The reason I stayed out of the SCA, after some inquiry in the '80s, is the same reason I got out of the D&D-playing groups (okay, the guy brandishing the pen knife at one game, pretending it was a dagger, had SOMETHING to do with it): I wanted to join a group where I could get to know people, not just their characters.

In '83, a friend invited me to be his guest at an SCA weekend affair (he arrived with a trebuchet in pieces on top of his car, set it up and flung some homemade "rocks", which was fun). But afterward, when referring ot some of the participants, my friend didn't even know their "real" names or anything about them (did they have kids, what did they do for a living, etc.); he only knew their characters' names and the histories they'd created for themselves. That was off-putting, as was listening to an argument at a science fiction convention between two SCA members, HEATEDLY disagreeing about which one had been a member longer (why was it that important??).

I much prefer the singer-songwriter crowd who are interested in baring their (our) souls, and folk music aficionados in general who are interested in expressing "the human condition" through song without pretending to be the characters in the songs' stories (except maybe at a Halloween sing). :-) :-(