Actually I laugh every time I see someone shoot accurately from 50 yards while sprinting in a movie. I grew up with guns, I have a fairly bad hearling loss because my dad never had me wear ear protection shooting as a kid =P

That's actually an official policy here, I work for the LVMPD. If you fire a weapon at a suspect, you aim to kill. period. If you don't want to kill them then don;t fire a gun at them.

But the movie industry is making fiction, these martial arts schools are telling theres people they can defend themselves and giving them almost none of the tools to do so I think that's just beyond messed up. In fact, I think that's prett different... That's almost fraud in my opinion. From what I hear these people have no realistic understading of the situation, and the "school" they go to is blowing smoke up their ass and taking their cash. It would be like wanting to learn NASCAR driving and haing them teach you exclusively on a Playstation then telling you you're good to go. I don't see how they can do that.

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This does explain some things though I guess...
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That's what I'm talking about when I say I wouldn't try my capoeira in a street fight. I've never fought with contact. I've never been hit (minus a few exceptions). I have never hit someone. So I completely agree you cannot use a martial art as a "weapon" unless your school practises actual contact fights. I'm actually considering going to an Ultimate Fighting school a friend goes to just so I can take a few real hits and give out a few ones myself, just for the experience.

But that doesn't mean (to use your good example) that I have a knowledge skill of capoeira rather than an active. I don't think about doing my moves (the ones I know, anyway). I merely act. In the roda (capoeira fights), even though there is no contact, the motions are still there. When that kick comes in, you have to react. It's not a kick aimed to injure you, but you still have to dodge it. Or respond with another kick, then gracefully crouch and backflip, or whatever combo. The "active skill" is still acquired.

Yes, there are. They I respect, though I can't say I'd be inclined to choose a school like that.
It's the incompetent ones who teach a sport and claim it to be self-defense that I don't respect.

~J the martial arts nazi

No, but you get an A for effort. The ability to defend oneself means the ability to make an escape from an opponent. In some cases, this may involve harming or killing the other guy before he can harm you, but in most cases it involves swallowing enough pride to evade the situation.

Let me tell you my favorite TKD idiot story. I was living in a boarding house, and one of my housemates was a TKD instructor who constantly belittled my style. Finally, one winter night, I became totally fed up. He had been telling me how weak my hand techniques were, and how powerful kicks were in every situation. I gave him a long stare, and said: "Ok, that's it. You're coming outside with me."

We walked outside, and I stood us on a large patch of ice. I looked him in the eye-- no stance, just a look-- and told him to try and take me down with a kick. He began to bluster: "Oh, of course I wouldn't do that, I wouldn't want to hurt you--"

I cut him off. "You don't get it. In five seconds, I'm going to take your head off. Either start kicking, or shut up and back the hell off."

Needless to say, he backed off. He kept up the bluster, but the audience (the rest of the housemates) knew how full of hot air he was.

Now, I have to admit, that was a very dumb move on my part. While I'm more than reasonably certain I could have beaten him, it goes contrary to the principles of self-defense to start a situation like that. However, it got him to shut up, which meant he wasn't giving martial arts a bad name anymore-- worth the personal risk, in my mind.

That's only too true of many people out there with black belts in this or that. I mean, I see 12-year-olds with black belts and I wonder how on earth their instructors can justify that without making a distinction between, say, black belts for kids and black belts for grown-ups!

Well, as you've said, you speak in reference to your own school. To me, anyone bragging about his/her black belt is full of it until I've seen with my own eyes what he/she is capable of or unless they're referring to their Armani/Gucci fashion accessory.

In my dojo, a black belt merely signifies that you're ready to learn, to be a student (I'm serious!), that you are now teachable. All the other colours before that just show your progression as a novice. Anyone of a higher grade bragging about their "rank" was quickly disciplined by their seniors or sensei to remind them to respect novices as much as their peers.

Each school is different so I don't expect much these days from people yakking about how good they are or what belts they have. I'll take them at face value and reserve my judgement till I've seen them in action. (I think this topic has been covered in another thread so won't get into it)

I don't know if it's like this for all martail arts or just the Karate that I studied. You didn't learn weapons untill you were a brown belt. You perfected your basics and the art first before adding weapons.

With out some form of martial discipline very few people can just pick up a sword and start learning it imho.

My experience indicates this to be incorrect. It is easier to teach someone who's had experience with an unarmed marital art (especially a striking art) to use a sword, but that's just because they'll have already had the basics, and the basics transfer pretty much universally. It works the other way around, too... someone who's competent with a sword will have a much easier time learning unarmed arts because they will already know the basics of movement, balance, power generation, and so on. You can learn the basics just as easily with a sword in your hand as without.

Heh.

*points at title*

You have learned well, Grasshopper.

Aye. This is one of the things that greatly irritates me about Shadowrun melee combat (it's fighting it out with the totally irrational division of the melee weapon skills for the top spot). It should be possible to default from most of the armed combat skills to Unarmed Combat, and vice versa, and it isn't.

Yes Master...

Note that I'm not complaining about the skills being divided up. I'm complaining about the method of division making no sense... Clubs and Edged Weapons are the primary offenders. They end up dividing weapons that handle very similarly into different skills, and lumping very different weapons all into the same skill. A sammy's Edged Weapons skill doesn't cover the bokken he uses to practice katana, but it works with knives and battleaxes just fine. Maces and hand axes handle more like each other than either of them do like swords, yet one is Clubs and the other is lumped into Edged with swords... and even the mace (Clubs) is more similar to a sword (Edged) than a knife (also Edged) is.

My house-rule solution was to divide the melee weapon skills into Knives, Single-Hand Weapons, and Great Weapons... these are basically the Reach 0, 1, and 2+ weapons, respectively, and regardless of whether they're bludgeoning or cutting weapons. I also included a category of hand-and-a-half weapons - the katana, bastard sword, combat axe, and similar weapons - that can be used with either Single-Hand or Great Weapons without penalty. Using Great Weapons with them gives you the +1 Power bonus for two-handed use; using Single-Hand doesn't, but allows use of an off-hand weapon or whatnot. (I also rule that the katana is assumed to be used two-handed, and already has that Power bonus factored in, so it's (Str+2)M Power when you use it with Single-Hand, just like any other sword... that's a different argument, though.)

And I put all of these in the same default group along with Unarmed Combat and Cyber-implant Combat, so that someone who's learned how to hit people in the face with a sword in his hand can figure out that the exact same move is effective if he hits them with his empty fist instead (though not as effective... there's something to be said for having a large piece of sharpened metal to hit people with ), and vice versa.

Contrary to common knowledge, there is no way to "take away" someone's black belt.

I just picked this up upon recommendation from a friend, but haven't had a chance to read it yet.