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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 8865069" data-attributes="member: 984">Our school/traditions didn't have belts, except for the kid's class, mainly because the parents expected them (but we didn't charge for tests or have an additional fee atop the nominal cost to buy the belt).  Coming into the school from what I feel is a pretty typical north american understanding of "Asian martial arts" schools, it was interesting and somewhat surprising to learn that there were no standard belt progression, levels, or even expectations.  For example, at some some schools, a belt only indicates how long you've been there, whether you practiced 12h a week or 2h, and with no link to your skill.  This isn't a knock on them per se -- the whole belt thing is a very recent addition to martial arts training/schools, and as the idea gained traction (and expectation) each tradition made up their own thing.Added to all this is the whole financial aspect to it -- it can be tough to run a school not at a loss.  Doubly so in markets where commercial space is expensive.  With limited and fickle audience (and competing with other options for one's time), limited hours you can operate (not so much during school/work, so evenings and weekends), and etc it's not exactly lucrative.  While I do not favour belts and paid belt tests, I again don't knock schools that do so too harshly (unless I see the masters driving around in Porches or something).  FWIW, our kid's class top level belts were Blue, Purple, and then (of course) Black.  Our kid's instructor (and, as it turns out and to wrestle this back to gaming, a fabulous DM/GM, holy cow playing his campaigns were awesome) used to nickname them his "bruisers".  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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