Medieval re-enactment as martial arts styles

[Dangerious P. Cats]

I'm working on a campaign where the players are historical reenactors going to various events and doing reenactors things (the campaign will be a bit tung in cheek). For the campaign I was thinking about starting up various forms of medieval re-enactment combat as martial arts styles and thought I should ask the forum hivemind for suggestions. I figure that historical fencing (or HEMA, or WMA, or whatever) could be easily represented by the actual historical styles but I am wondering how to go about representing SCA combat, Battle of the Nations fighting and metal weapons combat as martial arts styles. Any thoughts?

[Anthony]

Mostly as combat art or sport. I wouldn't worry overly much about maneuvers.

[Joseph Paul]

Dangerious - you need to remember they all have rules.

Anthony - What are you calling 'maneuvers'?

[Dangerious P. Cats]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Dangerious - you need to remember they all have rules.

Would you kindly elaborate? I'm not sure I follow you.

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

Would you kindly elaborate? I'm not sure I follow you.

"If a fight has rules it is not a fight' -Some Wit

Everyone of the re-enactment organizations have rules to check the possibility of actually killing some one.

Some armor the person.

All of them rebate the weapons. I don't know of any that are playing with sharps in front of an audience.

Some restrict the target zones.

Some restrict the power.

Almost none of them allow you to throw an opponent to the ground in such a way that injury is highly likely.

It is Art or Sport with sometimes intricate details. Switching between rules sets can be a problem - get hopped up and allow reflex to take over and you have got a ****** off opponent at the least and a hospital run at the (hopefully) worst.

[Joseph Paul]

Techniques and Perks like Shield Wall, Grip Mastery, Form Mastery, Counterattack, Feints, Hook, Low Fighting, Reverse Grip, Dual Weapon Attack, Cross Parry, Bind Weapon, Combinations, Reach Mastery? Seen all of those. Do most of them as do most of the people I have fought in the last 15 years. At least one group has ~8--10,000 people involved in the martial aspects and has dozens of tourneys every weekend across the US every year. The critical mass is there, there is a wide range of skill with a good corp of highly skilled people and some of those are going on to explore other methods in the WMA and BotN movements.

[Prince Charon]

Didn't see it mentioned earlier, so I feel I should point out that RevPK has a houserule that can apply, here, GM-permitting.

Houserule 14:

Combat, Combat Art, and Combat Sport Skills Are Techniques.

When you learn a Combat skill, Combat Art skill, or Combat Sport skill (see p. B184 for details), you may buy up the other two versions as an Average technique defaulting to your skill-3. For example, if you know Karate Art at DX+2, you know Karate at DX-1 and can buy it up to DX+2 level for 3 points.

This change is due to equal parts game-balance and realism. As the rules are written now, if you know (e.g.) Broadsword at DX+4, it costs 12 points to buy just your Broadsword Art up to the same level. That's a game balance issue because you're wasting points -- not just due to the lack of utility, but because you'd be nuts not to just spend the 12 points on Broadsword (raising Broadsword Art and Sport by +3, from default, simultaneously). While that issue comes up with other defaults, it's especially bad here, as many martial arts styles require you to, e.g., learn both Judo and Judo Art. And it's a realism issue, because fighters and athletes do transition between (e.g.) tournaments and MMA fighting without spending a full year training non-stop to adapt. A technique is a fair compromise; at 3 points per skill, it costs 6 points to raise all three variants to the same level -- exactly half of the 12 points mentioned above.

I tend to allow PK's houserules, or some versions of them, as a matter of course, but especially if I were running a campaigne about SCA members getting dumped into Yrth, or another such setting (or otherwise having a high probability of needing to fight with TL3-or-so weapons fairly often, in order to survive), I would point my players at that rule specifically, so they know they're not so screwed as they otherwise would be.

They would still lack training in specific manoeuvers, strikes, and techniques that would be against the rules - which is why any GM doing this should study the rules that re-enactor group uses, or the rules they used to use, as some groups have changed them a few times (e.g. the SCA changed the Fencing rules in ways that my instructor considered terrible, a few years ago), in order to work out what the style should look like.

If anyone who is better than I am at writing up MA styles for GURPS should want to, this is a good place to post them. There may be some re-enactor groups who do Dueling Shields, so you could find my thread on them useful.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I tend to allow PK's houserules, or some versions of them, as a matter of course, but especially if I were running a campaigne about SCA members getting dumped into Yrth, or another such setting (or otherwise having a high probability of needing to fight with TL3-or-so weapons fairly often, in order to survive), I would point my players at that rule specifically, so they know they're not so screwed as they otherwise would be.

I've taken to calling Art/Sport forms unique techniques defaulting to Combat skill - 0 with no upper limit. That is your first 2 points should go into a combat skill, so everybody with a sport form has some minimal combat effectiveness, and the rest go into the art, allowing you to buy it up pretty high cheaply, with no additional combat improvements.

This seems fairly reasonable - you do learn the basic moves and a little of what's dangerous with an art form - it's the stuff the safety rules tell you not to do - but the practice you put in to safe moves is fairly useless in a real fight. Of course for full contact sport, I might suggest alternating your points between the Sport technique and the actual combat skill, and anybody with a serious hobby involving real exercise should consider spending some of the points to buy up DX or ST, so you'd still get a little better at hurting people.

[Dwarf99]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Mostly as combat art or sport. I wouldn't worry overly much about maneuvers.

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Dangerious - you need to remember they all have rules.

Anthony - What are you calling 'maneuvers'?

I think those are called Techniques now.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Dangerious - you need to remember they all have rules.

Anthony - What are you calling 'maneuvers'?

Sorry, techniques. In any case, most of the time you're talking about 1-2 points max spent across a couple sport skills. Yes, there are people who spend years working on being better, but the vast majority don't, and there probably isn't a sufficient critical mass to create a high skill sustained sport culture.