Juijutsu, Sumai, Sumo?

I could seriously spend hours talking about hand-to-hand combat skills and techniques displayed in old-school Japanese combat arts – called koryu bugei in Japanese.

But that’s really boring to most people, so I won’t.

In an effort to keep it simple in-game, let me explain how hand-to hand combat works in L5R. The skill “jujitsu” encompasses all of a samurai’s hand-to-hand training in our game. It teaches your character how to grapple, strike, disarm and destroy an opponent with his hands and his body (yes, his whole body).

I’m also reviving a skill called sumai, which is best translated as “wrestling”. Sumai tends to focus on grappling, throwing and entangling. Most samurai no longer study sumai instead trusting to the destructive skills of juijutsu.

My Rokugan also includes Sumo, who practice a version of sumai that has had the lethality largely removed so it can be used in a competitive context. A pissed-off sumotori is still dangerous however – getting a hard push-slap from a man who weighs several hundred pounds and trains daily on how to use that same move to push a several-hundred pound man out of a ring is not a pleasant experience.

So, what kind of awesome things can your characters do with their bare hands ? I present to you a demonstration of several koryu bugei techniques from nine ryuha that compose the Bujinkan Taijutsu system – this is what samurai look like in hand to hand combat.

I hope this inspires you to feel cool about your characters.