Fencer Archive

word Chrai. all the fabulous background info aside on this rather interesting thread...

if you wantsamurai in star wars, you should play Bill & Ted's excellent online adventure instead- b/c there were no samurai's in star wars from my recollection. I think you get the analogy - I couldn't pass up on the aliteration

Well, the kind of weapons you would want to use would vary if you were focusing on a particular period in history. In earlier centuries where they had civil wars, the weapons and armor used by samurai were more suited to battlefield combat. During the later period the samurai started tocarry swords that were a little shorter and more suited to carrying at all times and fighting one on one against other swordsmen, and using more specialized forms, like the many schools that focused on iaido (sword drawing) techniques. If they wore armor, it was the newer and more mobile kind (I think it was lighter, but better designed than the battlefield armor of earlier centuries).

(The new Wookiee armor reminds me of the armor from both periods: the early, boxier armor, and the later armor that consisted of little steel plates connected with silk cords. I think the next Wookiee armor design will also be great for what you want to do.)

Use of the spear would have become more just a way of rounding out their training, as opposed to the sword which became the heart of the culture. By this point schools of swordsmanship wereas common as fencing schools in Europe. The fact that Japan closed its borders to the West for 300 years caused these schools to refine themselves continuously, whereas the popularity of the gun in Europecaused fencing to be more of a formality than a necessity. I'm not sure, but it seems like the uppper class that cultivated a dueling culture in Europe had no problem adopting the pistol.

Although JediQuic is right, the spear and bow in Japan would later go down different paths. Training with the bow became almost more of a philosophical "zen" exercise than even swordsmanship, but more abstract. I'm not sure at what point in history we saw a transition, but samurai wives and daughters were trained in the spear techniques to defend their homes--a naginata (polearm) was very effective at de-horsing people.

Despite the high encumbrance, slow speed, and low defenseof the pikeman in SWG, the techniques for using the naginata are very efficient, you're not moving your arms around that much, so youdon't have to be physically strong to change directions as fast as someone could swing a sword, and you can react very quickly to defend.There was a weighted steel cap at the blunt end, and a sword-sized bladeat the sharp end-- either side could be used offensively, and you could attack a wider range of targets without putting yourself at risk.I wouldn'tcall it a"woman's weapon,"but today,use of the naginata is taughtusing similar equipment tomodern kendo, and the field is dominated by women. And to see a woman with a naginata take apart someone with a sword, you would see that the naginata is really the finesse weapon. If SWG reflected this reality, then pike would be the most overpowered profesion in the bralwer tree. (And female characters would get a bonus!)

Now that I've learned you guys are Wookiees, maybe you should adopt the Ryyk blade as your general "walking around" weapon, even if you decide to go further into a different elite brawler profession.One ofthe majorideas behind the samuraias I've mentioned that they were simply a culture that said "No Thanks" when the Western world came knocking. That's not that different than what goes on with the Wookiees-- the Wookiees know about technology, yet don't let it change their culture. So maybe your character design could be a Wookiee from a clan in which had more of a militant, warrior culture.

You don't need to actually say "Samurai" to get the effect, just like you don't need to say "cowboy" in reference to Han Solo, but that's obviously the effect Lucas was going for when he gave him that gunfighter's holster.