First Game, and Thoughts Thereof

[Jake Norwood]

Okay, you guys, we're starting to get into serious speculation, opinion, and minutia.

I have repeatedly said that the katana could thrust--it's curvature is also relatively shallow, making it share many properties with a straight blade.

Curved blades do not have mystic powers and are not "better" than straight ones--they apply in different (and, IMO, fewer) techniques and situations.

The claymore was not a club, unless you consider any straight lever a club. There is an amazing amount of physics involved in a simple cut.

Draw cuts are attractive against soft targets.

Cataphracti were byzantine, not chinese, ad therefore part of the western empires that receded after the invasion of the turks and the mongols.

I also think that we're looking a little too deep in the "when" issue. The fact is that you draw when the opening presents itself and you cut when the opening presents itself and you thrust when the opening presents itself. Some folks have a personal preference, and some opponents are more susceptible to one or the other--hence different weapon types within even a single culture.

Jake

[prophet118]

i have yet to see that, but then again who knows... but in their defense both shows were done with support from either arma (in the case of the last one), or the royal armouries... i cant remember the official name of the last one, but its a friggin huge medieval arms museum in great britian, or england, one of the two places

[prophet118]

when i refer to a claymore as a club, and indeed when the show does, they kinda mean it, its not a primary cutting weapon, sure there is some cut action, but its a friggin huge blade, you'd break something before you cut them... theres too much sword there and too much edge to be anything else.....

of course we all know this is partial my opinion though....

most viking and celtic weapons were huge, the point of the weapon was to knock your opponant down, if not kill him, sure there was cutting power, but it didnt matter, if your opponant couldnt get up anyway, it doesnt matter whether you cut an artiery, or just broke something, the fact is it has been documented.

but the problem is this, TROS leaves no room for these kinds of things, its a simple matter of cut, thrust, peirce.....maybe some blunt thrown in as well.... sure TROS's timeline isnt anywhere near the time of viking or celtic weaponry, but yet those weapons are in fact being used in TROS, meaning that you accept that they are there, and in the time period.

[Ron Edwards]

Prophet, my friend, if you consider "in the book with a special unique reference" and "in the game" to be the same things, then you're in for a lot of frustration on this forum.

You gotta think a little, and be able to extrapolate one thing to another. You want a little more "whack" going on with the weapons you're referencing? Fine - you have Knockdown and Knockout rules - use them rigorously or even upgrade them to have some more effect.

The rules work. You have the power to tweak their numbers and applications as you see fit. It really isn't about what TROS does or doesn't "allow" because of exactly what is written in exactly what box of which table.

The table exists to serve play. The map is not the terrain.

Best,
Ron

[prophet118]

i know i have the ability to tweak things in the game, should i end up getting back to playing it..

however one would think i wouldnt have to...

here jake takes about time lines and such.. well he does cover quite alot of timelines in TROS, just which ones?...well i suppose only he can really tell us..

i wanted a system that could cover alot of ground, and not bring up more rules debates and desputes before i even played my second game.

yes, im going to be adding things to the game, and taking some away, ive already been branded a Rune heretic, i might as well be a TROS one as well

[contracycle]

however one would think i wouldnt have to...

Not if it were the perfect game bespoke to your exact specifications, no.

I also consider the amount of dispute to be relatively low.

I am however sympathetic to your argument in the abstract.  For one thing I am very intrigued by the use of shields, which are usually under-treated IMO in models of interpersonal combat.  I think that under most battlefield circumstances, putting your enemy on the ground is very nearly as good as actually incapacitating them there and then, and so knockdown can be a useful role for a weapon in its own right.  Pretty much anything described as a weapon can kill a person with one physical movement, if they cannot respond, so having a tool that gives you a good prospect of putting your opponent in such a state is quite a good idea.

Unfortunately movement, shock, momentum and so forth are not well developed in tabletop RPG or wargames due to the mechanical limitations of the medium, I think.  I try to overcome this by using a lot of physical colour in combat description, I bounce the characters around a lot and my NPC's often seek to engage corps-a-corps.   I'm also a very relaxed on the rules for penalties like being off-balance and such in the hopes of achieveing something more akin to a bar-room brawl than dancing about with an epee in one hand and the other in the air.  I use them a lot but not strictly, and dish out brusies and little injuries which don't have actual penalties attached.  I've had good results with players responding to this sort of approach to give shock and impact more prominence without necessarily tampering with the mechanic (not TROS specifically) to make it represent reality just so.  I'd think think TROS would be quite suitable for this sort of thing because it has quite a variety of knobs that are easy to twiddle, like the terrain mechanic.

Moving on, I don't want to get involved in too contentious an argument, but would like to clear something up.  What I meant by cataphract was that some central asian tribes, and the chinese during the Warring States, used massed armoured, barded cavalry.  It's unclear whether they used the lance couched at first, but they were being deployed as a shock unit to punch holes (big holes) in enemy formations by the 6th century AD.  There is graphic art depicting full coverage scale armour for both man and horse from at least 357AD in Korea and c.500AD in China.  So all I mean is that far east is not unfamiliar with cataphract-style combat and its implications.

[Brian Leybourne]

when i refer to a claymore as a club, and indeed when the show does, they kinda mean it, its not a primary cutting weapon, sure there is some cut action, but its a friggin huge blade, you'd break something before you cut them... theres too much sword there and too much edge to be anything else.....

If it really bothers you, use the bashing table instead of the cutting table, but increase the blood loss a bit (maybe use shock, pain and description from the bashing table, but BL from the cutting, something like that).

I think you're getting into fairly irrelevant minutia myself, but whatever floats your boat, my friend.

Brian.

[prophet118]

its not that it bothers me, and nor an i looking for changing the system damage..

again though, jake reminds us to "stay in the time period".....what is the time period, i assumed Ren. period... that does seem on par with what is going on in the main areas, but at that time, people certainly werent using heavy armors, nor were they walking around with staves they called swords...

i want an accurate figure of when the time period for the game is.

[Jake Norwood]

Okay...

See, just because the ARMA was on that show (and it was JC), doesn't mean that it wrote the script. The claymore is essentially a great sword, which is an elegant weapon. Might it knock a guy down? Hell yeah. On the other hand, I can knock a guy down with two fingers if I stick 'em right.

We need to remember that swords were not heavy, clumsy, or anything like the last 100 years of movies and literature have shown us.

The time period in TROS is roughly the same as the late 1400s in the "real world," depending on location. Heavy armors were in their prime at this time, but elegant street-weapons were also in developmental stages.

Lastly, I don't recall really wiggin' out on timelines here...

Jake

[prophet118]

never said you did, however you and some others have mentioned several times that certain things didnt exist with other things....if im not mistaken one you said was a rapier, and heavier armor.....maybe im wrong, and you meant different time zones... instead of eras

[Valamir]

How does any of this matter?  Man you are getting so caught up in detailed characteristics of weapons that we only understand in the most basic sense compared to their actual masters that you seem to be missing the whole point of the game.

The game is about the quest for the riddle and how your character uses and reacts to what he believes in along the path for that quest.  Not about what the odds of knocking someone down with a claymore is.  Back up and take a good hard look at the forest before you decide to start chopping down and planting new trees.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I am jumping into this a bit late, but I couldnt help myself..... the stuff about claymores not cutting actually hurt when I heard it.... I guess if you wanna get picky about what "cut" means you can distinguish what the claymore does by using the word "cleave" instead. Its a "Blade" as Prophet astutely noted, and blades are meant to cut, and claymores have a nice bit of distance from cross guard to pommel allowing for MEAN and NASTY cuts due to lots of tork, and even a writs cut from one of these puppies is brutal!

If you want knock down from the weapons you can do what I do and when a character takes a lot of shock from a wound I often declare him knocked off his feet or off balance or whatever and say that the shock is representative of this. Role playing is not all numbers, if you want knockdown from swords in your campaign, use your role as story teller and ruler of your world to just say there is or isnt a knockdown resultant from a blow or series of blows.

[prophet118]

How does any of this matter?  Man you are getting so caught up in detailed characteristics of weapons that we only understand in the most basic sense compared to their actual masters that you seem to be missing the whole point of the game.

The game is about the quest for the riddle and how your character uses and reacts to what he believes in along the path for that quest.  Not about what the odds of knocking someone down with a claymore is.  Back up and take a good hard look at the forest before you decide to start chopping down and planting new trees.

try sharing that bit of epiphany with the rest of the people over in the sorcery thread....

yeh im getting so caught up over a detail such as that... yup sure thats me........

[prophet118]

I am jumping into this a bit late, but I couldnt help myself..... the stuff about claymores not cutting actually hurt when I heard it.... I guess if you wanna get picky about what "cut" means you can distinguish what the claymore does by using the word "cleave" instead. Its a "Blade" as Prophet astutely noted, and blades are meant to cut, and claymores have a nice bit of distance from cross guard to pommel allowing for MEAN and NASTY cuts due to lots of tork, and even a writs cut from one of these puppies is brutal!

If you want knock down from the weapons you can do what I do and when a character takes a lot of shock from a wound I often declare him knocked off his feet or off balance or whatever and say that the shock is representative of this. Role playing is not all numbers, if you want knockdown from swords in your campaign, use your role as story teller and ruler of your world to just say there is or isnt a knockdown resultant from a blow or series of blows.

i never meant to elude to that claymores arent cutting weapons, however they are not primary cutting weapons, the whole point behind large weapons such as that, was to knock your opponant down, a side effect of the power that is needed in the swing, is that yes, they do cut, they are not however, their primary function......

but i can see clearly that i need not worry myself with technicalities, or even "preceived" correctness

the changes i am currently making to the system actually have nothing to do with weapons, i am however going through the point, and adding my own changes where i see they are needed, i havent gotten to the weapons section quite yet, but im sure there will be some minor changes that will need to be made

[Ashren Va'Hale]

Actually, the primary purpose would be killing. any way you could do it. Pommel 2 inches through forehead or diembowelment,.... death is the "primary" purpose. Not knocking someone over, not cutting, not slicing, each is a means to an end not the end itself of the weapon.
how the weapon is used determines a large part of the details this debate encomapsses Cutting off amans head will definetely knock him down while also cutting end result: dead. very very dead.
The nice thing about TROS is that the rules don't dictate everything, the rules form the basis for a structure around which the player and the seneschal can dictate the means and the results in a fun way. I am glad you are having fun adapting it to fit you and your players.

and I will do some research into your side of the debate prophet, it really does NOT sit well with me so I will look into it further, you mentioned a history channel special... which one? And jake, do any of your books discuss this topic?

And someone mentioned stabbing with a katana with the curve up... wouldn't a lateral thrust ( blade parrelel to the ground) be more effective due to ribs? why would you thrust vertically? Just wondering if I  understand this principle right....