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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J_D" data-source="post: 1647493" data-attributes="member: 20956">What I originally said:ThenI didn't insult you.  There is nothing in what I said that could be construed as an insult if taken as written.  A suggestion that you may be "desperate for fun" is not an insult, at least not where I come from.  If you're reading something into it (that I didn't type) that makes it insulting to you then that's your issue, not mine.  And this last sentence is not an insult either.Well, you've done some of the work for me below.Or maybe it was a cultural thing, because they certainly had the ability to make swords, and that they can also be used to chop trees seems to me a pathetic reason for sticking with an inferior weapon.Denial of power to the peasantry is unquestionably a cultural decision.  The fact that the samurai remained with their swords in preference to firearms was very strongly cultural.  They were used some around shortly before and after beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, but they made a conscious decision to reject firearms just like they did to eject all foreigners and foreign ideas and keep Japan in isolation until the 1850's.  This decision was far more cultural than anything else, far more than the tactical or economical considerations.There's that.  Then there are other examples, although these weren't very long-lived.  There was a time when the Pope forbade the use of the crossbow except against non-Christians, because it was so deadly to the knights in armor.  Again, when firearms became common, the Church banned rifled barrels because of the sound the spinning rounds made were believed to be evil spirits from Satan or something.  Both of these were cultural prohibitions. You're actually asking for justification for a cultural choice?  You do realize that cultural choices aren't strictly logical or rational, don't you?  You do realize that tradition is doing things for no other reason than that your father and grandfather did the same things, don't you?  Maybe in the far past the tradition began for some practical or logical reason.  Sometimes that reason still exists, but at least as often the reason is long obsolete and it's just cultural inertia that maintains the tradition despite any reason or logic.  If reason or logic contraindicates the tradition, and it does so dramatically enough, then change will happen but traditions have an undeniable inertia to them.  In real life, I myself tend to disdain tradition and prefer a more purely rational decision making process, but in an RPG game I recognize that in-game cultures will often be driven far more by tradition, and if I'm going to play a character from that culture I'll follow the traditions.  Now, maybe dwarves don't have to have that axe-based fighting culture, and if you come up with a home-brew world in which they don't that's great, but in most published game worlds or fantasy literature the fact is that they do, and following that is simply good role-playing.  In my opinion, violating such a cultural tradition in a extraordinary way requires an extraordinary in-game justification.If you can make a case that real axes are equally effective to real swords, then sure.  My own preference is that the game mechanics for mundane things like this should echo the real life characteristics as closely as possible within the limits of a system simple enough to play.  We'll just have to agree to disagree about whether verisimilitude or balance is more important.In my opinion, a culture that is described in game books is a sufficiently valid in-character reason.In my opinion, that all of these weapons continued to be used is by itself not sufficient justification to conclude that they were equally effective weapons.  You need a physics or mechanical ananlysis of the weapons to conclude this.True, culture isn't an all-powerful force that blocks all improvement.  If improvements are dramatic enough, then over time changes will happen.  That said, I don't think you credit culture enough.  I think it has more power than you are willing to admit.</blockquote>

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