What do posters feel about re-enactment societies?

[Dibble201Bty]

Originally Posted by Von Richter

The Leeds Armoury wot a place to get yer neck stretched! I was there a couple of years back on a joust day, prattling on about reanactors being sad wankers and wotnot, when I got a rap on the shoulder. It was fom a six foot tall fully armoured Knight, built like a brick shithouse...
it took some snivelling of the first order for me to slink away from that one wiv mi' bigoted 'ead still on mi' shoulders.

What you should have done is charged at him, knocked him off of his feet, then slip your bollock knife through his vizor, through the eye socket into the brain cavity, then make a mixing motion with the hilt, pull out the blade, look at him and say...'you want reenactment? That's f#[king reenactment!'

Paul

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Shoeless

I don't know if the one guy was just being facetious, but to think that I am against video games depicting soldiers and the game of chess is just silly, and not at all what I was getting at. There is a difference between sitting in your living room and playing a piece of entertainment about soldiers, and actually dressing in the uniform of a serviceman and firing blanks at other people.

I'm the guy and I was not being facetious. I understand you are not against videogames or chess, and I guessed as much before I posted that; that's why I mentioned them, it's a reductio ad absurdum.

I'm aware there are differences between playing war on a boardgame and playing it in a costume. Then again there are more points in common than differences. In both cases it's entertainment, it's not the real thing; you are not a real general when moving your counters on the board, and you are not a real soldier when wearing your costume.

Whether you were a real soldier in your real life, or not, has little bearing on either, since in both cases it's not reality, it's fiction. Having been a real soldier certainly helps you playing the part better, but a non-former-soldier who is a committed student may be just as good. Most actors interpreting Hamlet were not princes in real life.

I'll add that I think that what's important is what goes on in one's mind. That's why I mentioned that if no disrespect is intended, no disrespect is done.
But to elaborate, there is of course a slim possibility that a guy in, say, Patton's uniform, deludes himself into thinking that he is, somehow or to some extent, as good as the real Patton.
Naturally I would disapprove of that, but I would disapprove exactly in the same way if a guy playing Patton in a boardgame, videogame or role-playing game nurtured similar delusions. I've won Diplomacy games playing as Turkey, and I'm happy about that, but I don't think, for that reason, that I'm better than the real Turkish decision-makers who lost WWI. Mine were games.
In both cases (re-enactment or gaming) the man having those delusions would be a guy with mental issues, not your typical re-enactor or wargame player.

Of course I understand you have just put forth your personal point of view and I respect it; the above, in turn, is just my own point of view.

[Von Richter]

Originally Posted by Dibble201Bty

What you should have done is charged at him, knocked him off of his feet, then slip your bollock knife through his vizor, through the eye socket into the brain cavity, then make a mixing motion with the hilt, pull out the blade, look at him and say...'you want reenactment? That's f#[king reenactment!'

Paul

Our Gert always says that I'll have some buggers eye out one day... every time she has me on jankers peeling the spuds.