The Armour Archive

This is a very rough draft of the petition I offered to put forward on the “If you could change…â€

curiously, this reminds me of a history class in which we found strongly implied social and legal problems by continually restated laws to bar particular activities, prohibit fighting on Sundays, during Lent, etc. But when the laws need to be reissued without reference to the first issue, it says a lot about how much the law is being ignored.

Hi,

The bleed rule seems a bit odd, and difficult to enforce. Would all marshalls need to watch each fight with a marshalling staff in one hand and a timer in the other? Certainly the fighters will be a bit busy...

In addition, although the counted blow tourney is my absolute favorite type of lyste, legislating it as the "official" type (as per your letter) seems unnecessary. We already have the ability to, on a tourney-by-tourney basis, choose to use this variation or a myriad of others.

I am not saying that SCA combat has no regulatory flaws, I just think that overregulating anything is inherently problematic.

My opionion only,

Drake

I don't think managing to count blows in a war scenario is reasonable. There is SO much sensory overload, etc. that expecting people to remember where they are at in their count just won't work. Also people, rightly or wrongly, look for an effect to their blow, and I think will not love not knowing whether they actually had their blow acknowledged or not.

It probably is more realistic, as I think the bodies we have from battles are generally multiply beat up, but I can't see it being practical.

My knee jerk reaction, after a first reading, was to strongly oppose this. After re-reading several times, however, I believe I understand better.

As I understand the petition, you wish to change the wording of the rules to make counted blows the standard (rather than the 'acted out wounds' we currently use). The wording seems to need some work if this is the case. Your changes would not prohibit the 'acted wounds' standard, but until you carefully read the rules and then think about them for a while, they seem to read as if the 'acted wounds' standard is being prohibited. I think most people would jump to this conclusion based on the current wording.

This also ignores a key point. Although the SCA is pre-1601 our combat (based on the assumed armor standard) is effectively pre-1350. We have lots of evidence for the former time period, but less for the latter.

Suggestion: Replace B.1. "...a certain number of telling blows" with "a telling blow or a number of blows that has been set for a particular tournament"

and then after "in a manner appropriate to the combat being recreated" add ", including acting out the injury if desired."

Remove the last sentence in B.1. because it is an event management suggestion rather than a marshallate rule.

Replace B.2. "...a certain number of telling blows" with "...a single telling blow"



[This message has been edited by Maelgwyn (edited 09-10-2003).]

Looks like it needs a lot more work, thanks for all the comments. Please keep them coming.

The point, I obviously didn’t make clear enough, is to remove "acted wounds" as a default in combat. The "certain number" bit is meant to indicate that you can have any number of including one. Maelgqyn suggestion "a telling blow or a number of blows that has been set for a particular tournament" is a step in the right direction.

Having a fighter sit on their knees and fight with a supposed leg wound is just not a good recreation of a typical occurrence in any form of pre 1600 combat I can find. Even just standing on an injured leg doesn't seem to be common. In most of the references I can find if someone was having trouble using a limb, the yielded or the fight was stopped if it was a tournament. There are exceptions, but these cases seemed to have been remarked upon because they were considered so unusual. What we don't see are accounts of folks sitting on their knees or walking around on their knees.

Just for clarity.

Counting good blows received or struck, is actually a modern construct used to simulate being struck enough times that you would have either yielded, been stunned, or badly wounded depending upon the type of combat being recreated (restricted combat such as the tourney versus all out combat such as war), and as such isn't really tied to a particular time or place. Counting the number of blows thrown by the combatants is practice we see in 14th and 15th century tourneys in Europe. I need to find some way to better communicate the distinctions.

Thanks for the input so far, keep posting more. I appreciate both positive and negative comments. I’m going to start a rewrite which I hope will be done by Friday.

Asbjorn

I like the idea and the revisions for suggested word changes.

I agree with Maelgwyn (congratulations BTW) that one blow is probably best for melees. Otherwise it opens up a lot of possible problems and magnifies some of the curent ones. People who just don't like to die (oops, I mean quit the field) would have more room for fudge.

You could say under melee "One telling blow unless specified otherwise prior to the melee" This would suggest what we figure is the "best" way without prohibiting experimentation with multiple blows

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Non Onme Quod Licet Honestum Est

I have mixed feelings on this. First, I prefer the counted blow system to the current one for tournaments, hands down.

AS to melees, this may not be as workable as our current system. I would be more inclined to discount leg or arm shots entirely in favor of a single blow to a lethal area. I would wholeheartedly support experimentation with different systems.

Trevor

Who, BTW, is organizing a big counted blows event on Memorial Day 2004...

see I think that some points in this are good as counted strikes blah blah blah but this is the whole reason why I'm NOT going to be fighting in the SCA too many damned rules and regulations that don't make sence to some ppl and make sence to others and some that aren't historicaly accurate and some that are. Just too much "polotics" to it. and don't even get me started on the plastic armor thing witch I woun't but anyway... some of the rules suck and yes I agree that taking a knee is rediculas expechaly for me, some one who doesn't have the best knees in the world. but that's me two pennies worth of it any way. good luck with the rule changing. oh one last thing try not to make things too technical it will confuse the hell out of ppl... well some ppl anyway lol
thank you,
Sharp Tooth