Leaving Mundania (36 page)

min-maxer:
A player who employs an extreme version of power gaming to create a powerful character. Min-maxers work the system of a game, placing the bare minimum number of points in skills that are neutral or undesirable and placing lots of points in skills or stats that maximize desirable traits. A min-maxer might create a “glass cannon” character—one with lots of awesome offenses but next to no defense. (See also: power gamer, munchkin)

mod:
Short for “module” and used in Knight Realms and in some other games. A mod is the basic unit of adventure. It's a discrete encounter that takes place over the course of a campaign. A mod can be as small as two rogues trying to rob a cabin and fighting its inhabitants or as large as a battle pitting the whole town against an army of dark elves. Sometimes, players at Knight Realms will playfully hold “bacon mod,” during which several pounds of bacon are cooked and fed to whoever wanders by.

moulage:
Makeup and latex prosthetics used to simulate wounds.

munchkin:
A player who seeks to amass power and items at all costs, even at the expense of his or her party in a role-playing game. Considered pejorative. (See also: power gamer, min-maxer)

mundania:
The real world, according to some reenactors and gamers.

newbie/noob:
Fresh meat in the world of gaming. Noob or newbie may also refer to a gamer of any experience level who is behaving in an annoying way. Generally considered pejorative.

nonplayer character:
Almost always referred to as NPCs, these characters are the scenery for a larp or tabletop game. NPCs are the monsters, the local barkeep, the strange man with the magic shop, the random policeman. They play any necessary role that is not filled by a PC, or player character.
To NPC
means to play
an NPC role, an action that generally requires an NPC to wear some kind of costume and often to carry a character card similar to but generally less detailed than the ones that player characters carry. (See also: player character)

norms:
Dear reader, have you ever worn a strange costume in public on a day other than Halloween? If you answered “no,” then this word describes you. Norms are normal people who are non-gamers. They are sometimes called “mundies” or “mundanes.”

off-game:
The Nordic way of saying out-of-game. (See also: in-game/out-of-game)

one-shot:
A self-contained game intended to be run only once, usually over the course of four to eight hours. (See also: campaign)

period correct:
Used in reenactment to indicate whether a piece of costuming, prop, or method of performing a task is historically accurate.

pervasive game:
A game that uses the real world as a backdrop, involving possible interaction with people or places that aren't an immediate part of the game world. A scavenger hunt is an example of a pervasive game, since during play participants may encounter or interact with people who aren't playing the game. Some larps are pervasive.

player character:
A player character, or PC, is the hero of a tabletop RPG or a larp. PCs go through the plots that the GM has laid out for them, solving puzzles and leveling up, often collaborating with their fellow PCs as part of a “party” that works together.

power gamer:
A player who tries to make his or her character as powerful as possible within the confines of the rules. (See also: munchkin, min-maxer)

player versus player:
Combat that occurs between players, as opposed to between players and NPCs. PvP, as it is almost always called, is a hot topic among gamers. Many games ban it, because it can cause ill will between players that extends beyond the realm of the game and into real life. The term is sometimes used more generically, to describe any major conflict with lasting impact, not just actual combat, that occurs between players.

Ren Faire:
Shorthand for “Renaissance Faire.”

rolling up:
In Dungeons & Dragons, players literally “roll up” their characters by tossing predetermined sets of dice in order to generate a list of numbers that will become their characters' basic statistics. The verbiage has carried over to many role-playing games, including ones that don't use dice. To roll up a character simply means to create a character's core statistics according to the game's rules.

rules lawyer:
A player who argues rules technicalities with a GM, sometimes to advance his or her own character, sometimes for the sake of argument, sometimes to prove a point. Rules lawyers typically forsake the spirit of the rule in favor of the wording of a rule and are often, but not always, well-versed in the rules of a game. The term is considered pejorative.

soak:
An effect of some armor and weapons in Knight Realms and other games. Equipment that has a soak diminishes the amount of damage the user takes from a given hit. Wear a breastplate with a soak of five, and if a goblin hits you for fifteen damage, you only take ten points of damage—the armor soaks away five points.

Society for Creative Anachronism:
A group dedicated to reenacting medieval life, with chapters all across the United States and all over the world. Historical accuracy is very important to the SCA.

steampunk:
A genre similar to cyberpunk, but instead of taking fans into the dystopian future, steampunk imagines a world, usually a Victorian- or Edwardian-era one, in which steam power beat out electricity. The symbol of the steampunk subculture is brass goggles or a bare watch gear.

stitch counter/stitch Nazi:
These hard-core reenactors are obsessed with the minute historical accuracy of costumes and props. (See also: farb)

Storyteller:
Another name for a GM. While the term can generically refer to any GM, in some games the title Storyteller implies that a GM is responsible for some aspect of the game's plot, as opposed to logistics, decor, or rules mechanics.

stupid o'clock:
The hour at which sleep-deprived gamers begin acting ridiculously. Sometimes coincides with beer o'clock, when at a venue that permits alcohol.

support class:
Describes characters who are not frontline fighters but who benefit other characters, serving a support function. Examples are bards (who typically buff others), healers, and alchemists (who provide beneficial potions). Sometimes, support-class characters in a larp are demeaned by fighters as “girlfriend-class” or “scenery.”

sword jockey:
A boffer larp player who doesn't care about immersion or building a realistic character, only about killing monsters with his sword; someone who enjoys the sport of boffer fighting. Also known as a “stick jockey.”

tabletop RPG:
A pen-and-paper role-playing game, usually played with a variety of dice. Tabletop games, in contrast to larps, take place around a table, with players describing their characters' actions to the group rather than acting them out. Dungeons & Dragons is the most famous tabletop RPG.

tacticals:
Improvised battles that historical reenactors fight in private; fights that don't mimic a specific historical battle and do not have a predetermined victor.

Travance:
Fictional town in which Knight Realms takes place.

total party kill (TPK):
Refers to an adventure in which the entire party dies as the result of player stupidity, dumb luck, or a GM who made the monsters too difficult.

war gaming:
A type of strategy game played on a terrain map, or miniature terrain, with small figurines, each of which represents a unit.

Whedon, Joss:
Our new overlord
(Buffy, Firefly, Dollhouse).
He deposed George Lucas
(Star Wars),
who deposed Gene Roddenberry
(Star Trek),
who deposed J. R. R. Tolkien
(Lord of the Rings).
May have to cage-fight J. J. Abrams
(Lost, Fringe)
in order to maintain supremacy.

CHAPTER
3
: QUEEN ELIZABETH, LARPER

1
. Brian Morton, “Larps and Their Cousins Through the Ages,”
Lifelike.
Jesper Donnis, Morten Gade, and Line Thorup, eds. (Copenhagen: Projektgruppen KP07, Landsforeningen for Levende Rollespil, 2007), 244–259.

2
. Cornelia Emilia Baehrens,
The Origin of the Masque,
(Groningen, Netherlands: Drukkerij Dijkhuizen & Van Zanten, 1929); see also Suzanne Westfall, “‘A Commonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling trick': Household Theater,” from
A New History of Early English Drama,
John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) 39–58.

3
. Ibid., 14.

4
. George Gascoigne,
The Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle (Gascoigne's Princely Pleasures: with the masque, intended to have been
presented before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle in 1575: with an introductory memoir and notes)
(London: J.H. Burn, 1821), 87, note to page
8
. Historian Alan Haynes contends that the amount was much less, about £1,700 for the seventeen days, stating, “The notion that he poured out many thousands of pounds is absurd.” Still, that is more than enough for Dudley to have visited the theater more than 56,000 times. Alan Haynes,
The White Bear: Robert Dudley, the Elizabethan Earl of Leicester
(London: Peter Owen, 1987), 119–120.

5
.
www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk
, Accessed Nov. 2011.

6
. Jeffrey L. Forgeng,
Daily Life in Elizabethan England,
(Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2010), 102–104.

7
. Westfall, 43.

8
. Gascoigne, 80, note to page
5
.

9
. Ibid., 7; see also David Bergeron,
English Civic Pageantry: 1558–1642,
(London: W & J Mackay, 1971), 31; see also
Robert Langham: A Letter,
(Leiden, Netherlands: EJ Brill, 1983), 39–40.

10
. Langham, 45.

11
. Gascoigne, 24.

12
. Bergeron, 34.

13
. According to Alan Haynes in
The White Bear: Robert Dudley, the Elizabethan Earl of Leicester
(London: Peter Owen, 1987), the cancellation was “unexpected and unexplained,” though Sarah Gristwood blames it on the rain in
Elizabeth and Leicester
(New York: Viking, 2007).

14
. E. K. Chambers,
The Elizabethan Stage,
vol. 1, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 123; see also Bergeron, 58.

15
. Bergeron, 64.

16
.
Lady of May
details from Bergeron, 36.
Neptune's Triumph
info from Lauren Shohet, “The Masque in/as Print,”
The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England,
Martha Straznicky, ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 177.

17
. Ian Anstruther,
The Knight and the Umbrella: An Account of the Eglinton Tournament of 1839,
(London: Geoffrey Bles, 1963), 147.

18
. Anstruther, 124.

19
.
Life,
March 3, 1941, 102. Accessed June 2011 via GoogleBooks.
http://books.google.com/books?id=IUoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA2
&dq=life+march+3+1941&hl=en&ei=6YniTOriNsWqlAf0zfDaA w&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6 AEwAA#v=onepage&q=life%20march%203%201941&f=false.

20
. Daniel Mackay,
The Fantasy Role-playing Game,
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001). The last sentence in this paragraph is a paraphrase of what MacKay says on page
13
.

21
. Ibid., 13. See also J. R. Hammond,
An H. G. Wells Chronology
(New York: St. Martin's, 1999), 67.

22
. Lawrence Schick,
Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-playing Games,
(New York: Prometheus Books, 1991), 17.

23
. Mackay, 14–15; see also Schick, 18.

24
.
www.sca.org/officers/chatelain/sca-intro.html
, Accessed Nov. 2011.

CHAPTER 6: CLOSETED GAMERS
AND THE SATANIC PANIC

1
. William Dear,
The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III,
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 18.

2
. Ibid., 280–281.

3
. Lisa Levitt Ryckman, “Murder and Suicide Among Teens Caught Up in Dark World of Satanism,” February 13, 1988, Associated Press.

4
. Gary Alan Fine and Jeffrey Victor, “Satanic Tourism: Adolescent Dabblers and Identity Work,”
Phi Delta Kappan,
September 1, 1994.

5
. Mary Elizabeth (Tipper) Gore,
Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society,
(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1987), 118.