This week at Amtgard

Today at Amtgard I ran a kid's quest. I hadn't been planning on doing it, but what happened was that there were some kids there and they told me they wanted to "fight the evil ogre." Of course there wasn't any evil ogre before, but there was one now. So I left the base in order to "scout out" the area (i.e. hide the evil ogre's treasure for the kids to find.) The kids said they had a "map" that told them where the ogre was, and that they would "turn me into a crab" so the enemies wouldn't notice me. It took a while to hide all the stuff, so when I came back I said that I was delayed because "it's kind of hard to read a map if you're a crab." The first half of the quest was mostly the kids running around everywhere except where I hid the stuff, making stuff up as they went along. They said their "map" told them where the ogre's "secret weapons" were, but they kept changing their story about where the "secret weapons" were, and never actually found any "secret weapons." (Remember that it was just me and the kids; there were no actual players playing monsters.) Eventually they went over to the area where I hid the stuff. I hid four small pouches and one big bag, and said that the pouches contained the "fire gem," "air gem," "earth gem," and "water gem." They found all the gems except the "air gem" but couldn't find the last one. One of the kids said that maybe the last gem was in the ogre's "main treasure hoard." Of course I knew that I hid it on the ground in the wooded area, but I went to the place I thought I remembered hiding it and it wasn't there. Eventually they found the bag (the "main treasure hoard") and the fourth pouch was in there! (Someone must have been walking through the path in the back of the woods, saw the bag and the pouch, and assumed that the pouch belonged in the bag and so put it there.) At the end I took the ogre mask, put some armor on, and said that the armor was cursed and transformed me into the ogre. Of course they defeated the "ogre" and we all went back to town (the pavilion.) They looked at the treasure and saw lots of potions. I told themthat I had a "magical device that could detect the power of the potions" (i.e. my iPhone, which has an app on it that displays a fake "meter" that you can control by pressing a hidden button) They actually recognized the "magical device" as an iPhone, but went along with it anyway. Overall it was a very fun day, and Colleen rewarded me by giving me a "mithril armor" relic.