First of all, let me give credit where credit is due: I enjoyed reading the stories on Shan's Ring Game page so much that I decided to steal her idea. I wish I could recall some of those older games in the amount of detail she provides (when you get to be my age, they all tend to blur together). So, I'm sure this will be a pale imitation of her work, but I'll do my best.
Meeting Day Reconnoiter Pictures/Intros Part I Part II Part III Part IV
My story begins even before the first meeting. While walking through a local mall, the "Winnie the Pooh" costumes in the Disney Store caught my eye. At first, I was contemplating being "Beorn the Pooh," but as I browsed through the store, I discovered the "Bear in the Big Blue House" costume, which was much more bearlike. Alas, they only had it in children's sizes. I asked the Mouseketeer at the cash register if they were available in adult sizes, and she said you could only get them online or through the catalog. A plan began to form in the back of my mind! I followed up my first question by inquiring of the Mouseketeer what size costume she would recommend for me and she said, "Large." In hindsight, I probably should have gone with a Medium—you can see in my picture that the Large bear suit kind of bunches up around my ankles. Anyway, as soon as I got home, I logged on to disneystore.com, gave them my credit card number, and clicked on "order." Now all I had to do was get Beorn as my character!
The day of the meeting, I picked up Joe at the "student slum" apartment that is his current "crash space," and we drove to Madison. After nearly ten years of making this trip, I'm almost able to find the parking lot closest to the Humanities building without getting lost. Almost but not quite (thank goodness for Rand McNally). We arrived just as Jeff was getting started on the info for newbies, which for Joe and I is the time to find and get reacquainted with our Ring Game pals. The meeting started in the room across the hall from the usual room, then got moved again because that room was reserved too. I can only imagine what went through the minds of the students when they saw all the RG character names on their blackboard.
Getting a number is always tricky. If you take a number too soon, it gets buried at the bottom of the bowl (despite the "shaking"). If you take a number too late, it might accidentally get left out of the bowl altogether (as happened to Joe and me in 1998). So I waited a bit before taking a number and got (if I recall correctly) 33. Three is my lucky number, so I figured 33 must be twice as lucky. Joe also waited for his "lucky number," 69. I'll refrain from comment. As numbers began to be drawn, I did my usual ticking-off on the character list to show the order that characters got picked before mine. I wasn't too worried about being able to get Beorn, as it's not one that often gets picked early. So naturally, the inverse-square law kicked in (the more popular the character you want, the later in the draw your number comes up, and vice-versa). My number was the sixth pick overall. All four wizards were still available! I contemplated playing Radagast again, because it was really fun playing Radagast last year. But remembering how long it took me to get Radagast (five years!), I decided I should let somebody else play him and took Beorn as planned. Ironically, Radagast was taken by the same guy who played him last time—so much for giving somebody else a chance.
As the rest of the picks progressed, it became apparent that a very strong good team was being assembled. George picked Saruman early on, Sauron was taken by Jake (who noone seemed to know, even though he must have played in the last game), and Scott (aka. "Mr. Shannon") took Gandalf. This created quite a migration to the good team! Joe had talked to Todd at the last game, and they had talked about doing a "Bard vs. Menace" grudge-match (Joe, you will recall, not only broke Todd's old Menace-kill record, but shattered it). Todd didn't show up at the meeting, however, and the Menace got taken pretty early on (which really P.O.ed Sterling, who'd wanted to play the Menace himself—he ended up being Bard). So when Joe's number finally got called, he gave into peer pressure and took Frodo, an announcement that was met with cheers by the assembled players. With Scott as Gandalf, Joe as Frodo, and a relative newbie as Sauron (he didn't even stick around very long after choosing his character), Good was feeling mighty confident. Joe and I were very psyched as we made the long drive home.
During the intervening weeks, the e-mail wires heated up with plans and strategems, thanks largely to a special mailing list that Scott set up for the good team. My task as Beorn was to meet up with Radagast and the Lothlorien crew, get the Stone of Galadriel token, and proceed to a fallen tree in the vicinity of the Paths of the Dead. There, I was to wait until the Gondor battle was resolved and use the Stone to revive the good army, if needed. I ended all of my messages in this exchange with a variation on the question, "can a guy in a bear suit defeat the forces of evil?" (It was a takeoff on the old David Letterman bit where he would use a hidden camera to find out things like "can a guy in a bear suit get into a strip club?" and "can a guy in a bear suit get a hug on the streets of NYC?").
The day before the game, Joe and I left Minneapolis fairly early and drove down to Dodgeville (leaving the Interstate at Joe's lucky exit, #69), arriving at the park at about 3:00 PM. We drove first to the Lothlorien camping area, then over to Mt. Doom. Maury Smith and his sons were there, setting up for their overnight campout. We chatted with them a bit, learning that Maury was playing a Rivendell Elf, Clay was playing Gimli, and Curran was playing a witch (or warlock, or whatever the heck you call those). Joe and I then went to check out the condition of Mt. Doom. We discovered that some time in the past few weeks (I had visited the park around Labor Day, and this hadn't happened yet), a huge chunk of the northwest side of the hill had broken off and slid down about thirty feet, taking a number of trees with it. The view of the crossroads, parking lot, and Mt. Doom approach, which had been partially obscured in the past, was now completely wide open. There was no way to hide any Good team movements from the Mouth in that direction. We took a roundabout route back down Doom, checking out the condition of the ground around the Saddle and the north side of Doom. Because the game was later in the year than usual, the trees were more bare than we're used to. Joe commented that you could hardly even tell we were in the woods, it was so open. Plus, all the leaves were on the ground, so it was nigh-impossible to move without lots of whoosh-whooshing noise!
When we got back down to the campsite, I took Maury off to one side and gave him a little background on what the Rivendell team's strategy was going to be. He hadn't signed up for the e-mail list because he shares his e-mail address with the kids, one of whom was evil! By this time, Joe and I were wondering where Scott and Shannon and their crew were. We'd been told which campsite they were going to be in, but I didn't realize at that time that it wasn't one of the ones in the game area. So, we drove over to Gondor to check out the muddiness/dryness of the ground between the bridge and the road (it wasn't too bad), as well as the campsites in that area. Then we drove up to the ranger station, inquired about the campsite, and were given directions. En route, we spotted the big red machine going the other direction, hit the brakes, and sure enough, it was them! Shannon introduced us to her friend Elizabeth, who was playing in her first game (as Arwen). Since they had plenty of room in their vehicle, we stashed my car at the little parking area by the waterfall and drove back down to the game area. Joe and I had already scouted out Doom, so we headed up to Barad-Dur. There are all sorts of nooks and crannies there that I never knew about (and which proved to be pretty important the next day!).
From Barad-Dur we went over to the Mt. Doom campsite and chatted with Maury for a bit (he had beer, which he was willing to share). It was dark and drizzling quite a bit by this time, so we hid out under Maury's tarp. At this time, Jake and Chris (aka. Sauron and the Menace) showed up, they were also camping out. After a bit of witty banter, Scott drove us back to my car, and Joe and I headed into town to check into our hotel. Given the rainy weather, we were very glad not to be camping out. We grabbed a sandwich at Subway and went back to the park to once again seek out the elusive campsite, which this time, we found—due in no small part to the very cool jack-o-lanterns that Scott & Shannon had set out. We chatted for a bit in the camper and the decision was made to light a fire. Andrea was supposed to have been there with dry wood, but there was no sign of her yet. But through Scott & Joe's determined efforts, a small blaze was ignited. As the wet wood was feebly sizzling, Andrea and her crew arrived with the dry wood! Soon, a cheery blaze was burning away! Andrea introduced us to her brother, and to Cindy, another first-time player (Shannon, Andrea, and Cindy were all playing Lothlorien Elfs). Since we were not camping overnight, Joe and I had to leave the park by 11:00 PM (drag), so we briefly took our leave. I say "briefly" because we were barely back on the road when I realized I could hardly see—I'd dropped my glasses by the fire while taking pictures! So we headed back to the campsite. Luckily, we were able to find my specs pretty quickly and get out before the park rangers barred the gates (or whatever it is they do).
"We must away ere break of day!" Joe and I checked out of the hotel and drove back to the park. On our way to the staging area, we stopped off by the Lothlorien campground so Joe could stash a bottle of gooey blue liquid (PowerAde, I believe). I took my eyes off him for just a moment when he was about halfway up the hill, and he completely disappeared from view! His beige sweater and pants provided perfect camouflage. When I told him about it, he decided not to wear some of the extra costume bits he'd brought along.
Since I've been taking pictures for the web site, I've always tried to arrive plenty early, so I can get through the line quickly and get set up to take pictures. We weren't the first ones there, but we were pretty early. We claimed a picnic table, taped the "get your picture taken here" sign to it, put fresh film in the camera, and were ready to go. The bear suit seemed to be very popular with other players, who got a good laugh out of it. I had to use a bit of duct tape to keep the foot covers in place, and ended up wrapping my fanny pack around my walking stick (even at maximum extension, it wouldn't fit around my bear-belly). I was first through the line, and gave my sheet to Jeff saying, "I'll take my fifteen costume points, please." To my surprise, he just took the sheet, marked 15, and gave it back to me. I said that I was really just joking, but he replied, "hey, if you're crazy enough to wear that all day, I'm crazy enough to give you fifteen points for it!" So I had my first-ever fifteen-point costume.
I was happy to see that Mike B. was there (even though he was playing a dark elf). I joked with him that his "retirement" only lasted one game! (The 1999 "Boys vs. Girls" game was supposed to have been his swan song).
Picture-taking was pretty uneventful, the tricky bit was trying to keep my "paws" away from the lens. I've tiraded elsewhere about Joe's absent-mindedness, so I'll let that go for now. I used up the last frame in my camera with only one person left to photograph (a Rider of Rohan), so I used my disposable to take that last one, then it was time for introductions. In the past, I've tried to come up with an appropriate schtick to do during introductions (last Spring, for example, I "flew" around the circle in my "Super-Saruman" outfit, to demonstrate that I was a "strange visitor from Valinor, come to Middle-Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!"). But the bear suit really spoke for itself, so I just did a little bobbling walk and "hi kids!" type wave. Joe and I tried to start a rousing chorus of "who let the wargs out?" when the wargs were introduced, but I guess there's not too many "Baha Men" fans at Ring Game.
After introductions, I bummed a ride to my starting location from Shannon (Radagast also rode with us). En route, we were amused to see Sauron perched precariously in the back of a station wagon. Shannon pulled up as close as possible so we could take pictures. Radagast and I briefly discussed which way he and the Rangers would go, and where we'd be meeting up. Then I was all alone at my starting spot.
It was time to see if a guy in a bear suit could defeat the forces of evil.
Mickey's big and little hands reached the 12, and I headed down to the crossroads. I spent a few moments looking in the direction of Mt. Doom for any sign of evil. There was no evil or good paladin, so the road was bare to the Long Lake bridge and beyond. I headed over toward Lothlorien, and about halfway there, met up with the "northern elf" crew. Otto (playing Celeborn) and I had a bonding moment (not to be confused with a Bondoman moment, which is something completely different), as we were both wearing our "One Ring" replicas from Badali Jewelry. We headed back to the Lothlorien rock, where we were soon joined by Radagast and the Rangers. We divvied up the tokens—I was supposed to take the Stone of Galadriel token, but since Alex S. was one of the Rangers, I willingly yielded it to him. As Dirty Harry says, "a man's got to know his limitations," and I certainly knew that Alex had a much better chance of getting the Stone to safety than I. I did take the Bow of Galadriel, however.
Alex, me, Radagast, Galadriel, John the Ranger, and the young Ranger whose name I don't remember (sorry), headed off to Gondor. Alex took the lead and decided to take a straight diagonal route towards the road, which meant going over a steep bluff. We bounced a pair of red eye orcs, and then started the laborious process of clambering over the cliff. In hindsight, with that size group, we probably should have taken the slightly more roundabout route. While Alex and Radagast were able to get up and over the bluff very easily, those of us who are a bit slower and heavier than we used to be, slowed down the group. As we approached the road, I told Alex that I should bring up the rear, since my costume was the most visible. Therefore, I missed most of what was happening on the road. All I knew was that there was some evil there. The usual chaos ensued, I was debating whether I should hide or join in the battle, when the young Ranger waved at me to move towards him. He's young, so I forgive him. By the time I realized there was a pack of dark elves there, Radagast called a freeze and I was definitely within 25 paces. So we got bounced and the dark elves took the Bow token, even though I tried to talk 'em out of it (Stacey/Legolas was not pleased when she found out I lost her token). The dark elves even bounced the troll who had lured us onto the road in the first place. Naughty dark elves! The good news was, Radagast had very cleverly timed the tag and the freeze to make sure that the dark elves were within 25 paces, but Alex (with the Stone token) was not. So he was able to get away. While we were dead, the northern elf team came by and pitied our poor, twisted, rent bodies. Then they went back to their designated patrol zone.
When we came back to life, what remained of our group split in two. The fast team (Radagast, Galadriel, and the young ranger) ran up the road to cut across at the easy crossing point and get to Gondor that way. The slow team (John the Ranger and me) took the more direct cross-country route, using a path I'd found back in 1999 when I was Radagast. We got to the road just as Saruman and the dark elves were going by (lucky we saw them before they saw us). After crossing the road, we met back up with Galadriel, Alex, and the young ranger. Alex gave me the Stone token, and I continued through the Entwood to the fallen tree while the others went to go scout out what was going on at Gondor. Specifically, I wanted them to inform Gandalf that I was taking up my position as we'd planned. I was glad for the opportunity to lie down and rest—the bear suit was darn hot!
Alex returned, but didn't have any definitive news about Gondor. I gave him back the Stone token. While we were waiting to see if there would be any of the hullabaloo normally associated with a Gondor battle, we were found by another good team, lead by Sterling (Bard). Apparently, there was no battle of Gondor—because the good team had had trouble assembling in time, the decision had been made to abandon it. So we decided to head over to Barad-Dur. Again, we broke up into smaller groups, with Alex and a couple of guys going one way, Sterling and the rest of us going the other.
At first, we started to try something I've always wanted to try (namely, following the power lines for a shortcut). But it quickly became clear that the area under the power lines is just too tangled with brambles to allow any kind of swift passage. So we took a more roundabout route, until we came upon a path that nobody had seen before (not even Sterling and me, who are pretty experienced players). My guess is that the park service cut it recently as a new horse path. As we followed it, we came across a spot that I thought would be a perfect staging area for the good team: it's not on the map, it's close to Mt. Doom but completely hidden from view, and wide enough to accommodate a pretty large group. Unfortunately, there's no way you could ever explain it to everyone in enough detail to actually get everyone to gather there. And it's too close to the center of the park for it to even be a good hobbit-meeting place. Oh well.
We made it from our Paths of the Dead hiding spot to the Barad-Dur campground without encountering any evil (except for some onesie-twosies at a distance). We got to the Barad-Dur path (the steep one on the north side) and headed up single file. But there were Nazgul about halfway up the hill, and they managed to pick off some of our guys piecemeal as we went up. I saw one of them tag a Citadel Guard above me, and shouted that I wanted to be in the combat. I paced up (it was about fifteen paces uphill), but the Nazgul still had more points than us. I asked him if he minded if we sat out our dead time at the top of the hill, and he said sure, so we just went up the rest of the way (which was all I wanted to do in the first place). So the Guard and I were out for fifteen minutes, but we had joined the Good army on Barad-Dur.
Good had already sacked the citadel, and there was a small Evil contingent there who kept getting killed over and over. When their fifteen minutes would be up, they'd decline their two-minute head start, initiate a combat, and be dead again. I'm not sure what they expected to accomplish by this, but they were still there when the Good army finally left.
Now the waiting game began. Good held Barad-Dur in force, although those pesky Nazguls were still lingering around the lower shelf area, and there were occasional forays by Evil scouts from the direction of Mt. Doom. One of these proved to be fortuitous for Sterling—he was chasing the Menace when an Evil Man-at-Arms who was lurking in the area jumped out and tagged the Menace. Sterling was within twenty-five paces, so he yelled, "I choose to enter the combat!" paced in, used the Black Arrow token, and orced the Menace.
A side note: this Menace got on a lot of people's nerves at this game, and not just because of the usual "killing lots of people" reasons. I personally saw him come back to life a lot fewer than fifteen minutes after Bard killed him. His flagrant flaunting of the rules prompted Sterling to announce his intention to form a "kill Chris club" for the next game. I expect Chris to be bounced early and often at the next game, whatever character he selects!
Gandalf arrived, but there was no sign of the hobbits (well, Merry and Pippin were there, but they weren't the hobbit, if you know what I mean). While I was wandering aimlessly around Barad-Dur snapping some pictures, I heard a commotion down on the north side of the hill. I went to the edge and looked down, and there was the northern elf party, apparently chasing (or being chased) around towards the west side of the hill. Gandalf went down to lend support, as did a few other characters. Apparently, Joe was being chased by a Nazgul!
As if this wasn't chaotic enough, Sauron showed up from the direction of Mt. Doom (it was just 3:30, so he had just become infinite). He killed the entire good army, including the hobbits! This led to a bit of a dispute: Sauron seemed to think he could interrogate dead hobbits. Wrong-o! You can capture or kill, not both, and he had specifically said to each hobbit, "you're dead, and you're dead." Andrea was called up from the side of the hill to act as an impartial arbiter, and she agreed that Sauron was S.O.L. Sauron left in a huff, and moment later, Alex showed up with the Stone token and revived everybody! The evil squatters tried to kill some folks then, but were foiled by the recently-revived good army.
I'm not entirely sure what was going on on the north side of the hill during all this, but I know from talking to people afterwards that there were some very close calls (as well as some dark elves not freezing when Gandalf called a freeze—naughty dark elves!). Everybody was looking down the north side, trying to get some glimpse of the hobbits. Nobody was looking down the south side, because everyone knows that side is completely unclimbable. But that was not reckoning with the rock climbing ability of Joe-do Barker! He popped up when nobody was looking, much to the relief of the Good forces. As he was surrounded by congratulatory teammates, he took the opportunity to remove his shirt and show off his muscles. Check out those six-pack abs!
Several minutes after Joe's heroic appearance, a very weary Nazgul also appeared from that side of the hill. I think he was just as happy to be killed, 'cause he was very tired. Joe and Scott huddled together to plan the final attack on Mt. Doom. Meanwhile, I'd found a piece of Sauron's armor that had fallen off during the previous encounter. Sterling's bow had broken during his charge to catch the Menace, so he was happy to loan me a length of string. I tied the piece of Sauron's armor around my neck, thus giving me my very own "battle trophy." Not as good as recovering a lost token, maybe, but I enjoyed it.
4:30 approached, the time we could take the Army of the Eagles token (the young ranger, in particular, was very eager to claim it). Alex went to hide with the Stone token—I told him that when/if we were killed, I'd shout "everybody Good who's dead, sit down!" We took the Army token (the young ranger took some convincing to give it up and let Joe carry it), and started heading towards Mt. Doom. We hadn't even got halfway to the path when Sauron approached with what seemed like most of his army. Sure enough, he made the tag and called a freeze. He clearly expected Gandalf to use the Miracle token. But the joke was on him. Scott immediately produced the Windlord token, said, "I'm taking this hobbit, we have a five minute head start!" and took off with Joe. Sauron seemed a bit bewildered, and Shannon did a good job of keeping him distracted by returning his attention to the battle at hand.
Of course, since Sauron was infinite points, we were all dead, so I loudly announced, "everybody Good who'd dead, sit down!" Which we did. Right on cue (shortly after Sauron had left the area), Alex appeared with the Stone token and we passed it around. I had a laugh when somebody (I forget who) said to another person (who was being slow about passing the token to the next person), "C'mon man, don't bogart the Stone!" We were alive again! But what to do now?
First, we all scurried out to the path leading to Mt. Doom. We quickly nominated Andrea as our leader, and she made the call that our best contribution at this point would be to get to Mt. Doom as soon as possible, in case there was an Evil army that needed distracting so Scott and Joe could make their run. So, we took off for Mt. Doom—some running, some jogging, some walking fast, some walking not so fast, but all of us doing the best we could. I started near the front of the group, but by the time we got to the vicinity of Mt. Doom, I was definitely at the middle-back of the group. You try running in a sweaty bear suit that you've been wearing for nine hours! So I missed it when the leaders tried to tag a group of dark elves and were told that the game was already over—and that good had won!
It seems that there were very few evil left between Barad-Dur and Mt. Doom. Scott hadn't even had to use the Miracle token. The only close call was when Gollum nearly free-tagged Joe, but wound up tagging Gandalf instead. Oops. The Army of the Eagles token was more than a match for the Mouth of Sauron. Thus, Frodo and Gandalf had a free path to drop the Ring in the Crack of Doom!
The good army wound up winning without having to rush up Mt. Doom (well, except for Scott and Joe). But that didn't keep a lot of us from trudging up there anyway to savor the fruits of our victory. And a sweet victory it was, definitely one of the funnest games I've been to.
P.S. At Culvers, I bought Stacey a root beer, and she forgave me for losing the Bow token. So all was well.
