Markdoc

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design Not good, but then in most cases gladiators were already condemned to die. If your choice was "Crucifixion? On the left, take a cross." or "Gladiator? On the right, there's a wagon to the training camp every 20 minutes", which door would you take? Still, it was not quite as bad as you might think: in many cases, a gladiator might only fight 3 or 4 bouts in a year and even if he lost, there was at least a chance he might get away with a wound, if he entertained the crowd. That said, most gladiators had a life expectancy of only a few months (That's another reason I don't really believe in "gladitorial martial arts"). The whole point after all, was death. The romans didn't just have fights to the death - they also had snuff films (well, snuff plays) in which the condemned man or woman got to play the part of someone who dies in the play. Imagine Romeo and Juliet, but with real swordfights, and at the end, a real knife and real poison. The romans were a brutal bunch of bastiches - as a saying I like goes: "How many other languages even have a specific word for "killed every tenth person?" cheers, Mark

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design

Re: Alternate Swords, cuz Katanas are overdone! That's right. The Yayoi period (c. 300 BC - AD 300 AD) is sometimes referred to as the Japanese bronze age, since bronze items start appearing then - but they seem to have been mostly imported. However the Japanese switched over to iron very rapidly during this era. The reason is probably that Japan has no natural source of tin: therefore, no bronze. They had plenty of iron, though. cheers, Mark

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design I don't think anybody is talking about knights just whaling away on each other - but the manuals you refer to (usually called fechtbüche) are from the Renaissance, which is when European martial arts started to take form. It depends on what you mean by martial arts. I don't use it to mean "fights real good" - but to mean a systematic style of teaching combat. At the time fechtbüche were regarded as something revolutionary - a new approach to teaching combat skills - which is why many historians don't think you can really talk of European martial arts before that. Of course, in real life - and in Hero system - that doesn't necessarily mean better. A fighter who spends his points on CSLs and extra STR might not be as flexible as one who buys martial arts, but he's going to be a formidable foe in combat with is favoured weapon. cheers, Mark

Re: L.A. Caveman Yep - (or to be more precise, they display a bigger range - so the larger brain cavities from Neanderthals are larger than all but extreme human examples) though there's no real connection between brain size and intelligence, which seems to have more to do with how the brain is wired (still a pretty mysterious subject). It *is* possible of course, that neanderthals were dimmer than the group that replaced them - it's just that it's impossible for us to know. In evolutionary terms, the time they co-existed with modern humans is short enough that maybe the difference was just not immediately obvious and they were pushed out when populations became high enough that they came into direct competition... Yeah, I know that now I am arguing the other side: it's just that there's so little data that we can basically believe whatever suits our prejudice. Cheers, Mark PS. My prejudice is that the question is currently unanswerable and therefore essentially unaskable.

Re: L.A. Caveman Ishi (the name just means "man" and isn't his real name) was the last of the Yahi, or "Mill Creek Indians" who used to live around Mt Lassen in Northern California. During the gold rush era and the cattlemen who followed, the Yahi were basically hunted into extinction. Or so it was thought - but a small group retreated into the mountains and survived without any contact with the rest of California until around 1910, when the last few survivors were found. Three of the four apparently died after the men who found them stole all their food and belongings, leaving Ishi, who eventually was taken to the university of California, where one of the professors learned his language and tried to teach him how to survive in the 20th century. In return, he passed on his knowledge of his tribes lore and language. We'll never know how he would have fared outside the university, though - he died of TB a few years later. Ishi's story has been made into a book, at least two movies and a Tv documentary. cheers, Mark

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design I'm in the minority in believing that there *were* relatively few western martial arts until the renaissance. There is no evidence that anything like organised teaching existed except for a few, rare examples, and we know that transmission of martial knowledge didn't occur much (if at all) in the medieval era, so there was little chance of building up a body of knowledge. I think too many western enthusiasts suffer from "martial arts envy". That doesn't mean I think western fighters were inferior - in a fight between a medieval knight and a contemporary samurai, I'd put money down on the knight in virtually any circumstances. And there were plenty of samurai who felt that martial arts training was no substitute for learning in combat. But to me at least martial arts is a system of training. SCA sword and stick is a martial art. Fencing is a martial art. Knightly combat does not seem to have been, wishful thinking notwithstanding. Knights certainly got weapons training - but it was, as far as we can tell, neither organised nor systematised - and usually not given by a knight. If you got a good, experienced weapons master he might give you some good lessons - or he might not. Either way, there wasn't a school behind him to offer a replacement or alternate approach. But anyway, that's beside the point when it comes to fantasy martial arts. I *like* martial arts and have used plenty of them in my game. There's too many, and they are too culture-specific to go into detail here, but common types are: Light sword. Basically fencing, straight out of UMA, although different schools tend to have an extra secret (for example throwing a concealed knife or similar weapon, when your opponent is distracted). Sword and shield. Basic attacks, with an emphasis on defence (ie: maneuvers that give a DCV bonus). That's mostly to differentiate it from light sword styles, rather than any real-world reason. Greatweapon styles - the exact opposite: a style emphasising hitting as hard and as fast as possible. "Special secrets" include area-affect attacks to mimic the fantasy runaway lawnmower effect. Not just for barbarians, but also for heavily armour knights who rely on their armour to protect them as they slice through opposition. Armoured grappling. Focus on takedown, hold and bind/disarm maneuvers, combined with sword/dagger use - the idea being that it's easier to make a called shot when your opponent is at reduced DCV. Unarmed combat. In general, this is restricted to either people who are not allowed to carry weapons, or people who don't *want* to be seen carrying weapons (like assassins) - the latter tend to be heavy on special maneuvers like killing attacks, eye gouges, nerve strikes, etc. Any and all of these tend to have special powers associated with their style which advanced students can learn - I've given a couple of common examples above, but again, the range is too much to go into here. I'll give a couple of examples. In one area of the campaign, I have the Warguilds. Think of a cross between medieval knightly orders like the Teutonic knights and WH40K space marine chapters: small, very mobile "pocket armies" tooled up with the best armour and weapons magic can produce - giant golem siege engines, ancient suits of armour passed on through the generations and getting ever more magical geegaws added to them as time goes on, flying mounts, etc. Almost all chapters have a martial art that fits with their philosophy of war. So "First in Battle" (whose motto is "Never retreat, never surrender") teaches an armoured greatweapon style that's highly aggressive (including area of effect attacks, letting them mow down large numbers of foes in record time), but also teaches "secret" maneuvers that let a surrounded warrior keep his foes at a distance so he can survive until his comrades reach him (similar to pushback from VA). Another warguild, which also teaches a greatweapon style, focuses instead on killing single, armoured opponents efficiently. Their style is more defensive, making use of the greatweapon's extra reach, but also teaches kicking and takedown techniques like legsweep. Among their secrets are all out defence (Forcewall, with the "must block, must be aware of attack, etc" limitations). They also teach Find Weakness to advanced pupils. This lets me differentiate different schools, even though the weapons used are the same and gives the PC who wants to be a buff martial artist reason to travel and seek out teachers from different schools. cheers, Mark

Re: L.A. Caveman Given that they lived along-side - and apparently competed with - anatomically modern humans for about 50-75,000 years, probably not very different. It's an ongoing (and probably unsolvable) argument as to whether neanderthals were replaced by being outcompeted by better adapted modern humans, or simply eradicated by a culturally more evolved subgroup of anatomically modern humans (since the same group apparently also replaced *other* anatomically modern humans elewhere). As to physical appearance, humans are diverse enough, a properly dressed neanderthal could almost certainly pass as human without eliciting more than "Wow! That's one ugly guy!" in response. cheers, Mark

Re: L.A. Caveman

Re: Alternate Swords, cuz Katanas are overdone! Leather armour yes - hardened lacquered leather for light troops stayed in fashion for a long time. But then hardened leather stayed in fashion in Europe too, for the same reason - it was relatively cheap. I know of at least one suit of bamboo armour, but it was for ceremonial use (I've also seen reference to european knightly armour made from paper maché, for the same purpose). But as far as we know samurai didn't go into battle in bamboo armour any more than French knights did in plate made of paper. The earliest japanese armour we have copies of are called tankô or "small armour" (sometimes translated "short armour"). They are simple cuirasses made of several laced metal plates and date back to the 5th or 6th century (ie: well before the samurai arose). The older Yamato era armours haven't survived, but grave carvings of them look a bit like tankô, so they are probably also metal (could be hardened leather: it's hard to say from a crude stone carving ) Hardened leather was used to make some of the fantastic crests on helmets, but the bowl of the helmet is always metal, apart from ceremonial parade helmets which are made of very light leather and paper. Bamboo was used to make shields for sieges, stakes for archers and pretty much everything else you can imagine - just not armour. cheers, Mark

Re: Alternate Swords, cuz Katanas are overdone!

Re: Alternate Swords, cuz Katanas are overdone! Ummmm. No. Plate gauntlets - even the most intricate - don't have plate on the *inside* of your hand. You couldn't hold anything if they did. You wore either a leather glove or cloth under your gauntlet. It's possible that you might have chain under cloth, but I'm not aware of any such thing actually existing. So you'd be grabbing the blade with a lightly protected hand and then "jabbing" really hard - which is as good a way of slicing your hand right open as I can imagine. Actually, if you follow the links posted the "hand on blade" technique is *not* used in those manuals. Indeed, I'm unaware of any renaissance manual that teaches such a technique, except for those for greatswords which have a ricasso. I do agree that the regular broadsword or the bastard sword remained more than just a status weapon - with practice, you can get quite precise with the point, especially since armour contains many places where the tip will naturally slide into something soft and hurty - armpits and groin being the obvious examples - simply by sliding the tip of the blade along the armour. It's why late period swords emphasise the point more and why late period armour spends so much effort trying to block those "slide lines" with knurls and flutes. The bastard sword perhaps became popular because having a second hand on the hilt (not the blade) made this easier. cheers, Mark

Re: Deities in Detail -- Brainstorming Heaven Yes. I thought it was amusing, anyway cheers, Mark

Re: And off we go! Here's another adventure update: The players split up on leaving the Hermit's place. Aquila and Gen sneak up to the top of Bald Man to survey the surrounding countryside, while the others lead the qurrocks and Silas around by the track clockwise. An interesting feature of the otherwise completely smooth dome of Bald Man was a little rain-filled depression right in the center, perfectly round, and carved with old worn symbols and concentric circles (they sketch a copy of the pattern, and learn later that this is the point where the Smiler used to tie his airship - according to local legend). From the top of the mountain they can see the city and a couple of villages - one of these has a temple on a village green, backing up against the forest - just like in Khatz' vision. Meanwhile the rest of the party journey on without incident, cheerfully ignoring the meaningful sword flashes and qurrock horn honks from the heights above them. But then they cross a river, and bobbing in the water under the bridge is something white... the body of an older woman in a shift. They examine the body but can find no sign that she was murdered. She has been in the river a day or two, but the players work out from the lack of bruising that she had in fact been dead when put there. Aquila and Gen catch up with the the rest while they are stopped. They wrap the body in a cloak and load it onto a qurrock, then carry on towards the village with the temple, and are there by nightfall. It was indeed the same temple that Khatz had seen in his vision from the Samadrian sword. A group of villagers and the senile old headman meet them. When the PCs tell them about the found body they say it couldn't be one of their people as everyone was present and accounted for. They send for the priest while the players question them about other visitors. Half a dozen travelling priests had stayed at the temple the night before and talked to the village priest (who is from Theyre, and not much trusted by the locals). The visitors paid with foreign silver sails, and the players swap one of these for a local coin. When the priest Vesos turns up Castor tries to mindread him, to which he reacts extremely badly. When the threatened riot had been calmed Vesos and his hunchbacked assistant carry the body away to the temple. There it is unwrapped - and the priest and the hunchback go white in shock. It WAS a woman from the village, but she had died three days ago and been buried! Khatz, Lamoniak and Aquila herd the villagers away to the hall to explain to them and keep them out of the way while the rest interrogate Vesos. The hunchback lays the body in the crypt - the one from Khatz' vision - then Khelsen takes him to inspect the grave, which has apparently not been disturbed. The hunchback confesses that he buried the casket but threw the body into the river. Khelsen asks him 'Why?' - upon which the hunchback hits him in the chest with his spade, and tries to flee. But he doesn't get far; Khelsen fells him and then interrogates him at swordpoint, to the priest's distress. He says that none of this is the hunchback's fault, and explains: His Samadrian visitors had wanted to talk to this woman, who had died in her sleep after a long illness the day before they arrived. Or rather, they wanted to talk to anyone who had known a former villager called Drass. What the priest and players don’t know is that in fact, they turned up the night before, slipped into her house with the intent of interrogating her quietly. The old lady, awakening to find several robed and hooded men in her house, promptly had a heart attack and died. It wasn’t until the next day that they found no-one else could tell them what they wanted to know. The only two villagers left alive who had known Drass were the senile headman and this woman Draga, Drass' sister. Having no one live and sane to question the Samadrians asked to spend an hour alone with Draga's body in the crypt - which Vesos allowed, telling the hunchback to bury her empty coffin during the family's funeral service. The Samadrians apparently did not learn what they wanted from Draga's body, as one of them looked 'kind of irritated' afterwards. Aquila is fetched back from the village hall, and Khatz and Lamoniak entertain the villagers further while the rest of the group question Vesos closely. The Samadrian priests had talked to him about philosophy and stuff, and given him a book in exchange for the time with Draga's body (Vesos, an educated priest exiled to a small rural village is pretty desperate for cultured conversation and new books). It is fetched from his room, and Bellona and Aquila ransack the room for other forbidden goods, coming up with another book written in a foreign language. This proves to be a book on philosophy from Hellenwelch, and not harmful. The gift book (written in Ostragaian) from the Samadrians is another matter. The title is 'Various Philosophies of the New Gods', and its content is deeply heretical! When the hunchback is questioned he confirms Vesos' story. He didn't bury Draga's body as the priest instructed him after the Samadrians had finished with her, because it was night and he was scared - there were strange noises out in the forest "like fingernails inside his skull". He had swung at Khelsen and fled because he was afraid of what would happen to him if the villagers found out that he had dumped the body in the stream. What Vesos tells the PCs about Drass is this: he moved to the city (Theyre) and became an artist, a stonecarver. He died rather young, and was sent back here for burial. The priest looks up in the temple register to find where his grave is - in the south corner, and the burial was paid for by his sister Draga. A couple of PCs go have a quick look at Drass' grave, and it has been recently disturbed. The hunchback confesses again - the Samadrians gave him a silver piece to borrow his shovel. He didn't dare watch what they did. One priest especially was very scary, and heavily cloaked. Vesos also heals Khelsen of the big hole his hunchbacked assistant made in his chest. After the long meeting in the village hall, Aquilla, Khatz and Lamoniak question the headman about Drass. The headman is in one of his lucid spells and he remembers Drass - he reckons he'd always said Drass would come to no good - he chased girls all the time and messed around with carving wooden things, like whistles. He can't remember if there is anything of his work left in the village. Lamoniak arranges to inspect Draga's house with the headman's daughter in the morning - Aquila checks it out immediately. A slightly run-down place, he can get in easily via the unlocked back door. The house is messy and old inside; Aquila finds no diary but he does find a packet of letters tied with a ribbon, which he pockets. Castor inspects the Samadrian's heretical gift book more closely. It speculates openly on whether the number of New Gods is fixed, or if it should perhaps be expanded! Castor confiscates it at once. In the center of the book are two pages stuck together - something that Vesos hadn't noticed, since he hadn't had time to read the book right through. Castor pries them apart with a dagger, revealing a picture of flying crows. Then the pictures begin to fly in a circle on the paper and then begin to move and fly off the page! They circle inside the temple, cawing madly, while the characters try to slash at them, and then pass insubstantially out through the glass windows. Bellona runs after them, but they vanish behind the temple. Castor is certain that this is black Shadow magic, as was used in the marketplace at Houndsgar. Khatz takes the book off to the quiet of the priest's room to try and get a vision from it. He sees a large and rich temple interior full of ornate stained glass and fancy statues, but the statue of the Smiler is missing its head! The next thing is the rest hear a bang and a yell, and Khatz comes running out saying that the book exploded into smoke in his hands. But he does remember the pattern of the stained glass and sketches it, and the priests recognise this as being from a temple of the Sage. Next they examine the letters that Aquila has acquired. They are from Drass to his sister Draga, short and simple. They cover a period of some years with long gaps between them and the first two or three were clearly written by a scribe. He says that he has found work in a temple at Theyre as a stonecutter and that his prospects are good. By the third letter he has been promoted to sculptor; the High Priest likes his work, and he does small statues and the like. In his last two letters he is a journeyman and has been commissioned to do 'special artwork' by a merchant. He has met a girl and is hoping his last commission will let him ask her father for her hand. The last thing they examine is the crypt. The wall behind the stone laying-out table has a round stone set into it, and it sounds hollow when knocked. Aquila and all the rest try hard to make it do something, but can't find a mechanism. The priest noticed it a long time ago, and thinks that the temple's founder might be buried in there. They then get some rest, hoping to make an early start in the morning. Fortunately they set watches, for in the night Khatz and Gen hear a glutinous scratching at the back of the temple. Before they can investigate, a booming knocking comes from outside the crypt door. The guards wake everybody then run outside to investigate - and are met by the sight of a horde of decomposing animated corpses in the graveyard trying to beat their way into the crypt. The crypt doors crash violently open, and five of the corpses lurch down into the crypt to meet Bellona, Aquilla, Khelsen and Castor, while five turn and attack Khatz and Gen, who have been joined by Lamoniak, in the graveyard. The PCs are stunned by horror at the sight and stench, and for a while the corpses get the better of them in the ensuing battle. Especially since their bodies continue animated even after their heads are cut off, and hands still clutch and limbs still thrash when severed from the trunk.... Alas, the PCs neglected to secure the back door of the temple to the priest's quarters, and four of them get in by that way and fall upon the priest, who is sitting in bed, wonder5ing what the hell is going on. On hearing his screams Khelsen and Castor race upstairs to save him, Castor attacking the corpses with his “searing hands” spell so that the stench of singed decaying flesh fills the night... We ended there for the night cheers, Mark

Re: Movement in a Jetliner! Actually one of the incarnations of ... damn, I forget his name ... the guy in the flagsuit from alpha flight ... could do this: superspeed flight by "rendering himself at rest with regard to the earth's motion".* I thought WTF? when I first read it - wouldn't that mean he'd go shooting off at a tangent into outer space? And since his face is exposed and he's not Batman, I assume he can't survive in outer space. Actually as far as I recall, he only ever used that power once so maybe it had negative consequences cheers, Mark *What does it mean that I can remember a line of dialog from a comic I read 20+ years ago, but not the name of one of the main characters? My conclusion is that that he was obviously the most boring character...

Re: Build me a voodoo doll

Re: Build me a voodoo doll Also agreed - if you were determined to avoid megascale you could do it like this - it'd cost you a bit less than 20 points more, but you could certainly do it. Since I have nothing in particular against megascale, I wouldn't bother. In either case, this is essentially a plot device power: the only way to avoid it is to have an appropriate suppress/dispel or have the coreect defence vs the NND (in my case, it was being inside a protective ward, like a pentagram or holy sanctuary).

Re: Hmmm...okay, how about a Bosnian Pyramid?

Re: Build me a voodoo doll

Re: Build me a voodoo doll A better approach than handwaving (and the one I have used myself in games) is to make the attacks area-effect megascaled: big enough to cover the planet, and then add in the limitation - only affects target whose material is contained within doll (-1/2). The limitation is not higher because in some way this could be seen as an advantage. Then all you need to do is hit the hex you are standing in with your attack roll. Even a palsied old wizard should be able to do that. cheers, Mark

Re: Alternate Swords, cuz Katanas are overdone! That's actually a pretty good idea - there were lots of these. A couple of weeks ago, my frend John came to Europe for a visit (well, also to get married) and we spent a "boy's week" prior to the wedding. One of the places we went is the national museum here which has a whole display of "combiweapons" from the renaissance. My particular favourite is the beautifully inlaid battleaxe/double flintlock pistol, which actually looks reasonably functional, but there's cane swords, virtually every combination of blade and pistol (including a matchlock/halberd) and some wacky guns (6-barrelled matchlock pistol, anyone?) Trouble is, if you used something like this in a movie, 90% of the audience would assume you made it up and laugh cheers, Mark

Re: Alternate Swords, cuz Katanas are overdone!