Greetings!
Do you embrace weapon distinctions in your campaigns? I know, for example, that D&D 5E provides a fairly generalized assortment of basic weapon types, making the essential argument that shorter swords are all alike, longer swords, and so on, are all basically the same weapon, and have the same damage type and performance details within the category type or classification. Honestly, this is a fine approach that provides a simple, fast, and easy framework from which to deal with, and it certainly has strong merits in its favour.
However, and I know it can seem to be contradictory in desire--I admit there are competing and conflicting desires and goals!--but I also like the numerous little details in damage and performance between weapons. Historically, for example, there are numerous models to examine. Hand Axes may seem just like a simple hand axe--though the barbarian Franks were famous for developing and using the Francisca--which was a hand axe that was more easily and accurately thrown, as well as being lighter in weight, and able to be used both as a missile weapon on foot, or when fighting from horseback. It has been noted that many Frankish warriors and knights went into battle equipped with several Francisca axes. Likewise, the Viking "Bearded"axe--it too, was a "Hand Axe"--but it was also well-able to be thrown in combat, and was very lethal in hand-to-hand combat. Furthermore, the "Bearded" axe was also known to be of such cunning design as to be a swift-striking weapon--providing the warrior to make sharp, quick strikes, more so than when using other, more standard types of hand axes.
Then you have the Composite Recurved Bow--known for having an effective range of a longbow, but having superior penetration power, and also being easily and customarily used from horseback while mounted. I'm also reminded of the Dacian Falx--a heavy, curved two-handed sword used by fierce Dacian barbarians fighting against the Roman Empire. The Dacian Falx was known to be a very effective and fearsome weapon--easily cutting through heavily-armoured Roman Legionaries. Similarly, while the Roman Gladius is well-known as one of history's most brutally effective and lethal weapons--the Celtic Falcata was also known, even to Roman historians--as a fine weapon that was also very lethal, and had a longer reach than the Gladius. Similar distinctions can be found with a wide range of weapons, from different kinds of battle axes, different kinds of flails, as well as maces and war hammers. Each, much like many of our own firearms of today, provide different performance advantages, disadvantages, or other weapon properties.
D&D often simplifies these distinctions, as noted--and avoids perhaps burdensome and cumbersome details--and yet, throughout history, warriors from the world over selected very different and distinctive weapons for use in battle, and seem to have eschewed simply gravitating towards a simplified, common weapon that was otherwise deemed as being "Good Enough". I generally strive to provide a bit more distinction and different properties with weapons in my own campaign, because I'm cursed with a love of history and weapons and am always cognizant that warriors throughout history developed and embraced different weapons for particular reasons. Historical warriors didn't embrace simplified, generic weapons, so I always get annoyed when I am tempted to do the same in my own campaigns.
What do you think about it, my friends?
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK