Martial Arts styles based on historic fighting manuals

[Cheomesh]

A lot of what's in manuals are simply covered by attack rolls and parry rolls.

M.

[Anders]

What style did they use in Surf Ninjas?

[RobKamm]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

(so "Longsword fighting" represents German longsword in general, not the version in one manuscript;

Worse than that. I don't remember everyone who had their hand in that one, but I know that I made some suggestions and I primarily study Fiore, an Italian. I've seen some of the German material (and I consider myself lucky to be able to count Christian Tobler as a friend) but I can't say that it had much influence on my comments or contributions to the book.

My take, for what it's worth, is that each historical master started with some common material and the focused on whatever worked best for them (you can see that kind of development in what successive manuscripts incorporate). We know, for example, that the manuals included a large number of different techniques, but we have little idea which of those techniques each master favored. With Fiore we theorize that at least some of the surviving manuals were produced by students from a common source. Their individual foci and interests can be seen in the differences between the books.

[Dangerious P. Cats]

Originally Posted by Cheomesh

A lot of what's in manuals are simply covered by attack rolls and parry rolls.

M.

True that. I find on the whole the styles in GURPS martial arts tend to have a great deal more represented than would be in any real world system. The Longsword fighting for example seems to cover everything from every longsword manual from all of early modern and medieval Europe, rather than just say, the English or Italian school.

Originally Posted by aesir23

Well, frankly, I just use the Hutton Saber style that you wrote! Is something wrong with it? Generally you're my go to forumite when it comes to historical European styles.

Well it's not in te core martial arts book ;). I've been playing with the Highland broadsword writeup for a while now (I think there are a few different ones on the forum) and I wouldn't mind you gave me some feedback on how you find it in play and how it's being recieved.

My point is more that there are few styles based on historical manuscripts in GURPS martial arts and most of the historical styles contained within are more indicative what modern re-enactors do by taking sources from a wide range of periods and languages (fencing methods seem to have been devided up by language backgrounds, presumably as sword systems were the product of exchanging ideas which you need to speak to others to do) and squishes them together into a super style containing all the techniques possible (I take issues with doing this much of the time but that's a topic for another thread). I was kind of curios if anyone writing for historical campaigns had decided to go into more detail and write up styles accurate to those periods and the background of the campaign. As much as this probably does constitute going into excessive detail I feel that excessive detail is in large part the joy of GURPS (I think I've written three new styles for a Swashbucklers campaign I'm doing, in spite of there being only one combat orientated character). I would reject that all or most means of using the same weapon are the same in GURPS terms, there would be a noted difference in the shortsword of George Silver, regimental highland broadsword and Italian single sword for example, as there would between say English and German longsword. Assuming I remember I'll demonstrate this with style write ups when I get back to my GURPS books.