Vebrand: "most of the things you mentioned above were rules adopted by one Kingdom and spread to others well before the SEM put them in to law."
Let's see, where to start...
Finger gauntlets -- the famous "must wrap and touch" insanity: In about 1981, I and a few others (four in total) made and used finger gauntlets in the style of the 14th C. brigandine-cuffed "wisby" gauntlets. We labored under the tutelage of Valerius Paencalvus and Will of Wiltshire, two Laurel armorers renowned for their reproduction quality work.
We fought non-stop with these guantlets for three years and with all weapons forms without injury in the Middle Kingdom and at Pennsic -before- the rule was instituted.
When the change became effective, there was no opportunity for comment, no grandfathering, and no grace period. It just happened. To the best of my knowledge, there were no serious injuries reported, no chronic "history" of recurring injuries, no movement of kingdoms graduating to similar conventions -- nothing that we could immediately point to to explain the change.
The SEM at the time was a Western duke.
Hardwood spears -- or how the East nearly lynched the SEM: Seriously, they burned him in effigy at Pennsic (or so he told me)! This actually happened shortly after the finger gauntlet ban, but under a different administration.
The East had been fighting for many years with hardwood-shafted spears. Again, there was no history of injury above and beyond what was accepted for rattan-hafted spears.
The SEM, however, was not from the East; he was from a kingdom (Calontir) that faced the hardwood-hafted weapons annually at Pennsic, but did not allow them themselves.
Admittedly, while the practice was not widespread, there was no "movement" to prohibit them among the kingdoms. At the most, it could be characterized as one kingdom explicitly allowed them, and several had not progressed to that level (remembering that there were all of 7 or 8 kingdoms at the time).
To the best of my knowledge, the primary reason to introduce the rule was to enforce an arbitrary consistency.
Covering the inside of the elbow under a shield -- armor "creep", or looking for that "visual" balance: This was an adjustment made to the ruleset entirely by fiat by the SEM (I don't even remember who was in office at the time). To the best of my knowledge, it was not a part of any kingdom-level convention east of the Mississippi.
Padded and unpadded polearms -- or, He That Hath the Power Maketh the Rules: Were you active when two successive administrations effectively reversed each other, apparently driven by the local prejudice of their local kingdoms' conventions?
It was a lesson in lunacy, and the arguments were equally crazy. Each group argued that their system must be "safer" because it's what they used and the opposite system must be inherently more dangerous because they weren't familiar with it.
Apparently nobody took into account that both factions had been using their preferred forms for over a decade with no measurable difference in injury (except maybe to their ability to think logically, and then they were both equally afflicted).
"Directed Touch": This is the maddest of the mad. Western-rite kingdoms (and a few Eastern-rite ones, as well), easily representing a third or more of all fighters, have been using "positive force" rules for decades. No one has ever produced a single injury report, let alone a history of injuries, that indicate any group is at any more risk than any other.
Yet despite the lack of evidence and clear lack of support from at least a half-dozen kingdoms, an SEM -not- from one of these kingdoms felt it necessary to impose the rule anyway.
Subsequent SEM's (one that, while from a western-rite kingdom, was apparently a really good guy but not a very strong administrator) have continued down this path to the point that, in at least one kingdom, it has since been openly dismissed by that realm's Crown and assembled knights.
Vebrand, I do not pretend that my evidence is complete, or that any of the above wasn't introduced out of the best of intentions. But to color these changes as the culmination of some sort of grass roots movement belies the complete surprise felt by myself and my peers when they were announced, as well as the rather severe outcry (or outright rebellion) that resulted when they were instituted.
With respect,
Alfred of Carlyle
