For us ancient gamers, back when gamer meant pencils, a table, paper and dice, there was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
We recall E Gary Gygax looked up every synonym of "polearm" and put them on the weapon table. We even got pictures when Unearthed Arcana came out.
If you used the speed/range table, the differences in these weapons mattered. Real debate about the relative merit between a glaive and glaive-guisarme happened with the same heat as 9mm vs .45.
Here's a series of youtube on the problem. In particular...
It was actually something of a relief when we converted to GURPS with just a few polearms defined by effect rather than appearance (glaive, halberd, and poleaxe in 3e adding a naginata for 4e) and it boils down to what kind of thrusting damage you do when stabbing and if there's a hook on the side. The GURPS names for these things is wrong for a lot of the weapons represented, and it's not until Low-Tech for 4e that we start adding in all the silly sub-variants we're familiar with from the old AD&D days, but it's still a pretty sparse list by comparison. Bill (including dueling bill, forest bill and guisarme), Glaive (including dueling glaive, bardiche, fauchard, jedwart, jeddart stave, and lochaber axe), Halberd (including dueling halberd, ji and voulge), Horse-Cutter (including pudao and bisento), Monk's Spade, Naginata (including nagamaki, rhomphaia, and ngao), Poleaxe (ahistorical) and Polleaxe (including bec de corbin). With sub-variations listed in the text description.
In GURPS, spears (including bolg, chaing, hasta, ngao, sibat and yari) and warhammers aren't polearms because they use different skills.
Our friend the ranseur is listed under partisan (Low Tech p. 60), and that's just a kind of spear using the spear skill. In GURPS terms, a ranseur is the same as a boar spear, Bohemian ear-spoon, magari-yari, partisan, spetum, or spontoon. An "unthrowable" spear with something to keep the impaled target from walking up the stave (rules for this are in the GURPS: Martial Arts I don't own).
We recall E Gary Gygax looked up every synonym of "polearm" and put them on the weapon table. We even got pictures when Unearthed Arcana came out.
If you used the speed/range table, the differences in these weapons mattered. Real debate about the relative merit between a glaive and glaive-guisarme happened with the same heat as 9mm vs .45.
Here's a series of youtube on the problem. In particular...
It was actually something of a relief when we converted to GURPS with just a few polearms defined by effect rather than appearance (glaive, halberd, and poleaxe in 3e adding a naginata for 4e) and it boils down to what kind of thrusting damage you do when stabbing and if there's a hook on the side. The GURPS names for these things is wrong for a lot of the weapons represented, and it's not until Low-Tech for 4e that we start adding in all the silly sub-variants we're familiar with from the old AD&D days, but it's still a pretty sparse list by comparison. Bill (including dueling bill, forest bill and guisarme), Glaive (including dueling glaive, bardiche, fauchard, jedwart, jeddart stave, and lochaber axe), Halberd (including dueling halberd, ji and voulge), Horse-Cutter (including pudao and bisento), Monk's Spade, Naginata (including nagamaki, rhomphaia, and ngao), Poleaxe (ahistorical) and Polleaxe (including bec de corbin). With sub-variations listed in the text description.
In GURPS, spears (including bolg, chaing, hasta, ngao, sibat and yari) and warhammers aren't polearms because they use different skills.
Our friend the ranseur is listed under partisan (Low Tech p. 60), and that's just a kind of spear using the spear skill. In GURPS terms, a ranseur is the same as a boar spear, Bohemian ear-spoon, magari-yari, partisan, spetum, or spontoon. An "unthrowable" spear with something to keep the impaled target from walking up the stave (rules for this are in the GURPS: Martial Arts I don't own).