Among the many difficult and potentially unanswerable questions which will be posed in this area, the thorniest of the lot is also the most fundamental: "What is it?"

At its most rudimentary level, Living History is popularly understood to involve people from the present wearing historic costumes. Beyond that simple definition, hairs begin splitting in a hundred different directions ranging from "Weekend Warriors" who reenact military battles, to the "RenFayre" groups and their complex heraldic arrangements, to elderly daycap-clad docents manning entrances to Southern Plantations, to accredited museum programs attempting to maintain a state of controlled chaos in their staff, to independent interpreters making the rounds at schoolrooms and public events, and finally, a wide range of stragglers such as survivalists, video game developers, and performance artists thrown in for good measure.

Maproom Systems will be doing its best to split up these hairs as carefully as possible, much as a Victorian woman preparing locks for a mourning wreath, and hopefully, in time, we will come up with a clearer image of the medium. In addition, once we've defined it, an effort will be made to qualify it as well- What makes a good living historian, how does one begin researching a character, what are the fundamentals of good interpretations?

Through essays, discussions, and illustrative galleries, this Living History section (like the rest of our site) will be utilized both for entertainment and education, which are the two essential ingredients in the medium of Living History- the spoonful of sugar surrounding the bitter pill which the general public is otherwise loathe to swallow.