I’ve started sword fighting again.
Sounds dramatic, no? It certainly brings to mind dramatic scenes of yelling and fisticuffs. Blood feuds settled through grueling combat. Victory gained and lost in seconds, by luck, by strength, by skill. It’s all very exciting.
I'm the one in the middle. Please excuse my poor form, but I'm sure I'm being distracted by a passing dog or something.
I really enjoy fighting, even if it’s foolish for somebody with as little reach as I do to sword fight. Sure, speed is an important element, but that doesn’t help much when your only option to hit the opponent is to open yourself up like mad. I’m not much good at it, but a large part of that is my lack of motivation.
I wasn't joking about the dog. Same practice as above, but I gave up all pretense of being "good" or "dedicated."
Of course, this means I’ve been thinking about strategy a lot more than usual lately. This has made me think about how ridiculous D&D combat is, if you think of it in real life terms. With a broadsword, my reach is at about five feet. How can halfling and gnomes even hope to hit enemies in adjacent squares?! Why are dwarfs portrayed as brawlers, when stealth and cunning would probably be more useful for winning battles in deep, dark caverns? And then I chastise myself for taking a fantasy game too seriously, especially when I’m not a huge fan combat in my RPGs.
But I like fighting, and I like mixing my interests and hobbies (I like to think of it as being efficient, myself). Despite that, I don’t think I’ll ever seriously contemplate HOW HORRIBLE AND UNREALISTIC D&D’s combat system is (although I will still complain that it takes forever). I will, however, strive to make D&D combat descriptions more interesting using my long-unused knowledge. Oddly enough, it helps me with combat. The past couple of sessions have been kind of combat heavy, and all in all, I think they flowed pretty well, even when we had ~8 people (plus NPCs).
See, benefits to exercising and hitting things with sticks already!
Something Shiny! 