Renaissance (and other historical Martial Arts)

[macphersonrants]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

They should look pretty similar; probably the same skills even if the real-world execution was slightly different. That might be a lot of work for little gain, unless one of the PCs is a student of Silver's or they encounter a lot of them. Otherwise, I'm not sure it's distinct enough.



You could do a whole book of longsword styles, really. We did one, just like we did one kenjutsu style. It's a blanket representation, easily amenable to specific versions being broken out.



Sure. Again, we represented an entire weapon's style with one style. Different instructors, different methods.



The generic Longsword style works for a sword-armed landsknecht (specifically well for a doppelsoldner). Shortsword Fighting is a good backup weapon style; so is Dagger Fighting. For sword-and-shield armed tercio, the Sword-and-Shield style was used by the Spanish until the 16th century. The pike and arquebusiers would train differently, but pike doesn't lend itself to much of a style...it'll be a short list like the polearm styles often are.

I absolutely agree with your observations.

For me, the thing that would decide whether to right up a new version of one of the more generic Martial Arts 4E styles would be if a given master's style had a number of existing techniques, not part of the existing style, or one or two new ones that don't yet have rules yet.

With Silver what I am looking for is a stand alone Elizabethan backsword style. I'll pick up the Stephen Hand book ( http://www.amazon.com/English-Swords.../dp/1891448277 ) and see whether it is different enough to warrant a write up. I certainly don't want to reinvent the wheel if it's not needed.

As I have said before, I think the Martial Arts book is great and I am really glad that all of the cool WMA stuff made the cut.