Krieg said:
FWIW DMauricio isn't too far from the mark.
Historically the term "longsword" was used in Europe to describe a weapon with a longer hilt & blade that was designed to keep pace with advances in armour technology. Said weapons could be wielded with two hands & were referred to as "longswords" to distinguish them from their shorter single handed brethren.
The more typical single handed weapons were typically just referred to as a "sword".
Similarly in Japan the term Daito (literally "long" "sword") was used to refer to any weapon with a blade more than two Shaku (1 shaku = 1 foot roughly) in length. A Shoto (short sword) had a blade between one & two Shaku in length.
Ironically enough both historical usages of the term "longsword" translate to the D&D Bastardsword (which brings up an interesting point of it's own).
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Not to belabor this point to the chagrin of the 99.9999% of people in this thread that dont care about it... so I'll apologize in advance
If you would, quote me some references to the use of the word longsword in actual historical classification and not just casual description. The fact is, almost every 'developed' sword was called a specific term by not only the people using them within the realm of their culture and time period, and often something else by those outsite of their immediate culture upon viewing or attempting to classify it into their realm of experience. It's really not until fairly recently that anyone has attempted to truly classify historical swords; most older historical references would refer to either the accepted name for their culture, or an off-handed reference like 'his sword' or 'a long sword'. The fact is that 'longsword' is not an 'official' or accepted term of classification, and most references to it are literary in nature and are more along the lines of calling a certain culture of people 'tall men'; they may not all be tall, and may have a lot of other differences other than just being tall... it was just a generalization made by someone unconcerned with an accurate classification. For some time people referred to (and still do, inaccurately) certain european knightly swords from the late 13th to late 15th centuries as 'long swords', but people have tended to try to push way too much into that classification.
It's just way too much of an overgeneralization; when you say longsword you could be referring to a late-Roman Gaul-inspired Calvary sword, an 11th Century Norman knightly sword, a specific type of one-handed Viking raiders sword, a 14th century type IV arming sword, a 16th century transitional cut-and-thrust sword, or an early 19th century English field officer's long infantry hanger. Not a one of those swords have much of anything in common other than they are approximately around the same length, are fairly straight, mostly double-edged, and are made to cut people; to attempt to lay that much of a general term upon them as 'longsword' causes real learned sword historians (which I am not one of) to wail and gnash their teeth, while practical amateur sword enthusiasts (which I am) to go "huh? What kind of sword out of the thousands you have to choose from are you talking about?". Oh, and 'bastard' swords was a term in use on occasion in history, but it was also more often called a hand-and-a-half and sometimes a late renaissance knightly long arming swords (arming swords generally being shorter, but many late ones were heavier and made with longer handles), among other things; they are distinct from what most historians and sword enthusiasts would even consider a 'long sword', even though the distinction is pretty thin. Sure, lots of people refer to a class of swords as 'long swords' in history (notably 13th to 15th century straight one-handed swords), but the people who really classify them and the folks who carried originally them do/did not, because it's just way too broad and often misleading.
So it's not 'wrong' to call a certain knight's sword a longsword any more than it's 'wrong' to call a S&W M29 .44 magnum a 'big gun'; both of you guys are fairly close to the mark FWIW. Both are technically true, but there are a lot of other 'big guns' that dont have anything in common with a .44 magnum, and calling a firearm a 'big gun' doesnt tell you very much about what caliber, how it fires, how old it is, who used it, etc. So your mark is just excessively big, whereas I prefer to focus on the tiny little dot in the middle
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In game terms, it's perfectly alright for the purposes of play; the modern popularity with the term 'longsword' comes almost as a direct result of RPG usage throughout the 70's til now. My only real gripes with D&D and a few other RPG's with historical weapons is not their classication system, but their depiction of characteristics like weight, method of use, etc, which are often incredibly and horribly innaccurate.
And the part of the word Daito, 'Dai', while being correct in assuming that one of the original intentions could have been "long" (and accepted by many), it is equally valid (and argued among enthusiasts) that it was intended to convey "great", and several other words similar in idea; such is the problem with translations of older uses of language to more modern ideals. So you have people calling it a great-sword or a long-sword, when (in D&D terms) it is neither. Your reference points are fairly spot-on with the historical governmental measurements during the time period that Daito were carried. The real difference comes from the way the sword was *worn* and used within the context of it's time period however; there are quite a few examples of daito's shorter than the proscribed length, and katana's longer than an average Daito. Daito's are generally earlier in Japan's history, with what are called Katana's now coming a bit more recently, with a fair amount of overlap in the middle.
Of course, it's further complicated by the fact that probably over 70% of the actual books out there on the subject of swords and antique weaponary are wrong to various degrees; often the authors sufferred from inexperience, laziness, prejudice, ignorance or stupidity towards certain classes of weapons (and some of them almost all weapons), so it's often not easy to travel down to the library to get an accurate reference. And it's hard to disprove someone's assumptions when they are writing their work based off of things that you cannot easily put your hands on or talk to an original builder about; even today among the respected experts there is considerable debate about certain weapons and their existence, classification, or use. There are a few good experts out there who have done feasible classification attempts; you can find them if you look hard enough.
On an actual thread-related note, I did like the way that CoC d20's gun section was written, though I have heard many both support and criticize it's accuracy and ease of use. I never played it, but it did read well.
