The Mystery of The katana

[El Mahdi]

... It has been theorized that one of the wounds he suffered emasculated him, explaining why he never got married. The names are unrelated. I had never heard about the horse myself.

Ahhh, a gelding then...

Check out Bullfinch's Mythology. The stories of Charlemagnes Paladins are awesome (that's where Roland and Bayard come from, in that context).

Myself, I'll have to read up on the aforementioned Cavalier.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

That does sound like the coolest thing ever. Can you recommend any titles?

Well, nothing exactly like yakuza fighting demons but keep in mind that this genre suffers from hypersexualisation and showcases campy gore.

Recently I've enjoyed Princess Samurai (A bunch of Yakuza rape some girls, so a cyborg is made out of raped/murdered girls to seek revenge), One Chanbara (A scantly dressed girl wearing a cowboy hat killing zombies with samurai swords) and Death Trance (A wandering swordsman steals a coffin containing the goddess of destruction. A monk is sent after him but the supernatural also want the coffin...)

 

[Wicht]

Death Trance is good, though it actually works better on the second viewing than the first, IMO.

 

[Filcher]

Well, nothing exactly like yakuza fighting demons but keep in mind that this genre suffers from hypersexualisation and showcases campy gore.

Recently I've enjoyed Princess Samurai (A bunch of Yakuza rape some girls, so a cyborg is made out of raped/murdered girls to seek revenge), One Chanbara (A scantly dressed girl wearing a cowboy hat killing zombies with samurai swords) and Death Trance (A wandering swordsman steals a coffin containing the goddess of destruction. A monk is sent after him but the supernatural also want the coffin...)

Awesome. Thank you. And yeah, I'm just looking for some light entertainment with fun action. Ala:


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSIetIg7O3M]YouTube - Sucker Punch - Official HD Trailer by Zack Snyder[/ame]


Respecting the OP, I'd offer the tongue-in-cheek possibility that RPG weapons are like RPG deities. The more that worship them, the stronger they are.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

by the way you COULD have a large headed maul, hammer or morningstar...
make the majority of wood, plate the face or spikes with steel!

this gives benefit of big striking areas, which are good for blunt weapons, with hard/sharp material

as for the weight of weapons, aye, you can't really wield any of those stupid big things, real claymores for example weighed about 4 to 8lbs which soon wear syou down swinging it etc

strongest man I ever knew was the only one who could pick up and lift upright (with a kind of snap/jerk/twist) a 56lb bush hammer with one hand (back before steroids etc, so just natural strength). Bush hammers were used to drive in "bushes" into the axles of large machinery, so had VERY broad flat heads
Him, maybe he could use a 15lb fantasy style great axe, but even he'd get tired quick.

if you compare a wood axe to a real battle axe, the wood axe has a thicker body, designed to split wood like a wedge, but a war weapon has a very thin blade compared to the wood axe
wood axe has a sort of convex profle, the war axe has a flat one.

 

[cattoy]

it doesn't matter what you make a maul out of, it's designed to be a tool, not a weapon.

Mauls are great when you need to drive stakes or axles or stuff like that.

Mauls suck whenever your target might

A: move
B: stab you
C: all of the above

They are, by nature, slow and unbalanced. Swinging one requires a long windup and a longer follow through. Either one of these things will get you killed in combat.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They are, by nature, slow and unbalanced. Swinging one requires a long windup and a longer follow through. Either one of these things will get you killed in combat.

Actually, the same is true of a 2-handed axe and flails in general, which is why the preferred style of use was to keep them in constant motion (as seen in several History & Military History channel shows, FWIW).

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

Awesome. Thank you. And yeah, I'm just looking for some light entertainment with fun action. Ala:


YouTube - Sucker Punch - Official HD Trailer by Zack Snyder

Holy crap that looks cool!

 

[Wicht]

Actually, the same is true of a 2-handed axe and flails in general, which is why the preferred style of use was to keep them in constant motion (as seen in several History & Military History channel shows, FWIW).

Which is why swords, and spears are probably better for armies. You really don't want to be standing shoulder to shoulder with a guy that has to keep his really sharp axe in constant motion. At least with the spear, they are all generally going to be pointed the same direction.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True- most of those weapons would have been use in small numbers on a mass battlefield, such as by the Housekarls who fought William the Conqueror a couple of weeks before his more famous battle in 1066...