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Worlds of Design: Gun vs. Sword
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7803015" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Which gets right back on topic with lew's post and my response to it - RPGs typically rout around the problem of Lanchester's Laws by unconsciously or consciously constructing the game such that the long lines of sight that are normal in reality are non-existent in the game world, thereby creating parity between melee and missile weapons that generally doesn't match reality. They do this in fact even in cases where the rules don't punish a player for using cover, concealment, and a ranged weapon, much less in cases like FATE that you are talking about.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Except historical experience tells us that a rifle or shotgun with a bayonet on it, being essentially a short but effective pole arm, tends to out perform a sword in close combat and the only reason that they stopped issuing bayonets (and bayonet lugged combat shotguns for that matter) is that experience showed that the number of times the enemy was actually able to close into hand to hand combat successfully was so low as to hardly be worth worrying about. Even in close combat the majority of casualties turned out to be from bullets, and the major impact of that bit of sharpened steel tended to be psychological. And in cases where it was no deterrence, say last ditch charges by Japanese Samurai during WWII, there was still far more shooting the enemy at point blank range than parrying and stabbing with the bayonet effective though that proved to be when needed. Rifles are extraordinarily hard to chop in half, even for a berserk Samurai with a katana. </p><p></p><p>And the Claymore mine pretty much ended the human wave attack as a tactic.</p><p></p><p>So again, even by the FATE rules with an M1 Garand, I'm advantaged in pretty much all cases over just having a sword.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7803015, member: 4937"] Which gets right back on topic with lew's post and my response to it - RPGs typically rout around the problem of Lanchester's Laws by unconsciously or consciously constructing the game such that the long lines of sight that are normal in reality are non-existent in the game world, thereby creating parity between melee and missile weapons that generally doesn't match reality. They do this in fact even in cases where the rules don't punish a player for using cover, concealment, and a ranged weapon, much less in cases like FATE that you are talking about. Except historical experience tells us that a rifle or shotgun with a bayonet on it, being essentially a short but effective pole arm, tends to out perform a sword in close combat and the only reason that they stopped issuing bayonets (and bayonet lugged combat shotguns for that matter) is that experience showed that the number of times the enemy was actually able to close into hand to hand combat successfully was so low as to hardly be worth worrying about. Even in close combat the majority of casualties turned out to be from bullets, and the major impact of that bit of sharpened steel tended to be psychological. And in cases where it was no deterrence, say last ditch charges by Japanese Samurai during WWII, there was still far more shooting the enemy at point blank range than parrying and stabbing with the bayonet effective though that proved to be when needed. Rifles are extraordinarily hard to chop in half, even for a berserk Samurai with a katana. And the Claymore mine pretty much ended the human wave attack as a tactic. So again, even by the FATE rules with an M1 Garand, I'm advantaged in pretty much all cases over just having a sword. [/QUOTE]
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