Monday 15 August 2016

Rewarding Player Skill and the Myth of Realism

I like martial arts and combat sports, and have practiced a few of them. I enjoy fighting. I enjoy watching it too. I always look forward to the Olympics, as it gives me the chance to sit on the sofa and binge-watch top level judo over a period of days, as though stuffing massive dogi-wearing chocolate eclairs into my face like some sort of combat-sports-watching beached whale.

I also like wargames. Pretty much the only computer games I play are ones that involve military strategy and huge numbers of slain pixel soldiers set to a backdrop of Barber's Adagio for Strings.

What combat sports and wargames have in common is that they're not very realistic. Let me explain. I watch a lot of youtube videos about martial arts. One thing you'll have noticed if you do the same, is that youtube is absolutely awash with aggressive commentators explaining why martial art x or y "sucks", typically in comparison to the muay thai/Brazilian jiu-jitsu combination practiced by most cookie-cutter modern MMA fighters. These are people who have fallen for the clever marketing of the Gracie family and the later promoters of the UFC, K-1 and similar, which makes a great show of how "realistic" their product is in comparison to, say, judo or tae kwon doe. I will restrain myself from ranting about the problems with this attitude and the sociology of it - suffice to say, teenage boys seem to strongly believe that some combat sports are more "realistic" than others.

But no combat sport is really very "realistic". Striking sports - whether karate, boxing, tae kwon doe, or whatever - almost always insist on the use of gloves (as much to protect the fist as the face). The rare ones that don't (kyokushinkai karate is the only one I can think of) prohibit punches to the head. Grappling sports, like judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu or greco-roman wrestling, typically prohibit strikes and various techniques which an opponent would almost certainly use in a real life-or-death fight (like eye gouges, groin kicks, etc.). MMA may look more realistic than judo, but that's just a clever illusion - a UFC fight is as unrepresentative of the conditions of a street fight as is a bout of Olympic tae kwon doe.

Similarly some wargames try to produce a veneer of realism - I'm thinking of things like Advanced Squad Leader or the modern updates of computer games like Steel Panthers (which is still modded to this day). Don't get me wrong - I yield to no man in my love for that sort of thing - but again, one has to be very careful about claims of representing reality. Those games may be detailed and complicated, but the conditions that they represent (rough parity of forces or ways of balancing delay vs attack, etc.; emphasis on tactics and lack of emphasis on logistics; failure to replicate individual initiative and cowardice, and so on) are not "real".

The desire to have "realistic" combat, then (one which I feel myself, I think it is important to confess), is a red herring. What is important, rather, is combat which is interesting and detailed enough to reward a good player. It doesn't matter that judo is not particularly realistic; what matters is that it is a tactical and detailed sport in which the best fighter in the bout typically wins, by making the most of his technique and physical strength. Similarly, it doesn't matter that Steel Panthers: World at War is not really a "real" representation of a World War II battle; what matters is that there is a lot of depth to it - such that the most intelligent and thoughtful player typically wins.

Why am I talking about this? The same is true when it comes to RPGs. Some RPG combat systems appear to be more realistic than others - and many, indeed, make explicit claims in that area (I'm thinking of Cyberpunk 2020 and the more recent Blade of the Iron Throne, as well as Rolemaster and Runequest). But I'm increasingly of the view that is a quixotic goal. The reason why Cyberpunk 2020 or Rolemaster have interesting combat systems is not really because they are "realistic", but rather that they are detailed and complex to a sufficient degree to reward a player's intelligent play. Their choices and ideas and decisions really matter, and matter in ways that are predictable (or retrospectively reasonable).

This is also why D&D, in the hands of a weak or mediocre DM and players, has such a dysfunctional and bland combat system - it is not in itself enough to reward intelligent play. (If anything, it does the opposite - if you have better AC and more hp and do more damage than the opponent then you will win, and the process is effectively mechanical. Just keep rolling the dice until you win.) Of course, in the hands of a decent DM and players, the combat system works well, because it is simple enough to add lots of complexity in the form of movement, improvisation, tool use, good planning and so on. But in the abstract, at first glance, its combat rules are simple and robotic. Their virtue, if they have one, is that they are easy and transparent enough to get out of the way to allow the players and DM room to improvise and put their own detail into what is happening.

What's important in an RPG combat system, then, is not how realistic is but how much it rewards player skill. Does it have the right level of detail and complexity to make player choice and player thought matter? 

45 comments:

  1. This desire for "realism" kind of played out in a similar way in computer graphics in general. We're now several years past the days when a game's rendering engine was a bullet point on the box, but I remember how tiresome it all eventually became. (I date myself merely by talking about video games coming in a box.)

    I think it comes from a desire to legitimize one's entertainments by somehow dressing it in the emperor's clothes of being "real". If it's "realistic" then obviously this activity bears as much gravitas as "real life", so stop yelling at me to take out the garbage while the console loads up another level, Mom. ;)

    Well...

    A: Reality kinda sucks in a lot of ways (it's great in a lot of ways too, don't get me wrong). I choose my escapism to ESCAPE, not to have more reality thrown at me.
    I'd rather watch Yellow Submarine than Das Boot most of the time.

    B: A lot of these attempts to be more real roll up to the precipice of the uncanny valley and tumble into the abyss below. In the aforementioned computer graphics so many games became hyper-detailed, fugly masses of browns and greys and game players started gravitating toward games that were bright and clear and easy to look at and understand.

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    1. Yes, nobody really wants realism if it means all the messy stuff.

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  2. Real fights look so little like combat sports it'salmost comical. There's a couple minutes of footage of U.s. marinnes and japanese soldiers jostling back and forth for a patch of ground at hand to hand distaces that looks like a football game at really high speed everyone is clumpred together on each side and they are runing back and forth toward and away from their opponets.It looks almost nothing like combat spports or film combat, people go from stading to down In the blink of and nothing like skilled hand to hand combat is seen as men kill each other with bayonets,knives, rifle butts,and the occasional grenade.

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    1. WWII combat footage fascinates me. I haven't seen footage of hand to hand combat. Do you know where I could see that?

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    2. I believe it was a segment from the Tarawa film. The whole segment may not have made it too the doucmetary. I believe I saw it on the history chanel of all places (once i a while they mess up and have some actual history) and it was on demand for a while. Ow I'm goig to have to poke about.

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    3. Ah, thank you. I hadn't gotten around to the Tarawa footage yet. There was something in the Peleliu footage that I thought might be it, but was much, much shorter than you describe and didn't have any actual contact between forces.

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    4. Peleliu has a segment that looks even more like they are playing football (if i'm remembering this right) but it isn't a long clip becasue the camera man had to stay down.

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    5. Maybe (the problem with watching these things online is that different people get ahold of different amounts of footage and put them together kinda slapdash sometimes). The only such thing I saw from Peleliu footage is a very short (1-2 seconds) clip of Japanese soldiers charging, some with swords out, others with bayonets leveled.

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  3. Excellent post. I agree on all the martial arts stuff; the fact that BJJ and judo are pretty much *identical* in techniques (the former being derived from the latter) is often overlooked. It's just a matter of which techniques are emphasised by competition rules - and Kosen judo looks pretty much the same as its younger and better-known cousin, BJJ. Participants in one can surprise practitioners of the other because of that different emphasis - especially if their background isn't known.

    I think there's a point about Rune Quest combat that really shapes the game differently from D&D: fights can be so lethal and unpredictable that they tend to become a last resort. Even a single trollkin can get lucky and cost you a limb (or worse), so there's much more nervousness about getting into fights than in most games. If the PCs have to deal with a broo gang, there's none of the complacency that might attach to an encounter with D&D orcs, as there's nothing to stop one of the broos being a superb veteran fighter or a runelord or an accomplished magician. And broos are typically bigger and stronger than human PCs to begin with, and carry diseases. And if you fall into their clutches - well, we've all seen Alien.

    So, the realism that RQ offers isn't so much the mechanic itself as the outcome that the mechanics produce: a healthy fear of violence, especially if sharp or spiky things are involved. Running a recent game of RQ2 confirmed this: sneaking and ambushing became player necessities, because main force never looked likely to succeed.

    That said, there is something about RQ combat that gives it an edge over D&D, I think, and that's *transparency*. I'm probably biased because I played RQ before any form of D&D, but when I played D&D (mainly AD&D) I found it baffling. After RQ, it just seemed so abstract and alienating. The journey went from "I try to hit him; YES - impale!"; "He falls to the floor with your spear in his guts - now you need to try to get it out." to "You hit him; roll for damage; now it's his turn".

    In that sense, I think Rune Quest combat is actually simpler than D&D combat (I could never get my head round those THACOs). You can run RQ2 as a skirmish wargame (with a few miniatures per side) and it works really well, not least because climbing, sneaking and throwing stones or whatever are all so seamlessly integrated into the system. But that doesn't mean it's any more *realistic*, of course.

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    1. Yes, I take the "realistic consequences" point. That's important.

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  4. 100% agreed with rewarding player skill. Regarding the myth of realism, any GM or DM is first and foremost, a storyteller, just as any author. And just as any literary genius, a DM is not only capable of making the gaming experience realistic for the player, they can make it REAL. With their storytelling ability they can put them player at the controls of a space-ship or in the middle of a bayonet charge, and have the players stress and sweat as if they were living it. The gaming community misses this point. A large scale war game, such as those made by Avalon Hill, are abstractions, that can not convey the experience. When D&D made the Battlesystem transition into a wargame, they moved away from the vivid and experiential and into abstract. Consider the experience of a soldier. He does not see the hexes, does not make the saving throws. He must cross the field, as quickly as possible, and not too fast and not too slow as not to make an individual target, and there is a strong chance that he will be killed or injured by bullet or shrapnel. On the top side of this pyramid, you do not have generals moving chits along a field of hexes and rolling dice, like wargamers. You have weeks and months of tedious strategic and operational planning, hours of surveying, coordination, communication and writing, and sending out observers and taking reports from them. They do not work with a board game or have a chess-like experience. They are instead trying to recreate the big picture from incomplete and contradictory information, and make sure that everyone reports and stays in touch as they should. How many games in the hobby emulate this experience. Martial arts, boxing, and even street fighting with bare fists differs from hand to hand combat, is that it is a fight until someone produces a deadly weapon, at which pain fear plays havoc with your mind and the combat becomes a desperate struggle to see who will get slashed, cut, stabbed, or clubbed last. You want to make your combat more realistic? Every time your player gets hit by an arrow or a sling stone, have them roll 1d6. If they roll 1, they die. Have them role play for 1d6 x 10 seconds saying goodbye to other player characters. Actually, if you want to make it more realistic, make it 1 or 2 on 1d6. latest research into police shootings and survival has determined that if an off duty police officer gets involved in gunfight, he or she has a 30% chance of taking a fatal bullet wound. Most police officers have families, car payments and mortgages, they have a lot to lose if they go to jail. They do not want to shoot anyone in error. They want to be on the good side. They think, that if the bad guy takes a first shot at them, then they will in the right, if they return fire. Unfortunately, that first shot has a 50/50 chance of hitting them. And any bullet hit has a 30% chance of being fatal. Simple math. Most shootings occur at 7 yards or less. You CAN make your game real. Realism is a different animal. There is a lot of good research out there after all the wars and turmoil of the past 25 years. You can read up on it and introduce that knowledge into your GMing.

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    1. You mention Battlesystem, but it makes me wonder if you've played the game, as what you describe doesn't sound like (the first edition, anyway) that game much at all. Battlesystem merely simplified the combat system of AD&D somewhat and provided a statistical range based on the abilities of the forces involved, counting up an actual number of hits based on the AD&D statistics, converting those into an approximate number of "hit dice" (consider each to be 4.5 hit points) in damage, and removing that many casualties. The second edition of the game was a little further abstracted, but then they published Battlesystem Skirmishes, which was back to being a streamlining of the combat rules of AD&D. None of the three rules sets used hexes, either.

      But more importantly, they were intended to bring D&D back to its roots, since the game was originally a way to use the Chainmail miniatures system with figures representing a single individual and provide a continuity with that individual (so that it could participate in multiple engagements set in a persistent world).

      I think that I see what you're getting at, though, but I'd attribute that to WotC-era D&D, with its battlemats and five-foot squares, rather than anything that happened in the TSR era.

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    2. I saw a Battle System product with sheets of cardboard punch out counters reminiscent of the Avalon Hill war games. When I was still in high school, I painted miniatures and got a mimeographed copy of the Rune Quest's Perilous Encounters rules for miniatures play. I found it much simpler and elegant than either Chainmail or Swords and Spells.

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    3. First edition Battlesystem came with a large number of cardboard chits, sized according to the base sizes of the game. They were intended to be used as either bases for miniatures, or else as substitutes if miniatures (or enough miniatures) were not available, like System 7 Napoleonics games. Battlesystem (any of the three versions) was a miniatures game, like Chainmail and Swords & Spells, designed to integrate closely with the AD&D rules.

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    4. "Every time your player gets hit by an arrow or a sling stone, have them roll 1d6. If they roll 1, they die. Have them role play for 1d6 x 10 seconds saying goodbye to other player characters."

      Sounds like OD+D, Moldvay, and Mentzer at low levels. But in those games the chances of survival of that hit at 1st level are usually lower than what you propose.

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  5. So, I've been thinking about this, and considering what the other commenters have written, and I think that what people are looking for when they say "realism" is a sense that a) they can make decisions that affect their characters' chances of survival and success (balancing risk with reward and such), and b) can make those decisions without having to refer to rules mastery - that is, they can make decisions based on a reasonable person's understanding of how the world works and expect a similar result. That seems to me to be a laudable goal in gaming, but I think that generally what we end up seeing instead is mere complex modeling. That's fine for a computer-run game, which can engage in the modeling more quickly and accurately than a human could possibly do, but actually moves the game away from the true goal of "realism". RuneQuest managed a really good balance, in my opinion, and may have gotten even better in recent editions (I can't really say, not having had a chance to play it lately), but did so at the expense of making it much more difficult to build a starting character - a problem that seems to be the case far too frequently with games that improve "realism" in the sense I am talking about here. D&D mostly handled the situation by punting to the Referee/DM, which seems like a good solution if you have a good Referee/DM, but I think that a lot of people want to have rules that help support the Referee, since she already has a lot of work placed on her shoulders. I'm not sure if there's a perfect solution to the problem, but different games use different methods to approach it and so appeal to different people/groups. I think that's perhaps the way it should be.

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    1. Oddly enough, I remembered RuneQuest character-building as being a real faff, but when I ran a game last week, I found that I'd misremembered the process. It's really simple enough - you could do everything bar the equipment purchases in five minutes or so. But what *is* a huge hassle is statting up monsters, because every monster is essentially a potential PC. So that takes ages (all those five minutes add up). That's the reason, I'm sure, that many early RQ supplements were just lists of pre-generated monsters. And that's why there are random-encounter generators for RQ on the web now.

      What gives RQ its feeling of realism is simply the detail, I think: "With a low sweeping blow, he hits you in your left shin; luckily, your greave absorbs most of the damage, though you're left with a painful bruise (take one point of damage to your left leg)". The abstraction - a simple succession of traded blows and parries - is pretty much as extensive as in D&D (no one in RQ gains an advantage and then rains down telling blow after telling blow on an opponent), but it *feels* more detailed and realistic.

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    2. Faoladh - Yes, I agree.

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    3. One of the Runequest founders was also the founder for the Society For Creative Anachronism, and they did some live action role playing which included sword-play. RQ combat system was influenced by how the LRP fencing combat was adjudicated.

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    4. @Brooser Bear: Not founders (those were David Thewlis, Ken de Maiffe, and Diana Paxson), but Steve Perrin was involved in that organization (and tapped a couple of his SCA friends to help write the combat system).

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  6. We all want realism, except when we don't. A game in which characters die off when minor wounds get infected isn't fun. On the other hand, sometimes a lack of realism makes it too hard to suspend disbelief. I personally can't deal with a bard pulling out a lute in the middle of combat. Everyone would be long dead while he was still tuning. Nothing objective about that; it's just me.

    As far as combat goes, systems that purport to be realistic will naturally be more detailed. The level of detail and the wealth of meaningful choices is probably much more important than the ostensible realism. Maybe I'm just summarizing your point.

    The relative virtues of abstraction versus detail in combat come down to this: How much is the game about combat? How much time do you want to spend on it compared to other activities? In old school abstracted D and D, combat isn't necessarily interesting on a detailed tactical level. The important choices are talk, run, or fight. Then decide if you need to retreat. It's the stakes that make it meaningful rather than the details. In some D and D systems, "Fights can be so lethal and unpredictable that they tend to become a last resort." is also true, although the risk becomes less swingy as characters advance.

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  7. "I will restrain myself from ranting about the problems with this attitude and the sociology of it - suffice to say, teenage boys seem to strongly believe that some combat sports are more 'realistic' than others."

    The magic of the internet allows everyone to get in touch with their inner teenage boy. In grouping is a powerful thing. I have a theory that there's no topic too trivial for people to have flame wars about it. Have a look at Wikipedia talk pages, for example.

    There's a site dedicated to slagging off different martial arts called "Bullshido". Case in point.

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    1. "Bullshido". Nice.

      You are absolutely right about that. I quite enjoy reading wikipedia talk pages for that very reason. You should see the arguments people have about different types of tanks in WWII.

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    2. I think that's the major failure of that site. There's a city that I won't name between Limavady and Letterkenny. Wikipedia editors spent years coming up with a group consensus on how to treat the name issue. But it only takes one new user to restart the whole discussion. I understand it too.

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    3. I spent a fair amount of time reading Bullshido because I generally find the dark side of people interesting. Really funny also. For me, cause I don't care about the subject matter at all.

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    4. I haven't read Bullshido in the better part of a decade, I think. It started as a way to call people on their bullshit about martial arts ("ninja death touch" and such). Has it really devolved into just slagging off other people's arts? That's too bad.

      You're obviously talking about the city that is known as either Derry or Londonderry. Me, I prefer Derry, but only because "The Derry Air" is a hilarious song name, while "The Londonderry Air" is just silly. ;)

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    5. I don't think the line between calling people on their bullshit and slagging people off is clear. I do remember seeing frequent posts consisting of "I hate Chunners", "I hate Ninjers" and the like. Lots of status games in my view.

      Yup. I didn't name the city in question mostly to make the point of how touchy the subject is. Your reasoning is much better than any others I've seen.

      I'll add that being right isn't an excuse. It's the investment in being right and others being wrong that leads to the weird ego inflation thing that happens.

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    6. That's definitely fair, and come to think of it I do remember more than enough posturing on that forum.

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    7. Come to think of it "Stroke City" has a lot of comedic potential too if you consider alternate readings...

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    8. And once you frame it in personal terms, your chances of having a meaningful discourse becomes approximately 0%. I don't think changing peoples' minds is even the outcome they're seeking. If it is, "You moron!" probably a good start.

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    9. *"You moron!" probably isn't a good start.*

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    10. "I was born in Londonderry/I was born in Derry City too..." as the Divine Comedy song goes.

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    11. I believe that was actually the Wikipedia consensus (at one time, of course. They never last). One name to be used for the county, the other for the city.

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  8. To those of you who have some background in martial arts and war: Has your knowledge ever made it harder for you to suspend disbelief? I tend to think tolerance for handwavium is pretty personal. I doubt that people with careers in law enforcement can stand TV cop shows, for example.

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    1. I do a bit of HEMA sword, and I have to say that it started out a problem. I'd watch a sword fight on camera and I'd see nothing but the way that they were telegraphing and attacking each other's swords instead of each other, and I'd get taken out of the story. After a while, though, you either learn to just roll with it or else you have to stop enjoying perfectly good stories.

      The same goes for linguistics, history, and religion in relation to most gaming worlds. Gaming worlds, by and large, don't make any kind of sense in one way or another. Either the languages are dumb or the history is contrived or the religions are ridiculous or whatever other issue might obtain. You just ignore it and get on with the game. Anyway, most worlds are designed to show off one particular thing (the economy and society in Hârn, or the religion in Glorantha, or the languages in Tékumel, and so on), so you learn to enjoy that strength.

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    2. So you've learned to go with the flow in RPG combat, too?

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    3. It's easier when the combat is more abstract, but yeah. In more detailed systems, it helps when the designers present examples (the people who wrote GURPS Martial Arts, for instance, have written up movie martial arts scenes) that showcase how a real (or cinematic) technique appears in the game. For instance, I've seen writeups of both the scene in Iron Man 2 where Black Widow takes out a dozen or so guards while Happy dukes it out with the one guy, and also describing a HEMA tournament fight in GURPS terms. Further, other writers have described historical gunfights (notably, the OK Corral, which has been fairly extensively documented) in game terms, again showcasing how the rules are intended to represent reality.

      In the end, though, it's all abstracted to some degree, so that helps in allowing the knowledgeable to fill in the details as it suits them, while letting the "laypeople", as it were, just get on with the game. Still, the precisely desired balance between detail and abstraction differs from person to person.

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    4. I agree with faoladh. I usually feel as though elements of fictional worlds just don't sit right with me from a linguistic or historical or sociological perspective, or whatever. You just have to accept it, or not read any fantasy or SF literature. The same goes for fighting, I suppose.

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    5. Over the years, I've done a fair bit of judo, a lot of sabre fencing (though not for many years now), a smattering of BJJ and - tangentially relevant - lots of rugby. There's lots of sabre technique in most "swashbuckling" films, which is always fun to spot, but the main problem I find in watching films is the ineffectiveness of armour. I thought the fight scenes in the LotR adaptations were almost unwatchable because of that: the Amon Hen scene in particular, where the outsized orcs seem to gain no protection whatsoever from their armour. The same trope plagues Game of Thrones too. Other than that, the main problem in "medieval" fight scenes is generally a lack of grappling along with the sword play. Medieval manuals show that throws and trips and grabbing swords, arms and whatever else you could get hold of were a huge part of fighting. One more thing: films tend to privilege swords, which were generally a second-choice weapon after polearms or spears, and to devalue shields and helmets (GoT has been very bad in that respect recently; the full helms visible in the first series seem to have vanished from the battlefields of Westeros entirely!).

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    6. I meant to say - the "tangential" relevance of rugby is appreciation of the weight and impact of colliding bodies. Films often play this down in favour of "clean" swordplay. In periods when armour was well developed, knocking people down to be finished by others on the ground (stabbed through the visor or whatever) was a big part of battles.

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    7. But the Conservation of Ninjitsu is still totally legit, right? Right?

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    8. JC: Yeah, the way that armor and shields are portrayed in cinema and television is almost criminally bad. That's a major issue that I have just learned to let go in order to enjoy the story.

      Hare: Of course it is. (I know of a couple of RPGs that have rules, or options, to help simulate that trope.)

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    9. I wrestled in high school and it took me years to enjoy professional wrestling again even though it was what got me into the sport in the first place. On the other hand when I watch UFC all I can see is a bunch of illegal and usually ineffective wrestling holds even though I realize this is because the object of the sport is so different.

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    10. I don't know much about wrestling. It's one sport I don't get much of a chance to watch, and it just isn't a sport people in Britain do, for some reason. We have really good boxers and some decent judoka, but wrestling isn't even on the map.

      I like UFC and other MMA tournaments but the brashness of it turns me off. It takes the worst elements from boxing and adds some special nastiness on top. I also get irritated by the fans for reasons discussed in the post.

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    11. noisms: There are a few people in the UK and Ireland who are picking up traditional, local wrestling styles and trying to build them. Lancashire wrestling (which is one of the ancestors of Catch wrestling), Cornish wrestling (which is related to the Breton sport of Gouren), Collar and Elbow, Scottish backhold, and others. Even the minor sport of shin-kicking or purring in the Cotswolds (and still part of the Cotswold Olimpicks) might derive, ultimately, from some kind of fixed-hold wrestling where kicks ended up taking precedence over throws.

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