Sharp Swords vs. Spears according Roland Warzecha

Is a wooden sword just a sword, but doing crushing?

GURPS says so.

It's one thing that hasn't sat well with me for a while Per the rules, it's basically just turning the weapon to crushing. Same weight, fraction of the cost.

But it doesn't affect anything else about the weapon at all. I just don't buy that. One thing that supports that idea is this interview. I'd heard it a while back (say . . . 2020?) but I couldn't find it again. I mentioned it to Doug, who knows Roland Warzecha, and he said, "That sounds like something Roland would say." Sure enough, I found it thanks to him.

RW: Exactly. And then we know about the physics of this or we know how to move a sword efficiently. You called it a labour saving device at one point. So if you know how to effortlessly use that implement, then you can get a much better idea of swordsmanship. Also, you understand why it has been such a popular weapon for such a long time. Because that’s another thing that people misconceive. I remember in my re-enactment days, people said “The spear, that’s the Gatling gun of the Viking age. It’s super efficient.” I thought it was really funny, but then I thought, hmm, it’s kind of strange that they were so obsessed with swords all the time when the spear was so much greater than the sword. It almost seems like in history, anybody who is able to pick up a sword, picked up a sword. One really interesting experiment, I ran at one point – we were talking about swords earlier on and how it really helps to better understand swordsmanship – so there was this experiment with my friend Mikkel Mønsted. He was a really good spear fighter. He was using a blunt two-handed spear and I was putting on the mask and some additional protection and I had a sword and a buckler, a blunt sword. There’s one 15th Century depiction of that kind of match, this kind of setup. So we wanted to see how it actually works. If you have a shorter weapon, you have to shorten the range as quickly as possible so you get into your killing zone, so to speak. While the other one with a longer weapon can take it easy, just retreats so that you impale yourself. So you have to make a charge. And eight out of 10 times he just poked me in the face. It was really easy. I mean, I would bind his spear, trying to it keep it safe while I entered and he would just gently rotate and disengage. Also, a good spearmen can change the length of the spear pretty easily by withdrawing it. It’s a great weapon. But then I traded my blunt for a sharp.

GW: Aha that’s very different as you can actually bite his weapon.

RW: Exactly. And what was more I didn’t have to look. I realised ,when I was using the sharp, that earlier on, to get an idea what is happening in the bind I had in my peripheral vision, tried to take track of where the spear moved, because I couldn’t sense it through the blade. Now I could focus on my target and anything that happened in the bind just happened and I felt, because I got all this tactile information, and disengaging was less easy for him because there was no slippery sensation anymore. It was crystal clear information coming from the bind and that completely reversed the outcome. It was like three to seven or so, but almost reversed the outcome. And because the active sensing is only for me, the wooden pole doesn’t have that, so this is something that a sharp blade gives you. You can sense actively, you have different means of controlling the bind and getting sensory tactile information from it. And that is exclusively for the sword. So I think this is this is one of the reasons why the sword is good.

That's GW - Guy Windsor - and RW - Roland Warzecha om The Sword Guy Podcast episode 8.

You could apply this to GURPS, if you like - reduce the effectiveness of wooden swords, or increase the effectiveness of edged metal ones, in the bind and parry. You could give it an edge in any skill vs. skill contest (Feints, Beats especially) as well vs. a wooden weapon.

It's an extra complication, but games either privilege swords over all - like D&D games, where swords are the best tool for butching unarmoured foes or cutting up iron golems or anything in between - or weaken them to the point that axes and maces and spears suddenly seem like the best weapons. Yet, as RW says, anyone who could use a sword got a sword. Rules that gently nudge you that way without making them super-weapons is helpful.

I'm not sure how I'd want to put this in . . . but it's one more thing I would consider as a factor in weapons rules if I could write them all from scratch.