Are there martial arts for non-Asian/Oriental settings?

[Agrippa]

Has anyone ever thought of coming up with an occidental martial arts system or expansion for Labyrinth Lord? I'm saying this becuase the West has it's own martial arts traditions, ranging from two-handed sword fencing to savate.

[by_the_sword]

Yup. This is why I cannot stand "Oriental Adventures" type stuff. Ancient and Medieval Europe had many complex fighting systems dating back to the ancient Greeks and maybe even farther. The stuff from the far East gets glorified and the western fighting arts are made to seem like ignorant brutes whacking each other over the head with 50 pound weapons, trying to get through the plate armor, when that was not the case.

There was tripping, there was disarming, there were crippling strikes, feints, lunges, wrestling, half-sword, pummeling, there were maneuvers to get an opponents shield or weapon out of the way, and there were techniques that taught a man how to defeat a fully armored opponent with a dagger. I figure all of this stuff is built into the attack-roll/ armor class system that LL uses, so why complicate things further by adding another page worth of stuff to the character sheet. Leave that to later editions of D&D (which I love, but when I want to play old school, I'll play old school).

[Fearghus]

As the above post states, yes; there were even published manuals for these European/Renaissance martial arts.

1. Wikipedia gives a nice summary and has several references if you are interested in detailed reading. Be sure to check out the German and Italian fencing sections.

[bighara]

Savate is a cool one.

[ArcherSix]

Yeah, it's called rolling to hit.


Not trying to be a smart alec(well, not trying too hard anyway), but just say, "I kick the bad guy in the face." Roll a d20 and see what happens.
Bam...instant martial arts!

[1970]

Not to necropost too much, but there was a supplement for OSRIC Unearthed from Vigilance Press. A portion of it is dedicated to the Eastern Arts, but there's also boxing, wrestling, specific fighting styles for dwarves and magic users and fighting styles for various weapon choices (such as two-weapon, weapon and shield, two-handed weapon, etc.) It's not a perfect fit, but it's a good place to start.

Also, it has several new classes, if you're interested in that sort of thing.