It seems like the default sci-fi sword is a Katana.
Which I understand with a lot of the genre growing up in the background of rising japanese presence in the 80’s and 90’s when a lot of cyberpunk and near future stuff was getting going. But do you think it would be the go too sword in the nanobot laced near future skyscraper duels?
Do you think that tactical smallswords three musketer style would be more of a thing because of how compact they are? just slap on the prerequisite black and geometric aesthetics of the setting. Or maybe sabers or Dao for more easy one handed use while holding a pistol or phone in the other?
Though the topic might be tied to what culture develops more of a renaissance in the near future and the default is bushido japanese instead of the french gentleman duelist, the Scottish Brave, or the Turkish whirling dervish.
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Cyberpunk is cool, Katana are the coolest sword. Doesn’t get more complicated than that.
Iunno, I think a cyberpunk take on a fencing fight would be cool. Especially if the cyberpunk rapier is introduced as some kind of bot killer because of the pierce.
Kinda but also fencing is kinda gay
so are samurai.
Fencing was all the rage popularly in the earlier part of the 1900s. all the big movie actors had fencing scenes. Hell, Even Gundam ended off on a fencing scene back in 1979.
All in how you do it.
Probably because of the Musketeers, fencing and the French are connected. The French are pompous, old-fashioned, and effeminate, very uncyberpunk.
>Implying that fricking with gender conventions isn't a staple of cyberpunk
Frick it, now I want a French accented cyberpunk femboy duellist with a mono-molecular rapier and 10 million hours of sword fight training downloaded into his neural lace. Right next to the 11 million hours of blowjob heuristic programming.
You should check Moebius's stuff, I wouldn't be surprised if he hasn't designed something like this.
Mating Press, next question.
I will now buy your Cyberpunk game.
Remember Me was neat.
Kukris too. Same functionality with a little shapely flare!
Yeah, hilarious to imagine the WW1 implications if the then-recent war hadn't been Japs against fricking Russians. Everyone got the notion that "superior mettle" could see the men through even though it'd only worked because the empire beaten by it was a shambles. As to regulations jitte are pretty neat as corpo-ware. On the one hand they have implicit classism and paranoia, on the other they can be refluffed as some sort of neurospike (perhaps tailored to short suicide implants for securing interrogation-fodder).
Which is moronic since it's the French authors of the 70s who invented cyberpunk.
>inb4 Bilal isn't French
He is a turbo-mutt, which makes him the epitome of the modern french.
> Man from a country where ~35% of people are blacks and nearly 80% have mixed ancestry calls a country with 6~8% blacks mutted.
Assuming you are either British or American.
If you aren't, you literally do not have the right to an opinion that is worth anything.
Dude, I've seen pictures of modern day paris. Modern france looks like downtown Detroit to the point where there's a shoot mental illness derived from people having mental breakdowns at how shitty it is now next to the glamour of mythologized romantic france.
>breakdown cause Parisians suck themselves off so hard
Hmm sounds like everyone else's problem if they can't be arsed to not take things at face value
>Dude, I've seen pictures of modern day paris.
And I've been to early 2000s Detroit.
And New York.
And Chicago.
And London.
Paris has always been a shit city with an undeserved reputation apart from a few arrondissements which are overpriced anyways.
Doesn't change the fact that Anglos that have been opening the floodgates to immigration for the last 120 years like its nothing should shut the frick up about a country that is not 1/3 as "multicultural" as yours.
>The French are pompous, old-fashioned, and effeminate
l-like the japanese?
>Probably because of the Musketeers, fencing and the French are connected. The French are pompous, old-fashioned, and effeminate, very uncyberpunk.
Kek, which is hilarious since French fencers were the only ones who were interested enough in samurais to have a few masters shipped over to their home country to compare styles. They wrote that once you adjust for the deceivingly long range of the draw they were just good swordsmen, nothing incredible you couldn't rapier away.
The real reason why the katanagay fears the rapier
> "La longue poke, ou la courte poke, votre choix, samurai-sama."
>samurai-sama
Nay weeb
The frogs were the original weebs.
Always laughed when reading Gaijin and the jap lord meets some frogs for the first time and insist they have to be somehow related because French names sounds so much more like Japanese names in comparison to English or Dutch ones.
>Always laughed when reading Gaijin and the jap lord meets some frogs for the first time and insist they have to be somehow related because French names sounds so much more like Japanese names in comparison to English or Dutch ones.
In the Meiji era, some japanese "proved" there were descendants of Greeks ("we look and sound much more like Greeks than Chinese" - really) or even the 13th tribes of Israel. Then again, "mythical" origin is a common trait of this sort of regime. The Bourbons were styling themselves as descendants of Troy in the 16-17th centuries.
>French fencers were the only ones who were interested enough in samurais to have a few masters shipped over to their home country to compare styles.
>interested
It was a silk-worm arrangement which evolved into a military alliance, not a bunch of interested fencers travelling for whatever reasons.
thats what I said in less words and less specifics.
>Katana are the coolest sword.
>but also fencing is kinda gay
Its insane how hard this thread is trying to be as wrong as possible right from the start.
>Its insane how hard this thread is trying to be as wrong as possible right from the start.
I would say that Katana are pretty universally considered cool. Whether you personally find them cool or not is a different story, but I don’t think that diminishes my point.
Fencing back in the day was cool, everybody likes that type of fencing and thinks its sweet. Fencing like it is now is fricking gay central, tiny little rubber bendy blades, ridiculously extended lunging begin the only viable tactics, full body armor, gay ass face plates, oversensitive, pussified electronic scoring.
That's what people think of when they think of modern fencing, gay shit. Katanas are cool because the Japs have changed Kendo much ,much less from what it used to be. Also they hit the shit out of each other.
t. obese hemagay that gets winded going up stairs
is he wrong? Who watches fencing anymore besides fencers?
Fencers are actual athletes with lightning fast reflexes.
Fencing falls under the same umbrellas as wrestling where it's very fun to participate in, but isn't fun to watch. Unfortunately.
Lightning-fast reflexes? Sure.
Athletes? Lol no. Only in the most vague sense along with bobsledders and curling teams.
The entire sport is the ugliest microcosm of the contemporary pollution of an expression tradition as I have ever laid eyes on.
You are an obese hematard. Respect your betters that can actually run a mile.
the cardio needed for fencing is insane, especially considering how start-stop it is
Yeah fighting is hard
>Athletes? Lol no.
Tell me you've never done fencing without telling me outright.
you don't even have to fence just watch it and have some athletic experience
it's clearly been alien to
for long enough that Ser Goochsweat Butterball shuffling around the woods with his foam boffer no longer understands what athleticism is
>fencing gays when they get stabbed with a knife and it doesn't bend and give them points
>hemagay
>Katana
?????
>katana
>coolest
Only according to Fedora-core Trenchcoat Edgelords of Plebbit
So this speaks volumes about you.
You'd better be a post ironic friendly dude because if not you're a Black person
HEMA is for dweebs.
Plebbit loves slopping up HEMA cum.
Love how mad you israelites are about goyslop perfectly describing the poison israeli companies sell to the point where you've gone all claws on deck to try to subvert it
> t. no guns
Funny how /k/ thinks guns are the epitome of masculinity or something. Try learning to fight like a real man for once.
a real man who's not an idiot knows to respect the power of the gun.
>Try learning to fight like a real man for once.
Rational animal or featherless biped?
>israelite gets named
>changes the subject
Thank you, king of /misc/, for gracing us with your presence.
>fedora-core
>core
kys
Plebs dont understand the coolness of polearms
Euro swords too op. Euro polearm like swords even more so. Italian and french nobility sticks too gay
Scottish still existing would make any homosexualry done by gangers that arent scottish too unrealistic (and also slightly too OP).
Hijabi and Ottoman foil and bronze was beaten by cast iron pans wielded by slavic grandparents thus completely unrealistic.
That leaves with bri'ish street greeting and weeb sticks as only defaults scifi is left with unless it invents some funny "cultural tradition" weapons that are usually variants of the axe or the stick and all the cheapo mass consumption shit is already made in east asia.
Simple as.
polearms seem a little less “carry on your person”. Which seems like the major thing when it comes to more modern para-civilian things.
a gang of tuffs might carry swords around. sword of any persuasion really, but they arent lugging around pole axes.
How about foldable telescopic shaft?
Switching between hatchet mode indoors, and halberd mode out in the streets
dont know what that means, but retractable batons are pretty near future-ish
yeah, something like that except longer and with axe/halberd head
Make the head a telsa coil, say the locals use them to jumpstart engines. In a world where tech is everything, 30 seconds to restart is too long.
>ignoring various science fiction elements like a extending pole with energy blades
You two do realize a standing carry non-field polearm takes less street space and is more convenient to carry around than half the guns and melee seen in sci-fi, right? Or even modern gay scooters or plain people with heads up their ass looking at a phone. I mean sure a pike would be a problem if you have to enter shops, but a regular 2.2-2.4m (and scaled down for ladies/those sub meter eighty, continue to exist) swiss halberd, absolutely no problem, even in the narrowest one way-between buildings space you can still go low guard with choked grip better than all (non-westernized) kenjutsu stances that combined have 3 actual thrusts 2 being seigan variants that aren't offhand (well supposedly wakazashi compatible, but really its knife only due to elbow biomechanics unless you are really fricking short) based parry followups.
>regular 2.2-2.4m (and scaled down for ladies/those sub meter eighty, continue to exist) swiss halberd, absolutely no problem
You are absolutely fricking delusional. You are carrying around a seven and a half foot pole ALL DAY, and trying to just go about doing regular shit ALL DAY. Swords have fricking sheathes you tard.
>Black person doesnt know how to plant and lean
I bet you think mercs and guards also didnt use mauls, shields and two handed swords.
>homosexual ignores even greater praise given to the better made sword that werent style or material compensation over design to focus on "stick with bonk" part is useful, especially in fantasy where you can easily make a already simple to carry around all day weapon even better and then claims its polarm homosexualry
Nice projection.
Most of your post was unreadable, as often happens when a child throws a tantrum. I'm going to help you out and repeat why what you said is stupid, this time calm down, take a breath, and think a little before you respond.
Swords have sheaths, you cannot sheath an 8 ft. pole-arm with any degree of effectiveness. This is a discussion about somebody in a cyberpunk setting, not a guard in a medieval township whose job it is to stand around with a halberd in an open market for ten hours.
You need to run and jump and climb and shop and get in and out of cars and get in elevators and eat food and sky dive and all sorts of shit.
You will look like the biggest, stupidest homosexual to ever walk the earth when your eight foot pole-axe rips the upholstery in your fixer's 10 million dollar car after you've spent the last thirty minutes trying to fit it in at just the right angle so he can drive you to a job site.
nta but a folding/telescoping haft seems pretty reasonable in a cyberpunk setting. You don't need to be walking around with a solid wood pole like it's the renaissance.
I got it! "Magberd"
Magnetic-Halberd. You carry it around like a tent pole or nunchucks. Then you turn the magnets on and it pops out to 6-8 feet.
Plus if the magnets are not working, you can flail it around like a whip.
>seething weaponless Black person is katana homosexual, moronic to the point of having no spacial awareness of measurements and ESL
Many such cases, your wranglers have my condolences.
>lemme carry a eight to nine foot pole around to be intimidating
>in the cramped alleyways of a poorly designed big city
Surely it's cause they don't understand the cool factor
> Doesn't know how to weapon
Kek. You can use polearms effectively in cramped quarters, you just switch your grip around.
Truth is however that we'd be getting machetes and sabers way before we'd get polearms or katanas.
>You can use polearms effectively in cramped quarters
He wasn't talking specifically about fighting, but about how to carry that stick all day.
While mass in space is expensive, space is cheap. We often have the image of spaceships being like submarines, but it is possible that spaceships in the future will be a lot more spacious, especially if they are launched from orbital installations instead of from Earth. This is also beneficial for spaceships since you want to get rid of extra heat and a way to get rid of extra heat is by having larger surface areas.
>Plebs dont understand the coolness of polearms
that weapon is literally for Plebs
>weapon
>weapon singular not even those weapons
Pleb projecting their inferiority detected.
>projecting
cope
I think polearm gays have finally passed sword gays as the most obnoxious people on the planet.
>polearms
Why not wrap it right around into bayonets. A little over the top, and rifles have concealability issues, plus attaching the weapon to a firearm removes the bypass of gun-control feature.
But it resolves the "Why not just use a gun?" problem.
Then you have the secondary gun-sword issues, but that is why we have FUTURE-ENGINEERING!
You make a good point. All things considered, and with how the genre favors compactness, why isn't there an smg bayonet of some kind? Could come apart as a handy knife, and would compliment fending off rushin' fricks
bayonets are pure fricking SEX
cyberpunk mostly came over in the early anime that crossed the ocean. Akira, ghost in the shell, armitage, tank police and etc. in all of those the katana was the go to because in their home country that was the default. if we had gotten cyberpunk from Europe we probably would see alot of influences from there.
before anyone gets on me, yes we had cyberpunk literature but let's agree they never really went into what they used enough to specify for the settings. a visual medium kind of has to pick a style though.
>yes we had cyberpunk literature but let's agree they never really went into what they used enough to specify for the setting
no, let's NOT agree, you fricking moron. the reason katanas are a cyberpunk staple is because NEUROMANCER, THE BOOK THAT LITERALLY INVENTED THE GENRE AS WE KNOW IT, HAS A FRICKING VAT-GROWN JAPANESE CORPORATE SUPERNINJA NAMED HIDEO AS THE BIGGEST BADASS IN THE BOOK WHO SOLOS THE ENTIRE PROTAGONIST SQUAD SINGLE HANDEDLY.
And the first scene in the book is the main character hanging out in a bar in Chiba city, overhearing some drunk idiot saying the chinese ACKSHUALLY invented all the cyberpunk technology around them (as opposed to the japanese), which the main character sneers at and calls bullshit. From the first moment of the first book cyberpunk has been strongly influenced by the nips.
Factually incorrect.
>katanas are a cyberpunk staple
Katanas are a cyberpunk staple because Japan had a booming economy that boomers thought was going overshadow the States and Influence everything. Granted most modern cyberpunk doesn't really take from that tidbit anymore and goes with the "JAPAN COOL" thing
Wrong, the main reason is that Japanese movies have better swordsmanship choreography while western filmmakers do "wrestling but with swords", thank stupid Muricans for that. Here are examples that prove that I am right.
You make an interesting point, but what of good Solonius?
Only in the sense that samurai movie choreography have more work put into them, they are more aesthetic, but they are still incredibly shitty demonstration of swordmanship. That video from Harakiri is a good demonstration. It is artistic as frick, sure, but a horrible representation of two samurai swordsman fighting.
And you can find much better western duel than the Spartacus one without looking too far. Apart from the much commented on "spinny around the back" move, that is, which may be excused by the character being exhausted and discouraged.
I would not call a film made in Soviet Poland with the support of USSR a Western film. And typical fight in western cinema is a simple John Doe pretending to be a knight and swinging his sword like a baseball bat. Here is an example. No aesthetics, no style, no philosophy, no skill, just stupid swing wider and hit harder. So it is not surprising that samurai have more fans, Japanese are not afraid to show them more distant from ordinary people, while the Western tradition dictates that all characters should behave like modern people.
how about return of kriegsmesser (technically not a sword, legal to carry)
Makes people think of swords and then it just looks funky and small because they're thinking of swords, like the person has a small penis.
Describe the functional difference between a katana and a kriegsmesser. Both are single edged swords, in which we interpret the label of sword broadly instead of according to autistic German medieval laws.
anyone got any pics of tactical/cyberpunk swords that arent katanas? Kinda hard to find.
>do you think that tactical smallswords three musketer style would be more of a thing because of how compact they are?
They'd have carried full rapiers, anything but compact. The smaller, lighetr swords are what you get when all the stuntmen/actors/fight co-ordinators are trained in modern epee fencing.
>Or maybe sabers or Dao for more easy one handed use
Sabres can be two-handers, dao come in all sizes up to full polearms.
Man, that was fricking hard.
>They'd have carried full rapiers, anything but compact. The smaller, lighetr swords are what you get when all the stuntmen/actors/fight co-ordinators are trained in modern epee fencing
thats flatly false. smallsword were used throughout the 1700s and most of the 1800s. And very much for specifically ease of carry and use. Its probably the most utilitarian purpose built self defence sword. filling much the same role as the katana in the edo period. Hoghly beurocratic and civilian states like france or England who still had a culture of individual honor fights and occasional assassination. Rapier is a much more mixed weapon for both civilian and military use.
nta but The Three Musketeers is set in the 1630s, when rapiers still the go to thing. "3M style" is rapier style.
>smallsword were used throughout the 1700s and most of the 1800s.
"On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625"
Among the weird tacticool weapons you could order in France back during the 19th century were folding sabers/machetes.
Tactical longsword
Thanks, looks cool. wonder what the opening is for. kinda want to see a veriety with this aesthetic.
Remember really liking the mgs4 and revengence style of things.
I think it's just a fancy scabbard that opens up.
>Do the commies actually still respect the dao
No and that anon is clearly wrong.
It's foolishly simple-minded to think that an instance of cultural influence on Western culture in the 80's will be simply repeated. Japan was in a specific situation, America was in a specific situation. Japan didn't have an authoritarian campaign to literally erase it's own culture in the 20th century (it already did that in the 19th).
Go to Kultofathena.com and do a search for 'tactical'.
I'm kinda fond of this one- https://www.kultofathena.com/product/a-p-o-c-tactical-wasteland-gladius-designed-by-angus-trim/
And you want to subvert expectations why? Is there an actual rationale for blueballing players that probably enjoy katanas in their cyberpunk?
i didnt. i said why it may be so, not that it was bad or good, and then proposed other avenues that could make sense as well in a similar vein. there is no subversion there or making balls of blue.
Because Katanas were basically the last sword manufactured to actually be used in combat.
In a modern setting a Katana does not look out of place because in WWII, katanas were used as officer swords. And due to supply lines and desperation, people ended up actually fighting with swords.
Enough GI's in turn ended up with Katana's in their attic as prized war trophies.
In turn, when Hollywood made movies and wanted someone to use a sword in a modern setting. Using a katana was the least anachronistic.
This extends to our current modern settings, and since it applies to our modern settings it is extends to Sci-fi.
I will say, of swords issued over the past 100 years Katana's are amongst the best by virtue of actually being a sword you use on foot primarily as a weapon. Western Officer sword is purely ceremonial and based on cavalry sabers. Kukri's and machetes I think are more useful due also serving as knives as tools.
>modern setting
>doesn't look out of place
WEEB WEEB. It's still just as out of place then as it is now. You know what swords became? Knives because we have ranged options eight times out of ten.
I literally mentioned Kukris and machetes and being more useful.
And I described them as the -least- anachronistic.
Did you read more than 26 words? Did you just want shout weeb the moment someone offered any positive word?
>Because Katanas were basically the last sword manufactured to actually be used in combat.
Actually, id say that was the saber for practical tactical function. most sabers where completely functional, ip till wwii. many militaries had dress and battle sabers though like dress and battle uniforms, with the former sometimes (though not always) being more decrative. Even the nips tended towards using sabers until wanting to drum the nationalism bent up to 11 for the war for propaganda purposes.
But it is true enough that they had a lasting cultural impact in america due to the optics they had in wwii and post war japanese postings
can't forget the apocryphal desert storm story of some military officer bringing his dress saber into battle and killing someone with it
There are some real examples of gun swords and the conclusion drawn from them is that they were very awkward to use as pistols and unnecessarily heavy and uncomfortable swords. A gun and a sword ends up working better than a gunsword in reality. god damn are gun swords so cool in fantasy though
Were the gunsword impracticalities more a matter of design or composition? I can imagine the heated barrel and having to reload to be hindrance. I suppose weakening of the guard if the gun mechanisms are there too. But wouldn't genre convention do away with it? What's to stop someone from having a cyberarm where the the thumb and index finger become a barrel+firing mechanism, with the ammo being fed through part of the palm/wrist while the sword is composed of the middle, ring, and pinky finger with part of the forearm extending forward to give more length to the blade.
Outside of being, maybe, needlessly complex that is.
Japanese had new sword regulations and method of use develop in the 1940s. The new Gunto no Soho is from 1941 and it was designed to be "practical" use (as far as swords are practical), not just parading. Then again, the japanese had great success in hand to hand combat in 1905, it's partly why melee fighting was still thought to be an important thing, while it... really wasn't.
>Western officer sword
>Purely ceremonial
The first kraut killed by the Brits on WW1 was shanked by a sabre-wielding cavalryman, the Gurkhas were cutting heads off right through WW2 into Malaya.
Fricking weebs and claps ain't got shit, knife (war)-crime is a treasure of the Empire.
>The first kraut killed by the Brits on WW1 was shanked by a sabre-wielding cavalryman
Holy shit did 1900's guns suck THAT much?
Correct . Remember barrel rifling was frowned upon for a good while cause it was "without honor" or some shit. WW1 broke the aristocracy of that silly notion
think you got your time periods messed up as well as your topics if you are talking about rifling being considered “without honor” in 1914, when it was used semi regularly during the napoleonics, and was standard during the US civil war.
You're right. This is what I get for posting so early.
No, it's just that tactics were lagging behind the technology. Suffice to say cavalry lost whatever remaining relevance it had pretty quickly once people figured out how to properly deploy machine guns.
It was more that rifling was expensive and made loading a bit more difficult. The "dishonorable" angle was basically about killing officers, as rifling made it much more feasible to pick out and snipe officers from a distance, which ruffled some feathers as you can imagine. Nevertheless, by the mid-1800s, rifling was the norm.
Cavalry was still relevant in WW2, although in the form of mounted soldiers.
Cavalry was still relevant in WW1, but in WW2, even a bike could mount a machine gun, never mind a motorcycle.
Countries had more horses than bicycles usually. The nazis were primarily a horse operating army
Bicycles can't pull a cart or operate on all terrain.
The nazis were a bit of an enigma, most countries had all but removed horses from frontline roles (apart from messengers or raiders in difficult terrain, but there is a technological factor there: even though wheel and axle suspension was the norm, the carburettors of the day couldn't maintain pressure when they were bouncing around and you DO NOT want to suddenly gasp a diesel engine dry. Even in 2023 with direct injection you'll frick it if it's starved of fuel), but Germany in WW2 had a chronic fuel shortage and blitzkrieg tactics were slower than you'd expect.
For example, the partition of Poland took almost two months, which was shockingly fast back then.
So horses had a very valid place in doctrine, as all you need to do is provide them with food and medicine, and being mammals a lot of our meds worked on them.
Bicycles on the other hand only worked on paved roads, particularly before the development of inner tubes and gearsets. A fixed gear solid tyre bike is FRICKING HELL to ride on anything other than tarmac.
For reference to a rich country of the time, there were 5 periods of road development in Britain: 75BC, 43-68AD, 1130AD, 1706-1821AD, and 1960 to the present day. During WWI and WWII, any road in the UK was either cobblestone, poured tar (if you were in a very rich city), or dirt. The bikes of the day like one of those three options, horses can do all of them and more.
>Bicycles can't pull a cart or operate on all terrain.
Are you on drugs? They tested cycles against horses before WW1 already and cavalry got mogged hard. So hard. Mind you, those bikes were objectively worse than the ones used during WW2.
Admittedly, draft animals can actually pull useful loads, but the only reason why the Germans used them in WW2 was that they had'em while their automotive industry was pretty awful. They couldn't build enough trucks for the life of them.
>Bicycles can't pull a cart or operate on all terrain.
Horses can only be safely operated on ghost-free territory, which is problematic when you're a German army trying to invade France across former WW1 battlefields north and south.
der horsencrouchers….
Der saddlewaffen, I kneel
no, they are the ones that are kneeling. On horses.
Cav still has some relevance today, but as the song goes, mostly with special forces on those wily Afghan horses. Dostum's Northern Alliance give their thanks
source?
>source?
That is very clearly Sengoku Basara. You can tell because it looks like Samurai Warriors but stupid.
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY ONIONS
Doctrine just lagged behind tactics
WWI style combat had already been experienced by the British (in an extremely light manner) in the 2nd Boer War 11 years earlier, where the Boer forced the Brits into attrition (dug trenches) and pounded them with improvised artillery.
Artillery and trenches were also used in the US civil war.
It was clear the way tech was going, but doctrine lagged behind.
Changing doctrine means tearing the military down to the bullets and rebuilding it. It's not something countries do just because they can, and their allies will often desert them. Alliances are based on utility, and if that ally changes how their military works they may not be useful to their allies anymore, so that alliance falls apart.
At the start of WWI militaries were still fighting in regimental and brigade formations, meaning lots of soldiers (1,000+) were being lead by a single man making all of the decisions. Trench and urban warfare require far, far smaller scale leadership, but the presence of artillery means that units need to be precisely organised.
At the start of WWI all forces rapidly promoted sergeants from positions of enforcing discipline, to leadership, and issued watches and timetables to ensure that infantry kept on time with the artillery. This worked for about two seconds until the enemy recovered the timetables from corpses, so physical communication didn't work and there was investment in wired and wireless communications. Eventually modern infantry tactics (independent ~60 man platoons with semi-independent squads within them) evolved, because they could stay in constant communications with the other elements of their military who were a bigger threat than the enemy if they weren't in constant communication.
It really was a case of the old ways worked for about 5 minutes until they didn't, and in 4 years of warfare military attitudes jumped 100 years. We still learn infantry tactics and principles that were learned in WWI today.
yes
facts
CyberGermans as a concept is pretty neat but why do women always fail to get "the point" of Cyberpunk? Do they secretly understand cyberpunk but intentionally confuse/misdirect the issue because the concept of 'being dissatisfied with the status quo' makes them uncomfy?
>Do they secretly understand cyberpunk but intentionally confuse/misdirect the issue because the concept of 'being dissatisfied with the status quo' makes them uncomfy?
It's either that or they're too dumb to understand the point at all, yes. Even women i've met who play a ton of cyberpunk RPGs don't really seem to understand the point of the genre and just really like the aesthetics. Fair enough I guess.
What part of that picture looks like satisfaction with the status quo to you?
>using the guys known for substance over style in the genre known for slapping lights on shit for no reason
That's not what the germans are known for, you cuck.
The germans are known for whatever I SAY they are known for.
That is just Shadowrun if you play in Berlin.
Germanic cyberpunk is just Necromunda, isn't it?
>Instead of rainy neon streets, it's oily eastern bloc factories
>Literal cybermonocles everywhere
>Intersection of WW2 fascist aesthetics with those of the catholic church
>Roided bodybuilders, heavily armed rave girls, BDSM police
>endless bureaucracy
>powdered wigs and cyberflintlocks
>feudal pecking order
I have difficulty picturing a Necromundan wienertail bar, but by frick can I imagine a beerhall every ten feet
This sounds more like Wisehauptpunk than anything
It's more like "what if Berghain was the size of an entire planet"
>Germanic
>Catholics
Ya all even recognize the OG MLK?
They try not to think about how cuckolics got btfo'd by prots
Fun fact: Despite being the birthplace of protestantism, there are still catholics than protestants in Germany.
Probably because the bulk of the population that used to be Protestants are now agnostics/atheists.
necromunda is actually a pretty good example of more baroque euro style cyberpunk.
>swords no longer need weight to cut things due to science homosexualry
The moment you remove the need for weight in sword design you essentially make the nip swords rise in value because they're made for slashing lightly armored targets/civilians who bump into you which is what everything is when you have a nanoblade.
Don't worry OP, I think that Mask of Zorro (2079) is a really cool idea. A mask-wearing swashbuckler and his decker companion freeing corpo debt-slaves or whatever. At least it's new.
Anti-Sword gays:
>ackshually polearms are better
>WEEABOOS GET OUT REEEE
>Swords have no place in ranged combat
>Swords were always ornamental
Pro-Sword gays:
>Max range for melee blade but still comfortably carrying
>Future-tech makes them super strong, probably electric or something
>Cool as fuk
From a realism standpoint, the sword is useless once semiauto weapons became commonplace.
From a rule-of-cool standpoint, realism can get BTFO.
To actually answer the OP, your closest probably non-katana sword while being functional is going to be something like the gunblade from FF8. Any time a sword is going to be usable in a CP setting, you're probably cybernetically augmented to the point you're not going to be doing euro-fencing little parry and riposte, you're gonna zoom in on titanium chicken legs, slash, and keep moving so you don't get shot.
>slash
So uncivilized. A poke or three is more than enough
>your closest probably non-katana sword while being functional is going to be something like the gunblade from FF8
how so?
Multi-functional which is or may be an unsung trademark of the cyberpunk tech advancement. Cloud's multiple swords in one big ol' buster may be another example
the ff8 ones don't actually fire any projectiles, they just vibrate the blade (which is still kinda fitting tbf)
for me, it's the wacky transforming gunblades from 13
practicality is for CHUMPS
>But do you think it would be the go too sword in the nanobot laced near future skyscraper duels?
If we're talking "realistically", then no one would use swords at all. Guns and knives pretty much have it all covered. If we're just talking about coolness, the main thing the katana has going for it, aside from cultural momentum, is a relatively sleek profile. Western swords don't lend themselves as neatly to a sleek, futuristic looking shape. Kinda the same reason it's hard to make a futuristic looking axe without giving it a funky shape or something.
A katana and a saber look mostly identical and a two handed saber would basically be a katana with a guard.
ermagerrrrd!!!
jappaaaaaaannnn!!!!
*jerpeeeeern
ftfy
The go-to "sword" currently is the machete. Big, cheap, choppy, and good for maiming. Very popular in the UK and in Africa.
Knife and sword fights generally aren't the sword of thing you want to get into. If you're carrying a sword or a knife, there's very little justification for WHY you're carrying the damn thing unless you're in the middle of the woods.
Yah, I could see machetes or other very small sword types being more popular too.
one more thing - katana is thin and sleek. So in cyberpunk world it has a niche. No big sword needed when you have sharpened microedge or whatever. Rapiers being a hole making weapon lose to guns. I could see kinetic hammers, or polearms being used in cyberpunk, but i.e. Flails or bastard swords would seem out of place - they are clunky
In a Cyberpunk setting fashion is very important. Not necessarily as a cool thing, but simply as something that pervades the world. Kind of like how Japanese officers in WWII had katana-like swords because it was cool, not because it was practical. Remember, the UK banned "zombie knives" because of the immense attraction those had on their imported crime problem.
It’s probably because the katana is associated with speed (because of ninjas and stuff) and European swords are associated with sluggish knights and you be needed to dodge gunfire from assault rifles, and it’s very likely you be fighting cyber ninjas too.
You are mostly on the nose, but you are missing one key element: Star Wars.
The Lightsaber is just a laser katana. Star Wars unambiguously rips a lot of imagery from Samurai movies, look it up if thats not something which you are already familiar with.
So you have both Star Wars AND Cyberpunk reinforcing that the sword of the future is something that is effectively a katana.
Samurai movies in terms of fight scenes.
0 katanas till side book content already 3 movies deep.
40k barely includes katanas. There is og course there’s the iconic chainsword. But power swords are also usually just broadswords with a power field on the blade. Infinity likewise has a similar aesthetic for the knightly order inspired factions, although the asian inspired factions lean katana/jian. Sword style really comes down to wether you want samurai flavoring or knightly order flavoring in your setting.
i remember liking infinity’s space islam faction.
Cooler then the knights of the welfare state.
Katana are specialized for small-scale fights against unarmored and lightly armored opponents. There's a few other sabers that could do the job about as well but it's not a completely senseless choice.
cutlasses, sabres and other such weapons would make more sense for close quarters fighting. theres a reason they were used on ships for so long. im surprised tacticool "survival multitool" axes arent used more in cyberpunk settings. it fits the gadgety aesthetic and an axe form factor probably has a higher chance of damaging armour than a sword form factor even when adding high tech plasma / vibro sword / other assorted scifi tech
one that kinda gets me is katana in post apocolypse western setting. I would think there would be more old veteran military dress sabers lying about on mantles in people's houses from their grandpa then authentic katanas.
Nope, katana sucks big wiener.
It will always be greatswords
Its not a question of what you personally like more, anon. Its a matter of what the genre staple is.
If you could name 2 scifi movies or books where someone uses a greatsword and its not a result of time travel, I'll be shocked.
*blocks your boarding party*
It's fairly simple calculus
>Japan was a powerful foreign influence during the 80's and 90's (like China was/is now)
>Japan's signature sword was the katana
>Cyberpunk came into the mainstream during the 80's and 90's, having Japanese aesthetics as a primary influence
>Street samurai weilding katanas are the logical throughpoint
It would be like the Chinese Dao being prevelant in the genre if it became mainstream today
Do the commies actually still respect the dao the way nips still like katana? I thought all martial arts but tai chi were discouraged or something based on that one mma guy that BTFO those fake masters and got his social credit nuked
The problem is that the Commies had a powerful anti-magic field that dispelled ghosts and fightan magic, so the Republican's mastery of the Dao could never truly shine.
In the sci-fi setting I've been playing in, the characters have melee weapons- but most of them are designed with utility in mind ('Hand Axes' are tomahawk/hatchet tools, 'Short Swords' are basically well-made machetes, etc.)
The aesthetic I went with for my character's sword was a bit absurd: A re-interpretation of the Messer. Essentially- it's a single-edged sword with a 2-foot blade, but the aesthetic is something more akin to a military combat knife.
It's probably going to be sleek looking knives. Combat training has adapted if you need reach then just use a gun and if you need close quarters then go with the weapon that has the most extensive training to get up there and inserting it into vital organs.
People love masterwork bastard swords.
I want cyberpunk spears but wakanda managed to make it look so shitty in modern combat that even my speargay ass cant take it seriously anymore
Real katanas are hard to come by now, why would they become ubiquitous in a shitty authoritarian near-future? It’s not as glamorous but it’d probably be more realistic to use 3D printed knives or concealable/disguised weapons.
Jigga Jones once explained how to make a weapon he called a ‘$1.98’. You take a soda bottle, spray paint the inside black, pour some quick-crete in it, then stick a piece of rebar in the end to use as a handle. Then, wear a hoodie and stuff the rebar up your sleeve and hold the bottle from the top so that it looks like an ordinary bottle of soda that you can walk around with in plain sight until you’re ready to attack. Shit like this is the opposite of high tech but in a world where weapons are illegal and probably super expensive this is the type of shit you’d more realistically see people wield.
>but in a world where weapons are illegal and probably super expensive
homie cyberpunk is the complete opposite, the entire ethos of the genre is "high tech, low life", they're ancapistan shit holes where you can buy a pristinely manufactured autopistol from of a bodega for less than it costs to get actual fricking lettuce and tomatoes. Street Samurai literally walking around with military grade combat prosthetics, monomolecular blades, and enough firepower to single handedly win a prior millennium world war are the absolute norm. The entire point is that the government is so corrupt and atrophied and at the mercy of their corporate overlords they can't even regulate goddamn drinking water, let alone restrict the global military industrial complex from ensuring every citizen has the opportunity to buy a coin-operated rocket launcher on their sixth birthday
>he thinks weapons being illegal matters
Buddy the "paradisical bastions of socialist success" tauted by the same useful idiots that insist disarming Americans will stop crime are now the grenade attack capitols of the "civilized" world. It's absolutely moronic to imagine that in a high crime dystopian future it will somehow be harder to get weapons.
I find it fricking hilarious that buying and using grenades that have always? been low enough availability to get at CC in Shadowrun was considered ridiculous and gauche in all the games I played growing up, now Sweden gets grenaded a couple times a week and it barely makes the news and Seattle is dealing with an epidemic of........ Shoplifting.
>But do you think it would be the go too sword in the nanobot laced near future skyscraper duels?
No. But cyberpunk isn't about realism, it's about exaggeration of the reality of corporate greed, government failure, and public apathy. So exaggeration of weapons is fine.
In reality, fighting inside corridors, you'd probably want a short sword or dagger assuming edged weapons. Or, more likely, a club.
Personally, I think the cyberpunk sword of choice should be Fully automatic. Basically your gun of choice, but mounted in a sword hilt. You swing the sword and pull the trigger to use the stream of bullets/plasma as a cutting edge, like a ballistic chainsword.
It's efficient, predicable, durable, and wacky, imagining a guy with an AK47 with neon lights, mounted like a fricking bullpup-longsword, swinging it around and decapitating people with Far-Future fire rates in his corner.
Plus, the collateral damage would be huge, which is good for any and all cyberpunk. Balistic Swords are the hill I'd die on.
>Which I understand with a lot of the genre growing up in the background of rising japanese presence in the 80’s and 90’s when a lot of cyberpunk and near future stuff was getting going.
The 80s and 90s also kind of cemented Japanophilia into the western psyche to the point where any sword other than a katana is seen as cringe or larpy, which is strange, considering Jap shit is nothing but larp. Landsknecht and Condotierro would work REALLY well in cyberpunk due to their history of being mercenaries. Samurai were mercenaries to a degree but they were mostly a political class.
>Do you think that tactical smallswords three musketer style would be more of a thing because of how compact they are?
Smallswords and sabres would unironically be the best types of swords to use in an urban setting, not only are they stylish but also practical for carry. Rapiers could work incredibly well since they were still a cutty weapon in a sense, just not as much as a sidesword or sabre.
>Though the topic might be tied to what culture develops more of a renaissance in the near future and the default is bushido japanese instead of the french gentleman duelist, the Scottish Brave, or the Turkish whirling dervish.
I could argue the west is going through a minor renaissance culturally, with the rise of HEMA people are slowly realizing that a lot of Japanese martial arts are cringe larp shit and you can actually do sparring with steel swords fairly safely. Youre also seeing more euro history stuff being drawn and represented in media instead of the cringey overdone samurai.
But making this thread on Ganker is kind of stupid because lots of people, especially /tg/ have a chronic addiction to japanese media and think anything not considering samurai as literal demi-gods is heresy.
Pic related is possible euro-focused cyberpunk could look like. Honestly, ive been tempted to write up my own setting that removes all the cringe ass Jap shit.
Another thing too, if you had to do a "euro focused cyberpunk" youd have to decide on what era to build your aesthetic around. Its not like Japan where they were culturally stagnate for hundreds of years, euro shit evolved pretty damn fast in comparison. You could always go a mish mash kinda like Warhammer Fantasy does but that still basically ends just before the Victorian era.
A rapier and dagger edgerunner would be fricking dope to see.
"WAAAAHHH BUT EUROSHIT DOESNT HAVE GOOD SHIT! ITS JUST LONGSWORD AND AND AND AND-"
Euros were doing lots of wacky shit that would make Warhammer Fantasy blush, for e.g this pistol parry dagger.
Theres another one where theres a pistol embedded into a poleaxe/warhammer.
Honestly, theres so much untouched gold to do a fricking crazy good original cyberpunk setting that isnt weebshit
>"WAAAAHHH BUT EUROSHIT DOESNT HAVE GOOD SHIT! ITS JUST LONGSWORD AND AND AND AND-"
Nobody said that.
>The 80s and 90s also kind of cemented Japanophilia into the western psyche to the point where any sword other than a katana is seen as cringe or larp
The meme of superior japanese Katana even appeared in The Wheel of Time back then.
>The meme of superior japanese Katana even appeared in The Wheel of Time back then.
The Wheel of Time is 1990s, so a decade after the Japanophilia set in.
>If you gathered your medieval bros and told them today you're taking off your armor
Spoken like someone who doesnt know what HEMA even is. Harnischfechten is under the HEMA umbrella but its a super niche sub-sport because of how expensive it is. HEMA is unarmoured dueling and it covers a bunch of things from medieval fighting to victorian era street fighting.
>HEMA covers everything that got some kind of manual we can refer to
It also covers boxing and wrestling which confuses the weeaboo.
>Though yes, there are pretty significant holes in what we know and cross-cultural comparisons do reveal that there are way of fencing that aren't covered by the manuals at all. We have no way of knowing whether they weren't practiced in Europe or whether they were exclusively orally transmitted and thus lost.
Its like how Fiore has heavy implied boxing elements and you wouldnt know unless you do boxing then tried to do armizare. There are probably some oral only traditions like how polish sabre basically died and it now this weird mish mash of reconstruction from dubious sources and dussack.
But overall HEMA still has a lot of solid sources to fall back and doesnt fall into the pitfall of relying on some dude claiming he learnt it from an Okinawan like Japanese martial arts do. If anything, Japanese martial arts are a big LARP.
Hell, you got high ranking kendoka claiming theyre epic swordsmen and then getting dunked on by some mid tier longsworder. Even historically the samurai got dunked on by Portuguese rapier duelists so hard they just outright refused to duel them.
>But overall HEMA still has a lot of solid sources to fall back and doesnt fall into the pitfall of relying on some dude claiming he learnt it from an Okinawan like Japanese martial arts do. If anything, Japanese martial arts are a big LARP.
This is a massive cope, as there are thousands of MA practitioners both in Japan and internationally who can legitimately say they're part of a hundred year old tradition. Some of that training is little better than tai chi while others make for practical self-defense, but unlike HEMA or Mall Ninjas they're pupils of a living school of martial arts. They don't have to pretend they're something they're not like HEMA practitioners. No matter how accurately you can reconstruct a dead art, you're still pretending to be something you're not, which to me is the essence of a LARP.
Also claiming that living traditions like boxing, Olympic wrestling are also HEMA is disingenuous.
Lmao you fricking weeb
I accepto your concession.
>turn entire lifestyle to something
>get beaten by literal LARPer that spent a third of a year doing italian fencing of all things or a few weeks of german swords school doing bare hand wrestling
Thank you and your room temp kin for giving us these glorious lolcow moments.
Hema is larp. All non-modern practical defensive training is larp. If you gathered your medieval bros and told them today you're taking off your armor and you're practicing traditional caveman rock beating techniques, that too would be larp. That's okay, larping is fun
HEMA covers everything that got some kind of manual we can refer to, which includes 19th century military fencing styles. Not every type of HEMA has the I.33 problem of being fragmentary and in need of interpretative reconstruction.
Though yes, there are pretty significant holes in what we know and cross-cultural comparisons do reveal that there are way of fencing that aren't covered by the manuals at all. We have no way of knowing whether they weren't practiced in Europe or whether they were exclusively orally transmitted and thus lost.
Being real or not isn't the important bit. If you found perfectly accurate historical nunchuck techniques and met up once a month to practice realistic nunchuck combat, it'd also be a larp. It's still just costume play. It's renfair with a manual.
Kids these days can't even tell the difference between SCA and LARP, yet they still argue online.
It'd be infinitely more respectable to just accept the title than to declare you're actually a more niche, separately respectable concept. You're proudly declaring that you're not coated in mud, it's actually dung.
So what's your argument then? That it's not flying unless you do a 9/11?
That's not podracing unless you explode into a skeleton
>t. salty weeaboo who fell for the japanophilia bullshido psyop
Dont you have a kata to practice?
To be fair, SCA is a LARP, they were one of the biggest pushbacks to HEMA becoming a thing because SCA still lies to itself that its reenactment while HEMA admitted after a while that its a sport.
SCA people are still salty as frick that HEMA became big and SCA didnt.
Popular media depicting katana as the sci-fi sword was made when it seemed like Japan was going to rule the world with its unstoppable economy and cultural influence. Then it tanked super hard, but a lot of Japanisms have stayed. It's why Blade Runner has so much Japanese shit in it.
3 reasons
>pondsmith specifically is a weeb
>scifi was big in anime and anime is big with nerds
>during the genesis of the cyberpunk genre there were fears of global Japanese cultural and financial dominance, and cyberpunk generally played on that
>It seems like the default sci-fi sword is a Katana.
You mean beam saber?
When you really get down to it Katana, Dao, Scimitar, Cutlass and Saber are all different variations of the same general class of sword.
>When you really get down to it Katana, Dao, Scimitar, Cutlass and Saber are all different variations of the same general class of sword.
Beam sabers aren't sabers. They're closer to jians if anything.
They're only similar in that they're curved. Cutlasses are one-handed, so you see more of a counterweight in the grip typically, and the blades tend to be thinner (even though they are backswords with a reinforced spine) so they're more meant for a slashing action than cleaving peoples' limbs off.
Katanas I theorize have a similar origin, they fact that they tend to be short is really noticeable given the Japanese martial tradition emphasizing reach so much. The Tachi was supposed to be a cavalry sword originally, but who sees "cavalry sword" and thinks "we should make this shorter and two-handed?"
Nobody, but that's exactly the sort of thing I would do if I were trying to design a boarding weapon. My guess is that the Katana's evolution owes in part to the preeminence of naval warfare in Japanese history, and this is also the context where European sailors encountered them and noted how cool their swords were.
>beam Saber
Cool it Travis
Honestly, if this is a futuristic, high-tech setting, the go to weapon is going to be… a pistol, maybe a fancy, high tech pistol, but a pistol, small, easy to conceal on your person, easy to justify owning, and allows you to strike down your enemies from beyond “get punched in the throat” range.
After that it’s going to be knives, followed by improvised weapons, like hammers, hatchets, and machetes.
A katana is obvious and screams of “attention seeking snowflake” in any modern setting. People see some cyberpunk with a katana and it just tells Everyone that either you are an edgelord, or an assassin, and neither is good to have people thinking.
Now a long sword and shield in a futuristic urban city?, now that will leave people way too confused by the whole absurdity of the sight to question your motives!
If you're using a sword in a gunfight you've already abandoned pragmatism. Might as well look cool.
I always liked the idea of whatever weird excuse you have for swords being in common use in sci-fi, also caused there to be an autistic division about what kind of sword was best, as you'd expect there to be given how people obsess about it today.
The result being that different practitioners of whatever weird melee style of the future tend to have really finely made swords for some specific style of fighting.
Katanas are two handed, generally short for their weight, really really good at cutting, very fast within their range. It doesn't take a genius to guess what these are good for, or a rapier, or a hanger, etcetera.
But because it's the future and the evolution of weapon styles explodes in the industrial era, you can get any kind of sword you want from any era made with space age materials, so suddenly people are bringing back falcatas and khopeshes because those designs are actually really good for X specific situation that comes up a lot in ship to ship boarding actions, stuff like that.
pretty sure the default sci-fi sword is a laser sword
What was the name of that very small scale games workshop fantasy map game?
I like the idea of retractable, regenerating segmented weaponry as a future staple. Kinda like the Attack on Titan swords but if they just kept pushing out new bits instead of holstering to reattach the blades.