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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4756502" data-attributes="member: 54707">Well, I'm not sure that martial arts alone has had this influence AM, but being involved with real fights and combats has affected the way some of us play, and changed the ways we handled fights, starting maybe twenty years or so ago.We rarely rely upon dice to resolve in-close combats anymore, instead we use Describe and Demonstrate to show techniques and affects/effects. As for some monsters, obviously we have to rely upon dice for creatures that can do things no person could do, but in the main we enact combats rather than role them. (There are much fewer combats in our games over the years, because people that know about real combat want to avoid them if they possibly can, but the ones we do have are all extremely dangerous to the characters.)Various forms of martial art knowledge, armed and unarmed, have affected technique more than overt lethality in our games, but certain forms and certain methods of martial arts combats are obviously designed for killing impact and purposes, and so critical hits and that kind of thing under certain circumstances can become very lethal very quickly.I prefer combats this way, as they are far more realistic. And dangerous. And exciting. And lethal.Then again my campaigns also often involve warfare, and so war-efforts make a large showing in our games. And just like small scale tactical combats (in our game) in war people can lose eyes, become crippled and lame, wounds can become infected, disease is a problem, concussions can lead to brain damage, and other kinds of chronic issues can result. I for instance broke my back (or had it broken for me) in real life (in addition to suffering various other injuries and wounds, some serious) and very well understand how serious injuries can have long lasting effects upon abilities. Serious diseases can have the same or similar effects.So that is thrown in as well.Now some of the younger players, like my kids, have no experience with such matters, or with real combats or serious injuries (Thank God) but they seem to learn and mimic us to some degree when it comes to in-game combat. And I'm teaching my kids Tai Chi right now to ready them for their instructions in boxing and other forms of unarmed martial arts. Later on I'll teach them to knife fight and gun fight (though they both are pretty good spot shooters right now), but for the moment I think they understand that fighting is serious, dangerous, scary, potentially lethal business, and is not a, "I'll flip over a twenty foot wall, run down a bamboo shoot and make a flashy sword twirl and kill thirty armed men while taking seventeen arrows in my gut cause I have three hundred hit points kinda endeavor." It's always much, much better to take no arrows anywhere if you can possibly help it. As for high jumping twenty foot walls and running down bamboo shoots, well, we're playing D&D characters, not superheroes. Spider climb with magic okay, jumping around like the Six Million Dollar Man without bionics, not so much.A man with a combat knife slices open an artery or hamstrings you and you're in real trouble, I don't care if your name is Achilles or Conan and so that's the way we approach a fight. Fights aren't really something you get into cause you're just bored or looking for an adventure. An adventure is a good, brisk, pleasant hike through the Rockies living off the land for a week or so. A fight is a lot of heavy grunting, scared <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />-less, desperate, sweaty, highly intense, exhausting, who's gonna kill who first, and how badly am I gonna get screwed-up and injured doing this kind of thing affair. Fighting every day for sport or just for the hell and high-water of it is not for men who want to live to see the grandchildren get married.So knowing the difference between hidden dragon pummeling you down to your last sixty hit points, and tiger crouching over your downed body ripping your throat out and bleeding you of your last good pint of the red stuff sorta changes the way you perceive things like that. It does for me anyways.</blockquote>

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