History

The RMSG began as the Denver branch of the Rocky Mountain Historic Combat Guild, which was a loose association of Colorado study groups devoted to HEMA. The Denver study group divided its time between several different disciplines until the arrival of Keith Jennings, who assumed the role of head instructor shortly after his arrival in 2003. Keith was a senior scholar of the Chicago Swordplay Guild, and began teaching a variation of the CSG’s curriculum, based in the Italian tradition. By late 2005, all three of the RMSG’s active founders had moved on, so Keith decided the time was right to reorganize the Guild. The group was renamed the Rocky Mountain Swordplay Guild, and became a formal study group of the Chicago Swordplay Guild. This relationship was formalized when the first RMSG students tested for the grade of scholar and played their prize in Chicago in February 2006.

Keith returned home to Chicago in the fall of that same year, and the group was again without a head instructor. As fate would have it, only a month later, Roger Siggs moved to Denver. Roger was a former Rector (instructor) of the Tattershall School of Defense, an instructor in Italian close quarter combat, Renaissance swordplay and classical sabre fencing, and came from an extensive background in Japanese martial arts. Better yet, he was a recurring guest instructor at the CSG, and had recently helped them redesign their close quarter combat program. Much like Keith before him, Roger quickly found himself drafted into service. He expanded the Guild’s training schedule, revised and expanded the grappling and dagger curriculum and saw to the continuation of the CSG’s curriculum. In February of 2008, three more Guild scholars went to Chicago and successfully played their prize.  At this event we were given a charter as a full, filial chapter of the CSG, granting us the right to train and promote scholars within the CSG’s curriculum for medieval swordsmanship.

Instructors

Roger Siggs is the primary instructor and curriculum director for the RMSG.  Prior to joining the Rocky Mountain Swordplay Guild, Roger served as one of the founding members of the Tattershall School of Defence, and was on the editorial board of Western Martial Arts Illustrated magazine. Before moving to the Denver, Colorado area in late 2006, Roger was the founder and faculty advisor of the Historical European Martial Arts club for Glendale Community College, as well as the instructor for several martial arts classes during his tenure there.