I guess I learned the martial art I modded in through osmosis.
You don’t need to be literate to see pictures, which are kinda required for the more hands-on martial art manuals.
Admittedly it would cause issues with stuff like Ninjutsu or The Book of Five Rings. Especially the latter, which can be summed up as “read this, then read everything you can get your hands on, learn some actual physical trade like farming or smithing, and don’t forget reading everything you can get your hands on”.
Definitely was unexpected though. Rather fitting that I discovered this by learning medieval swordsmanship as a churl. >.>
This is clearly a feature. If that Avatar cartoon taught me anything, a bunch of martial arts manuals used to be picture only, maybe with annotations to explain what the pictures showed.
As it turns out, nobody used to expect soldiers to be literate.
Just took a look at my wife’s Kuk Sool Won books, (she is a blackbelt in a weird martial art and that is sooo hot) and they are pretty much all pictures, with Korean and English annotations under the pictures, but the annotations are very easily gleaned from the pictures. There’s a picture of a dude standing with his foot up, and the annotation says, “Stand with your foot up.”
Hmm. That said, in the case of some manuals, the text can be incredibly helpful to understanding the images. Still, can understand the reasoning behind it.
Though personally, I’m still convinced this was an accidentally-realistic bug, not a feature.