On Swords, Blades and the Song of Swords

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by safisher

I'd love to see all this in generic form, with names lime short long medium light heavy etc. Cultural weapons and material culture have limits when you remove them from their home setting.

GURPS often uses cultural names for weapons.

The things I explictly added were as generically named as I could, though.

A Cut-and-Thrust Sword could be a narrow-bladed broadsword, a normal-sized jian, a short schiavona, a sidesword, etc. There are no built-in cultural factors at all (with a very good reason, since I game in a fantasy world).

Similarly, the Heavy Broadsword could be Conan's Father's Sword from the movie, but it could also represent the British 1796 Heavy Cavalry Sword, which actually did weight 4 lbs. without scabbard. Or it could represent any sword balanced for both cutting and thrusting that is heavier than an arming sword without being long enough to quality for Reach 2.

The Odachi has an unfortunately cultural name, but really, it represents a scaled-up Katana, so that's understandable. It's a curved blade optimised for the cut. Of course, any culture that made swords similar to the Katana would use the same stats for a two-handed version heavy enough not to be balanced in one hand, in the same way that the Korean jang gum uses Katana stats in GURPS RAW.

The Falchions are named in GURPS already. I simply got rid of the Dao, which is simply a Chinese name for the larger varieties of Falchion. There is a note that any heavier cutting sword is a Falchion, regardless of culture. Some of these will have poor points, some will have have earnest attempts at them, if not as effective as a sword meant for both cutting and thrusting.

The weapon modifications are already culture-free in their names. Armour-Piercing Blade, Reinforced Blade, Slashing Sword and Thrusting Sword? How could they be less culturally specific? I note some real world examples in the text, if only to help visualise these blades.

The Reach categories were at least an attempt to be generic. Clinch, Close, Short, Average, Long and Very Long are generic enough. It was when it came to naming the intermediate steps that I failed to find appropriately generic names and resorted to adapting fencing terms. Tight Range, Wide Range and Long Measure are certainly not perfect and if anyone can give me more descriptive general terms, I'd be grateful.

Is there anything specific that you think is too culturally-based and needs a more generic write-up?