The Cloisters Demo

Every year, there is a large street fair and medieval festival in upper Manhattan, next to the site of the Met Cloisters medieval art museum. I’ve been attending and tabling with the SCA’s Crown Province of Østgarðr since 2017. This year, a week in advance of the event, the Rapier Marshal in Charge of the event offered me the opportunity to run a tournament. I am a Marshal in Training, and I need to get more experience in order to become a full marshal, so I gladly accepted. (I want to be a full marshal so that I can give back to the community by helping run events and watching for safety in tournaments, and specifically I want to be able to run practices on my own on days when the only marshal regularly attending our local practice can’t make it to practice.)

My tournament rules

  • I wanted there to be lots of audience interaction, that didn’t necessarily require much knowledge of fighting, since we get a big crowd of potential newcomers at the demo list when fights are happening. I originally wanted a wheel for the audience to spin, but couldn’t source one on short notice.
  • I didn’t know how many people would show up, so I needed to run something that would work with anywhere from 2-12 fencers. (We ended up with 4.)
  • I didn’t want to have to keep track of a lot of details of matches - I’ve seen round robins at this tournament be very complicated, as individuals who need to be fighting for the format to work best get pulled away to chat with newcomers who’ve wandered up to the booth and have similar interests/areas of study.
  • I would be arriving by public transit (and carrying several musical instruments for the bardic performance later in the day) so couldn’t bring very much in the way of props.
  • I had an hour to fill.

Spec I wrote in advance (that nobody else read, didn’t have time to post it in advance!)

At the Cloisters demo (https://www.eastkingdom.org/EventDetails.php?eid=3551), there will be two rapier tournaments. One will be the provincial championship tourney for the Crown Province of Østgarðr. The other will be a PIT OF FORTUNE, which will be run as follows:

The format of the tourney will be a bear pit (winner stays in, up to 3 bouts), wounds and weapons form will be retained, in cases of a double kill both participants will be counted as a loss and leave the field. The bear pit will start shortly after 1pm and last 40 minutes, or until 1:50, whichever comes first.

Each fencer must choose someone to ROLL THE DICE for them and determine the weapons form they may bring out. Picking a volunteer from the audience to roll for you is highly encouraged. There will be one loaded die*, labeled as follows:

  • SWORD
  • SWORD
  • DAGGER
  • RIGID PARRY
  • SOFT PARRY
  • SWITCH HANDS

If a fencer is authorized in more than one form, they may roll a second time to determine what they can take out in their second hand, with the following clarifications:

  • If they roll SWITCH HANDS, that means they take a single sword in their non-dominant hand. Otherwise, they can choose what goes in what hand. If they roll SWITCH HANDS twice, they must take single sword in their non-dominant hand - they don’t cancel out.
  • If they are authorized in 2-hander they may choose to bring it out if they roll SWORD.
  • If they roll two parry objects, they may take either, along with single sword.
  • If they are not authorized in a form that they roll, they may re-roll once, after that it is treated as if that roll was SWORD. (e.g. Someone authorized in only dagger & single sword could: roll DAGGER, then roll SOFT PARRY, reroll and get RIGID PARRY. They have now rolled DAGGER and SWORD.)
  • Anything not clarified here is decided in the moment by the nearest marshal. Marshals are encouraged to choose the most entertaining interpretation of the rules that is safe.

I hope you’re feeling like Lady Luck is on your side!

Note: Loaded die is a rectangular cardboard box.

Changes day-of

  • I labeled the box such that “soft parry” and “rigid parry” were on the short square sides, and the other four labels were on the long sides.
  • I found it more entertaining to require combinations of switch hand + dagger to require taking a dagger out in the non-dominant hand, rather than sword + dagger with switched hands.
  • We were on at 1pm, and by 1:30 everyone was ready to stop (it was probably over 80 degrees in the heat of the day).

Overall I think it went quite well. Some really small and cute kids rolled the large die for us. Vivat to Engle der Pfau, the winner of the tournament!

Me holding the 'loaded die', with sides "DAGGER" and "SWORD" visible.