We often have jousting at our nearby Belvoir Castle. I might look up when the next one is. Thanks for reminding me.
I remember once playing a live medieval roleplaying game (called Treasure Trap) with some school friends, some by then at university. My friend Ian Ward, during a night at the pub, introduced us to this game that he played at Birmingham University. So a few weekends later, armed with a car-boot full of garments and strange padded weapons brought by Ian, we all found ourselves dressed as wizards and elves and knights in Stapleford Woods.
During one encounter the team of five adventurers met a slime monster (which was basically Ian dressed in green and covered in slime) and the wizard controlling him (namely me in blue robes and what I can only describe as a tiara). The adventurers quickly discovered that their attacks on the slime monster with their padded weapons were ineffective. The game reason for this is that their non-magical weapons could not harm a magical creature. In fact, Ian was even telling the adventurers this between slimy snarls in the hope they might find another way of stopping the monster, which was simply to take the tiara off me to deprive me of the magic I used to control the slime monster.
But one of the players, called Martin, quickly discovered that the slime monster he was hitting with his padded 6-foot staff was not, like the other enemies he had encountered, 'dying'. It was at this point that we discovered that Martin had not fully understood the concept of this game. He stopped, pondered the problem for a while, and then in a moment of brilliance thrust his staff between Ian's legs and yanked upwards. Ian yelped, crumpled to his knees, and lay on the forest floor for some time making gargled noises that we all attributed to some kind of unimaginable searing pain.
When Ian finally regained his breath, he yelled at Martin: "You f*&king idiot! I told you: non-magical weapons have no effect on a magical creature."
Martin, grinning but clearly still not quite with it, and perhaps a little miffed at the response to his moment of genius, replied, "Well, it seemed pretty effective to me."
