GD4H

Tag: ruleset design

  • Cutting Tournament Design – Helsinki Longsword Open 2023

    Cutting Tournament Design – Helsinki Longsword Open 2023

    Design ideas behind the cutting tournament at HLO 2023.

  • Hitting Hard Is A Strategy – You Can’t Figure Out Safety Until You Accept That

    Hitting Hard Is A Strategy – You Can’t Figure Out Safety Until You Accept That

    Force levels in HEMA competitions are a hot topic for discussion, and that’s a good thing. But in order to properly explore the solutions we have to understand it’s role in the tactical context.

  • You Suck At Writing Rules – Here Is How You Can Do Better

    You Suck At Writing Rules – Here Is How You Can Do Better

    You heard me. If you’re reading this you probably suck at writing rules (documents).

  • Why I Don’t Allow Gayszlen In My Tournaments

    Why I Don’t Allow Gayszlen In My Tournaments

    This is pretty simple to introduce, I don’t allow Gayszlen in the tournaments I write rules for. The reasons for this are actually pretty multifaceted, including: Before we start, I want to emphasize that any of these reasons alone is probably not enough. These types of one-handed strikes are probably not an egregious enough violation…

  • Types of Training Games

    All models are wrong, but some are useful George Box To say that you can easily classify training games would be a lie. You can probably come up with multiple different taxonomies that are all mostly accurate, and all have different strengths and flaws. The usefulness of such a model isn’t in the fact that it…

  • My Journey to Right-of-Way

    At this point in my longsword career, right-of-way is one of my favorite rulesets to fence under. Before you get disgusted and click away, hear me out – I wasn’t always like this, I used to be a right-of-way hater just like most of the HEMA community. It was a slow transition over the course…

  • AG Open 2023 Stats – Point Values vs Targets Hit

    I haven’t posted my usual Friday article for the past 2 weeks. Two Fridays ago it was because I was at the AG Open event in Plymouth Michigan to compete, ref, and lecture. Last week I just forgot. But now we’re back, and I’m going to post something related to the event. Something that I…

  • Failure to Withdraw – A Game Design Puzzle

    Since Summer of 2021, my club Bucks has been using an in-house ruleset that I call “Weighted Right-of-Way” (WRoW), in which all clean hits are worth 2, and a double hit with priority is worth 1. Before I get into it, what is “right-of-way” anyway? Basically it’s a method of resolving double hits (both fencers…

  • Longsword Takedowns: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

    To say that takedowns are a contentious topic in HEMA would be an understatement. For some takedowns make the game too dangerous, for others you are watering down and ruining the sport if you don’t include them, and everything in between. In this article, I’m not going to dig deeply into that debate, or proffer…