Neil,I agree about the cultural influence on TFT's HTH system. When most people think of martial arts and swordman, the usually think of chinese and japanese arts. Yea, they might think of the Three Musketeers but that doesn't really count. A relative of mine who immersed himself in eastern martial arts recently confessed that the western swordsman were probably pretty good. How many know anything about swiss bucklermen? A person more involved in modern self-defense championed the western swordsman when he said that in the use of the sword was developed as an art, in the West, it was developed as a science.
I have often wanted to reengineer the TFT HTH system to allow expressions of the different styles of martial arts: boxing, okinawan karate, souther chinese boxing, northern kung fu, tae kwon do, pankration, eskrima, etc.... I quickly realized how impossible this would be. On the one hand, anyone and everyone would want their system represented. The nuances between the styles couldn't be adequately represented. Most of all, it's not necessary. These differences can be part of the story.
I like the TFT level of abstraction but the differences in grades/levels could be done differently. The type of martial art available would be restricted by geography or the DM's story. Generally, there would be schools that focus on striking and schools that focus on grappling. There could also be schools that focus on both where the martial artist trains in both but moves more slowly in each discipline. There should be a distinction between untrained, trained, master and grandmaster level of skills in anyone school and maybe some "special" skills restricted by school. The actually differences in the systems, how they appear in play, like between any one striking school (punches, kicks, whatever) and another wouldn't really matter and would be part of the particular culture. The effect of the skills for the levels would be standardized. Ah, I'm ranting and digressing.
Oh, while I'm at it, I do miss an eskrima/arnis/kali style art in the game. Techincally, when not using a blade, the eskrimador just uses clubs. How could you represent this aspect of eskrima without reducing the weapon to a "mere" club? Would you just use a club as a weaopn but allow the application of fencing talent for damage? That would be the easiest way, wouldn't it?
May it be blessed, Aidan----- Original Message ----- From: <raito@raito.com>
To: <tft@brainiac.com> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 6:08 PM Subject: RE: (TFT) Word Value
Quoting David Michael Grouchy II <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>:represented and almost overpowered in spite of how European imperialistsviewed the Native cultures that they come from. And Unarmed combat really is a way of life if one wants to pursue it and not something fully realized bystudy on the weekends.I'm somewhat of the opinion that Unarmed Combat in TFT suffers from theAmerican cultural mindset of the 70's. More recent study seems to show that any reasonably complete system medieval system of fighting (western or eastern)includes both weapons and unarmed combat. Heck, Fiore begins with unarmedcombat and then moves to weapons, in very much the same way tat the Filipinoarts do. His opinion was that as soon as you're close enough to touch the opponent with you're hand, it's no longer a sword fight, it's a wrestling match. Of course, his ides of wrestling usually involved broken limbs.And any serious system of combat requires more than cursory practice, whether isuses a weapon or not, or both. Neil Gilmore riato@raito.com ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"
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