About

The intended purpose of this website is to bring together Stories, Pictures, and Rules for period medieval games. Hopefully it will delite good gentles of all ages, and give them a reason to share the comradery and fun of a good game. It is with that spirit that is maintained by The Honorable Lord Aurddeilen-ap-Robet, Landed Baron of the Barony of Buckland Cross, East Kingdom, Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).

Aurddeilen has been playing with the SCA for more than 40 years, and enjoys researching, teaching, and recreating historic games. The images found on this website were obtained from public and private sources for educational purposes only; credits are included with images whenever possible.

Aurddeilen is mundanely know as Ray Becker, and is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, Ray helped create a city wide organization know as the Cincinnati Adventuer Gamers (CAG). CAG was comprized of several local area gaming groups and businesses which organized numerous game conventions in the 70’s and 80’s. Some of the more notable groups in the CAG were the Eastern Hills Gamers, the Buzzkriegers, the Kolbolds, Boardwalk Hobby Shop, Wanna Play, and Ral Partha Miniatures. Ray is also an avid game designer and play-tester, and has helped develope several board, card, and dice games.

Mundanely, Ray is a structural engineer and currently resides with his wife and daughter in Southampton, PA; a northern suburb of Philadelphia, Pa. In addition to being a member of the SCA Order of the Maunche, and the Order of the Silver Crescent, Ray is also a member of the Bhakail Baronial Order of the Harelquin, and is the 2017 Bhakail Baronial Games Champion.

The following is a story about my Dad that I posted on March 16, 2017.

It’s all my Dad’s Fault

When I think back to my childhood, I can easily say that my love of games is “all my Dad’s fault”. At a very early age my Dad taught me how to play chess. In fact, when I think about it, I was playing chess before I ever played Monopoly. My dad loved games, and even built the chess table that you can see in the following pictures, just to teach me. My Dad was really good at chess. I never beat him, but I did play him to a draw once; that was the day he gave me the board and the pieces as a reward for having done so.

My Dad’s other favorite game was Milton Bradley’s Battleship. He once told me that “Battleship” was actually a game that he, and several of his US Navy shipmates played quite a bit during WWII; except they played it with paper and pencil.

My Dad also loved playing card games, in fact my whole extended family did. There were many weekends where my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins all came over to our house to play cards; mainly Gin Rummy. Sometimes they would play cards until the wee hours of the morning. In fact, there was one incident where we got so absorbed in our card playing that my grandmother forgot to put the cover over her bird’s cage; the poor thing keeled over dead from starring at us playing cards all night. From then on that incident became a catch phrase when we ended a night of card playing; “Guess it’s time to put the cover on the bird cage” my grandmother would say.

Of course, I guess I can’t blame everything on my Dad, my mom worked for the US Playing Card Company as a card inspector. We all knew we were in trouble right after my mom was the dealer in the card game because she knew every defect in every card after shuffling the cards a few times. She often knew every card in your hand just by just looking at the backs.

My Dad passed away over 20 years ago, but I still have the chess table he made to remember all the wonderful times I shared with him. This table is over 50 years old, and it is a bit beat up, and cracked in few places from all my moving from place to place, but it means the world to me. He also made the storage box  for the chess pieces shown below, and shortly before he passed away he was working on carving chess pieces for me. He never finished that chess set, but I do have the first two pieces that he carved; a Knight and a King. That would be me and my Dad; the Knight and the King.