The author has been passing on what he knows of LRP combat for the past 20 years or so, first in a series of articles for the now long-gone Adventurer Magazine, and later with his "Northern Fight School" in Durham. From this latter group have sprung some of the most respected & feared combatants in British LRP games, so his pedigree is certainly impressive, and backed up by practical success.
I'll look at each section in turn. The single sword section is clearly intended to provide the foundation of Wright's fighting style. It's very common, among LRP fight teachers, to start out teaching people how to use a single sword, though I've argued for many years that it isn't the most efficient approach if you want them to rapidly become competent enough to hold their own in a skirmish or line fight, or on a linear adventure (start them with either a sword and shield, or a polearm, depending on their own personal preferences and other factors; that way, at least they won't be even further disadvantaged against the majority of their enemies than they already are by being novices). It is fine if you know (as Wright presumably does of most of his Northern Fight School pupils) that you will have many hours to teach them from first principles, although even then it doesn't seem worth devoting so much space (almost half of the pages devoted to weapons) to single sword, since there are very few occasions in most LRP games in which one is armed with only one sword (duels and contests should be about the only time).
Still – is the instruction on single sword any good? Yes, it is. It's confused by Wright's rather pretentious, faux-Chinese martial arts terminology (personally, I'd rather call the left shoulder "left shoulder", than have to try to remember that Wright calls it "Sky" when he's trying to hit it with a sword – especially if the strike ends up being a "Sky Heaven Dragon" or something). In many cases, it's further obfuscated by the lack of photos; yes, there are lots of photos and diagrams in the book, many of them excellent, but some of the most complex "special moves" described are not illustrated. Fighting manual writers would do well to take a leaf from the old Western Martial Arts fechtbuchs; don't just tell me how to do the move, but instead, start out with an illustration or two and then describe what the combatants are doing in a commentary to the illustration(s).
Despite these flaws, there are some great concepts, here, and a reader who takes the time to understand, try out, and practise with pretty much any three or four of the special moves given will find two or three of them effective, for them. Sure, they'll not use all of it – individual differences in physiology, and simply in fighting style, will see to that – but they'll find some significant benefits.
In fact, any serious LRP fighter will find the move "Fishing the Moon" – which Wright subtitles "The Ultimate Attack" – to be worth the price of the book all by itself. Sure, it's 'just' a series of two feints and then an attack – but done in sequence, with each feint performed with enough intent that the opponent has to defend, it will almost always work... even against an opponent who is expecting it.
I'm frustrated, though, by other aspects of the book. One gets the impression that Wright and his fight school have been operating in something of a vacuum for 20-odd years... sure, they go (I think) to one of the big fest systems in the UK, and they clearly practise regularly among themselves, but their system of fighting is based around the restrictions on "safe LRP fighting" that that one big fest system have, which are not (by any means) universal; and though it's clear that they've fought with sport fencers, and probably kendoka, and taken note of those styles' strengths and weaknesses, they don't seem to have taken very much notice of two other big, more recent developments in hoplology: the popularisation of Filipino martial arts (FMA), and the rediscovery and popularisation of a lot of the fight manuals, or "fechtbuchs", of historical European martial arts. There's plenty of stuff there that Wright and his Northern Fight School could have learned from. Notably, for sword-and-shield work, there's a load of very useful info & technique to be found everywhere from George Silver to Talhoffer (and the extrapolations from Talhoffer by Stephen Hand & others, in Spada Vol. I and elsewhere) that directly conflicts with some of the advice Wright gives, but that is still decidedly effective in LRP combat – though, that said, if you generally play in a game that heavily restricts or prohibits any vaguely aggressive action with a shield, some of it may not be allowed. Likewise, for two-handed weapons – barely covered at all by Wright in his two-handed staff section, and only then in a very basic, traditional LRP combat kind of way – you just can't beat Liechtenauer, many of whose techniques can be found for free on YouTube these days... And for paired swords, in particular, there is much to learn from Filipino martial arts work (and, for that matter, from the earlier Spanish sword-and-dagger techniques that were adapted into FMA).
Some of these references to fechtbuchs and FMA and so forth may sound highly advanced, or difficult, or complex – but, again, to my mind, the techniques in a lot of the old fechtbuchs are actually easier to learn & understand than many of the techniques in The Sword Book. This, really, leads on to another problem I have with the book: it doesn't seem to be the most efficient way to rapidly teach beginners effective techniques.
In particular, as mentioned above, it seems kinda weird to start people off with single sword. If I have a few minutes to teach an LRP novice the basics of effective LRP combat, I'll first do my very best to persuade them to either use a weapon with a shield, or a two-handed weapon, not just a single one-handed sword. Anyway, with a book like this – why devote most of your instruction to single sword, when few combatants are so armed when actually doing LRP?
I think this problem has arisen because though the author's intention was a "comprehensive fighter's manual for LRP", he's actually produced a comprehensive manual for Northern Fight School members. Sure, if you have a student for a year or more, doing practice at least once a week, it may make sense to start with a single sword, and to take the time to have them learn your terminology... but if you have a student for ten minutes before their first ever LRP battle, or if you're a novice yourself wanting to get some quick tips, this may not be the best the book for you.
(Incidentally, lest anyone misinterpret this review as some kind of egotistical "I'm a better LRP fighter than the author" rant, I'm reasonably sure that Wright or any of his better students could beat me in an LRP combat – unless maybe with greatswords – I just don't think he's managed to communicate his techniques with this book anything like so effectively as he does in person.)
The two sections of The Sword Book I like best, and consider to be most universally useful, are at the end: The Art of Combat, and the section on fighting games and practices. The former contains some great strategical advice on fighting effectively as a team, both in skirmishing and in line fighting. This is a real strength of the book, because most LRP combatants don't devote hour after hour, week after week, to training with their group as a cohesive fighting force, even if individually they may be seriously effective fighters. So, having 20-odd pages that you can just make everyone in the group read, and remember, is probably the best substitute for that. One notable omission, which so many LRP fighters tend to take for granted if experienced, but don't even think of if not, is a lack of discussion (and here is surely the place) of stealth, sneak attacks, and awareness. I'm not talking about smearing oneself in mud and erupting out of a swamp to stab someone in the back – all that ninja stuff tends not to work in real life, unless maybe you really have practised for decades at it – but more about taking advantage of an opponent's temporary distraction to stab him in the back, sometimes deliberately engineering such distractions by artifice and misdirection, and guarding oneself against the same.
The fighting games and practices will let you maximise the use of practice time that you do have available, whether at an LRP event or between events, as well as keeping things interesting. There are some good, solid, fun games here that will also improve your fighting, both individually and in group combat.
The section on kata and gradings is wasted space, unless you're a Northern Fight School fighter. I tend to think that kata and gradings are, in almost all supposed martial arts, the least useful uses of time (I'll allow that kata in judo make for very handy training for judo, but that's because those are done in pairs... any combat sport – and LRP is a combat sport, not a martial art, particularly the way Wright does it – is only ever really going to benefit from kata in pairs, if at all). Gradings? More pointless hangovers from the traditional martial arts world. In these days of competitive, televised Mixed Martial Arts, who care if you're a 1st Dan at Yu-Gi-Mon any more, when unless you've tested your skills against resisting opponents in the ring, you may as well be a white belt. Likewise, given that you can go to any LRP event and get some fighting in against resisting opponents – well, who cares what grading you nominally have? I already mentioned that the Northern Fight School is well-respected for producing capable opponents – but I never found out, or cared, what grade any of them had, and I like to hope that most of them would be too embarrassed at such nonsense to bring it up at all.
Hmm, LRP as a combat sport – a sidetrack in this review, maybe, but a necessary one – again, a bug (which may, depending on one's perspective, be a feature) of The Sword Book is its assumption that as long as you get a clear hit in, and avoid being hit in return, that's all that really matters. I don't really have a problem with this concept, particularly in most bigger LRP games, where skill at the combat sport of LRP fighting is way more important than one or all of the following other factors, some of which may be more emphasised by other games: "realism" (whatever that may mean, to different people), "heroic style fighting", "theatrical style fighting", etc. As hinted above, most of these concepts mean different things to different people, anyway, which is why any LRP organisers, who want or demand attendees to fight in a particular style that isn't pure combat sport, must ensure they explain exactly what's meant by that – do they have specific rules for how strikes should be made, for reacting to blows, etc.? Personally, I enjoy most styles of LRP combat, from Wright's purely combat sport approach to games where you're expected to do big dramatic swings with your weapons, react strongly to every blow even if it doesn't pierce your armour, etc.; but I worry that though the common-sense, no-nonsense combat sport approach taken in this book works for many games, it doesn't work in all of them. Again, a few words to at least mention such different game systems would go a long way towards making this a truly comprehensive LRP combat manual... rather than risking it being a vehicle to promote the author's ideas of how all LRP events' combats should be played out.
So, has Wright succeeded in providing a comprehensive manual for LRP fighters? No, certainly not; if nothing else, where are the daggers, axes, greatswords, flexible weapons, thrown and missile weapons, stab-safe spears? Sure, there's limited room, but to truly be comprehensive, isn't it necessary to at least cover the very basics of common battlefield weaponry, as a priority, rather than devoting page after page to advanced single sword techniques? I would say so, even if it's just a page or two for each weapon. The book also needs techniques or at least advice on fighting against dissimilar weaponry; sure, it's useful to know how to use a quarterstaff against another quarterstaff if you're fighting a quarterstaff duel, but it's a lot more useful in almost every other circumstance to know how to use it against sword-and-shield, or paired weapons. The book's not truly comprehensive, either, since it only covers the author's fight school's particular style of fighting – which is in itself best-suited to two or three of the bigger LRP games in the UK, and the particular rules those games have.
Has he succeeded, though, in providing a book that should be on the shelves of anyone who is interested in LRP combat? Almost certainly, yes. The claims of "suitable for everyone from the novice to the master" are true; there is almost certainly no-one, of any level of ability, who won't get something out of this book. Those whose focus is on competitive LRP combat, either for winning competitions or for the mass battles of two or three of the larger fest systems whose rules suit Wright's style best, will get most out of it. Still, many fighters – whether novice or advanced – will get confused and put off by the variety of weird terminology, the often unclear descriptions, and the non-comprehensive nature of the illustrations. And it will take time – sometimes considerable time – to get the most out of almost any one of the techniques described here.
So: 2 out of 5 for Style. It really, really needs more photos, and clearer explanations, otherwise there's a lot of frustration involved in getting the most out of this book.
4 out of 5 for Substance. Despite the omissions, there's a stack of useful info crammed into the pages of The Sword Book. Good luck winkling it out!
