Quote:
Originally Posted by 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?
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Well I tried to ask (paraphrased):
"What is difference between learning a Eurpean martial art in a military school and learning an Asian martial art from a Master in a Dojo?"
in this question I suggested that there must be SOME difference because Eastern styles have strong consistent terminology whereas Western styles do not and instead are typically associated with a certain military school.
However, in response I got mostly pounced on by people exclaiming that European martial arts were just as highly developed (in fact probably more so!) than those in Asia, but that the Europeans were more fluid and quickly absorbed new styles and techniques into an overarching style and blah blah blah blah Europeans do EVERYTHING better than Asians blah blah blah is why we don't have such a rich heritage of specific martial arts in Europe blah blah blah.
So to avoid running into what is an obvious but subtle sore point in the Western mindset, I attempted to repose the question. Instead of saying "learning spear in military school" vs "practicing sojutsu", I said "learning spear in english military school" vs. "learning spear as an art for sake of learning to use the spear with the ideal that it may lead to higher levels of self actualization, and doing it in Europe, perhaps in France." Of course this sounds absurd, and the reason why illustrates the reasoning for my original question. But people seemed unhappy/unwilling to indulge a question in this form, and instead wanted to offer up examples of how the West had their own in depth martial arts. So when I tried to appropriate this in a way that would pose "military school" against the colloquial "martial art" without involving the East, it sounds pretty stupid; however that's basically the logical conclusion of what people were suggesting to me.
If you're willing to accept a non-essentialized difference between the East and West, and offer up ways in which the Eastern pedagogy of martial arts is different from Western pedagogy of martial arts, then please share with me. I'm looking for ways to model it in a game system. It could be anything... I'm NOT saying one is better than the other, I don't believe they are. I just don't believe the "put a skill point in swords and you learn swords" is a good model; easy, but not good. Learning a weapon comes with a lot of other ideals attached. I'm not afraid to be creative here, what is mundane to us could be good fodder for special abilities in a game world, and might even better model for the mundane than a simple skill point.