(Untitled)

[raccaldin36]

This mostly a rambling, vaguely stream-of-consciousness, discussion on combat and mental state. Triggers: lots of talk about medieval versus modern combat in S.M. Stirling's A Meeting at Corvallis, and some chatter with Josh on "keeping your cool", and a little bit of watching action flicks with Hollywood combat on the very long plane flight home

Comments

[raccaldin36]

I included fencing largely because the sport is derived from actual combat, and what is actually taught in the sport is sufficient to be used as training for using sharpened foils in live combat. They don't wear body armor because blunted tips can poke out eyes; they wear it because if those little balls fall off, the damn things can slide into your heart if you're unlucky.

I shunned the word combat because I wanted to focus on stylistic categorization. An unarmed Karate practitioner versus a French lancer, for instance, rather than the categorization of specific tactics, like screams, disengages, half-step jabs, and mounted charges. Styles are a set of such tactics, extended with statements on how they flow together, and a philosophy pulling the entire thing together.

Also, we both need to stop using "melee" incorrectly. D&D and descendants have thoroughly bathed me in using it to mean hand-to-hand, or fighting without ranged weapons, but that's not correct. Melees are confused group hand-to-hand engagements; a duel between two people is not that. You could stretch the definition to include a confused duel, where neither seems to know what they're doing and they flail at each other crazily, but between competent fighters? No.

You started it, though, and this has come up before. So maybe I've got it wrong?