Chinese Sword Styles
 

I'll be running a wuxia game soon, and I noticed that Martial Arts lacks any styles specifically geared towards Chinese swordmanship with the jian. Surely there must have been historical styles that taught swordsmanship as a primary focus, does anybody know anything about them?

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

Well you could alter the rapier styles

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

Sure, but I'd rather have some historical Chinese style to base it on. Even just a name would help. Surely in the Summer and Autumn periods swordsmen trained to use swords.

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

I'll see if I have any D20 Modern Styles I can bung you as a little short of different styles myself; and quite frankly can never be bothered to create my own usually resort to stealing from elsewhere and converting.

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

If I recall correctly the jian techniques are part of the northern kung-fu family. In my limited experience of Chinese martial arts they seem to have fairly slender barriers between armed and unarmed styles.

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

Sure, I can accept that, but none of the Chinese styles in MA offer Broadsword or Rapier as primary skills, and only Wushu has any sword-based techniques even listed as optional (and those for Broadsword Art).

EDIT: In fact I'd prefer a style that uses both armed and unarmed skills, it's kung-fu after all.

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

You probably want T'ai Chi Chuan, which is notable for its use of the jian (via optional skills). Other styles worth looking at are Kuntao (which is Chinese-derived), Pak Hok, and Shaolin Kung Fu. Note that "jian" just means "sword," much as "dao" simply means "saber," and that just about any Chinese style that includes the Broadsword skill implicitly teaches the jian.

It would be cool if there were an "all jian, all the time" style in the spirit of rapier fencing, but the fact is that there's little evidence to support it. We put the jian under Rapier because it's balanced well enough to use that way, not because it's generally used that way. Pak Hok is the only exception I can recall off hand.

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

The problem with Chinese sword styles is that not much of them is left. One of the victims of the cultural revolution was Chinese swordsmanship, which was seen as an elite pursuit (because destroying cultural artefacts but leaving oppressive social structures like secrete police and ineffective bureaucrats was a great way to fix a country). Most of what is left are the katas, which survived realitivly well, though they contain many moves that aren't clear what they are intended for. Much of the modern Chinese sword skills would be Art skills.

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

I didn't find any dedicated sword-styles, or at least not enough information on distinct sword styles to make one.

Your best bet is to tack on Broadsword or Rapier onto an existing unarmed style, and add techniques that match the unarmed style. If the unarmed style has lots of Feints and Spinning Strikes, it's like the sword form would, too.

But yeah, sorry, we just didn't turn up enough usable material for an armed-only Chinese style. They all seemed pretty well mixed into the unarmed styles, not separate. Add that into the pretty reasonable assertion that Chinese styles are already very heavily represented...


But don't forget that Wuxia games - if at all based on modern movies - would be full of practitioners doing Wushu, possibly Shaolin Kung Fu, Pak Hok, T'ai Chi Chuan, or Wing Chun. The movie stars in those movies almost always do Wushu-inspired movies, not actual historical styles. And pretty much everything in GURPS Martial Arts actually post-dates the Wuxia period, but are popularly perceived as being "wuxia" styles. So just pick the unarmed styles you like, add in Rapier and Broadsword or whatever, and customize away. Your guess as to what a real Wuxia style is like is going to be at least as good as anyone else's, and you can choose the way you want it to look in your game. Consider it free rein, not a lack of guidance. :)

Re: Chinese Sword Styles
 

I've know Northern Style Preying Mantis Kung Fu Sifus who give instruction in the jian, but I'd mostly attribute that to their T'ai Chi Chuan background, which many also give instruction in.

I'd say just add it to any Northern Style you like, but keep in mind it was a relatively expensive blade, so it's not like something peasants and poor monks got the privilege of getting trained a lot in.

The real jian styles were a noble pursuit and the commies quashed and eradicated any traces of those they could find. *grin*