Frequently Asked Questions
What is Belegarth
What makes Belegarth different from other medieval combat games?
Why do you guys wear funny clothes?
What is the origin of the name 'Belegarth'?
What's the story between Belegarth and Dagorhir?
How is Belegarth goverened?
What is Belegarth?
Belegarth n 'BEL-la-garth' 1. A medieval sword fighting sport where foam padding is used on the weapons to prevent serious physical injury to participants.
Think of the term Belegarth like the term "baseball". Because Belegarth is much like Baseball, anyone at any age can really play it with people in their same age group. There are different levels of play, there are gatherings were a lot of people play at once, and there are small groups and teams that intermingle with other groups. But most importantly Belegarth is a semi-competitive sport where participants can strive to just enjoy playing with others or work at being physically and mentally the best fighter they can be.
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What makes Belegarth different from other medieval combat games?
There are a number of other medieval combat organizations currently in existence: the Society for Creative Anachronism, Amtgard, Dagorhir, NERO and others. While there are similarites, there are also differences from one group to another. Belegarth's chief differences come in the level of contact, role-playing and costs to play.
Belegarth combat is a full contact sport. This differentiates it from other foam combat games in that we allow grappling, shield kicks and bashes and do not require participants to pull blows. This allows for fast paced, hard fighting.
Belegarth participants are also not required to roleplay, although it is certainly encouraged. Many foam combat groups have races, classes, magic and roleplaying integrated into the gameplay. Belegarth's combat system is focused entirely on just that: combat. If you choose to roleplay, your character is limited only by your imagination; we have no rules regarding roleplaying and no combat advantages are given.
The cost to begin playing Belegarth is also significantly cheaper than some other combat groups like the SCA. Because the SCA uses heavy rattan weapons, they require protective armor in order to stay safe. Belegarth's philosophy is that we pad the weapons, not the people. This allows a person to get started with their own equipment for very cheap. Basic beginner garb and weapons can be had for under $20!
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Why do you guys wear funny clothes?
It is called 'garb'. Garb is the commonly worn uniform in our sport. Basically garb is medieval or medieval/fantasy-based clothing. Think about it for a second: most sports have a strange uniform worn by its athletes. Though the "uniform" rules are less strict in our sports than most other organized sports, Belegarth still has rules that cover what constitutes garb as well as what can and can not be worn during a battle.
Sometimes at practices you will see participants wearing street clothes, just like at basketball practices you may see players wearing sweats instead of game jerseys. At events, however, garb rules are stricter and street clothes are not permissable on the field.
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What is the origin of the name 'Belegarth'?
The name Belegarth means "Great Realms" in J.R.R. Tolkien's Sindarin language. The name comes from the following.
beleg = adj. great, mighty y/352, S/428 leka (BEL-EK).
ardh = n. realm, region. Ety/360 arda (AR1-AD).
Ety = Etymologies - History of Middle Earth.
S = Silmilrilian
# is page number
The "dh" sound is pronounced "th".
The name was put together from its roots by Sir Kegg and Sir Jikanta both of Numenor to describe a umbrella organization of Dagorhir groups in Illinois. Sir Kegg, the founder of Edhellen Armoury (which is the Sindarin word for "elven"), recently had much difficulty with Edhellen being mispronounced (ed-hel-en instead of the proper Sindarin pronunciation eth-el-en), so the spelling was changed to the phonetic spelling to avoid similar confusion (Belegarth instead of Belegardh). The name was meant to mean "Great Realms", a play or homage to the Aratari name of "Noble People".
After the split with Dagorhir, the realms which became Belegarth decided upon the name because:
- The name came from Tolkien,
- It was a good description of how they saw themselves, and
- The URL already existed
The word Belegarth was then adopted as the name of the new national organization.
The members of Belegarth are known as 'Belegrim', which means "Mighty People".
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What is the story between Belegarth and Dagorhir?
Put as simply and objectively as possible, in an effort to protect their service mark on the name Dagorhir and all related intellectual property (IP), such as the original Dagorhir Handbook, the Dagorhir Board of Directors (BoD) requested that any group wishing to continue to use the Dagorhir SM and IP sign a legally binding contract regarding their use. The former Dagorhir groups that chose not to sign this contract instead formed a new game known as Belegarth.
In simplest terms, the two groups' severance was largely caused by miscommunication and mistrust among the leadership of both groups, which was made far worse by heavy reliance on bulletin boards and emails to discuss issues that should have been discussed over the phone, if not in person. Ultimately, both groups did what they thought was best for their game at the time, and in the end went their separate ways.
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How is Belegarth governed?
Belegarth's governing bodies can be divided into two categories: the Board of Directors and the War Council.
The Board of Directors, consisting of five members elected by the War Council, is tasked with running the business non-profit aspects of Belegarth as well as the website. They have no powers to run events or make changes to the game itself.
The War Council consists of representatives from each of the voting realms. Voting realms are realms that have typically existed for at least a couple of years and have interest in helping to shape the future of Belegarth. The War Council makes all decisions related to how the game is played.
You can find out more about the governing bodies by reading the Belegarth Bylaws.
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