OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Fate

So, here is my understanding of your question:

Different styles of fighting are taught in drastically different ways, even with similar or identical weapons. You want to represent this in a way more interesting than French spear fighters have +1 attack and English spear fighters have +1 defense or that kind of oversimplification.

I would counter that it is difficult to break this style of gameplay, especially when I don't know anything else about your game (such as whether or not you want to have stats or skills, and, if you do, what kind you would have). If you don't want a "The Punch does 8 crush damage" dynamic I am interested what you would replace it with.

You might want to look at the game "School of Sword" (an online flash game you should be able to play for free, though not without visiting obnoxious flashing sites). It is based on three areas (above, right, left) in which the player may make attacks or blocks. It is based on predicting where your opponent will strike and taking advantage of the long downtimes after every move. The important part, from my perspective, is the emphasis on the what is actually done with each move rather than abstractions (of course, you can always go farther in that direction).

If your interest is the learning itself, you might want to wonder to what extent the PLAYER learns different styles as opposed to their CHARACTER. You probably also want to consider what the basic unit of THING LEARNED (is it a style, a move, or something else?). Another part which is important, especially for many of the martial styles that come from militaries (as opposed to martial styles that came out of street fighting) is the other skills taught with equal or greater importance, such as marching and survival skills.

I hope that sheds some light. I can't give any more specific help without knowing any more about your game.

This is some great info.

I was purposefully ambiguous about the game because I have no established system, just some basic scaffolding that I'm trying to get some ideas on how to work with. I have skills and stats, but I don't want classes. I've got stats somewhat mapped out, but I'm still in square one with deciding how to make skills work.


While most games have Humans as sort of the neutral, central race, mine does no such thing. Human's special ability is the exact thing we take for granted in everyday life, the ability to structure the world around us through our Mind. In fantasy, this can translate easily to the Sorcerer crafting spells that effect the world around him, but even in a more mundane way the warrior, through discipline, structures the world around herself. Knowing how to fight with a sword, how to march, how to survive in the wilderness, necessarily makes the world completely different to that Mind; this is the point of Kantian and Heideggerian metaphysics.

To give some contrast, and display how another race can operate without the ability to structure the world around them, consider another race of mine, the Machinists. They are completely textual and logical. Humans think through axioms, deductions, and presence. We can make connections in our mind which have no logical arc and which we can't prove, and yet act on them productively anyway and actually shape the world through them; this is in fact basically what science does. Imagine a race of beings which could only think through context and logic, nothing has any set meaning and truth occurs at the point of interpretation. They would be unable to proactively shape the world around them without first assimilating it textually. At that point they would be able to reassign truth to the world and manipulate it systematically. A race like this could never develop a martial art because nothing would have a meaning outside of its text; they could never envision style and form. Such a race would probably never have specialized fighting forms, and may be more like our "put a point in swords" cliche system of modeling skill. However, since they can't even envision the style of a sword, nor follow the disjunctive arcs that trace the from the goal of killing a person to using a sword to do it, they would have never developed a sword. It's questionable they could have survived at all, but through some deus ex machina the can always be placed in the game world in a survivable position.


For some basic ideas, i'm thinking that learning to use a weapon could come packaged with a few other skills, but I'd like to go beyond that. Perhaps practicing in a specific style or heritage causes a certain stat to raise at an accelerated level (although I had kind of hoped stats would remain constant). Or perhaps as the practice of the weapon goes up other skills are being raised too, depending upon which school is being practiced within at the time. Perhaps the "school" is something different from the "skills" and which school is being trained with raises those skills at some rate, but at a certain level that school becomes more difficult to advance with and the warrior may be benefited by learning from another school. Therefore, someone who wanted to be a "warrior's warrior" would train with several different schools and masters, while a character who needed a weapon for defense but wasn't a warrior could learn a few moves or even perhaps in one school without having their life dedicated to weaponcraft.

Also, I'm not averse to just giving some kind of "special ability" dependent on the specific martial art.

Given this ability to learn structural and axiomatic skills, you can see that Humans have a very distinctive advantage. They will need it given what the other races have though... However, all races will have this to some extent, I just think that we humans have just mastered it and should gain significant benefits with it.

[JimMorrison]

Honestly, it seems like there are 2 problems, as far as giving directly helpful advice -

First, if you really want it realistic, then you will have to research the individual martial arts themselves, and then through anecdotal recordings of students of different philosophies, assign "personalities" to each art, and assign effects accordingly. However, I don't think anyone would fault you for just kind of making it up yourself, as long as you try to apply at least a superficial logic, ie- students of Tai Chi have enhanced Balance, and ability to Meditate. What does that mean though? That's the other problem.

And that is, it sounds like you want a non-traditional character design, which is definitely cool. But while cool, it means it's hard to just jump in and offer something well thought out, and hope that it applies to how you envisioned your system. It could be fun to assign factors like "Balance", that as they increase, give stealth bonuses to certain things such as Dodge, or a resistance to being knocked down. But do you want that info transparent, or hidden? We just don't know these things. I do agree with the different moves concept though. Perhaps one school of spear would get a critical strike bonus because they focus on powerful thrusts, while another school is more attentive to footwork, giving you enhanced mobility between strikes.

[Gregstrom]

As far as secondary skills go, I guess I have a few ideas.

In some schools of Eastern martial arts, I understand calligraphy and possibly poetry were considered as important as weapon skills. They would surely be part of any training that was undergone. Maybe religious knowledge, literacy, meditation?

Cromwell's soldiers might well have known some basics of leatherworking - enough to make leather bottles and the like - and how to make fuse cord, as well as a degree of animal husbandry and other general military skills.

A student at a German school of fencing might also be learning heraldry, court manners and dance. If the school had a military bent, maybe he'd learn maths, a foreign language or two, logistics, military strategy and the basics of codes and ciphers. Probably a bunch of other things too.

It's hard to talk in depth about the eastern martial arts, because I don't know that much about them. In the case of the formal schools, they seem to have been pretty much a student's whole life while they were in training so it seems reasonable to assume that a wide range of life skills would have been taught.

In a fantasy RPG with noticeable amounts of magic, it's probably a safe bet that any training above that of basic line infantry would cover some details of magical theory and possibly even practise.

[atul]

Can't say too much about the medieval stuff, but as far as the modern martial art sports go, I've practiced stuff from both east and west (kendo and fencing mostly, along with little boxing and capoeira). Anyway, the basics in all are the same, i.e. hit the other guy but don't get hit yourself. The major difference in my experience has been the way things are expressed.

At least the kendo practice had an emphasis on the group, most of the things were done as a part of a group and everyone knew their part/standing in the practice, whereas fencers appear really invidiualistic in comparison. There are teacher and students, but the tradition appears less rigid.

Apart from culture I really don't see much difference. The ideas are expressed in a more "spiritual" way in east, whereas the west favours mechanical expression. An example here is "kiai" versus "priority". In kendo, in order to score a hit, you must have proper posture, spirit and determination. In fencing, the priority one gets or loses is determined mechanically, but basically the end result is the same - attacker is the one doing the hurting, not the other guy.

In game terms, depends totally on your system.

[Endoperez]

I'm studying 3d-graphics for games, and I've given some thought to similar things. As I said earlier, it's a good question.

Here are some simple ways that can be used to differentiate martial arts from each other in RPG-type games with a strong main character. Some of these are inspired by ADOM, a roguelike game.


Mechanical differences in learning:

- Some skills are faster to learn than others.
- Visiting a techer may give you instant bonus, or you might get knowledge that only becomes useful after, say, 150 weapon hits, at which point you "understand" the teaching. This would be a nice way to incorporate kata-style practice in-game.
- Also, it may be easier to find teachers for some styles than others. If there's a school, you just have to be accepted, which may just be a matter of paying a fee. Being taught by an old master, whether he's a knight or a sage, may require you to run errands and do quests for him, perhaps before every lesson.
- Some part of the skill should be keyed to time. Increasing the level when a weapon skill has been used long enough often works well. What counts as a use could vary between martial arts. Another, much-used option is limiting the skills to your character's level: you only get so many points per level, and must divide them between the martial art skills. In the latter case, if there are lots of different martial arts styles, weapon skills and other skills should have separate points so that people wanting to play fighters will have skills other than fighting as well.


Mechanical differences in use, or more options to fight with:
- Skill bonuses to other skills. Teachers teach you what they know, and it's never just the martial art. Conversely, the associated skills could give minor bonuses to martial skill, and choosing martial arts with similar secondary themes could be interesting character design decision.
- You need both martial art skill and other skills to get the benefit. Say, knowing basics of Tai Chi doesn't do anything before you get level 3 Balance and level 3 Intuition, but at that point you get some special stance or something.
- Some skills give substantial benefits at lower levels, while others give better bonuses once you've trained them for a while. These can be bonuses to speed, accuracy, damage, defence, perhaps stats/armor/hp at high levels.
- Some skills give better benefits than others. Whips don't make efficient melee weapons, so they need that kind of incentive, and it's nice to get some benefit from being a Little John with a staff instead of a spear.
- Different tactics or stances with mechanical differences. Learning western fencing might give you a stance that alternates between defense bonus and fast, far-reaching lunge attacks. Learning Bagua might give you mobility bonus in your basic defensive-balanced-aggressive stances.
- Different magical effects tied to a martial art. Avatar cartoon is the best implementation I've seen of incorporating martial arts with clearly supernatural. Unfortunately, most of the fan-videos are crap, or only show the fancy big moves.


Different dialogue options that you only get if you are familiar with a certain philosophy or martial art. This could be fun! Examples:

* Here's the money! Just don't kill the girl!
* What do I care! Just kill her!
* [bluff] What do I care! Just kill her!
* [preacher] Kill her and your soul will be damned forever! (15% chance of Charm Person)
* [robinhood/swashbuckler] I don't think so! (55% chance to disarm)
* [robinhood/swashbuckler] Touch a hair on her head and I'll nail your ear to the wall! (75% chance of intimidation)
* [iaido] My sword is sheated! I'll bring you the money. (55% chance of surprise attack)

[Tifone]

Yeah, agreed on Avatar, they've got really nice stuff, IIRC they have a Sifu as martial arts expert for the moves, you can recognize easily many moves and stances of Kung Fu Hung Gar and Tai Chi katas, and the implementation of the elemental powers is very creative and unobvious

[Foodstamp]

I think a lot of the spiritual / artistic part of martial arts is exaggerated in popular culture.

That being said, I have come to one near spiritual conclusion concerning Jiu Jitsu...

The more patience I have and the more I focus on relaxing, the better chance I have of winning. Since I have come to that conclusion the effort I do exert is spent almost exclusively on getting safe and dominate positions. If my opponent is spending a lot of effort trying to out power me or perform submissions early without position, I know I am going to win.

When I first started grappling I could get gassed after a minute or two of rolling. Now I feel like I can go forever if I focus more on relaxing, going for position and tricking my opponent to shift their body weight a certain way by making them believe I want it to go the other.

I am not sure how that can be translated in dominions as an advantage of a grappling art, but unfortunately I don't study a striking or weapon art so that is all I have to offer. I hope that helps a little towards your comparison between martial arts.

[HoneyBadger]

As far as representing martial arts in a game-if the game we're talking about is Dom3, for example, you might consider that applying a specific martial art to a "basic unit" might give, for example: an additional fist attack (boxing, or striking martial arts), defensive points (aikido), protection (iron shirt), kick (kickboxing, savate, tae kwon do), movement (monkey style kung fu, capoera), claw attack (tiger style kung fu), extra hitpoints (drunken boxing), size (sumo), magic resistance (tai chi, dragon style kung fu), attack (dueling/fencing), stealth (ninjitsu), strength (pankration, Indian wrestling) or spiked armour (grappling forms).

Ofcourse, these are broad generalizations, but they would debatably relate, in some way, to those in-game abilities.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

I think a lot of the spiritual / artistic part of martial arts is exaggerated in popular culture.

I've just done a light skim of research, and I think I have to agree (certainly for samurai).

I'd guess that actual warrior monks (there must have been some, somewhere) would have at least learnt the spiritual stuff in parallel with the 'punching people so hard their eyeballs squirt our of their ears' stuff.

[Foodstamp]

Yeah I think a lot of the exaggeration started before WW2 when the Japanese were trying to instill national pride in their people. At least in the case of samurai.

That being said, maybe the people that hold Euro arts to the same level as Asian arts are not being ethnocentric and may be pretty close to the truth.

One thing is for certain though. With any martial art your getting a lot more out of it than learning to fight. And there is some good in every art.