This Just In

Oldie, but still a goodie:

Society for Creative Anachronism Seizes Control Of Russia

(From the Onion back in 1999. This is a mirror.)

The SCA are experts in camping and having fun in moderately bad conditions. ("Your majesty, the port-a-potties all work, but it's too muddy to move the trebuchets." "Right, then. Get those crews to the shield-wall") They take care of their own in really bad situations. There are SCA-folk heading south even as I type this, to take care of their own.

In a Making Light comment, Avery says:

Unlike a church, though, we spend a lot of time out of doors setting up a goofy amount of necessities for an insane number of people as quickly as we can so we can go play. Most groups run an event once or twice a year that makes a wedding reception look trivial. Several weekends a year we do a corporate team buiding exercise in which screwing up is distinctly painful.

We call those "wars". Imagine a few thousand people descending on a big empty field on a Thursday. By Friday morning, there's a small town on that site, ready to party in grand style. By Monday noon, they're gone, and most of them (even the ones running the place) have had a pretty good time.

I haven't camped at an SCA event in a while, for reasons strictly my own. Like any group of over three human beings, there are politics, which can even be nasty. But on the whole, some of the greatest people I know play in the Society.