What would it take for melee weapons to make sense...

[Gaidin]

Although honestly I was envisioning a fight at longer range, which to me is a bit more compelling, but I'm weird like that. As my previous paragraph illustrates.

The gunfight in the hallway leading up to that might be what you're looking for.

Maaaybe.

Honestly, the gun-kata premise of Equilibrium doesn't do it for me because it's based on the idea that you can have a list of canned moves that will reliably keep you alive in a gunfight, and allow you to kill your enemies without stopping to look at where they are.

Well the gun-kata premise is a bit weird but fun to watch, doesn't mean that from the standpoint of the Force you can't see the Jedi do something very similar looking except using the force.

[Batman]

Honestly, the gun-kata premise of Equilibrium doesn't do it for me because it's based on the idea that you can have a list of canned moves that will reliably keep you alive in a gunfight, and allow you to kill your enemies without stopping to look at where they are.

It's been a while since I saw the movie but from memory I think the approach was 'to' look at where they are and then shoot them before they could move elsewhere.

[Terralthra]

The problem with the gunfight in the hallway (and why I don't like it very much), is that it's very clear how badly the concept breaks down. For the gunfight at the beginning, or the mid-movie Preston vs. squad of policemen, it's fine because it's fast and brutal and confused. When there's a long hallway with dudes toting automatic weapons all down it with only one door in, there's no believable way that doing backflips or tornado kicks or whatever keeps you alive long enough to empty multiple magazines' worth of bullets from your machine pistol.

The final duel is much more believable, in the same way a lightsabre fight is believable: predicting where the opponent is going to try and get a firing angle on you and blocking while trying to get an angle on them, etc. Real fist-fights, swordfights, and melee-range gunfights wouldn't last that long or look like that, but that's ok, because it's at least plausible.

That's essentially why I think Jedi avoid blasters even though they could (and are) quite good with them: sure, you're good with them, but it offers no defensive advantage like a lightsabre does. When it's swords vs. firearms, that advantage, as Simon says, disappears, because there's very little plausibility in a steel sword blocking bullets, because it'd just keep going toward your face.

A long range precognitive gunfight is an interesting idea, but I don't think would make a very compelling scene in a movie, or at least, would be hard to pull off.

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, the gun-kata premise of Equilibrium doesn't do it for me because it's based on the idea that you can have a list of canned moves that will reliably keep you alive in a gunfight, and allow you to kill your enemies without stopping to look at where they are.

It's been a while since I saw the movie but from memory I think the approach was 'to' look at where they are and then shoot them before they could move elsewhere.

They actually came out and said about this, when defining what a "gun kata" even is (since it was a term they'd just made up). To paraphrase:

"We've done a geometrical analysis of where enemies come from during gunfights. And we've trained our Clerics to shoot in those directions."

And Our Hero, Preston, does so. In real combat, he fires shots and makes moves that are basically pre-programmed, canned "katas," which isn't even how katas in martial arts are supposed to be used, let alone in gunfights. And this including shots fired behind his head or off to the side without stopping to aim.

The problem with the gunfight in the hallway (and why I don't like it very much), is that it's very clear how badly the concept breaks down. For the gunfight at the beginning, or the mid-movie Preston vs. squad of policemen, it's fine because it's fast and brutal and confused. When there's a long hallway with dudes toting automatic weapons all down it with only one door in, there's no believable way that doing backflips or tornado kicks or whatever keeps you alive long enough to empty multiple magazines' worth of bullets from your machine pistol.

Acknowledged.

The final duel is much more believable, in the same way a lightsabre fight is believable: predicting where the opponent is going to try and get a firing angle on you and blocking while trying to get an angle on them, etc. Real fist-fights, swordfights, and melee-range gunfights wouldn't last that long or look like that, but that's ok, because it's at least plausible.

A lightsaber duel is at least informed by the way real swordfights are supposed to look. Gunfights in Equilibrium... not so much.

That's essentially why I think Jedi avoid blasters even though they could (and are) quite good with them: sure, you're good with them, but it offers no defensive advantage like a lightsabre does. When it's swords vs. firearms, that advantage, as Simon says, disappears, because there's very little plausibility in a steel sword blocking bullets, because it'd just keep going toward your face.

Very true. I can't watch the video right now; were they trying to block with the edge of the blade (a la cut the bullet in half) or the flat of the blade?

A long range precognitive gunfight is an interesting idea, but I don't think would make a very compelling scene in a movie, or at least, would be hard to pull off.

I'm thinking more 'medium range,' i.e. on opposite sides of a room, with people ducking in and out of cover and so on.

You'd probably have to use other cues like the soundtrack to make it compelling- having a rushing noise when people act on prescient abilities, that sort of thing.

For a good example of shared precognitive abilities leading both parties to make the same conclusion... well, it doesn't actually involve psychic powers, but try the confrontation at Reichenbach Falls in the second of the recent Sherlock Holmes movies.

[Terralthra]

They actually came out and said about this, when defining what a "gun kata" even is (since it was a term they'd just made up). To paraphrase:

"We've done a geometrical analysis of where enemies come from during gunfights. And we've trained our Clerics to shoot in those directions."

And Our Hero, Preston, does so. In real combat, he fires shots and makes moves that are basically pre-programmed, canned "katas," which isn't even how katas in martial arts are supposed to be used, let alone in gunfights. And this including shots fired behind his head or off to the side without stopping to aim.

A key point here, I think, is that it's not where enemies are, but that, given a set of known opponent locations, the specific angles and timing of incoming bullets are "statistically predictable events". Thus, given the chance to observe the locations of the enemies, the gun katas are designed both to align the cleric's guns with the enemies, but also to move the cleric's body out of the way of incoming fire. Thus it lines up with our theoretically vaguely-precognitive ranged-weapon-user.

The final duel is much more believable, in the same way a lightsabre fight is believable: predicting where the opponent is going to try and get a firing angle on you and blocking while trying to get an angle on them, etc. Real fist-fights, swordfights, and melee-range gunfights wouldn't last that long or look like that, but that's ok, because it's at least plausible.

A lightsaber duel is at least informed by the way real swordfights are supposed to look. Gunfights in Equilibrium... not so much.

Again, for some of them, yes, I agree (thinking of the hallway, in particular, but also the first part of the Preston v. police in the badlands, where he does a running jump backflip off of a parked motorcycle that somehow confuses trained police with (what look like) assault rifles long enough that he gets up to pointblank range and shoots both in the face), but the final duel between Preston and DuPont, for me, doesn't feel ridiculous or contrived. It's a battle of two people who are both very good with pistols at close range, with almost no effective cover. They're both trained very well, and importantly, with the same training, so they each know not only what to do, but what the other will do, and what the other knows they will do, and it's the sort of move/countermove of chess, but played out in split seconds, with guns. I liked it.

I can't watch the video right now; were they trying to block with the edge of the blade (a la cut the bullet in half) or the flat of the blade?

Edge-on. It cuts through the bullet, but the bullet halves continue on their merry inertia-driven way in more or less the same line they came in on.

A long range precognitive gunfight is an interesting idea, but I don't think would make a very compelling scene in a movie, or at least, would be hard to pull off.

I'm thinking more 'medium range,' i.e. on opposite sides of a room, with people ducking in and out of cover and so on.

You'd probably have to use other cues like the soundtrack to make it compelling- having a rushing noise when people act on prescient abilities, that sort of thing.

For a good example of shared precognitive abilities leading both parties to make the same conclusion... well, it doesn't actually involve psychic powers, but try the confrontation at Reichenbach Falls in the second of the recent Sherlock Holmes movies.

To give another example (though this is more "literally being that fast" than "precognitive"), there's the various fight scenes towards the end of The Matrix, where Neo dodges bullets and blocks a bunch of hand-to-hand attacks without really paying attention or working hard. The problem is that for me they were...kinda boring, and not all that awesome as fight scenes. They were great for showing Neo's coming into his power.

Showing that one guy is three steps ahead of the other is easy, but makes the other look incredibly ineffectual, and only really nice if you want a curbstomp battle. Showing both of them being chessmasters at the same time seems harder to pull off. You're right about the Sherlock scene at the end, but it didn't seem particularly compelling to me (perhaps because I already knew what happens at Reichenbach Falls going in?).

[Simon_Jester]

A key point here, I think, is that it's not where enemies are, but that, given a set of known opponent locations, the specific angles and timing of incoming bullets are "statistically predictable events". Thus, given the chance to observe the locations of the enemies, the gun katas are designed both to align the cleric's guns with the enemies, but also to move the cleric's body out of the way of incoming fire. Thus it lines up with our theoretically vaguely-precognitive ranged-weapon-user.

I still don't like it because the katas are "frozen," by their nature. At most he knows where his enemies are, but he can't possibly be watching them closely while doing all the weird jumping and twirling. So his responses are, as I said, 'canned.' Which is exactly what katas are NOT for in martial arts; you may train in a specific sequence of maneuvers, but what you actually learn are a bunch of individual moves, and a style of movement, that lets you react to the unpredictable. You don't just automatically execute the same eight-move sequence every time, beat-em-up video games not withstanding.

The idea that all gunfights are so predictable that you could literally build a robot to dodge bullets just by knowing where the enemy shooters are standing is... kind of dumb, in my opinion.

Again, for some of them, yes, I agree (thinking of the hallway, in particular, but also the first part of the Preston v. police in the badlands, where he does a running jump backflip off of a parked motorcycle that somehow confuses trained police with (what look like) assault rifles long enough that he gets up to pointblank range and shoots both in the face), but the final duel between Preston and DuPont, for me, doesn't feel ridiculous or contrived. It's a battle of two people who are both very good with pistols at close range, with almost no effective cover. They're both trained very well, and importantly, with the same training, so they each know not only what to do, but what the other will do, and what the other knows they will do, and it's the sort of move/countermove of chess, but played out in split seconds, with guns. I liked it.

It's not without its virtues; it just doesn't do it for me.

I can't watch the video right now; were they trying to block with the edge of the blade (a la cut the bullet in half) or the flat of the blade?

Edge-on. It cuts through the bullet, but the bullet halves continue on their merry inertia-driven way in more or less the same line they came in on.

Well, you never block anything with the edge of a sword blade anyway, so that's kind of a moot point.

I mean, a caveman swinging a wooden club at the edge of your sword might well find it doing the same thing- in which case you get clocked with a chunk of wood.

Plus, having something large and sturdy and fast-moving hit the edge of a bladed weapon is a great way to chip the edge and break the weapon.

On the other hand, as noted, the flat of a typical sword blade isn't really that thick and it's entirely possible that a bullet would just drill right through it.

To give another example (though this is more "literally being that fast" than "precognitive"), there's the various fight scenes towards the end of The Matrix, where Neo dodges bullets and blocks a bunch of hand-to-hand attacks without really paying attention or working hard. The problem is that for me they were...kinda boring, and not all that awesome as fight scenes. They were great for showing Neo's coming into his power.

Well yes. The problem is that with purely visual effects, it's hard to show that someone's move is actually the result of their prescient response to the other guy's move that is in turn a prescient response to their move. As opposed to just, well... their move.

You need something a bit more exotic and weird to make it work.

Showing that one guy is three steps ahead of the other is easy, but makes the other look incredibly ineffectual, and only really nice if you want a curbstomp battle. Showing both of them being chessmasters at the same time seems harder to pull off. You're right about the Sherlock scene at the end, but it didn't seem particularly compelling to me (perhaps because I already knew what happens at Reichenbach Falls going in?).

Perhaps. I liked it in large part because it was sort of a parody of the similar fight scenes Holmes had gotten into earlier in the movie, where he would do this rapid analysis and come up with a string of attacks that would beat his enemy to a pulp, which had more or less been set up as his superpower in combat. And then Moriarty breaks right into his narrative and starts doing the same thing because he's just as smart as Holmes!

[Terralthra]

A key point here, I think, is that it's not where enemies are, but that, given a set of known opponent locations, the specific angles and timing of incoming bullets are "statistically predictable events". Thus, given the chance to observe the locations of the enemies, the gun katas are designed both to align the cleric's guns with the enemies, but also to move the cleric's body out of the way of incoming fire. Thus it lines up with our theoretically vaguely-precognitive ranged-weapon-user.

I still don't like it because the katas are "frozen," by their nature. At most he knows where his enemies are, but he can't possibly be watching them closely while doing all the weird jumping and twirling. So his responses are, as I said, 'canned.' Which is exactly what katas are NOT for in martial arts; you may train in a specific sequence of maneuvers, but what you actually learn are a bunch of individual moves, and a style of movement, that lets you react to the unpredictable. You don't just automatically execute the same eight-move sequence every time, beat-em-up video games not withstanding.

The idea that all gunfights are so predictable that you could literally build a robot to dodge bullets just by knowing where the enemy shooters are standing is... kind of dumb, in my opinion.

This is, I think, perhaps an unfair criticism. The montage introducing gun katas specifically refers to a distinction between "rote memorization" of the gun katas vs. mastery of them. The idea is that, much like actual katas, they teach you sequences of moves to put into muscle memory and a certain focus and mental discipline, but in actual combat, it's expected you would use the maneuvres that are appropriate for the situation, not work your way through a kata you've practiced. There's nothing in the fight scenes that indicates he's using a rote kata as opposed to putting moves together as he goes.

[Purple]

But not far away? Why not?

bullshit... more bullshit... they focus on one another intensely clouding one anothers powers... magical explanation... something about opposite energy fields canceling one another out like magnets... more bullshit plot device...

At least that's the gist of it. Although he might want to package that up a bit nicer.

[Simon_Jester]

Terralthra- good point.

Purple- why knowingly make up more and more overlapping "bullshit" for such a thing? I don't think it's worthwhile. Prescience is something I for one favor handling 'seriously,' with the idea that it transcends things like distance. Thematically, if you must have an explanation based on handwaves, you might as well fall back on something like "slow blade passes the personal shields" a la Dune, which we discussed earlier.

[That one, we concluded, falls down in large-scale open warfare because bulldozers are a more effective solution to the problem than swords... but it wouldn't eliminate the use of hand to hand weapons for things like close quarters combat or clearing structures.]

[Purple]

Purple- why knowingly make up more and more overlapping "bullshit" for such a thing? I don't think it's worthwhile. Prescience is something I for one favor handling 'seriously,' with the idea that it transcends things like distance. Thematically, if you must have an explanation based on handwaves, you might as well fall back on something like "slow blade passes the personal shields" a la Dune, which we discussed earlier.

[That one, we concluded, falls down in large-scale open warfare because bulldozers are a more effective solution to the problem than swords... but it wouldn't eliminate the use of hand to hand weapons for things like close quarters combat or clearing structures.]

Because every time you try and produce something that is plausible you are just creating a wall for people to poke holes in. But if you define it as "It just how it works. Get used to it." and than add a hint here and there about how the characters know why but not actually produce any exposition than your reader really can't do that. And he than can't spoil his own fun.

Think of it this way. Do we know how the One Ring makes you invisible? No, we know it does and that it's dark magic and evil and stuff. Would the story be better or worse if Tolkien had taken it upon him self to write up a theory of magical fields to explain it in technobable?

The same story is here. Just say something like "When up close the two users cloud each others foresight." and leave it at that.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Gun katas make as much sense as the idea that a man- or woman, or, hell, potato- can fly by flapping their arms. With human senses and human reaction time, this cannot be, and by assuming that it is you are so far into the realm of magic anyway you are at least in touching distance of having wizards throwing fireballs at each other.

People being what they are, they may well believe that such a thing is possible, and delude themselves into action on the basis of it, and plan around it and train for it; the nineteenth and early- twentieth century history of eastern Asia is liberally spotted with such (Boxer Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion, wars of the Meiji Restoration, Third Opium War, and arguably also France's Plan XVII);

as mythopoeic as people are, there are stories of those who succeeded- but there are also a few hundred million proven failures in the casualties of those and other gunpowder wars. Can't be done, not seeing at 40ms processing intervals, first move at 150ms, conscious reaction at 300ms, moving at most a metre every 100ms. Not with inbound at a metre every 1.25ms. (or 299,728m every ms.) The timings do not work, in much the same way that the power to weight ratio of human muscle and bone does not work for flying.

Gun katas are magic, or at most given the buddhist base and context of many martial arts, religion.

What you can do, what is humanly possible, is to be faster and quicker thinking than the other human being behind the gun, but how that doesn't constitute infantry work anyway-?

Shooting somebody at point blank range may be harder than at medium distance; people flinch, face to face, most of us are not natural killers- stress tends to send shooting skills to pot anyway- exploiting those factors may be less magic than common sense. You could do (and I now wish that I had an excuse to write this) a fight between precognitive gunmen as a duel of snipers, given a director or a writer who knows how to work suspense and tension- stalking each other from opposite sides of a river valley or through a half- ruined town...

it also occurs to me that you could have the battlefield dictated by a strategic imperative. The big guns are still out there, and no-one wants to escalate until bigger and bigger guns get hauled in, until you're trying to fight on top of a mushroom cloud. That on an ecologically fragile colony world where you can't afford the damage of zap guns, 'arms limitation' might take you right down to pointy objects. Hm?

[Gaidin]

The gun katas are a wierd thing to stress over the technicalities of because they came up as an example of what is a visual of what a jedi could do with a gun. I'm not altogether sure what the movie's technicalities have to do with that. The strangeness of some of its fights are altogether as bad as using a sword that can burn you severely by close proximity but you have the Sense not to.

[BabelHuber]

I'm trying to think of an air-tight reason why melee weapons would return to primary use in a Sci-Fi setting - I'm not talking about things like using knives for utilitarian purposes - I'm talking about a high-tech setting where swords, maces, axes, spears, and so on, have returned to main/common use among soldiers & armies.

There is a good example for this at atomic rockets: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... istory.php

In The Warlock of Rhada by Robert Cham Gilman, one thousand years after the fall of the first galactic empire, warriors are armed with swords and ride horses, but by golly the starships still work. Built to last.

This is not a 'real' high-tech setting, though. But I think this onev is more plausible than 'our suits can only be penetrated by knifes/ swords, but not by bullets or lasers'.

[Simon_Jester]

The same story is here. Just say something like "When up close the two users cloud each others foresight." and leave it at that.

Well, let me simply say that for me, an element of fun is clouded if prescience is clouded by proximity to other prescient persons. Among other things, that means that you can freely use prescience to find out what another prescient person is going to do from a distance- so you can see through their plots, their political strategies, know who they are associating with and what moves they're making to prepare for an upcoming crisis. Which is generally more important than what happens when you get into a sword fight with them anyway.

Gun katas make as much sense as the idea that a man- or woman, or, hell, potato- can fly by flapping their arms. With human senses and human reaction time, this cannot be, and by assuming that it is you are so far into the realm of magic anyway you are at least in touching distance of having wizards throwing fireballs at each other.

Well, the premise is that by moving just so you can make it vanishingly unlikely that you will be shot, even given that you do not see the bullet coming. This is different from being able to actually see the bullets coming, or predict their arrival, in time to avoid them. Which is silly- but at least nods in the direction of the fact that you cannot possibly spot a bullet (or a finger tightening on a trigger) in time to avoid the bullet.

You could do (and I now wish that I had an excuse to write this) a fight between precognitive gunmen as a duel of snipers, given a director or a writer who knows how to work suspense and tension- stalking each other from opposite sides of a river valley or through a half- ruined town...

This is more or less what I had in mind.

it also occurs to me that you could have the battlefield dictated by a strategic imperative. The big guns are still out there, and no-one wants to escalate until bigger and bigger guns get hauled in, until you're trying to fight on top of a mushroom cloud. That on an ecologically fragile colony world where you can't afford the damage of zap guns, 'arms limitation' might take you right down to pointy objects. Hm?

At that level of arms limitation it'd almost have to be the product of a detailed, mutual agreement between the two sides. The equivalent of agreeing to fight a duel with rapiers when blunderbusses are available.

[LaCroix]

The same story is here. Just say something like "When up close the two users cloud each others foresight." and leave it at that.

Well, let me simply say that for me, an element of fun is clouded if prescience is clouded by proximity to other prescient persons. Among other things, that means that you can freely use prescience to find out what another prescient person is going to do from a distance- so you can see through their plots, their political strategies, know who they are associating with and what moves they're making to prepare for an upcoming crisis. Which is generally more important than what happens when you get into a sword fight with them anyway.

Prescience should only be blocked by other users having opposing plans. Since they notice their plans are getting foiled, they adapt, which makes you adapt, and everything gets wonky and fuzzy.

In the later Dune novels, for example, prescience is actively sabotaged by spreading a tarot deck (and instructions, I guess) all over the universe. Since so many people used prescience to improve their daily life and plans, the future became so unpredictable that it was cloude. Only very big events stood out, but the background noize had grown to the point that you certainly knew that some huge thing would happen, but not where and when and by whom.

Also, users could mask themselves and their surrounding by concentrating. Probably by just playing with their decisions on how to evade detection - they became a fuzzy spot doing this.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The western equivalent of the belief that gives rise to gun kata shines through this;

"And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only joy of battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind,

Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will."

The author of the poem of which that was a fragment was a first world war gunner officer, Captain Julian Grenfell, who seems to have been a bit battle crazed before he even got to the war, and who at least lived up to his own impulses- used to take his leave, from his otherwise nice safe 18pr battery, by going forward to the trenches, borrowing a rifle and joining whatever attacks or raiding parties there were going. Complete lunatic. He didn't last, of course; he was killed. Shot.

Eyeball to eyeball is the only occasion I can see anything like gun kata having a place; when you're close enough to read body language, when you're close enough to have some social significance to the killing, when there are human impulses you can read. Battle, even a skirmish, is too random, too chaotic, too multifactorial.


The only reason to fight a duel with rapiers when blunderbusses are available would be, as happened, when duelling is culturally viable but officially illegal, and the bang of a blunderbuss would attract far too much attention from the guardia civil or the gendarmes. How you would get to a state like that, the convolutions of law and politics and world opinion that might make it so, would be a story and an act of world building in itself. Might still very easily produce nonsense, but in the real world the closest thing we have to a spell is a law.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, the first work of literature to outright call the things "gun katas" actually does try to justify it as based on statistical analysis- that if the enemies are standing there and there, you can confidently expect that dodging this way will most likely save your life. It's at least supposed to be evidence-based, although the logic is clearly trash.

I would identify Captain Grenfell's sentiment as a sort of poetic version of berserkergang- the condition of violent fatalism in which one accepts the possibility of death. The idea that martial or spiritual disciplines can make you bulletproof is something a bit different, although in medieval times the Norse certainly seemed ready to claim that berserkers were weaponproof.

[Gaidin]

In the later Dune novels, for example, prescience is actively sabotaged by spreading a tarot deck (and instructions, I guess) all over the universe. Since so many people used prescience to improve their daily life and plans, the future became so unpredictable that it was cloude. Only very big events stood out, but the background noize had grown to the point that you certainly knew that some huge thing would happen, but not where and when and by whom.

In the later Dune novels there are people who are genetically improved against prescience, which was at least most of the point of Leto II's genetic project.

[Starglider]

That's essentially why I think Jedi avoid blasters even though they could (and are) quite good with them: sure, you're good with them, but it offers no defensive advantage like a lightsabre does.

Star Wars has personal energy shields though. A Jedi with a blaster plus a smaller version of the shields the Gungans use would be pretty deadly. It's understandable why they wouldn't use this loadout in peacetime but it would be very effective on the battlefield.

[lance]

For another, this does not negate the problem that if your special material is that rare, you can't possibly make enough swords or axes out of the stuff to equip every soldier in a large army. In which case either you have only a handful of soldiers armed with silver swords (who get mopped up by any enemy force that doesn't consist entirely of werewolves). .

Just because they have the swords doesn't mean they don't also have conventional weapons.

Or you have a large army, only a tiny fraction of which actually has the silver swords... in which case each time a werewolf shows up, he'll probably slaughter his way through a dozen regular line troopers before your one silver-swordsman shows up

Figure that can be part of the story. Some amount of soldiers have them, others don't. The ones who don't have the means to kill a werewolf would have to do something to hold out until one of the swords showed up. Whether its fleeing, using nonlethal weaponry to buy time or locking themselves in there vehicle while people on the street get eaten

[Simon_Jester]

The main point I'm making here is that both these situations make it very difficult if not impossible for an army to prosecute the war effectively. The situation "the enemy has a substantial number of 'werewolves' and we only have enough 'silver' to make a few dozen spearpoints per thousand soldiers while everyone else gets nothing..."

That is not a tenable situation for an army.

[Purple]

That's essentially why I think Jedi avoid blasters even though they could (and are) quite good with them: sure, you're good with them, but it offers no defensive advantage like a lightsabre does.

Star Wars has personal energy shields though. A Jedi with a blaster plus a smaller version of the shields the Gungans use would be pretty deadly. It's understandable why they wouldn't use this loadout in peacetime but it would be very effective on the battlefield.

Honestly I do not think it is reasonable. The gungan shields can IIRC be turned off just as a lightsaber. So it should be trivial to make a lightsaber sized hilt which unfurls into a buckler. Or better yet to use the tech to create a nice round handguard for their lightsabers.

[Terralthra]

Any number of reasons:
Because they are keepers of the peace, and they carry weapons which reflect that role, not necessarily the best armament for warfare.
Because blasters are strictly offensive weapons.
Because a blaster dropped can be picked up and used by the enemy easily (in fact, that's pretty much the point of firearms in general), where using a lightsabre effectively and safely practically requires incredible dedication to the skill; thus a lightsabre is a weapon that can't be easily turned against the Jedi in question.
Because lightsabres can be used as tools, not just weapons (we see this in multiple situations).
Because lightsabres are a symbol of refinement, dedication, and minimalism/asceticism, which reflect values of the Jedi order.
Because lightsabres can be used one-handed, leaving one hand free for the gestures most Jedi need to use their force powers.

Also, the Gungan energy shields had a frame around the shield, so they weren't nearly as portable as a lightsabre hilt.

[Purple]

On the other hand a blaster is far less conspicuous in case you find your self wanting to blend in and still be armed.
And something like a buckler could be carried quite easily it was originally a shield carried by civilians in cities after all and be even less threatening than a lightsaber.

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly I do not think it is reasonable. The gungan shields can IIRC be turned off just as a lightsaber. So it should be trivial to make a lightsaber sized hilt which unfurls into a buckler. Or better yet to use the tech to create a nice round handguard for their lightsabers.

Do we have any evidence that Gungan personal shields actually stop lightsabers?

They might not for all I know.

On the other hand a blaster is far less conspicuous in case you find your self wanting to blend in and still be armed.

A lightsaber is a small cylindrical object that slips easily into a pocket. It is far easier to concealed-carry than any real life handgun except for a few dedicated special operations firearms... which tend to be rather inferior as actual combat weapons, to the extent that a lightsaber would be a better choice than a blaster that was just as easy to conceal.