, will he
not rather smile than fear, and with his little
finger crush us like a fly that tries to sting him?'
         As spoken by Imrahil in
         The Return of the King
         (c) Renewed 1983 by Christopher R. Tolkien,
         Michael H.R. Tolkien, John F.R. Tolkien
         and Priscilla M.A.R. Tolkien.


    Baton Rouge is sort of sub tropical and I grew
up with bamboo in the front yard.  We made bows and
arrows we made padded swords.  The arrowheads were
empty 210 shotgun shells duct taped on.  The cut a
triangle out of a tennis ball with an exacto knife
slid it over the shell, and duct taped that on to.
With a bamboo and nylon string bow one could lob
an arrow about forty feet.
    Initially the bamboo swords were padded with
cotton, which was wrapped in duct tape.  The cotton
would bunch up in weird places and leave gaps in
others.  Later we started using pipe insulation.  It
was pre-cut and formed.  It was much easier to apply,
and gave even coverage.   Soon the weapons were so
well padded that we were breaking the swords on each
other and it still didn't hurt.
    The two piece bamboo sword lead to the three-
piece composite bow.  Both were stronger and felt
better in the hand.  Two pieces of bamboo were laid
side by side and taped together, then insulated and
taped again.  Cross hilts were easier to apply and
the weapons actually started to look like swords.
The three-piece bow, was one thicker piece of bamboo
supported by two smaller ones.  These were strung
together with so much string that it was more like
weaving them together.  Once bent and strung these
bows could be quite strong and shoot over sixty feet.
    Further from our homes and deeper in the bayou
we found much larger bamboo.  Some as much as eight
inches in diameter.  For the first time large spears
could be made that would not break.  The first
prototypes were obnoxious, large and unwieldy, with
huge soccer balls taped to the end.  The tape was
always ripping in the middle of a fight and suddenly
a naked bamboo pole was being thrust at people and
the fight had to stop.  If someone wielding one of
these spears in a melee' suddenly turned in a new
direction, they could just as likely knock down guys
from their own team as anything else.  Then Edd
developed some real skill with the spear.  He
preferred the twelve foot ones, but could use the
massive eighteen footer just as well.
    The rules of engagement were simple.  If an arm
or leg was even touched, then the use of that limb
was lost.   The player would either drop the weapon
or shield, or go down to one knee.  Any other hit
was a kill.  The player would play dead until the
fight was over.  This ease of sudden death caused
very cautious fighting.  It was a lot easier to get
a kill with skill than with power.  In our melee
fights formations and group tactics became very
important.  TFT was invaluable.  We could use it to
plan out formations and maneuvers.  It gave us a
language for describing combat.  And it caused us to
experiment with peculiar weapons.

    Others had to know.  I set out to tell people in
the SCA.  I have seen some bad injuries in the SCA.
One guy gashed his knuckles on the corner of his
opponents' shield.  The knuckles were covered with
plate and leather.  Still the blow he was making was
so mighty that much blood was lost.  It was a gory
experience for a young impresionalble lad who was
watching the duels on the front lawn of the old
governors' mansion.  In down town Baton Rouge, next
to the planetarium, during the annual spring 'Fest
For All'.  What was the year?  Eighty-two, eighty
three, I can't remember.
    The SCA believes in armoring the people and
using unpadded weapons.  For swords they use rattan,
a lightweight solid form of bamboo, and would club
each other as hard as they could with it.  If the
hit is not deemed hard enough to have gotten through
the armor then it can be ignored.  Our system was
the opposite.  We tried to pull our blows, as you
only had to touch their chest to kill them.  It
promoted more finesse and technique.  SCA duels that
I see involve people charging madly together and
wailing away on each other.  Stroke after stroke
after stroke, until one of them stops swinging and
slumps over dead.  There is always bruising.
Sometimes worse.  No wonder one had to be a
consenting adult, eighteen or over, which had to
sign a release before being, allowed to fight.
    I knew people in the SCA.  I wanted to show them
a way to share their skills with children.  I wanted
them to be able to learn discipline and chivalry
early.  I realize now I probably should have focused
on Accounting, and not the SCA.  Then at least I
would have enough money to by all of 'Metagamming
Concepts'.  As long as I'm ranting, as far as Howard
Thompson is concerned I anyone ever does get the
money to buy TFT, I bet you could get it cheaper if
you bought all of metagamming.  Every module, and
supplement.  All of the copyrights.  I wonder if
there are any liabilities left?  Assuming debt can
be huge.  Particularly with interest over time.
    So after three years of convincing and being
rebuffed I got a call one night.  "Come over!"  Arial,
said.  "Me and the kids are running around in the
yard playing boffer swords.  Were having a blast."
I had a lot of fun that night.  Long cascading
laughter.  Adrenaline exhaustion.  And no one got
hurt.  I could have brought all four kids home to
mom, with only minor grass stains.  He had finally
gotten the gist of what I meant.  In our system,
unlike the SCA, we padded the weapons not the people.
Our system could be played in a T-shirt and shorts.
    Then nothing for a while.  The next year I got a
call.  He invited me to a state park north of Lake
Ponchatraine where people were gathering for the
Federation of Live Action Gaming (F.L.A.G.) event.
He and ten other members of the SCA had formed this
group.  It was eight dollars for two days as an NPC,
or twenty dollars to be a PC.  He said that last
year they had about seventy people attend the event.
 He wanted to know if I would come out and take a
look at what they were doing.  They were expecting
over a hundred people this year.  It sounded too
good to be true
    At this weekend event I saw many things go well,
and some that were not right.  A friend who lives
in Florida and was a member of the SCA for many
years told me that "the SCA is just a support group
for the emotionally disturbed".  He had seen many
breakdowns and emotional scenes, so I was prepared
to deal with that.  What I wasn't prepared for was
what they had done to my fighting rules.  The years
I had spent up till now trying to convince anyone
in the SCA to try padded weapons reminded me of what
it was like to try and convert a die-hard AD&D
player to TFT.  Now that it had happened I found it
still hadn't happened.
    They used hit points.  A sword did five points
of damage, a long sword seven, and a bastard sword
eight.  They actually expected people to fight and
do math at the same time.  Of course every member of
the founding council had characters with over a
hundred hit points.  You could smite them all day
and they still wouldn't die.  This had terrible
consequences for the fights.
    Boffer swords as a game had developed into group
tactics, formations, and maneuvers, just like the
ones that work in TFT.  What happened with hit
points is everyone would charge blindly and strike
rapidly over and over again screaming out numbers.
Despite the increased cost, many more people were
PCs than NPCs and more than once I saw some poor NPC
surrounded by people bludgeoning them over and over.
There was no way the NPC player could keep track of
all that math, and they would just kind of give up
and lay down.  Years later I saw the same kind of
behavior on something called "the Rodney King video."
    At the time I was emboldened.  I had been
brought in as a consultant of sorts.  I had
identified a problem with their game play.  After
discussing the situation with "Arial" I wrote up a
proposal and submitted it to the council.  It was
all to no effect.  The story gets very long and
drags on at this point so I will skip to the end.
They would not part with their hit points.  I
realized that if F.L.A.G. had been formed with TFT
players and not old school AD&D / SCA types, it
might have stood a chance, but hit points was the
core of their game system and it was what they were
out there to reality test.

    David Michael Grouchy II


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