From: thornley@milli.cs.umn.edu (David H. Thornley)
Subject: Re: GURPS: Combat Skills Reduction
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 05:54:01 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.194127.21708@news.columbia.edu> jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) writes:
>urban@stout.atd.ucar.edu (Art Urban (PROFS)) writes:
>>	Swordsman: All varieties of swords are now treated as a simple
>>	   familiarity. Perhaps this skill would need to made Physical Hard.
>
>	Actually, I was thinking along less extreme lines. There are many 
>skills which represent different techniques using very similar weapons. 
>Fencing/Katana/Broadsword, Main-Gauche/Knife, Boxing/Brawling/Karate, etc. 
>I was thinking of representing these by using extensions of the GURPS 
>Martial Arts rules. People train in fighting *styles* more than in individual 
>weapons: fencing, sword-and-shield, boxing, etc. 

One problem is that weapons restrict style.  There are many styles of unarmed
combat, and you can use whichever one you please regardless of your
armament, and so unarmed combat styles have to be considered as styles.
On the other hand, there are not many styles in which to use sword and
shield, and most of these are clearly suboptimum, and these styles are
somewhat different from spear and shield, mace and shield, and single
sword, so there is much more blurring of the difference between weapon
and style.

>	The styles are represented by primary and secondary skills, skill 
>enhancers (see below), and maneuvers. 
>
>	Skill Enhancers are things like Off-Hand Weapon Training in Martial 
>Arts. They represent techniques of the style to be more effective in 
>specialized ways (bought once per Style). Some things which I was thinking 
>of representing as Skill Enhancers would be: 
>
>[deleted]
>
>	I think this makes for a much more open and flexible system. I was 
>rather annoyed when I first read the rules to find that a style specific 
>to a limited period on Earth (Fencing) was continually noted as a special 
>case to the combat system. In this way, Fencing would be described like a 
>style, like this: 
>
>FENCING
>
>Primary Skills: Broadsword
>Secondary Skills: Buckler, Cloak, Knife
>Skill Enhancers: Enhanced Parry, Hit Location, Off-hand Parry
>Maneuvers: Disarm, Feint, Lock Blades
>
Uh, you can't fence with a broadsword.  If you require further convincing,
try it with a baseball bat (about the right length and weight).  Fencing
is done with rapier, saber, and smallsword according to GURPS.  You could
add these as weapon skills, but right now they're covered by Fencing.

This is not necessarily a bad idea.  Fencing is in GURPS for approximately
the same reasons Judo and Karate are - to provide a game mechanic, however
sketchy, to handle certain styles of fighting.  There was a lot of variation
in technique over the centuries and countries, and there are other similar
fighting styles that are not well represented here.

I think something similar to Martial Arts might be useful here.  Hero
treats Fencing and Karate similarly, as Martial Arts styles, and Ninja
Hero describes various armed and unarmed weapons styles, and gives rules
for designing your own (one local GM just designed a scimitar style for
his Arabian Nights campaign), so there's no reason to think a similar
approach wouldn't work for GURPS.

DHT

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc