OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[K]

Just to drop a line here:

The only difference between martial arts is the situations where they are designed to be good.

For example, kendo takes place in open ground along two axis and so is straight up superior to rapier fencing in an open field or something.

By contrast, rapier fencing was designed so that people could fight duels in alleys on one axis and it is flat out superior to kendo fencing in that situation.

My opinion for why Eastern arts are exoticized is because in the East orders of fighting monks and nobles trained from the age of 6. By the time they were adult they had enough skill that horribly inefficient but nice looking moves were possible with a young adult body and decades of training. Think gymnastics for a Western comparison.

The West never developed the same kinds of arts because of the simple "gun/bow > fists/sword". Heck, the history of the crossbow is fascinating because it was outlawed for hundreds of years because peasants could learn it with little or no training and kill armored knights.

So in a RPG, every martial art should have a situation bonus. Pirate Cutlass fighting should be better on ships and english military academy fighting should be better in closed circles and eastern wakizashi fighting should be better in house-to-house fighting.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by K

My opinion for why Eastern arts are exoticized is because in the East orders of fighting monks and nobles trained from the age of 6. By the time they were adult they had enough skill that horribly inefficient but nice looking moves were possible with a young adult body and decades of training. Think gymnastics for a Western comparison.

The West never developed the same kinds of arts because of the simple "gun/bow > fists/sword". Heck, the history of the crossbow is fascinating because it was outlawed for hundreds of years because peasants could learn it with little or no training and kill armored knights.

The eastern martial arts weren't and aren't "horribly inefficient with nice looking moves". I can only speak for tai chi, because it's the only one I've tried myself, and it can be brutally effective, if the practitioner is taught to use it that way. In the week I had to learn it, I spent about as much time learning applications as I did learning the form.

In the west we had knights who were trained from childhood not only to fight, but to improve and keep up an impressive physical ability. Among other things, they practiced getting on and off a horse. Speaking of gymnastics...

And finally, even if the papal ban was made, it didn't get enforced, and it certainly didn't last for hundreds of years.


I agree with your post otherwise: different martial arts mostly differ in the time and place they were developed. Styles' effectiveness should be situational. Unless it's hard to implement, in which case gameplay triumphs over theoretical realism.