Omg… wait.. this!! Wow :o

Mostly the same reply as in a comment above:

Martial arts on Earth were designed to fight against other humans. They are rarely practical against animals, and we have no monsters to contend with. Monsters would make the type of martial arts found on Earth to be extremely impractical to create. You would likely need to be well beyond the level a typical bronze rank adventurer starts at in order to take on most monsters, simply because a weapon provides a huge advantage when fighting.

Skills would also remove a lot of the need for a specific style (at least at lower levels) since many skills would not be suitable for a set style.

Does that mean there are no martial arts in Innworld? No. Just that they would be extremely rare. Given the population sizes, densities, and size of the world, it would not be strange at all for most people not to know anything about them. We know there are at least some, but they are not common at all.

As for music, Innworld probably does have its fair share. But it’s not going to be like much of our modern music. They have no electric instruments, nor sound effects to any instruments like we can produce. They don’t have synthesizers, or fully electronic sounds. They also likely wouldn’t have music that is played with anything close to the clarity of what something like an iPhone can produce. So, yes, completely new and original music of styles they’ve never heard before, or could even have a chance of making? Lots of people would probably enjoy that.

Art in general would be similar: Innworld likely does have plenty around. There have been a number of examples of paintings and such, even if a lot of detail wasn’t given to specific pieces. There have been mentions of bards and troubadours and such. And there was a mention of reenactments of famous adventurer victories. So things do exist.

But monsters. Monsters means people don’t travel around nearly as much. Art isn’t shared around nearly as much. Distances to travel are significantly longer than what would be accurate for middle ages on Earth. So someone comes up with a play, or a reenactment, or whatever… and it never makes it to other cities, because people can’t afford to hire guards to travel to another big city. Or they get killed by monsters on the way. And then that new piece of art is lost.

You’re forgetting one simple fact that is drastically affecting your perception of things:

Monsters

Virtually every human martial art and way of fighting in our world is designed to fight against other humans. They are rarely if ever designed to fight against animals, and we have nothing like Innworld monsters to contend with.

In a world with classes, magic, and monsters, there would be almost no reason to develop martial arts for most people. As Ryoka found, they do fairly little against monsters. A weapon is almost a requirement for a valid fighting style in Innworld, to be anything close to effective. There would be almost no point for 99.999% of the population to bother trying to learn much unarmed combat, to the point of making it a complete fighting style.

Are there some martial arts out there? Almost surely. But they would be incredibly, incredibly rare.

The same thing can be said for entertainment. Monsters would preclude a lot of things like traveling troupes, because one monster attack could effectively destroy a large portion of the troupe. They’d also have to spend heaps on money to hire enough guards to protect the whole troupe.

The omnipresent threat of monster attacks, as well as constant warfare, would also tend to incentivize people towards classes that could deal with combat if necessary, or just to general societal tasks, and away from superfluous stuff. Very few people would look kindly on unemployed people in this kind of society, and they wouldn’t give the time of day to someone who was “lazy” and just wanted to “goof off”, as they would see it.

Yeah. Very well written. These are my biggest gripes with the story.

Yeah, the irony was not lost on me

This isn’t so much a typo as a cultural thing. I’m a cook. I grew up with a mother who cooked everything from scratch, so I’ve been cooking since I was wee. And I’m writing my second cookbook. I have eclectic and wide-ranging tastes in food and have tried a lot of unfamiliar foods just to see what they taste like.

And I’ve never heard of spooned potatoes.

You mentioned them a few chapters back, too. Google is no help–the closest it can come to is spoon-mashed potatoes, which is basically a mashed potatoes recipe with the word “spoon” added to it.

Do you mean what we call mashed potatoes here in the US? Or are you making up a dish that’s specific to your world? (A la the Redwall books.)

I find myself wondering if this is a clue to what country you live in.

Even with the argument I have seen above, claiming that Skills stifle innovation, that seems hard to believe. Martial arts are a form of combat skills; they are pretty universal in our earth’s culture, and the principle is as old as the wheel (not the current actual schools, maybe). Now, I can believe that knowledge of “artistic” combat might not be wide-spread on Izril, and there are apparently no dojos or fighting schools out there.

But in a world with three or four times the surface of Earth, with dozens of fantasy sentient races (Dragons, Elves, Halfelves, Faery, Humans, Drakes, Gnolls, Antinium, Dwarves, Harpies, Djinns, Golems, Goblins, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Garuda, Dullahans, Lizardfolk, Drowned and String people, Trolls, Fraerlings, Gazers, Selphids and various Beastfolk tribes. Who did I miss?) … where was I… world, with dozens of sentient races, with fightable monsters around every corner and with a history of allegedly 20000 years, nobody ever came up with the idea of martial arts in some way? Or they did came up with it, but everyone forgot about it again?

Okay, there are no [Monks] and [Clerics] because there were no gods, but even so, people just need to combine [Skill]s: from runners, tumblers, dancers, unarmed strikers, gymnasts. And the argument that martial arts don’t work against monsters? Bah, that is just un[skill]ed martial arts, like what Ryoka tried. A [Kickboxer] with [Enhanced Strength], [Sure Footing] and [Combat Awareness] should be able to compete with the nonhumans and monsters.

It’s just like with Music: Whenever we hear of people appreciating music, it was imported from our world. Music is a huge cultural achievement and ingrained in human nature. And apparently, Drakes’ and Gnolls’ nature as well (see the Liscor concert). Also, art (for art’s sake) is mentioned rarely. Utilitarian art or decorations, yeah. But come on, the concept of theatrical plays being invented by Erin?

That Innworld has a bad history with regards to technology (due to magic) is easily justifiable, but arts and artists of all kinds should be available everywhere. It’s very okay when you can’t explicitly show us art all the time, because there needs to be action scenes (and the chapters would be even longer, and the details ivolved in world-building are extraordinary), but if all kinds of art are totally new to the world – uh, I don’t believe a word.