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View Full Version : Any aikido practitioners on here? Help with character.



MonkeySage
2013-07-04, 02:43 PM
The character i have in mind is for a real world urban fantasy setting, in savage worlds.

He's a bookworm with experience in aikido.

Aikido is a martial art that in real life i've always been interested in, but never had the opportunity to learn. So i'm hoping someone on here might be able to give me a crash course in aikido and how one might roleplay an aikidoka.

Thank you to anyone who can help. :)

Yora
2013-07-04, 03:36 PM
The thing about Aikido is, that is pretty much entirely a set of defensive moves. It's not really a combat style in itself, as every technique starts with your enemy trying to strike at you.
The techniques are useful for combat (as much as any martial arts are), but of the most use when you combine them with other martial arts and weapons that enable you to get on the offensive.

That being said, the charm of aikido is, that it works almost entirely on leverage and momentum. If you can really do it well, you don't need strength or size, and it is often said that it becomes even easier the stronger your attacker is. You never block anything, but always deflect. And the vast majority of techniques to deflect an attack, use the attackers momentum to make him trip or smash into things standing nearby. Once an attackers gets his body moving to crash into you, that body will continue to move unless something stops it. And he expects the impact with your body to be that something. If you can avoid being hit, all that energy is still there and has to go somewhere. And the harder he strikes, the harder will he crash into the ground.

There is also a lot of submission holds targeting the joints. Shoulders, ellbows, and wrists, are only meant to move in certain ways. And every time you build up your muscle strength throughout your life, it is only for movements that you actually use. If you can twist an arm in a certain way, you don't need to be strong to keep the arm in that position, as your opponent can't easily pull it away. He never had to use his muslces like that.
On the other hand, these joints are rather fragile and again, it does not take much force to break them, especially when you can take the whole arm itself as a leaver. There are a number of quite simple ways to twist an arm in a way so your opponent can't do anything but to go in the direction you are directing him to. Trying to move in any other direction will break his joints.
In demonstrations, you will often see the sparing partners being thrown in wide arcs, but actually they are jumping and assisting the their opponent in throwing them. Because they really don't want to hurt themselves by resisting to much.
Very beautifully demonstranted at 1:20 to 1:40 here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugsS2_Z0wpA).

Autolykos
2013-07-04, 03:43 PM
I don't actually practice it myself, so take everything I say about it with a grain of salt. But I know a few people who do, and I practice other martial arts, some of which borrow the occasional technique from Aikido - so here's my 2 CP.
First, your question "how to roleplay an aikidoka" is way too broad. Aikido has certainly more appeal to nerds and technical pacifists than to thugs, but I also know one that trains special forces (so, clearly more on the no-nonsense side of things). But since you said your character is of the "bookworm" type, I'd go with the former.
The ultimate goal seems to be to make the opponent see the "pointlessness" of attacking instead of beating him up until he can't attack anymore. They are extremely fond of all kinds of locks (and lock-based throws and holds), which have the advantage that they work quite well on bigger/stronger opponents*, but the disadvantage that they take a lot of practice to get right against an opponent who does unexpected stuff. They are also not nearly as harmless as they look - if your opponent doesn't know what you're trying to do or tries to struggle, chances are some of his joints won't be in working condition afterwards. And if he's drunk, they may completely fail to achieve their intended goal and just leave the opponent with a broken wrist or something like that.
If you want to go for the stereotype, your character should probably be a pacifist more interested in the philosophical aspects of martial arts ("tsuyoku naritai") than in having an efficient way to beat people up. But just using Aikido as one tool of many and taking the techniques that work best is also a valid approach. JuJutsu does that quite happily, for example.
A note on equipment: They also train with staffs and (wooden) swords, so that would be natural choices for weapons.

*This leads some of the practitioners to think that they don't need to care about strength or fitness at all, or even to assume that people training for strength or fitness have poor technique. It's a little like the Stormwind Fallacy of martial arts.

Yora
2013-07-04, 03:50 PM
My teacher always said you really can only start to use aikido in combat once you made it to the first black belt rank. With other martial arts, ther are some simple techniques that you can always insert into a fist fight. But to really be able to use aikido to defend yourself, you have to practice it until you've mastered it and can do everything by instinct. Otherwise you probably just get your ass kicked and should rather run away or hand over your money, or something like that. (Though that's actually the best advice for all violent situations, regardless of how good you are.)

However, that is not as daunting as it sounds. If you practice regularly and don't slack, I think you could get there in 5 or 6 years, completely without shaolin monastery training. :smallbiggrin:

Grinner
2013-07-04, 03:55 PM
However, that is not as daunting as it sounds. If you practice regularly and don't slack, I think you could get there in 5 or 6 years, completely without shaolin monastery training. :smallbiggrin:

And you only need to pay a small fortune in fees. :smallamused:

What? It's not like they teach these things for free.

Spiryt
2013-07-04, 03:56 PM
I would say that adding something more about system, setting, what your character is going to do etc. would help a lot... Because otherwise it's hard to know what you want exactly to roleplay.

How good your character is at it, what are his physical and mental abilities...

Generally, some good Google check will quickly sum up 'problems' with aikido, at least as far as 'real' combat goes.

Depending on teacher and his program, most to absolute majority of techniques are rather worthless, and practical ones still depend on opponent being completely uncoordinated and swinging idiotically.

It's also usually non-contact art today, so techniques aren't actually applied with strength and intent during sparring, which limits actual practical experience exponentially.


I'm not knowledgeable about Savage Worlds, so I'm not sure what to expect:



If this is more gritty thing, then simplest and, well, grittiest core stuff out of Aikido would be appropriate.

If it's quite heroic, then you can just watch some prime Steven Seagal Straight to TV flick and use all of those improbable wrist locks, spins, thrown, jumps etc.:smallbiggrin:

Yora
2013-07-04, 04:11 PM
That's probably the main issue.

The techniques do work, they are just not the right tool for the situation such a character might be likely to find himself in.
It's been quite some time, but I often feel that many of the moves would be really useful to know when a swordfight starts to dissolve into a grapple. But when does that ever happen these days?

There are some moves that can be used against attacks by knives, but when it comes to self-defense, the absolutely most important thing is to never ever get close to a knive. If you would be dead anyway and have nothing to lose, then trying to disarm a knive is of course the better choice. But if possible in any remote way, put all your self-defense efforts in that situation not happening.

What might work "reasonably" well is to buy some time. If an attacker thinks you are defenseless and you can catch him by suprise with a good technique to deflect that attack, it might get you 2 or 3 seconds until he realizes what just happened. In that time, you get out a gun, start to run, or something like that. But you will probably get only one shot at it. Once he knows you have some martial arts defense moves up your sleeve, he probably won't present you any more easy opportunities to exploit.

If you want to make a character who uses aikido (which is cool), you should use as a suplement to something else he can do. By itself, it really just buys you some time. Even if you get a cool submission hold on an attacker, you have to stay in place to hold him down. Once you get up, he's back at you, and if he has friends, it doesn't help at all. But buying time can still be something really helpful, especially in an RPG where you almost certainly have allies with you.

Brother Oni
2013-07-04, 04:37 PM
Having studied aikido for a few years, I'll point out something that may not be immediately obvious - if it can only be used to defend yourself, then you need to make your opponent attack you.
Easiest way to do this is to reach for your weapon - in my particular style, all the basic techniques are learnt from wrist grabs and reaching for your sword is an excellent way of forcing your opponent to do that.

The more egotistical people may advocate punching me instead and they'll probably will land that punch, but then I'll have my sword out and they're unarmed at which point the fight's a pretty much foregone conclusion.
Any properly taught unarmed martial art will advocate control of the opponent's weapon, which plays into the aikidoka's strengths. Substitute sword for pistol/rifle/baton and you now have some modern relevance.

Back to the original question of how to roleplay an aikidoka, there isn't one. Aikidokas come from all walks of life - you may as well ask how to role play a swordsman which ranges from knight to mercenary to legionary.

As for aggressive use of aikido, it exists - I know the Tokyo Riot Police uses a form of it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senshusei_course), and judicious use of iriminage (entering throw) and good mei-ai ('distance' is the best description of it) can be quite effective (it essentially looks like a pre-emptive clothesline on the direct version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=F3NmaYu2Kvc#t=59s)).



Generally, some good Google check will quickly sum up 'problems' with aikido, at least as far as 'real' combat goes.

There's a saying that's fairly common to that accusation: 'Aikido works. Your aikido may not work. Please don't confuse the two'.

I'm not sure where you get this non-contact part from - in both of the clubs I've studied/visited at (Japanese and Russian), it was semi contact as that's the only way to teach it properly.
Any good aikido club will teach ukemi (breakfalls) first - if the techniques weren't done at least semi contact, then there wouldn't be a need to learn ukemi. :smalltongue:

If you're still dubious, note that knowledge of jujitsu is fairly common among MMA fighters (brazilian jujitsu and the Gracie style especially) and that's not too far removed from aikido.

BWR
2013-07-04, 04:42 PM
If you want help roleplaying the actual techniques, look at aikido videos on youtube and see what looks fancy.

If you want help in roleplaying the personality:
1) make character
2) play character

That's really all there is to it. There is no 'aikidoka dimension' to personality.

MonkeySage
2013-07-04, 05:22 PM
I don't know too much about savage worlds yet, but the dm told me that:
1) Set in modern day Chicago.
2) Urban fantasy, the PCs are going to learn about demons and eventually become demon hunters. The DM wants each of us to have at least some ability to fight/defend.
3) As yet, the most we as characters can know is that there are myths about demons. None of us know yet that they exist, let alone how to fight them.

I suppose my question of how to role play may have been far too vague, but honestly the question I was scratching at was answered pretty well so far. All of you have said something I can use.

The convo. in general is helping me draw a picture up in my mind, hope to keep it going.

Autolykos
2013-07-04, 06:09 PM
If you're still dubious, note that knowledge of jujitsu is fairly common among MMA fighters (brazilian jujitsu and the Gracie style especially) and that's not too far removed from aikido.Just having common roots does not make them automatically similar, or similarly effective. I've yet to see Aikido practitioners dominate MMA like the Gracies did in the beginning.
Taking a few good techniques and integrating them into your personal style, sure. I really like Kote Gaeshi, for example, and that's a pretty typical technique in Aikido.
But the "pure" style? If you put someone with 10 years of Aikido and someone with 10 years of BJJ in the ring (selected at random from people in the respective art), I know how I would bet.

holywhippet
2013-07-04, 06:39 PM
One problem I can see with your chosen martial art is that it is designed to work on humans. If your DM throws something at you that is very much not human it might be hard to justify your martial art working. At least with direct striking arts you can still take a swing at your enemy regardless.

MonkeySage
2013-07-04, 10:43 PM
I'm thinking he takes aikido along side a sword art, perhaps one that complements his aikido skills?

pikeamus
2013-07-05, 03:28 AM
I'm thinking he takes aikido along side a sword art, perhaps one that complements his aikido skills?

Iaijitsu perhaps, they are historically quite related and I've known a few aikido clubs that do both.

The talk about whether or not aikido works in the real world is a little misplaced in this thread I think. I'm on the side of it not being very effective but that really doesn't matter for a fantasy setting, characters in such stories can have other inhumanly effective skills or qualities so why not have a skilled aikido practicioner? It's certainly a cool image, which is probably why so many people practice aikido around the world despite the fact that they'd be better off going to a wrestling, judo or bjj class if they want to learn how to grapple for combat.

Spiryt
2013-07-05, 07:14 AM
If you're still dubious, note that knowledge of jujitsu is fairly common among MMA fighters (brazilian jujitsu and the Gracie style especially) and that's not too far removed from aikido.

Well, no, no MMA artist, or competitive submission grappler I've ever heard ever hailed from aikido, or even trained in it.

BJJ, shooto, catch wrestling, or general any submission wrestling arts are in fact pretty far removed from aikido. That's off topic though.

Starshade
2013-07-05, 11:49 AM
Don't aikido also practice with weapons, including katana? tbh, if you wanted to get "samurai training" in a modern western country, going to an aikido Club and train there could be the closest possible to pretend to be Miyamoto Musashi in today's world, at least outside Japan. :smallsmile:
The Jiu jitsu Aikido is based upon is based on unarmed samurai traning.

Dvil
2013-07-05, 12:23 PM
Well there's Iaido and Kendo too, both based around using a sword. As far as I'm aware though a lot of Aikido/Iaido/Kendo schools share a dojo and practice after each other, so that people wishing to practice a couple of arts don't end up sacrificing all of their evenings to do so.

illyrus
2013-07-05, 12:43 PM
I've been doing Aikido for a limited time (about 6 months). I've much more experience in Combat Sambo (a Russian grappling style that has some striking in it).

Personally I'd think about the results of the technique more so then trying to describe it in detail. While another style might end up with the opponent in a lock with both people on the ground Aikido seems to have a lot of moves where your opponent is held on the ground with you still standing and able to quickly extract yourself.

As people have said it is mainly going to focus on counters though I don't think something like a sacrifice throw would be too far off for an attack move. While it might not mesh with the first "step" of the move you can slightly modify stuff and use it to attack by skipping to the further "steps" (I put that in quotes as techniques should be done as fluidly as possible).

Also if you're looking for a combination style, you could go with Daito-ryu Aiki-jujitsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dait%C5%8D-ry%C5%AB_Aiki-j%C5%ABjutsu

It is the parent style of modern Aikido and Jujitsu after all.

JusticeZero
2013-07-05, 12:45 PM
Generally, some good Google check will quickly sum up 'problems' with aikido, at least as far as 'real' combat goes.Although those criticisms of "problems" almost all have problems of their own, mostly because they mistake the "Octagon", which is a very artificial dueling scenario between two people with similar training working with an artificial set of rules, for reality.
Depending on teacher and his program, most to absolute majority of techniques are rather worthless, and practical ones still depend on opponent being completely uncoordinated and swinging idiotically.An incompetent teacher of any art, even MMA, will generate inept students.
It's also usually non-contact art today, so techniques aren't actually applied with strength and intent during sparring, which limits actual practical experience exponentially.As opposed to the arts which let you use strength and intent because they have removed all of the techniques that might injure their training partners. Every training method has a flaw in order to avoid sending students to the hospital on a regular basis. Aikido scripts attack/defense pairs, rather than concentrating on unrealistic dueling matches between people who do not behave like a realistic attacker, in duels which often hinge on learning to use unrealistic techniques which will get one thrown in prison like "closing the gap". Six of one, 3+3 of the other.
Well, no, no MMA artist, or competitive submission grappler I've ever heard ever hailed from aikido, or even trained in it.By and large, that would be because many people outside of the sport of MMA just simply do not care about the sport of MMA.

Aikido has a lot of techniques that consist of parry, grab, sidestep and throw/lock; it also contains a lot of sword training since that's where the movements come from. It really isn't hard to research, just look up some specific techniques. Or go take a class.

illyrus
2013-07-05, 12:57 PM
Also I'd like to point out the effectiveness of the art versus others in reality against humans shouldn't be a determining factor on using it for a game.

A) The game is for fun and not meant to be a realistic combat simulation.

B) The OP said the characters are going to be demon hunters. I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to attempt to get something like a balor in the guard or a leg lock. Or for that matter punch, throw, or attempt to nick it with a sword. The relative effectiveness of style A to B is dwarfed by the difference of fighting some combat monster that has probably spent 20 of your character's lifetimes fighting.

Autolykos
2013-07-05, 03:35 PM
The OP said the characters are going to be demon hunters. I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to attempt to get something like a balor in the guard or a leg lock. Or for that matter punch, throw, or attempt to nick it with a sword. The relative effectiveness of style A to B is dwarfed by the difference of fighting some combat monster that has probably spent 20 of your character's lifetimes fighting.That's a valid point. Against a Balor, I'd want nothing short of heavy artillery. Melee is a Bad Idea, and unarmed is clearly suicidal. For more conveniently sized demons, I'd go with an assault rifle - and wouldn't even consider to stand and fight unless I've got at least a polearm and good armor.

MonkeySage
2013-07-05, 04:09 PM
Any of you familiar with dresden files? I think that's where he's getting the ideas for his demons, since savage worlds only gives him a formula... I've never read dresden files myself so know nothing about it.