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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 1963385" data-attributes="member: 9254">Y'know, until the 60's and 70's had the martial arts craze there wasn't a lot of awareness of the 133t n1nJ4.  Most people draw from the Kung Fu tv series (David Carridine as asian?!?) for their inspiration.  Probably so did Gygax et. al.  Truth was there were european martial arts.  Matter of fact, every major culture had some form of martial arts.  Ever heard of greco-roman wrestling?  Outside of the Asian world, martial arts just means "beat people up efficiently."  Matter of fact, that's what it first meant in Asia as well until a very ritualistic society codified it and, like their tea, ritualized it.  Even in Asia you were a pretty poor martial artist if you couldn't beat people up efficiently.  The main difference is that most of asia was under a social structure where the peasants were virtually unarmed and were in a metal poor situation.  Those "exotic weapons" were the farming implements they had at hand.  A nunchuka is a variant of a farming flail, just as a european flail is and the kama is a sickle.  Dollars to donuts there was a european "Farm Fu" that just didn't get any historical attention because the nobles didn't want the peasants to know about it and use it against them.  The surviving european martial arts were weapon heavy and focused on using the weapon six ways from sunday.  I'd wager an 8th century englishman with a quarterstaff would be a match for a comparable asian staff weilder.   The two-handed sword was weilded as "big freakin' sword," in a spear stance with the hand ahead of the quillons, like an axe with the blade as the pole and the quillons the head, etc.  Punches, kicks, headbutts and using your armor and horse as a weapon were the norm.  In asia weapons were the domain of a select few.  Europe had far more armsmen even if most only had access to only a few weapons.  In a world of Arcane Archers, dwarven defenders, and the like is it such a stretch to see a person who's learned a set regime of combat maneuvers using native weapons?  Dim-door and the like are freaky but feh, arcane archers fire teleporting arrows and rangers talk to animals.</blockquote>

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