Hi,

I read an interesting article in Spada 2 last night, Medical Reality in Historical Wounds by Richard Swinney and Scott Crawford, that has thinking about the way in which we simulate wounds in SCA Rapier. The gist of the article was the illustration that many of the wounds that we treat as having an immediate effect are often not immediately incapacitating.

While I don’t have the article with me, some of the incidents that stand out in my mind are as follows:

A woman who took 15 severe cuts to the hands from a serrated butcher knife before she was able to grasp the blade and wrest it from her assailant.

A gentleman in period, who was run through front to back just below the ribcage, who removed the rapier himself and then walked to a physician. This gentleman actually survived…

Another gentleman who’s arm was caught in a log splitter. He managed to disable the machine. He then had his wife tie a tourniquet above the wound and drive him to the emergency room. Along the way they stopped to pickup coffee…

What strikes me from the article is that just because you manage to wound your opponent in the chest a second, two seconds or even 5 seconds ago, doesn’t mean that he will stop trying to kill you. He may not even notice the wound in that time! After all, how many of us have wondered where that bruise came from?

Now, we are playing a game, and shouldn’t just continue fighting until one of the combatants is too battered to continue. I think it is equally bad that you can go for a “gun slinging” attack, relying on beating your opponent to the touch while not really defending yourself.

My opinion is that we should change the rules regarding double touches (double kills). I think that the person scoring the touch should need to get back out of range in order to avoid a double kill. Since this is a game, I would also suggest that the person receiving the touch could take no more that one step after receiving the first touch until contact is broken and the blow acknowledged.

Let the debate begin…

Kit

PS. Spada 2 is available from Chivalry Bookshelf (http://www.chivalrybookshelf.com/)

Posted By Raoul on 03-16-2006 12:16 PM
It sounds reasonable to me.

Related to realism but different from the above, how do people feel about requiring a little positive force?

Ramon, how do you buy books from this site?

Raoul

By "positive force" are you referring to requiring a certain amount of pressure before calling it a hit?

If this is your intent then I think it would be a bad thing... if you do this it opens the floodgates to rhino hiding and everyone jacking up their shots in order to get the opponent to call it valid and we might as well just start wearing armor and playing heavy. The laceType w:st="on">kingdomlaceType> of laceName w:st="on">ArtimesialaceName> has this, they can call a rapier blow light and our recent transplant from there was telling horror stories of broken ribs and such because they think they have to hit so hard in order to avoid the call of "Light". 

Possible a better way of dealing with this might be for all of us to check our ego at the door and when you know that the little brush you just gave someone at the extreme outside of your range couldn't have possibly penetrated their clothing let alone killed them CALL IT BACK and continue the bout this includes head shots,  just because you touched someones mask doesn't mean they are dead if you are at far measure they are backing up and you just barely got there it wouldnt do much other than ruin (maybe improve) their looks a little  ... use your judgement and dont be afraid to call back a hit that you dont feel was really good. 

If that wasn't you intent please clarify so I can apologize for my pseudo rant   LOL

As far as the rest of this topic is concerned, I agree whole heartedly that if you are fool enough to get killed while killing your opponent then you should take it as a death and learn to protect yourself.

We do however have a legitimate process in place to simulate what the original poster seems to want, why do you think when I hold tournaments almost always double kill means your both dead and you count your scores accordingly (you both lose the point)... or in the case of Ursulmas where the lines got out of whack in the first half of the tourney I made people stay on the field till they had a clear victor... I like to believe it cleaned up the fighting a bit. I know the lines became less out of whack for reporting wins and losses.