D&D 4E 4e and reality

[Hussar]

1. Thanks for the explanation Hussar. What follows is meant in good spirits.

2. Because I offer a dissenting opinion to your statement of how things are termed by the majority or historical academia does not mean I need an education on how the term is used. It means I disagree with the majority usage or the term itself in its use.

Look hard enough and you'll find Latin being actively used and taught.

The fact that no one knows whether the European martial arts were taught actively and with no evidence can be assumed not taught is more a sign that the academics don't know if they are or not so instead of being called "ignorant" themselves, they call something "dead".

Of course that assumes they're using the term "ignorant" correctly and not in the negative connotation that society has put on it over the years.



KB

Yeah, thanks for taking that in the spirit it was intended, not in the snarky, knowitall crap tone that my post had. You are entirely right.

Well, I think we can safely say that European martial arts have not been taught actively for a couple of centuries, simply because no one has actually come forward.

But, I love the fact that it's being resurrected. I just hope it starts making its way into mainstream culture as well. I'd LOVE to see a medieval historical fiction movie done based on real fighting techniques and not fencing.

It will come. I think.

 

[DracoSuave]

Look hard enough and you'll find Latin being actively used and taught.

What region of the world uses Latin as its official language?

No where?

That is why it's considered a dead language. Parts of it are used in certain scientific and academic fields for various reasons, and it is studied academically, but it is not actively used by any culture or ethnic group. That's why it's a dead language, it is not used by anyone outside of academic study.

 

[Hussar]

What region of the world uses Latin as its official language?

No where?

That is why it's considered a dead language. Parts of it are used in certain scientific and academic fields for various reasons, and it is studied academically, but it is not actively used by any culture or ethnic group. That's why it's a dead language, it is not used by anyone outside of academic study.

Heh, the Vatican would like to have a word with you.

That's not quite the definition of dead. For a language to be dead, or any tradition really, there must be a broken chain of teacher to student. At some point in time, all the teachers died without passing on their knowledge to the student.

All the Latin we know today comes from books. There is no living chain of teacher to student. We actually don't 100% know how to pronounce these words. Ancient Egyptian is probably an even better example. We know what the hieroglyphs mean, but their pronunciation is basically a well educated guess.

The same goes for European martial arts. While we have books and pictures, we have no living chain of teachers stretching back to that time. We can reconstruct the tradition, but, in the end, we don't really know if the reconstruction is accurate or not.

OTOH, Eastern martial arts have living traditions. There are unbroken chains of living teachers to students stretching back to the very beginnings of the traditions. We know exactly what the traditions are, because we can actually ASK someone.

Granted traditions change all the time and something like martial arts also morph over time. But, there is an unbroken chain there, so, it's a living tradition.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Heh, the Vatican would like to have a word with you.

That's not quite the definition of dead. For a language to be dead, or any tradition really, there must be a broken chain of teacher to student. At some point in time, all the teachers died without passing on their knowledge to the student.

All the Latin we know today comes from books. There is no living chain of teacher to student. We actually don't 100% know how to pronounce these words. Ancient Egyptian is probably an even better example. We know what the hieroglyphs mean, but their pronunciation is basically a well educated guess.

The same goes for European martial arts. While we have books and pictures, we have no living chain of teachers stretching back to that time. We can reconstruct the tradition, but, in the end, we don't really know if the reconstruction is accurate or not.

OTOH, Eastern martial arts have living traditions. There are unbroken chains of living teachers to students stretching back to the very beginnings of the traditions. We know exactly what the traditions are, because we can actually ASK someone.

Granted traditions change all the time and something like martial arts also morph over time. But, there is an unbroken chain there, so, it's a living tradition.

As far as languages go it is entirely cut and dried. If a natural language has no native speakers, then it is a dead language. Latin has not been anyone's mother tongue for at least 1000 years and really longer than that in practice. It is a thoroughly dead language. Dead languages are often retained. Sumerian ceased to be a living language sometime around 2000 BC, yet it was still known and used for ritual purposes up until the 1st century AD. Its successor, Akkadian, likewise fell out of common use but was still retained as a diplomatic language in the fertile crescent until well after the 1st century AD.

I think when you apply this to European martial arts the situation is a lot more complicated. They obviously never died away completely. They just evolved into other things. Fencing became a stylized sport and military swordsmanship evolved into basic infantry fighting techniques. Things like Sabat etc faded but never entirely disappeared. Still, when you compare what was available for someone to learn in say 1900 in Europe and compared it to what was still being taught in Japan or China there is a huge difference. Their schools can usually trace back directly to ancient times. European techniques have almost all at some point fallen into disuse and nobody alive today can trace an unbroken chain of teachers back to the 15th Century authors of the fechtbuken or anything like that. Many of the techniques they taught are not even fully understood today.

It is worth remembering too though that even the eastern martial arts have evolved away from their roots a lot. Nobody studying kendo today is studying the same art that Musashi taught in his cave 500 years ago.

 

[DracoSuave]

Heh, the Vatican would like to have a word with you.

And if there are any members of the Vatican ethnic group, I'm sure they can correct me.

Any latest number on the census of people born in the Vatican in the last few decades?

 

[Jhaelen]

Look hard enough and you'll find Latin being actively used and taught.

Yep.

And if there are any members of the Vatican ethnic group, I'm sure they can correct me.

Any latest number on the census of people born in the Vatican in the last few decades?

And what does this have to do with the fact that Latin is still being actively used and taught?

 

[jonesy]

Just pointing out that Italian is the only official language of the Vatican.

The institutions within Vatican use other languages, but that's like saying Scratch is an official language of MIT. I mean, that's true, but...

 

[DracoSuave]

Yep.
And what does this have to do with the fact that Latin is still being actively used and taught?

What does it actively being used and taught by academics and clerics have to do with the fact no culture, country, or ethnic group uses it, no child grows up speaking it, there are no villages where it's the language everyone used, why there are effectively zero native speakers of Latin as a first language.

That's why it's dead. It's not that it's some arcane language needing a rosetta stone to decipher... it's that no one is a native speaker of it. The study of Latin is purely an academic endevour, and it's uses are restricted to academic or ecclesiastical ones.

That's why the Vatican is a bad example... no one is born there, and no one who is a Latin speaker in the Vatican was born speaking Latin. The Pope's first language is German, the last one's was Polish, and the most common first language amongst Cardinals is Italian.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

And, obviously, I strongly disagree with narrating any mechanically determined event before the results are known. I have zero problem with "I try to bull rush the swarm. ((Roll)) I succeed. "Biff the Wonderful picks up a board and pushes the rats back through the wall and blocks the entrance!"

Granted, doing it the other way around is fine too. "I try to push them back with a board! ((Roll - Fail)) Oh, no, they ignore my mighty board!"

The dice provide the direction, I provide the script. I find that results in a lot fewer weird moments where the narrative and the dice just don't match up.

I'm in complete agreement with this. I let the mechanics and the dice provide the direction. If someone has a power that allows them to grab something and they succeed in the die roll, then the direction is "they have successfully grabbed the swarm". How the player or DM describes this(since who describes the action is different from game to game) is really unimportant. In certain corner cases, it's harder to describe than others. In those cases, it's often worth not describing in any terms other than mechanics.

I prefer a DM to go "I'm not sure exactly how you grab the swarm, nothing is coming to mind right now. But you do. It's immobilized." than resort to "I can't think of a way you grab the swarm, so the power fails."

 

[P1NBACK]

I'm in complete agreement with this. I let the mechanics and the dice provide the direction. If someone has a power that allows them to grab something and they succeed in the die roll, then the direction is "they have successfully grabbed the swarm". How the player or DM describes this(since who describes the action is different from game to game) is really unimportant. In certain corner cases, it's harder to describe than others. In those cases, it's often worth not describing in any terms other than mechanics.

I prefer a DM to go "I'm not sure exactly how you grab the swarm, nothing is coming to mind right now. But you do. It's immobilized." than resort to "I can't think of a way you grab the swarm, so the power fails."

Sure. That's when there's dice but no clouds. It's called a boardgame. D&D 4E can be played this way. More power to you.