OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[sector24]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

Eastern styles are focused on the weapon itself, and many schools would teach the same style with some variation. We just didn't see this in the west.

So my original question: how should the learning of of something like Kenjutsu vs the italian Dardi school be represented in a game system?

I don't think this is necessarily the case, at least not for the entirety of history. There's a lot of anecdotal information indicating that talented fighters in the east would create their own schools which would last for roughtly their lifetime plus a decade or two and then be absorbed into other schools. For instance, the famous story about Sasaki Kojiro vs. Miyamoto Musashi. Kojiro founded his own school and even had a signature move, the "tsubame-gaeshi" but it didn't save him from being killed by Musashi. The school isn't around anymore, but the move survived.

So in the above case, I would consider training under Sasaki Kojiro to be the same as studying under George Silver except for one very vital difference; George Silver and many other European swordsmen wrote combat manuals which survive. I think the reason we believe the East had some kind of homogenous school of thought lasting thousands of years is because we don't have a written record to prove otherwise. But that doesn't mean things didn't change over time, it just means that when the process was finally put to paper, the independent schools had been absorbed.

The next important question is why do eastern fighters master a single weapon type while western fighters learn sword, dagger, buckler, etc.? Again, I think this is a misconception based on the fact that our contact with the east occurred during a relatively peaceful time in their history. For instance, significant western contact with Japan occurred just before Tokugawa Ieyasu had unified Japan. During the Edo period all these professionally trained warriors had no wars to fight. This led to a devotion towards perfecting their art rather than a practical application of arms. I think if you compared an 13th century samurai with an 18th century samurai, the 13th century warrior would have extensive knowledge of both the bow, the sword, and possibly other weapons such as the yari, hachiwara, naginata, etc.

By contrast, Europe did not have the social stratification that prevented samurai from being anything else. There was also a fairly constant level of warfare somewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages so martial skills were always innovating. And they wrote everything down so we have a record of it.

From a game design standpoint, I would not differentiate between west and east. And I apologize if the above is overly Japan-centric and massively oversimplified.

[Nikelaos]

there are definately fixed european styles, though i think alot of them tend to be meant for team work whereas asian martial arts tend to focus on the individual. Not saying warriors didn't work together but the style was perhaps just as useful 1 on 1 as in a battleground situation.

fixed martial technique was definately used by the greek phalanx and roman legionnaires, though perhaps not as excentric as eastern martial arts there was a big sense of a central style, tending to focus on keeping the guy next to you alive (phalanx for instance covered half of themselves and half of the guy to their left with their sheild, this made a wall of overlapping sheilds leaving very few weaknesses)

for more easternish 1 on 1 styles there is the schools of european dueling swords (epee, rapier...etc), modern day fencing is derived from these styles, being a keen fencer myself i know there is a solid structure, there are set ways to parry,attack and even set ways on how to move you're feet - however evolving you're own style around the basics tends to be encouraged because it makes it hard for people to guess what you'll do next and how (a big virtue in a 1 on 1 duel)

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Omniziron

Eastern martial arts seem to be tied explicitly to a single weapon or style, with a history for that style extending for hundreds and hundreds of years. I think this is why we today link the word "martial arts" to "Eastern martial arts". There is a specific style for each specific family of swords, a style for each specific polearm, and style for each specific weapon with its own name and terminology. This is something the West has never had.

I think the true reason that we only think of eastern martial arts is that most of the western martial arts have been slowly forgotten since the discovery of guns. What has survived are only the written fencing manuals but also these show hints of different styles for different weapons.

[HoneyBadger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...egional_origin

This is a pretty good starting point towards understanding the geographical diversification of martial arts. Under the European section, you'll find information about 'Stav', a Norwegian martial art based on runes, Kiridoli-an ancient Georgian martial art, Bataireacht--Irish stick-fighting, Gouren-a Franco-Brittanic martial wrestling form, and Svebor, a Serbian martial art used by knights.

[HoneyBadger]

I think one of the most important differences between eastern and western martial arts is that many of the eastern martial arts-karate, kung-fu, and aikido in particular-focussed on bare-handed techniques. Europeans encountered these forms at a time when they had assumed gunpowder was the pinnacle of fighting, and the techniques-combined with the mysticism and romanticism of the East-appeared almost superhuman.

European techniques were overshadowed because they were so often combined with more primitive technologies-swords, daggers, horses, etc. So I think gunpowder and exoticism were the keys.

[Foodstamp]

Are you really asking a question here? From your last post I can only guess the question is:

"How is learning to use a spear in an English military academy different than learning to use a spear in France?"

We would have to know a little about the teachers to answer that question I think. Or are you looking for something else, the question getting lost in your very verbose posts?

[WaltF4]

Omnirizon, what other experiences come with learning a martial art? Does the significance of these experiences depend more on why someone learns a martial art or how they learn that martial art? Are you actually concerned with stylistic differences arising from instructional differences in the use of same weapon?

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by WaltF4

Omnirizon, what other experiences come with learning a martial art? Does the significance of these experiences depend more on why someone learns a martial art or how they learn that martial art? Are you actually concerned with stylistic differences arising from instructional differences in the use of same weapon?

Walt, I'm not necessarily concerned with stylistic differences because they would be irrelevant in an RPG. I'm more concerned with the character affect impact they might have. For example what ELSE does someone learn in a military school in the English countryside? How about in a German military school? How about from a Master teaching the Yari, or the Naganita(sp?).

My idea is that no one learns the use of a weapon in a vacuum, so a simple skill point and you get "one level of spears" isn't sufficient. Rather, the pedagogy of weaponcraft has always come with other ideals and skills. What are these? I'd like something that can be reduced down to something easy to manage, maybe a few examples drawn from WEst vs. East martial pedagogy; thus my original question. I feel that the West - East difference in martial pedagogy offers the richest difference for cultivating weapon skill system ideas for a game.

[Fate]

So, here is my understanding of your question:

Different styles of fighting are taught in drastically different ways, even with similar or identical weapons. You want to represent this in a way more interesting than French spear fighters have +1 attack and English spear fighters have +1 defense or that kind of oversimplification.

I would counter that it is difficult to break this style of gameplay, especially when I don't know anything else about your game (such as whether or not you want to have stats or skills, and, if you do, what kind you would have). If you don't want a "The Punch does 8 crush damage" dynamic I am interested what you would replace it with.

You might want to look at the game "School of Sword" (an online flash game you should be able to play for free, though not without visiting obnoxious flashing sites). It is based on three areas (above, right, left) in which the player may make attacks or blocks. It is based on predicting where your opponent will strike and taking advantage of the long downtimes after every move. The important part, from my perspective, is the emphasis on the what is actually done with each move rather than abstractions (of course, you can always go farther in that direction).

If your interest is the learning itself, you might want to wonder to what extent the PLAYER learns different styles as opposed to their CHARACTER. You probably also want to consider what the basic unit of THING LEARNED (is it a style, a move, or something else?). Another part which is important, especially for many of the martial styles that come from militaries (as opposed to martial styles that came out of street fighting) is the other skills taught with equal or greater importance, such as marching and survival skills.

I hope that sheds some light. I can't give any more specific help without knowing any more about your game.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Fate

So, here is my understanding of your question:

Different styles of fighting are taught in drastically different ways, even with similar or identical weapons. You want to represent this in a way more interesting than French spear fighters have +1 attack and English spear fighters have +1 defense or that kind of oversimplification.

I would counter that it is difficult to break this style of gameplay, especially when I don't know anything else about your game (such as whether or not you want to have stats or skills, and, if you do, what kind you would have). If you don't want a "The Punch does 8 crush damage" dynamic I am interested what you would replace it with.

You might want to look at the game "School of Sword" (an online flash game you should be able to play for free, though not without visiting obnoxious flashing sites). It is based on three areas (above, right, left) in which the player may make attacks or blocks. It is based on predicting where your opponent will strike and taking advantage of the long downtimes after every move. The important part, from my perspective, is the emphasis on the what is actually done with each move rather than abstractions (of course, you can always go farther in that direction).

If your interest is the learning itself, you might want to wonder to what extent the PLAYER learns different styles as opposed to their CHARACTER. You probably also want to consider what the basic unit of THING LEARNED (is it a style, a move, or something else?). Another part which is important, especially for many of the martial styles that come from militaries (as opposed to martial styles that came out of street fighting) is the other skills taught with equal or greater importance, such as marching and survival skills.

I hope that sheds some light. I can't give any more specific help without knowing any more about your game.

This is some great info.

I was purposefully ambiguous about the game because I have no established system, just some basic scaffolding that I'm trying to get some ideas on how to work with. I have skills and stats, but I don't want classes. I've got stats somewhat mapped out, but I'm still in square one with deciding how to make skills work.


While most games have Humans as sort of the neutral, central race, mine does no such thing. Human's special ability is the exact thing we take for granted in everyday life, the ability to structure the world around us through our Mind. In fantasy, this can translate easily to the Sorcerer crafting spells that effect the world around him, but even in a more mundane way the warrior, through discipline, structures the world around herself. Knowing how to fight with a sword, how to march, how to survive in the wilderness, necessarily makes the world completely different to that Mind; this is the point of Kantian and Heideggerian metaphysics.

To give some contrast, and display how another race can operate without the ability to structure the world around them, consider another race of mine, the Machinists. They are completely textual and logical. Humans think through axioms, deductions, and presence. We can make connections in our mind which have no logical arc and which we can't prove, and yet act on them productively anyway and actually shape the world through them; this is in fact basically what science does. Imagine a race of beings which could only think through context and logic, nothing has any set meaning and truth occurs at the point of interpretation. They would be unable to proactively shape the world around them without first assimilating it textually. At that point they would be able to reassign truth to the world and manipulate it systematically. A race like this could never develop a martial art because nothing would have a meaning outside of its text; they could never envision style and form. Such a race would probably never have specialized fighting forms, and may be more like our "put a point in swords" cliche system of modeling skill. However, since they can't even envision the style of a sword, nor follow the disjunctive arcs that trace the from the goal of killing a person to using a sword to do it, they would have never developed a sword. It's questionable they could have survived at all, but through some deus ex machina the can always be placed in the game world in a survivable position.


For some basic ideas, i'm thinking that learning to use a weapon could come packaged with a few other skills, but I'd like to go beyond that. Perhaps practicing in a specific style or heritage causes a certain stat to raise at an accelerated level (although I had kind of hoped stats would remain constant). Or perhaps as the practice of the weapon goes up other skills are being raised too, depending upon which school is being practiced within at the time. Perhaps the "school" is something different from the "skills" and which school is being trained with raises those skills at some rate, but at a certain level that school becomes more difficult to advance with and the warrior may be benefited by learning from another school. Therefore, someone who wanted to be a "warrior's warrior" would train with several different schools and masters, while a character who needed a weapon for defense but wasn't a warrior could learn a few moves or even perhaps in one school without having their life dedicated to weaponcraft.

Also, I'm not averse to just giving some kind of "special ability" dependent on the specific martial art.

Given this ability to learn structural and axiomatic skills, you can see that Humans have a very distinctive advantage. They will need it given what the other races have though... However, all races will have this to some extent, I just think that we humans have just mastered it and should gain significant benefits with it.