CLASSIC SESSIONS

Classic Sessions are the original AiC camps adventurers know and love. All weeks of classic AiC include castle building, arms & armor, games and swimming whenever beaches are available at hosting parks. The terrain varies widely from park to park. Adventurers will have elective opportunities over the course of each week to customize their experience.

The Armory

Build anything you want for your character or your Esteemed House. Usually adventurers begin by designing their own suit of armor and personal arms: The Realm can be a dangerous place! Work independently or collaborate with a team. Add spikes, fins, scales, plates, helmets, gauntlets, shields limited only by your imagination. Go classic or go mythic. Create your heirloom sword, ax, mace, halberd, spear or other deadly accoutrements. Use and improve what you make in daily games of capture the flag.

Or... scrap the arms and armor and work instead on magical tomes, artifacts of power, hoods, capes, crowns, wands and rings of power!

Or... work on a farmstead and corral, a shop in the village, a tavern with games of chance, a forest hut for your sorcerer or a library for your wizened sage.

Each week will also have optional special projects with visiting local artists. Create a village, work on a giant maze, focus on siege engines, specialty bows or on more advanced live-action games.

The Castle Village

Design and build an actual castle and fortified village to inhabit, employ your trade, to defend and attack. Make walls festooned with battlements. Raise towers. Install a gatehouse with portcullis, arrow-loops and drop-holes for defense. Add village buildings, a blacksmith's, a tavern and inn, a stables, a thieve's den, a sacred temple, catacombs beneath the castle, anything goes!

Later in the week this sprawling fortification becomes the locus for many role playing activities. It's final size and the variety of activities that go on inside of its walls is up to our collective imagination. And for every person who manages to become Queen beware the Sword of Damocles that hangs above your head!

The Games

Develop group identities and team strategies to defend or storm the castle in daily competitions of Capture the Flag and other games. Each site usually hosts plenty of paved paths for bicycle patrols, open fields for pitched battles, shoreline beaches for longboat raids and wooded trails for haunted towers and wizardry! Some sites have caves, gorges and other extraordinary features to explore. Always seek magic and unusual characters in such remarkable places when you stumble into them.

Adventurers are divided into six different houses each with its own set of virtues and weaknesses. The Houses of Arko, Drake, Sanglier, Áquila, Hákarl and Hart collaborate and compete in games that seek to instill integrity, chivalry, creativity and collaborative play. Each esteemed House has its own magic related to its unique eorð-sigil or déor-dweomer. Each House also possesses a complex backstory that you will develop and add to as your week progresses. Rumor has it there are secret Houses whose initiates have been sworn to deny their existence.

Click here to view backstory ideas for games and props design!

Swimming & Boating

Swimming breaks are available at sites where local lakes are available. Sometimes when swimming is not available we'll still have the opportunity to use boats or even sometimes build them out of cardboard for our games.

ADVANCED SESSIONS

Advanced Sessions are similar to Classic Sessions, but the average age of adventurers is older. We include all of the same activities as Classic Sessions but with a heightened focus on strategy and competition gaming in Tactical Weeks and with a heightened focus on character, role playing and creating-your-own-structure in Theatrical Weeks. In both sessions the story is still king!

Tactical Sessions

These sessions are typically organized around extended rounds of a live action strategic game called Dominion. We will roll out all the relics, characters and backstory, but Tactical Sessions require higher levels of fair play and maturity. Tactical Sessions feature stricter rules, more competition and a greater focus on team strategy and battlefield tactics.

Counselors join their teams in the fray seeking to instill the best spirit of the game and let be what will be!

Come and test yourself: if you were transported into a tragic fantasy conflict of ascension, would you have the cunning, resourcefulness and character it would take to organize your warband and capture the throne?

Free Role Play or Theatrical Sessions

The main difference between Classic Sessions and Free Role Play Sessions is that in Classic Sessions there is a schedule, in Free Role Play Sessions the different activities of camp are always open and you can go WHERE you like, WHEN you like!

Theatrical Sessions are completely immersive role-playing camp experiences for participants. We don't bother teaching theatre skills or worrying about a stage, you will not be forecd to spend any time playing "Zip,Zap,Zop!" Instead counselors create open-ended scenarios where, after a first day of orientation, you are free to explore and participate as you will. You can even just be yourself transported into a mythical world.

We typically have upgraded encounters, new set pieces to explore as well as a fortified town ready to inhabit. You can build in the Armory all day, join tactical battles in The Realm, seek out mysteries and hazards in the town or wilderness and build political and financial power near the castle. Raise a rebel army with hobgoblin bandits and sieze the castle. Disappear into the library and unlock the ability to create and use magical potions. Or... just relax in the natural beauty of the woods.

In any case, YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS will have a large responsibility for helping to create the world we will all be inhabiting. Be prepared to immerse yourself in your character and in The Realm at a much higher level.

Double Realm Sessions

Week Eight is a Double Session at Nine Mile Creek. For most of the week The Band of Iron will stake out the northern part of The Realm by Moir Park, and The Band of Thunder will stake out the southern part by Oak Grove.

Each band will create an entire castle and village, prepare weapons and armor and play games until until the entire Realm opens and adventurers can travel to entirely different regions with their own castles and towns. 

• Explore 12 New and Mysterious Houses!
• Play 190-person giant battles of Castle vs. Castle Capture the Flag!
• Find New Land and Foreign Markets to trade your wares! 

Week Nine is a Double Realm Theatrical Session. (See Theatrical Sessions above.) Warning: adventurers taking these sessions will likely abandon all and settle in The Realm; you may never be able to convince them to come home.