There is a widely-held view in Dagorhir that exceptions ought to be made to the garb rules to allow people with injuries to play while wearing their medically-necessary safety gear. Consequently, players frequently make little to no effort to cover wrist braces, knee pads, MMA gloves, and other modern protective gear. Sometimes, we just forget to cover them - both I and my wife have been guilty of this many times.
I do not wish to argue, here, that people who cannot fight without protective gear should be excluded from Dagorhir, or that people who wish to be proactive about their safety by wearing modern protective equipment should be forced to remove this equipment. I am typing with a bruised tendon in one of my fingers today because I forgot to put my MMA gloves on at Ides of March - protection is a good thing. Rather, I want to show how a little bit of creativity, something as simple strip of fabric, can transform an ugly, modern wrist brace into a good characterization prop that proactively
adds to the look and feel of Dagorhir instead of detracting from it.
TUTORIAL: Covering an ugly wrist brace to make it look like a bandageMaterials:1 strip of off-white scrap fabric.
Food coloring.
Time to complete: 2 minutes. 3 minutes if you do not already have a scrap of fabric lying around and have to cut one out specially.
How to do it:In Attachment 1, I am wearing the modern wrist brace.
[See Attachment 1]
Worn with the rest of my garb, it stands out as an out of place reminder of the mundane world. It also clearly violates the spirit of these rules:
1.4 - Forbidden Garments, Patterns/Logos, and Equipment - the intent of this rule is to maintain an appearance appropriate to a fantasy/medieval setting at Dagorhir events...
1.4.1 - Forbidden garments include ... other obviously modern clothing...
The kind event hosts might allow me to fight with it as is (and they sometimes have, with nothing but my long sleeve covering it), but a simple fix will eliminate the need to ask for an exception and will prevent me from mucking up photographs with obtrusive modern gear.
To cover the brace, I first wrapped it with a long strip of off-white scrap fabric that I had laying around in the leftover fabric bin. I made sure that the fabric covered the brace and that it was securely tucked in on the ends so that it wouldn't come off half way through the battle.
I then took some red and green food coloring and mixed it together to get a nice shade of dried-blood brown, and I applied a splotch of this food coloring to my arm to make it look like blood had seeped into the bandage.
You can see the result in Attachment 2.
[See Attachment 2]
Now, instead of sporting a modern-looking exception to the rules, I'm wearing a bandage that looks like it came with a good story of a hard fight. A modern garb failure has become a cool characterization prop.
MMA gloves, sunglasses, knee pads, etc will each require a different approach to cover successfully (which might involve paint, hats, masks, helmets, long pants to cover kneepads, or a more creative application of bandages). But a little bit of creativity can easily transform these modern solutions into pieces of garb that add to, rather than detract from, the game. This tutorial is my encouragement to all of you - and myself - to take a few extra minutes, let the creative juices flow, and find a way to transform your modern safety gear into something that makes Dagorhir look better, not worse.
