Medieval Farming – offside from Mukul

Mukul’s offside report on Nick Luft’s medieval farming game A little bit of bread and no cheese that was run at the June 2015 Chestnut Lodge meeting.

Medieval Farming – Offside Report – AKA Village People by Nick Luft

A cart horse in harness

A game by Nick luft about village life in rural England. Players are the heads of households, various types; some rich, some poor; some large, some small, some old, some young, and the bailiff or sheriff who is the tax man. Heads of the family would run their family’s farms, most of us were those families. We decided what labour needed doing, plant various crops a bit like Mr James Kemp’s very good afghan village games. We would also have to give the bailiff a lot of our working time and some of our farm goods so that he could he maintain or improve his lifestyle and supply his lord with the fruits of the peasants labour.

I loved the idea of this game, brilliant. I wanted to see how the cooperation panned out between families, the bailiff and the church. How the bailiff influenced events and the how the church would act. The man upstairs would also want a part of the peasants work. Also the game was set up to have death and other acts of god strike the peasants for their waywardness.

Deserted Medieval Village at Hill – geograph.org.uk – 1089291 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ok so had it all panned out, umm tricky, very tricky. We got a little briefing and then that got explained and then more briefings and in the end we just got swarmed with briefing. A good deal of explanation, some hard (for me) to absorb technical jargon and the players just sort of collapsed with brain burn? So we did not a have a chance to try the game. A great pity as I still loved the idea of the game even that late point.

So any way I am still enthused and after the meeting I had a chat with some other folk that aren’t CLWG members and they sounded interested too. So much so that maybe some of them might come when Nick comes up the next metamorphosis of the game.

Maybe we needed a sort of model farm to see how we normally went our business, but left to our devices we were likely to make what should have unlikely mistakes. I reckon this game would provide a great educational experience for kids for a goodly chunk of time.

So good luck to the game and thanks Nick. Keep going!