Live Scape

As some of you know my family and I play a slightly modified version of Scape. Our heros have just two lives and squads one. We have some healers, but it is a tricky thing. We often play scenarios with goals.

On the last day of my crazy march break knight camp for kids all of the instructors vanished. We armed ourselves and took off for the darkest regions of the basement of the rambling old building we use as the school. The kids are terrified of the basement- it’s dark, maze-like, claustrophobic and supposedly haunted.

There were only three us down there, armed with foam swords. We picked a place where we could watch the entrances and got comfortable; we knew it would be a long wait.

I don’t really know what happened in our round table room, where the pages were assembled. I of course didn’t tell them what was going on. I just took off. But this is what I have pieced together:

ONE: they quickly realized that this was a quest. All of our exercises from the week on paying attention to your surroundings paid in spades. They noticed that the swords were left out, where they could grab them instead of being locked up. They had listened when I had mentioned that there was a repairman in the building and that they should not ambush him and kill him. And they had listened to the morning tale- about pages left on their own.

TWO: My twelve year old, who is a fantastic swordsman, took command. But during the week he had fought against the pages during previous quests so they didn’t trust him. (he is such an outstanding melee fighter he would kill any enemy almost instantly, so my only choice was to assign him to the enemy side, which was one guy against the fourteen of us) The pages thought it was a trap so they killed him.
Some of them thought better of it and healed him (they only had four healings total to use; each person has 2 life, and when healed they just go back to 1).
He sent out squads of unarmed scouts through the building, believing we wouldn’t kill the unarmed. They were too scared to come into the basement though. My son tried to get them to take swords and lead an expedition to the basement but they got scared and killed him again.
They healed him again and decided to follow him to the basement. He tried to split their forces up into squads and come down all three stairwells at once. They thought it was a trap and killed him.
They healed him again and decided to come down one stairwell, all together, in a big group. By then almost an hour had passed so we had abandoned them.

We stood there in the dark, watching the pages as they came down. Many and loud were the so-called-brave who took positions behind the rest. My son came forward, unarmed, hands raised, calling for me. I immediately worried that someone was hurt and stepped out.

He knows me too well. He knew we’d go to the basement. He gambled that we wouldn’t hurt the unarmed. He knew how I’d react. As soon as I stepped out, he asked, arms still held up, if they could turn on the lights. Of course I said yes. A page flicked the switch and then someone tossed my son a sword. It was all a ruse.

But I had prepared. I’d already sent the rest of my group up another stairwell to the second floor. But I pretended they were still with me in the basement. I began shouting orders to them, to encircle and attack. The pages panicked. And I exited leisurely up the stairs to rejoin my group.

Unfortunately all the doors were locked in the stairwell, so we were trapped. We stood outside the locked door that led to the second floor and waited. As usual, the pages were loud and noisy. When they opened the door to see if we were there I killed two and rushed the rest. They ran. My comrades killed two more and we chased them out the door of that large room.

I always make mistakes and now it was my turn to lose. It was just too hard to resist chasing the screaming pages and killing them as they ran. So we followed, right into a lobby with six entrances. We were swarmed on all sides and killed. Almost no one survived- pages and instructors.

When you’re lying on the floor, being dead, it gives you time to think. I marvel at all the wars throughout human history, at all the lives lost, at how easy it is to die. Life is precious, and it’s good to be alive. I’ll keep my fighting on the hexes.