Games without frontiers, war without tears (read: sports)

[Leon The Lion]

Yes, I'm a fan of Peter Gabriel, why you asking?

Anyway, I've been thinking (oh boy, this can't end well )...
What do we know of sports in the Star Wars galaxy? We know about pod and swoop racing. Also shock boxing. Is there anything else? And does anyone remember which books ware those described in ? Ware they ever actually described in detail?

Did anyone come up with their own ideas for sports in SW, planet-local or galaxy-spread? Used them in adventures, for player characters to participate in or just watch? If so, I'd love to hear about it.

In a recent adventure, I used a kind of biathlon-like b@st@rd* child of Formula 1, motocross, and combat gunnery exercise. An extreme sport, it had starfighter-like racing craft competing on an artificial asteroid field-filled track. The craft ware armed, but did not fire on competitors (a series of hardware and software safeties prevented any such thing, even accidentally), but had to hit varied difficulty targets placed along the track or suffer penalty time. The player characters found themselves in emergency need of money, and one of the racing teams found itself in emergency need of a substitute pilot, so they helped each other out. Was fun, with colorful craft and NPC racer complement, running commentary, and some hair-rising close calls with big rocks.

Another idea, for a combat sport this time, I considered borrowing form the really great (for me at least) book "Babel 17" by Samuel R. Delany. It's basically wrestling/judo, but the ring is a spherical room in zero gravity. The fighters score points if they can throw their opponent against a wall and recover and stop themselves on only a single limb on the rebound, while the opponent fails to do the same.

Generally, many normal sports could be made sci-fi by the addition of Zero-G.

What about some team sports? Zero-G handball? Zero-G baseball? Zero-G laser tag, like in "Ender's Game"?

A somewhat silly idea that struck me, is Harry Potter's Quidditch, made possible with high-tech replacing magic: the players riding repulsor bikes instead of brooms, and the balls being small repulsor-powered droids.

What do you say?
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[cheshire]

There are a couple of sports mentioned here and there... but, frankly, I think that Ultimate Tazer Ball sounds like something out of a sci-fi sports arena.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxBcXDJS5Go

Though, why not take it on to the next level... the ball is programmed with a 1 in 25 chance of setting off a 5D stun charge ever 10 seconds.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[DougRed4]

There's some sort of sport that looks like a bizarre form of football on the screens in the bar that Anakin and Obi-Wan enter in Episode II (the one where the guy tried to sell them death sticks). Not sure exactly what they were playing, but it did look like an organized sport of some kind.

I love your ideas, though, Leon (and cheshire's addition, too)! 8)
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[CRMcNeill]

Quidditch on speeder bikes sounds like a cross between polo and a destruction derby...
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Leon The Lion]

Certainly, it would be an extreme sport. The original is plenty dangerous already, let alone attempting it without healing magic available.

And that reminds me: droid pit-fighting and/or destruction derby! We kind of have this today already, but in SW the droids wouldn't be remote-operated.
_________________
Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes! So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize... Only be sure to call it, please, "research".
- Tom Lehrer

[Frandal]

Hutt-ball is a game played at the SWTOR but I do not think that it could be canon

[CRMcNeill]

Some variation on Steve Perry's Musashi Flex could make a potential crossover. After all, he used Teras Kasi in both Shadows of the Empire and his Matador series. Might be fun for a player who really wants to play a martial artist to be a Flex player and have a random encounter where another player calls him out.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[jmanski]

[Luwingo_Spince]

I'm working on this very subject (along with a lot of other things). I have compiled about 32 pages of star wars sports from various places.

here's a list that i have so far:
Gravball
Shockball which sounds kinda like what you mentioned
Nagaball
PodRacing
Solar racing
Swoop Racing

Every entry I have found is pretty extensive hence why only 6 sports but 32 pages. Was thinking about including it as a chapter in our upcoming Cantinas and Casinos Sourcebook.

[tetsuoh]

shockball is a stars wars sport by canon - look up the shockball armor in gry's equipment stats.


they play destructodroid football in that cantina.

also i do believe the mon calamari have a game not unlike blitzball from ff-x

YES YOU COULD USE HUTTBALL!!.
Maiming and disfiguring in a nessesity to be a champion - but the players are usually slaves anyway - think gladiators of rome.

and in that same stance, one interesting sport you never really see portrayed in star wars - xtreme foot racing - think ninja warrior.

only make the course in star wars deadly as sin - like the deadman wonderland anime.

speed can be an asset at times or a curse in others when you can't stop in time before the acid curtain falls over the track.

for bounty hunters there's a sport that is legendary - The Great Hunt.
not a sport per say - but it qualifies in my book. It is a yearly event nonetheless and requires sponsers to boot. cuss the entry fee is so high.

there was a sport mentioned in one of the books but i dont think was ever named. It was a gladiator ring with stepped columns and there was no floor - just a water pit filled with man eating sea creatures. the goal was simply last man standing out of like 10. funny thing was - in the book - one of the people who got eaten survived the match so the winner was forced into a rematch of one on one - but they changed the stage to just a floor show death duel. come to think of it. that might have been a story for boba fett or another bounty hunter and that why he survived and later won. sounds like something boba would do.

[nuclearwookiee]

Don't know that there is an official sport for them, but the Gladiator Walkers from Galladinium's Fantastic Tech would make for an entertaining sporty event.

[Kirkler]

Don't for get about Blob Racing
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Only the good die young? What about Wedge, he's good and still alive!

[DougRed4]

tetsuoh's post caused me to remember something else that is "sports-like" in the SWU:

Remember in EII when Anakin and Padme and Obi-Wan were put in the middle of (what was essentially) a gladiator arena? Then monstrous creatures get to slaughter them in front of the roaring crowd!
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Leon The Lion]

Hm, is it just me, or are most of known Star Wars sports at the least extreme and/or dangerous, or outright brutal and violent? I mean, even in chess the figures are of monsters, and they kill and devour opposing figures.

[CRMcNeill]