There is only Lite

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by Gollum

I fully do agree with that analysis!

To take another example, bo, saï, tonkwa and nunchaku are very different weapons and don't seem to have anything in common. Some are one handed, some others are two handed, some are rigid, some are articulated...

But they still all belong to the same training, the okinawaïan kobudo, and actually have a lot of things in common. The attacks with all of them are the same: shomen (vertical), naname (diagonal aiming at the neck), yoko (horizontal), gedan (diagonal aiming at the knee) or tsuki (thrusting attack with their tip)... The main principles are also the same: keeping the weapon as close from your body as possible to avoid opening your guard, letting your body follow their move, amplifying their speed and strength with hip move rather than with arm strength or shoulder move... And The stances and foot move are also the same: sanchin dachi, zenkutsu dachi, shikodachi, nekoachi dachi...

Brief these weapon skills are very different but also very similar at the same time. So much that the main goal of kobudo training is to master enough different weapons to be able to fight with any possible object: umbrella, walking stick, pencil, rake... but also axe, hammer, swords...

Thus, to be truly realistic, every weapon skill would have to be a different skill but each one of them would also have to give a bonus to learn the others. And more weapon the character would master, more easy it would be for him to learn a new one...

And which is right for weapons is also right for every other skill. Those who already know several languages find easy to learn a new one, those who already know how to pilot or drive several vehicles can more easily understand how to handle a new one... And so on...

The only problem is that it is very complicated to do that in a roleplaying game. In roleplaying games, either there are very broad skills, in which case we fall in the trap of necessarily larger than life heroes who master too many different things with only one skill, or there are more tiny skills with no link between each of them.

You may want to take a look (if you haven't already) at a thread I started about using Talents to simulate overall training in a martial arts style. The idea was to come up with a simple way to represent the synergy in learning skills in a given martial art, though the logic could be applied more broadly.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Infornific

You may want to take a look (if you haven't already) at a thread I started about using Talents to simulate overall training in a martial arts style. The idea was to come up with a simple way to represent the synergy in learning skills in a given martial art, though the logic could be applied more broadly.

Using talents sounds to be a very good idea, indeed. Thanks for it. Can we have a link to that thread, please?

[dataweaver]

Talents and Martial Arts is what I think it’s called.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Talents and Martial Arts is what I think it’s called.

Thank you very much.