My name is Derek and I’m an alcoholic…
Oops! wrong meeting
My name is Derek, I’m 36 years old, married with two kids, living and working in Albany. I play with computers for a living.
I started LARPing cough [size=75]25[/size] years ago when I was 11. We’d make swords out of sticks with carpet underlay wrapped around them and I would invent games for my school friends to play. It was called widegaming then and all the character classes and races were based in AD&D.
After 10 or so years of that I found the Auckland Sword and shield club where I trained for 4-5 years.
I then discovered the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and helped start a group in Auckland. The group is going strong and I am currently the ‘Baron of Ildhafn’ (the ceremonial leader for Auckland and Hamilton). This is where most of my hobby ‘effort’ goes.
The SCA does all kinds of stuff to do with medieval reenactment, but it’s also a bit LARPish in that people are encouraged to play ‘personas’. However, it gets very fantastical when you have Vikings and Tudors talking to each other and that aspect of it doesn’t really work under close examination. The role playing is very low key (usually restricted to ‘court’). The fighting is full contact and lots of fun - we actually wear armour which means people can whack you in the head.
I’m also a knight in the SCA which is essentially a fighting rank which says ‘we can’t hit this guy as much as we’d like to’.
(see www.ildhafn.sca.org.nz for further details)
I enjoy making stuff (medieval clothing, armour, weapons, seige weapons) you name it, I’ve probably tried making one!
I’m currently playing around with the Company of the Lance training towards full contact jousting.
Here is a picture of me fighting a visitor from Australia. I’m the little chap (Sir Inigo) and the big guy (Damion) was the Marshal (officer in charge of combat) for Australia and NZ at the time.
picture
(I won by the way)