Roleplayers thinking that they know..., about the stuff they pretend to do Options

[NeO_ZeN]

I was being facetious.....

Regardless, my view on all martial arts/any-form-of-combat is that most people grade themselves on their various belts and trophies, their plaques, scrolls, certificates, and well, that's a little antithetic.

No true martial art guru would talk about their abilities, their abilities would speak for themselves (bit hard on an electronic forum I know). The only context they'd be talking about themselves and their experiences is to teach their Way to a student.

Read Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa.
Better yet, read the Go Rin No Sho.


Edit : I'm not referring to anyone from DS. :|

This post has been edited by NeO_ZeN: Oct 9 2003, 12:35 PM

[Hot Wheels]

Actually we're pretty much set on the combat stuff.

Our group includes one ex army, and several hunters. Most of us have at least 1 gun in the house that the person knows how to use. All of us except 1 have done at least one martial art(the one looks like a troll and works great on intimidation alone.) and 2 were fencers. To our credit we have several muggers piled up and, shades of the hgost dance war, 4 of them tell a story of being attacked by indians on a camping trip.

[Bitten by the bu...]

Combat stuff...
I know how to handle a bow pretty good and fletching an arrow is still in my fingers and hands (though rusty they may be). Swords, been training one year with a sword, though the skill is pretty much rusted away.
How to handle myself in a fight?? Don't know, 2 or so yrs of Thaiboxing should do something to the guy/girl, but how much I don't know. I've never been in a real fight, so I can't tell how I will react. I know how I react when somebody provokes me enough, but that is another tale and neither here nor there...
I prefer not fighting, but sometimes a girl must defend herself. I am big (I am kinda tall) enough that most girls back down (and gets verbally abusive instead :please:).

With guns I am all SNAFUed. I know how it works theoretically and technically, but I've never been on the range with a gun.
I have hunted before I got kids, but that it ages back. But I do know how to skin an animal of any kind and how to prepare it (taking out the intestines and stuff). I prefer the ligaments of cats or dogs for my bowstring, though deer ligaments and horsehair are neat as well.:)

What I do know is my bow and arrows: how to make one, how to fletch arrows and arrowheads from flint or metal and how to keep it from harm.
That is all I know of combat stuff.
I have no delusions about how I will react in a fight; I'll either freeze or become a banshee. With my knowledge of me; Banshee, but I may be mistaken.:)

Sorry, didn't want to create such a lengthy post, but I will concur with Slamm-O. I've seen too many table ninjas and practitioners BS'ing eachother to take it all seriously. Especially when someone is vying for a girl's attention...:D
There are other criterias that I weigh against. Eyes, mouth, body movement, thoughtprocesses, speed...
Arrgh, even longer post... I'll stop now..:D

[Darkest Angel]

It depends on whether said person is claiming they can beat the shit out of all three oponents, and at the end of it stand over their broken bodies and laugh maniacly, or whether they just mean they can fight them off sufficiently that they can make a break for it and run. In the first case, I'd call bullshit on anyone who can claim that - having been in a fight with three guys - who came at me one at a time initially - I can say this; firstly it's bloody hard work, especially once they start double teaming (there's rarely enough room for three of them to take you on at once as long as you're standing), second, you don't have time to think about fancy-shmancy moves, you'll kick, punch, scratch, bite, pull and squeeze anything that'll give you the edge, you'll definately regret or feel nasty about some of the things you did and ask yourself 'shit, did I really do that?!' afterwards, thirdly while doing all this there will be two things on your mind, 1 look for an opportunity to escape, 2, staying on your feet; subconciously you'll be on one mode - really hurt the other guy (since you can only really concentrate on one at a time); when you're outnumbered pulling punches isn't an option, you just want them off your back so you can get away, or move onto the next one. If you can stay in the game long enough to beat all three down, kudos to you, you can obviously take a beating better than Homer Simpson, because no one is quick enough to keep dodging punches and kicks from more than one person.

I'll admit now that I have no formal fighting training, my training was from an ex-para (Falklands Vet so knows what he's talking about) who over a few weeks tought us some very dirty fighting moves, and the essential jist is this 'in hand to hand fighting, do anything that will give you the upper hand,' whether it's punching to the throat, stamping on knees (the side is best), or kicking the other guy in the balls, as long as it means you win, it's all good. That sort of 'no holds barred' fighting is not tought at martial arts schools, going from my friends who have had martial arts training, it all seems a bit too namby pamby and thought process requiring to be of any real use in a fight that involves more than one opponent. All that in mind however, I'm sure the gymnastic element of some martial arts is of great use in a mellee, and any edge from martial arts training that anyone has must come from that imho, because it keeps you on your feet and makes you able to reach places the less flexible amongst us can't.

On guns...

Anyone can use a gun, that's the sole advantage they had over bows, and is why they made them obsolete. Ten minutes training, and absolutely anyone (eye site problems corrected for) should be able to hit a 2" group with 5 rounds from a rifle from 50 yards. At 100 yards you should at least be hitting the target with all 5 rounds, at 200 yards, you should be hitting with one or 2 rounds, beyond that and you can barely see the thing without a scope anyway, so you either wait, get a scope, spray a burst or two in the general direction, or ask the guy with the LMG or
GPMG to deal with it. With troops in DPM these days, not to mention covered with twigs, grass and bracken - if you can seriously pick someone out at 200+ yards you probably don't have to worry about them shooting you.

[Lantzer]

What? You mean message boards are probably frequented by people who spend hours on computers everyday, not handsome, popular, deadly ex-green-beret Mensa members?

Phallus-waving is not new, nor unique to Dumpshock. It has long been a feature of newsgroups and bullentin boards devoted to "that other game," not to mention in bars in RL.

Folks are full of it, in general.

[Kagetenshi]

Gonna have to disagree. We were taught at my dojo to do anything we needed to to end a fight quickly, and we had more than a few techniques for ending it before the opponent knew it was starting. Testes were a valid target, throat is my personal favourite target, and none of the sensei batted an eye when after throwing an opponent to the ground in a technique I put as the finish about ten punshes to the face. Once it was commented on, but only in that on some surfaces I could injure my hand by hitting the opponent's forehead as his or her head bounced back off of a hard surface.

~J

[Sphynx]

Why is this even a discussion though? First off, it doesn't belong on this Forum as it has nothing to do with Shadowrun, and secondly, do you question when someone says they're an EMT, Programmer, Etc? People have hobbies, and people that hobby roleplaying tend to have lotsa hobbies of which martial arts and hunting are common.

The original post said someone could 'take on' 3 to 4 'basic' guys at once, and that's precisely what some MA's are all about, especially Aikido. It also said that the 3 couldn't 1-round a 'World Class Black Belt Master' of an art.

Now despite what any of you believe, a person CAN take on 3 to 4 people at once, I know that from an experience fact. Now, I admit that they didn't all hit me at precisely the same time, the first guy attacked before the others even knew for sure they were going to do anything, and he literally became a shield for me and I sustained one solid punch to my cheek bone which made me cry (if you think you wouldn't have tears from knuckles cracking on your cheek bone, you're crazy), but all 4 ran away with me still standing. Considering I don't consider myself a 'master' at all, I think that it would have been cake-work for any of my old masters/sensei to have easily handled the situation and probably not even been hit.

But none of that matters, you don't have to choose to believe any of what I or other people say, that's your call. But please (this is not to you Slamm-O, this is to the long list of people still calling people like me a liar on your thread) don't flame what you don't know shit about.

Sphynx

[Darkest Angel]

I didn't call that, I was in a similar boat, I was jumped by 3 guys, I fought one off - throwing him to the ground and giving him a damn good hiding, before taking a kick to the mouth from one of the other guys - I got away because the third guy at some point realised the first was in a bad way and called the other guy's attention giving me chance to run. As I say, fighting them off is one thing, beating them all to the ground is quite another...

[Raptor1033]

i have a friend with marines fighting training that got jumped by 3 hicks, on with a bat. he punched the one with the bat in the face, took the bat, and proceeded to beat them all with it. not pretty at all. course this was against people with no actual training but it does prove a small point. i think... :dead:

[krishcane]

Seems like this thread has attracted a pretty realistic mix of people, despite the general complaint of phallus-waving. Actually, my take is that there are just a few loudmouthed BSers on the boards who get extra attention, but mostly, people are legit. You can tell from these conversations that people have a mostly realistic view of themselves and their experiences. You've even got a few gritty stories of "funny things that happened on the way to the office". :)

One thing I thought was interesting... someone posted their idea of what skill ratings correspond to. Over five years training but no field experience kicked in at a skill of 2, and for a skill of 6, they wanted to see over 10 years of training and over 10 years of day-to-day field experience. Damn! I bet there is a pretty short list of such people in the world. In my speciality, I can count them on one hand. Wild to imagine my character being THAT good, or even better. :) I've always imagined much lighter standards for those skill numbers. What I might have called a skill of 6, that earlier post would have benchmarked at a 2!

--K

[Bitten by the bu...]

Sphynx, I need to see how people move when they walk, their reaction patterns, etc.
BS walks, Body talks - if you will forgive me twisting an old maxim.:)
You must admit it is very easy to sit behind a screen and BS people.

I've met too many table ninjas and table practitioners (I thought that it was evident what I meant) to believe people instantaneously and if I have offended you, I am sorry. bow of respect

As I've stated; I need to see how people move, their reactionpatterns, etc.:)
If I ever called you a liar, you would know.:)

[Hot Wheels]

Darkest angel the point of trianing regulalry is that your body acts without having to think about it. that's what gives the martial arts type the egde- not that they can fling an O'soto gari text book cleanly, but that they start to move without thinking about it. One friend of mine was mugged in the subway. She didn't freeze and she didn't go all Bruce Lee on the guy, but she did act without thinking- she jammbed her umbrella into his throat.
As for martial arts being whimpy in training, the beginers don't get the serious stuff early on. When I started judo the first throw I was shown was a hip throw. Nice basic, pick 'em up and drop 'em. It was only when I started training for a brown belt was I shown the follow through, that after dropping them you pull, lock, break the arm of the guy you threw.

Sure any gimp can be show to point and shoot in a few minutes, but to shoot well, repeatedly takes practice. A regualar shooter has all the little details fine tuned already and doesn't have to think.

I know the fencers in our group, that haven't competed in a few years have said when they work with kids of the HS team, they have the moves, but their speed/reactions are not what they once were because they don't practice the moves regularly anymore.

[Darkest Angel]

Again HW, that was a one on one event, it's totally different psychologically when you're being beaten on by 3 people. You simply cannot react quickly enough to cope with 3 people, because in essence you are fighting something that's moving and reacting 3 times faster than you ever could. Sure, with martial arts training you learn to react 'in the right way', but I can give you a cast iron guarantee that a martial artist will not use his fancy moves anything like as cut and cleanly, if even at all in a real fight, at best he'll show a messy adrenaline driven rough cut of one or two moves when fighting for his personal safety, as oppose to the nice clean cut moves he'll show you on the mat as his club. The reason for this is purely the adrenaline and instinct that kicks in when your wellbeing is on the line - something that simply does not happen when you're trying to impress judges, and you have a nice soft padded mat to land on if you screw up.

I'm not saying being a black belt in Kung Fu doesn't help, because it does, but taking on multiple opponents is so radically different from a one on one that it's a long way from being the be all and end all to crush your opponents into so much goo.

[Siege]

Table Ninjas
I think we all know a "table ninja" or two -- someone who not only has done _Everything_ you have, but has done it better and faster than anyone else.

These are braggers who feel the need to be the center of attention and tell equally tall stories about their mythical exploits -- if its martial arts, they studied with Bruce Lee. If it's military history, they spent time in the Green Berets doing covert ops in South America. And so on, etc. etc.

Unarmed Combat and skill rankings
As for the relative skill rankings -- 6 is the highest that a starting character can have in any skill. 7 if you specialize. Depending on how the dice fall, six dice aren't much better than three or four although the chances of doing someting _in game_ gets better as the gap widens. Which is why phys ads are so dangerous.

Martial Arts
UFC -- permit me to rephrase. If a Muay Thai boxer gets a rising knee into someone's face as they dive for the boxer's legs, odds are the target's neck is going to get broken. If the boxer makes a full strength strike and doesn't refrain for obvious reasons.

Anyone can take a martial arts class. This doesn't translate into "Aikido 4" or "Karate 3". Knowing the moves and techniques doesn't equate into skill. The aikido woman bragging about her classes made that mistake.

Hot Wheels pointed out quite nicely that the physical and mental conditioning must follow the technique. As Kage pointed out, some schools teach this and some don't.

Schools have drifted from the true purpose of martial arts and turned the concept into sports or philosophical actions. Judo was (and is) a sport. This does not mean it can't be combat effective, but it's history was not defined as such. In fact, higher level Judo students do learn non-sport applications but the focus of their learning is not combat or killing.

Some styles focus on killing and incapacitating someone in the shortest time possible. Some styles focus on teaching those skills to a student in the shortest amount of time possible. Some don't -- cultural differences manifest in this regard. Not to get on a tangent, but Japanese styles tend to take longer to develop the skills because it's a life-long pursuit (samurai) whereas Filipino culture didn't emphasize or support a warrior caste, so escrima and arnis are skills that are simple and relatively easy to learn and master.

Summation
Alright, I think I'm done venting. :twirl:

-Siege

[krishcane]

My school has a section of training dealing with the realistic multiple attacker problem, which as you said is a wholly different thing than the single attacker problem. It gives a few additional opportunities too, but it gives a lot more problems.

We start exposing people to this training after say 5 or 6 years of skill and proof that they can survive a very realistic fight at real speed against an uncooperative attacker. In the best case scenario, it takes about 10 years for someone to reach the ability to realistically and consistently handle multiple skilled attackers. However, it is widely acknowledged that many people who train will never get that good. We have plenty of active 15+ year veterans that are not this good.

That said, as the street stories above show, if some of the attackers aren't quite so skilled -- or more importantly, aren't quite so committed -- a person with much less experience and a vicious streak can get the job done. And luck factors in to things also -- I've seen people with 1 year of experience just get the timing perfect by freak chance. I've seen 20 year masters make mistakes at just the wrong moment and get hit hard. There are no iron-clad guarantees -- just varying odds.

--K

[Req]

I'm a brown belt Aikidoka. I trained pretty hard for four years or so, a bit less seriously of late. I know my shit; I'm not the best but not the worst either. And if someone with a clue jumped me - to say nothing of a bunch of people! - I've no illusions - I'm sure they'd likely kick my ass, martial artist or not.

I can fire a gun pretty well, pistol or rifle. I've spent time at the range with a variety of firearms. I can load 'em, clean 'em, and fire 'em, and I can almost do the cool dual pistols trick accurately. If I had a gun and wanted to shoot someone, I don't know if I could do it. Probably not, without a real serious reason.

I guess I'm just skeptical about a lot of the talk I sometimes see around here. I'm sure some of you are maybe justified in your badass-ness - but for me, I just do these things for fun. I like Aikido, it's a good workout and it's calming and enjoyable. I like firing guns, and was surprised how Zen it is. But I'm not a Warrior of Legend, I'm just a guy who's into these things.

Personally I don't even know why these discussions keep coming up. What relevance does your ninja-hood have to the game we all play called Shadowrun? I mean, sure, assign yourself a skill. Arbitrarily. And then run the numbers and see if you, given your arbitrary skill, could win in a fight against other folks of arbitrary skill. But in my opinion it's irrelevant. You can't justify the rules that way, nor can you invalidate them. What point is there?

[krishcane]

I don't think the conversation even has to do with Shadowrun. Like you said, it's irrelevant to the game and the rules of it.

I think there is a constant conversation somewhere on this board where street-fighters say, "Can martial artists seriously do what they claim they can? I doubt it, based on my experiences." And martial artists chime in and say, "No, really, we can do it!" or at least, "Some of us can do it."

So it's more about "what's possible" than "what's needed" or "what matters for the game". It's a conversation that has to do with people's vision of how reality works. It's almost a theological debate.

--K

[IcyCool]

[Ed_209a]

My call on this topic is that everything changes when its _real_.

You could be Bruce Lee when your opponent is another student, because there is no real fear going on. You know he is not going to hurt you badly when you go down. You know he isn't going to pull a knife if you are not an easy win. You know he won't kill/rape/rob your SO if you don't stop him.

I fully agree with D.Generate's math on the fighter mental state being at least 60%. All else equal, I believe the fighter who is more of a SOB will usually win. You hesitate less when you don't care about the oponnent. At all. Even less when you don't care about yourself.

So, you never know how you will react until it is real. All training, no matter how realistic, is still _training_.

[CanvasBack]

[Siege]

Strictly traditional aikido techniques do not have kicks, punches, etc.

Some schools do teach the basics of punches and kicks (or so I am told).

This is not to say that a creative person couldn't adapt what was intended as a defensive technique into an act of aggression.

Part of the problem is that people don't approach selecting a martial art logically:

1. Ask yourself: "What do I want to get out of this?"
2. Research the considered style
3. Does the style meet your expectations?

More times than not, the student will take a few lessons and assume they know enough to defend themselves. Or worse, they'll watch Hollywood and learn from that. The same thing with firearms. Please don't learn how to operate and handle firearms by watching movies. I don't think Darwin has enough bullets to go around.

-Siege

[Cain]

[Snow_Fox]

[Slamm-O]

as far as fighting 2-4 people, like i play in shadowrun im assuming they are all atcually fighting you (i.e. spent a complex action in sr to attack you before i give any friend in mell modifiers, if your friend is standing right next to you when a guy attacks you he is not helping you) so most of these stories where the guy does take 2-4 guys is a story of him fending them off, usually by making an example of one of them before the others fight him.

i agree that this is the way to fight groups of men/women. Go berzerk and frighten your opponents with an indominable spirit.

[TheScamp]

That's what I've always been taught for multiples; totally rail on one guy. That does 2 things - one, it has the potential to freak the crap out of the others, and more importantly it allows you to step out of the circle.