This weekend I doubled up on Amtgard, going to two different parks. On Saturday I went to Mystic Seas (Troutdale, OR) and Sunday I made the trip up to a Northern Lights Kingdom Level Event at Greenwood Keep (Lacey, WA). Both parks were doing quests.
Mystic Seas Monster Bash
Saturday was their monthly BBQ combined with their event, the Mystic Seas Monster Bash. I wouldn’t say their monthly BBQ is something I always go to but it’s certainly on my radar and something I do consider going to each month. It’s hard to pass up free food, it helps the food has been pretty delicious.
I ended up staying up in Beaverton the night before to cut down on my driving, but I stayed up pretty late visiting with Uriel and I was still late to the park, getting there around 1. As I mentioned they were also doing a Monster Bash and not just their monthly BBQ. This involved a monster themed battle games and a monster costume contest.
I had a burger before their first game of the day, which was a quest. The burger was homemade not frozen, it had a good texture and tasted nice. For the quest the players needed to cleanse five locations. They had a NPC priest they could also escort to the locations which could cleanse the locations at a faster rate. Each location had three cones, each one needed to be cleansed. For players it took 30 seconds per cone while the priest could do the same thing for only a 15 second count. Opposing the players was a band of monsters. They spawned at any cone that wasn’t being cleansed.
There wasn’t any losing condition. The quest was just for fun. It took the players about 50 minutes to cleanse all of the areas. I felt the last 15 minutes are so the game was dragging on a bit much. They were trying to cleanse the last area. It took two full waves of PCs to accomplish it. Luckily tempers didn’t flare and everyone had fun but I could see some of exasperation on their faces near the end.
You can see the quest in its entirety on my YouTube Channel. I’ll warn you, there are slow parts where I’m just walking down trails but I tried to get as much of the action as I could. It had to be broken into two parts because my phone can only record 33 minutes at a time. (PART 1 and PART 2) Part 2 might be more interesting, it’s shorter, has more concentrated action and you get to see them winning.
Afterwards I ate a little more food, specifically a pasta salad with red spaghetti. It looked spooky! It had a pleasant mild flavor. I would have liked a bit more sauce though. They held an althing to elect their GMR, which Dovahyol won, and they did the voting for the costume contest. A little child dressed as a fairy won, I didn’t catch her name. Kormac got second place as a minotaur.
I left shortly after the contest. I was there for about 3 hours. They were just setting up another game as I was packing up. I didn’t get a chance to do any fighting. There wasn’t any sparing when I arrived and none between the quest and the next battle game. I would however, get some fighting on Sunday at Greenwood Keep.
Greenwood Keep
I spent the night in Beaverton again, this time at Gustav’s. It cut my drive down about two hours, one hour home on Saturday and one hour back to Beaverton on Sunday. We left at 9:45 and it took us a bit under 3 hours to get to Greenwood Keep. We stopped once at the Exit 42 Chevron to get a pizza pocket, which is the tradition.
There was some fighting when we arrived. Gustav and I joined in on the sparring. After a while we took a break and then a ditch started up I opted to record the fighting. You can find the video HERE. It was a decent sized ditch. The next event was the relic quest. Gustav put on his armor and joined in as a warrior. I chose to follow along as an observer.
The quest was video gamed themed. There was no real objective stated other than killing monsters. It was also a fundraiser. Players started with two lives, signified by cut up index cards. You could get more lives by looting coins from monsters or by buying coins for real life money. There were also various talismans and trinkets for sale for real life money. They raised $143.
The quest was entertaining to watch but also confusing. There was no real objective stated other than killing monsters and no stated way of winning the relics. Many people assumed you would loot them off of the monsters but that didn’t end up being the case. To be honest I never found out how relics were award or which relics were supposed to go out. I also haven’t seen a post about the relics to clarify this. It left many people rather perplexed and some of them a bit salty.
Afterwards there was more fighting. Another ditch started up which you can watch HERE. After a short while I stopped recording and joined in. There were several rounds where I was fighting alongside Devry who was using a pole-arm. We worked together fairly well. It was nice working with a great weapon wielder that knew how to work with a shield man. I rarely died and got several kills. It was a bit of an ego boost.
Eventually they called for another battle game and it killed the ditch. The game actually took a while to set up and a small bearpit started up which turned into a small winners/losers game which you can watch HERE. For the first few minutes you can see Dogboy murdering some folk before he left to join in the battle game as a healer.
Gustav and I ended up watching the battle game. I didn’t hear the game explanation but it looked to be a two team bridge battle where you hold a central point on the bridge for a certain amount of time to score a point. There was some back and forth so the teams seemed even enough. The problem was it was a big battle game with lots of casters so verbals were hard to judge. I think it lead to some players being salty but tempers seemed to be kept pretty well in check. Most complaints I heard were post game.
After the game the fighting picked back up and there was yet another ditch. I chose to fight in it rather than record it. It got be be pretty large, by far the largest of the day. It was a blast. I got in some pretty good fights. I even scored a good shot on Dogboy and he congratulated me. It made me feel pretty good. Positive reinforcement is awesome. I also fought Talius several times and did pretty well, much better than expected.
Gustav and I ended up having to end the ditch early. One reason we journeyed to Greenwood Keep was to pick up some stuff from Heron which was at her apartment. Around 4 she was ready to go. We went with her to Afters at Sheri’s and then we gave her a ride back to her apartment to pick up the stuff. We were on our way back to Oregon around 6:30.
Sunday I fought more than I have in a long time and I was happier with how I did than I have been in a while too. The average level of fighting seems to be higher than the average level of fighting in my own area which only pushed me to perform better. It also helped that I wasn’t fighting the same people I always fight, which could account for some of my success. If that’s the case it might mean my fundamentals aren’t terrible. I also saw a few shots I’ve never seen before, One shot in particular was from Dogboy which was a weird body twisting shot to my shield side hip. It was a new one for me. It was a very good day.
Other Going Ons
I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about a few things other than my weekend. As some people may have noticed I’ve started a Patreon Page. The goal is to give people that like my content a way to financial support me. I have three goals.
The first one is to earn enough money to pay for the website and get rid of the ads. My second goals is to get some extra money to allow me to travel more in the Pacific Northwest. I have a limited income so it makes it hard to travel. I’d like to travel more to give my blog more varied weekly content. The third and largest goal is to get enough money to go to one or two of the big events outside the PNW and to give everyone a chance to read about my experiences and live vicariously through me.
I have three tiers you can donate at, $1, $5 and $15. If you donate at the second or third tier you have the option of getting your name listed on my website as a supporter. I created a new page for just that reason which you can find HERE. At the moment I have 2 supporters at tier one so no one is listed on the page. If you’d like to change that you can donate HERE. I’d really appreciate the support and it’s a good way to let me know that I’m doing something right.
I’ve also been gearing up on my YouTube Channel. It’s just unedited videos but I’m having fun recording them and sharing them. I try to get a varied amount of content. There isn’t much in the way of commentary but at the start of battle games I try to explain the game. Please take a look, subscribe and like some videos. I’ll try to upload something every week I’m out.
I’m also working on a magazine featuring my writing. It’s a second issue and I plan on having it out at the beginning of November. It’s not exactly Amtgard related but I want to expose my writing to everyone I can. This does issue does have some of my Shattered Kingdom writings so there is some Amtgard relation. I’ll talk more about this project with it’s own separate blog post later. It won’t take the place my normal weekly blogs. I put out an issue 3 years ago which you can check out on Amazon HERE if you’d like. It’s a $1.
Next week I actually have a concert I’m going to (The Boobomb Concert in Portland) so my time at Amtgard will be pretty limited. I’ll be going to my local park, Silvermooon (Salem, OR) but I will only be able to stay for an hour or two. I hope to get some video recording done as well as put in some time fighting before I leave.
I hope you all have a wonderful week!