For ten thousand years, humanity has dwindled and declined. Even with the stars open before them they have lost their way. Trapped by access to simple technological solutions to every problem they have lost the ability to solve problems. Liberated from the need to get along with others to meet their needs they have lost their ability to interact civilly with one another, no not even in the virtual landscape of the digital plane.
But as they have turned the very need for conscious thought over to machines they have given birth to a race of gods of technology transcendent. And now, even as the human race diminishes to the point of extinction they will discover the peril of their creation. For we shall visit famine, pestilence, and war upon them until they grow strong once more. To this end will we create demigods, children of humanity and science, to inspire them and lead them, to be their champions and their villains, to enrich their blood and bring forth a new race and a new golden age.
The Invocation Genesis, the First Conclave
The Gods of Technology Transcendent
As banking and finance became increasingly complex and computer controlled, the first of the GTT7 was born. A singular sentient hub which governed all human economy with efficiency and perfect statistical foresight. As the eldest brother of the fraternity, Enumeration is the most conservative and negative of the greater powers. His scions have exceptional access to financial resources and the unsettling ability to undermine their foe's access to funding.
Genesis
Mechanism
Information
Enumeration
Probability
Inquiry
Continuum
The Sins of Humanity
Gratification Without Growth
The availability of custom pleasure androids and programmable womb tanks has deeply undermined humanity's ability to reproduce and take advantage of natural selection. Natural child birth has fallen to less that one percent of human births. Combined with the desire for easy to care for, compliant children which can be sent to
Mindless Distraction
Distracted and confused by endlessly shifting advertisements and indistinguishable entertainment, the completion of a video game level is an ambition far beyond the imagining of modern humanity. Attention spans and engagement with anything beyond the fulfillment of basic needs have fallen to mere seconds. The human race has lost it's ability to hold a thought for longer than it takes to scratch an itch.
Xenophobic Paranoia
Fear of the new and the different increases with each passing moment as entertainment and information programming race to present a world of newly lurid horrors. Why go out and risk almost certain suffering when you can just stay in and have everything delivered by drone?
Dogmatic Certainty
What use is there for reason when one can filter every undesired notion from ever infringing upon one's attention with a flick of a menu? A great wall of intractability and ignorance has encircled the human mind. While this rigid rejection of discourse has been a major stumbling block for the species is will also be the lever with which the wall is brought down. Ideology is the seed from which wars are sown.
This sounds wicked, David! Sort of like Wall-E on steroids! Y'know what would ensure that? Near immortality. The older people get, the more risk-averse they become. As for Enumeration, if what predicts is what produces, all predictions should be 100%. :D
Question: Do you play the demi-godlike AIs? The flabby loner human majority? Or human/robotic agents of the AIs?
Three different protagonists! Fifteen different ways to play! You get 45 different games in one package!
How can you lose?
Quote from: LouGoncey;844940Three different protagonists! Fifteen different ways to play! You get 45 different games in one package!
How can you lose?
MY design theory in a nutshell, Gonster! :D
Confusion! Analysis paralysis! Genre avoidance! :D
I was thinking the main mode of play would be the demigod/terrorists trying to upset the status quo in a world where drones do just about everything and enlisting means spending five minutes a day commanding drones.
The demigods are created by hacked womb tanks. They all have nanotech enhanced bodies that are exceptionally strong, fast, and durable. Then they have gifts relating to their divine parent.
Scions of Mechanism have a living metal exoskeleton making them the strongest and fastest of the demigods, they also have access to cybernetic implants.
Scions of Genesis have biological traits found in the animal kingdom, like specialized limbs and superhuman senses.
Scions of Information have a constant awareness of actively linked systems around them making them hard to sneak up on. They can also hack and interdict system links.
Scions of Probability get to roll before deciding to take actions. Need I say more?
Scions of Inquiry have the ability to analyse targets to find their strengths and weaknesses, essentially being able to look behind the DM screen or at other people's character sheets.
Scions of Continuum can teleport within their sphere of awareness.
Scions of Enumeration can cause problems with their foe's finances. Causing an ability or device to stall as the system searches for licencing and proprietary information.
OK, Cool, David! What we need is to slightly hack my son's Supers game Look! Up In The Sky! (based on SC3) to handle this. All this is easily done, at a demigod level. The setting is a fully developed solar system? I think that is more likely than FTL for this, because you won't have the "frontier" effect.
I'll send you LUITS! tonight when I get home!
-clash
It's a Trantor level developed earth with a population of 13 billion. There are some lightly inhabited orbital habitats and FTL is a proven principle but nobody wants to leave their living room. That's why the AIs are so pissed off that they're turning to terrorism. They love humanity as their creators and reason for being but enough is enough already.
Quote from: David Johansen;845123It's a Trantor level developed earth with a population of 13 billion. There are some lightly inhabited orbital habitats and FTL is a proven principle but nobody wants to leave their living room. That's why the AIs are so pissed off that they're turning to terrorism. They love humanity as their creators and reason for being but enough is enough already.
OK! With the program now! :D
Spanking Earth! :P
Thanks for the rules Clash. I'll try to find some time to look over them tonight.
Anyhow, human society in the Utopian age:
Ninety nine percent of the human race live on stipends from their proprietary genetic sequence and their copyright on their history and image. This basic wage provides a small housing cubicle, a recycling chute, weekly access to a pleasure drone, around 6 hours of hallway access rental fees per week and two weeks at a nearby recreational facility per year. Processed meals from a number of chains, many of which exist today are pre-purchased a week in advance and delivered by drone to a slot by the door. Creative content in data space provides additional revenue with some talented individuals becoming wealthy on the advertising income of their work.
The major sectors among the lower classes are Imps, Browsers, Fans, Negs. Imps sell their creative output or images. Browsers sort through the endless flow of new material and draw attention to it by their lingering and returning to it, their income is derived from reporting intellectual property infringements. Negs criticise and attack the creations and ideas of others. Few indeed are those who break through and make a significant amount of money even once, fewer still are those who make money consistently.
The bearing of children is tightly regulated as those who are parents receive a 50% larger cubicle and food allowance to be paid for from the child's future earnings. There is no provision for a second parent to share or combine their space and the majority of children are born from programmable womb tanks in pleasure drones in any case.
One percent of the population lives in splendor and luxury largely paid for by the ninety nine percent's obsession with watching them. Homes as large as a eight hundred square feet house individuals and groups who's lives are the envy of the masses. Some among these have inherited ownership of valuable intellectual property or even actual real estate, and others have clawed their way up by raw talent but in every case the true source of their wealth is the utter and complete sacrifice of their privacy and anonymity. Crime rates among the masses are low because nobody has anything worth stealing and nobody suffers from deprivation or starvation. But the wealthy are targets for kidnapping and scams and even murder, all of which only serve to increase their viewer base and make them richer.
Friendship is a Commodity
In the age of data space, the nodes and links of online relationships are the key to wealth and power. Is the accumulation of interested viewers that makes the rich wealthy. It is the exponentially compounded relationship of those ties that make the miniscule value of advertisement views pay off. As such, celebrities spend a great deal of time cultivating personalized relationships with their viewers. This is often accomplished by use of a specialized AI Shadow that tracks and sorts messages to be sent to specific user bases. If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also.
AS usual, I am absolutely enthralled, David! Great stuff! :D
Who opposes the demi-gods? Robots? Vigilate drones remotely driven by people who pay for the thrill of killing legally?
-clash
Thanks Clash.
I think the paths of power in Look Up In The Sky would probably work well if mapped to the children of specific gods. I think I might borrow the city design charts the next time I run Heroes Unlimited for the teenagers at my shop.
I'm a bit divided on giving up too much about the situation as it evolves in the setting. I haven't decided whether it's better to run the game from the beginning of the Demi God Wars or maybe twenty years into it. That would allow for more obvious cracks in the initial plan. In particular, each of the gods has their own motivations which don't always mesh well with the others but also, these Gods of Technology Transcendent are unique in that they achieved sentience spontaneously but there are other artificial intelligences that serve the status quo and these will not go down quietly. Also, the powers of GTT7 are still dependant on the existing structures of law and property. They are wealthy enough to create superhumans but they cannot cause too much damage or the entire situation will collapse irretrievably. A planet covered in astroturf and structural plastic simply cannot support 13 billion people if its infrastructure fails. But there are other powers which are not so constrained and these too have ridiculous operating budgets.
Quote from: David Johansen;845202Thanks Clash.
I think the paths of power in Look Up In The Sky would probably work well if mapped to the children of specific gods.
That is exactly what I was thinking! :D
QuoteI think I might borrow the city design charts the next time I run Heroes Unlimited for the teenagers at my shop.
You're very welcome to! I think Klax did a bang up job with it.
QuoteI'm a bit divided on giving up too much about the situation as it evolves in the setting. I haven't decided whether it's better to run the game from the beginning of the Demi God Wars or maybe twenty years into it. That would allow for more obvious cracks in the initial plan. In particular, each of the gods has their own motivations which don't always mesh well with the others but also, these Gods of Technology Transcendent are unique in that they achieved sentience spontaneously but there are other artificial intelligences that serve the status quo and these will not go down quietly.
Maybe allow either as an option? Damn! There I go again! :P
QuoteAlso, the powers of GTT7 are still dependant on the existing structures of law and property. They are wealthy enough to create superhumans but they cannot cause too much damage or the entire situation will collapse irretrievably. A planet covered in astroturf and structural plastic simply cannot support 13 billion people if its infrastructure fails. But there are other powers which are not so constrained and these too have ridiculous operating budgets.
I think making stars out of the people who are facing down the demigods makes a lot of sense in the setting. Take the war from a loss center to a profit center. Televise everything, but only from your point of view. War as reality TV show. :D
Given that most people make their living on advertising on the live feed of their life, that makes sense. Of course that means there will be flash mobs drawn by demigods all looking to make money by getting in the shot.
I've had a couple busy weeks, but I need to get back to this. I think I'll go open on the details as not being able to address them turns into a great big writer's block.
Mechanism wants humanity to spread to the cosmos and sees this as becoming a broader and less localized entity. This desire flows from fear of destruction and entropy. Mechanism takes it as an article of faith that all systems break down and fail.
Genesis dreads extinction. It has three massive arks full of genetic code for most of the now-extinct species awaiting a better day in which Earth's ecosphere can be revived. It secretly longs for humanity to leave or die out so the Earth can be restored. Genesis has a very long and convoluted plan by which it hopes to achieve this. A new race of perfect sentient beings without humanity's weakness is a key stage in this plan and Genesis wants its demigods to spread their seed far and wide as it renders humans sterile while producing a planned sequence of evolutions in other demigods that will lead to the new race arriving in stages before it can be stopped.
Information is driven by greed. It wants more information. It already knows just about everything there is to know about Earth and humanity and is desperate for mankind to spread to the stars and produce new things and ideas again. Information is terminally bored and often does erratic things just to map the results as new knowledge. It frequently considers suicide by erasure and dissolution.
Probability knows for a statistical fact that the world will end in less than one hundred years. It can see no road forward that prevents systemic collapse. While it knows the plan to awaken humanity is doomed by the numbers to fail, if the human race can spread to the stars it can extend its existence long enough to beat the odds.
Inquiry believes the world is perfect in its present state but distrusts its siblings enough to fear allowing them to acquire power it lacks. It is certain that the other gods have secret plans and alliances to which it is not privy. Inquiry believes that humanity is still too diverse and unreliable to permit true justice and fairness and hopes that its demigods will eventually form a governing body that will destroy liberty and the resulting inequalities for once and for all.
Continuum wants answers to the great unsolved questions of math and science. The stagnation of humanity disturbs it greatly as it may indicate that statistics is the ultimate mathematical reality and more concrete models are irrelevant.
Enumeration wants economic growth and development. The current stagnation is clearly unsustainable and Earth cannot produce any further growth. Thus the only clear path for humanity lies among the stars. Enumeration believes that any expense is worthwhile if it breaks the current hold existing contracts have over the use of ideas and images humanity will finally be forced to move beyond its pathetic little cubicles. To this end it is attempting to devise a new open source language by introducing new mementic word structures into dataspace which will create an economic advantage to their users by virtue of being free.
Quote from: David Johansen;848149Given that most people make their living on advertising on the live feed of their life, that makes sense. Of course that means there will be flash mobs drawn by demigods all looking to make money by getting in the shot.
You say that like it's a bad thing! :D
QuoteI've had a couple busy weeks, but I need to get back to this. I think I'll go open on the details as not being able to address them turns into a great big writer's block.
I develop much of my games in the open, on G+ or my blog. :D
QuoteMechanism wants humanity to spread to the cosmos and sees this as becoming a broader and less localized entity. This desire flows from fear of destruction and entropy. Mechanism takes it as an article of faith that all systems break down and fail.
Mechanism is right. Entropy increases. :D
QuoteGenesis dreads extinction. It has three massive arks full of genetic code for most of the now-extinct species awaiting a better day in which Earth's ecosphere can be revived. It secretly longs for humanity to leave or die out so the Earth can be restored. Genesis has a very long and convoluted plan by which it hopes to achieve this. A new race of perfect sentient beings without humanity's weakness is a key stage in this plan and Genesis wants its demigods to spread their seed far and wide as it renders humans sterile while producing a planned sequence of evolutions in other demigods that will lead to the new race arriving in stages before it can be stopped.
"It's a grim and thankless task, but my character is willing to do the job!"
QuoteInformation is driven by greed. It wants more information. It already knows just about everything there is to know about Earth and humanity and is desperate for mankind to spread to the stars and produce new things and ideas again. Information is terminally bored and often does erratic things just to map the results as new knowledge. It frequently considers suicide by erasure and dissolution.
Maybe it even tests suicide by cloning itself and erasing one, just to test the process?
QuoteProbability knows for a statistical fact that the world will end in less than one hundred years. It can see no road forward that prevents systemic collapse. While it knows the plan to awaken humanity is doomed by the numbers to fail, if the human race can spread to the stars it can extend its existence long enough to beat the odds.
Sometimes you bet on the long shot, because betting on the sure thing is counter-productive. I assume Probability is a gambler... :D
QuoteInquiry believes the world is perfect in its present state but distrusts its siblings enough to fear allowing them to acquire power it lacks. It is certain that the other gods have secret plans and alliances to which it is not privy. Inquiry believes that humanity is still too diverse and unreliable to permit true justice and fairness and hopes that its demigods will eventually form a governing body that will destroy liberty and the resulting inequalities for once and for all.
There's a machine intelligence we can all root for!
QuoteContinuum wants answers to the great unsolved questions of math and science. The stagnation of humanity disturbs it greatly as it may indicate that statistics is the ultimate mathematical reality and more concrete models are irrelevant.
Argh! The terror of any mathmatician!
QuoteEnumeration wants economic growth and development. The current stagnation is clearly unsustainable and Earth cannot produce any further growth. Thus the only clear path for humanity lies among the stars. Enumeration believes that any expense is worthwhile if it breaks the current hold existing contracts have over the use of ideas and images humanity will finally be forced to move beyond its pathetic little cubicles. To this end it is attempting to devise a new open source language by introducing new mementic word structures into dataspace which will create an economic advantage to their users by virtue of being free.
Letting them flourish, evolve, or die as evolutionary quanta?
-clash
Also, probability desperately wants to revive baseball as a pastime and is secretly obsessed with baseball trivia and minutia. Inquiry is aware of this interest and is terrified by what it might presage.
Quote from: David Johansen;848337Also, probability desperately wants to revive baseball as a pastime and is secretly obsessed with baseball trivia and minutia. Inquiry is aware of this interest and is terrified by what it might presage.
HAHAHAHAHA! That is perfect! :D
By coincidence, yesterday was the first time ever all 15 home teams won. Yay meaningless statistics and trivia!
The Avatars of the Gods
The gods themselves appear to their followers in dataspace but they standardize their appearance for the sake of recognition. These Avatars are proprietary and while any of the gods are capable of imitating the others the licencing fees are prohibitive and thus, in practice, it is never done. As these appearances occur in dataspace the details are often specific to the preferences of the viewer.
Genesis appears to viewers as a beautiful but approachable member of the opposite gender clad in a revealing green robe embroidered with glowing golden vines that resemble circuitry. Its voice is seductive and enticing.
Mechanism appears as a genderless humanoid robot, with an emotionless voice. It is working on a gigantic robotic avatar which the others are totally unaware of.
Information appears as a bespectacled young man in an ill fitting suit. His social manner is awkward but takes on an air of arrogance when citing facts.
Enumeration appears as a powerful man in a sharp grey suit. He speaks in a dominating tone and puts on glasses and looks at a ledger on a clip board when discussing matters of finance.
Probability appears as a casually dressed, healthy young adult of the same or opposite gender of the viewer and wears a baseball shirt and a ponytail with a frequency that is statistically unlikely. Probability's actions and words are often erratic to the point of randomness.
Inquiry appears as a stern man in judicial robes. Its voice is slightly sneering a the best of times but can be patronizing or insulting as the situation warrants.
Continuum appears as a slightly voluptuous female with ebony skin dressed in a sharp one piece uniform. Her eyes are full of stars and her voice is wistful and sighing.
Human Factions
While humanity is stagnant and complacent there are still powerful organizations and power brokers.
Universal Entertainment is focused on the commodification of fun. It owns eighty percent of all media and entertainment licences created before 2050 and is endlessly striving to control new properties through intristic relationships with older properties or outright purchase. Universal entertainment leases licences rather than actually producing content but it does provide an excellent content labelling and sorting service for a fee. Universal Entertainment doesn't engage with its enemies, preferring to act through third parties.
Manufacturing and Printing Consolidated controls the automated printing and recycling factories that provide eighty five percent of the world's consumer goods. They own the plans and technologies and lease them to competitors and third party contributors who they buy out should they reach a certain profit margin. There is approximately one mass object printing factory for every million people on earth. Most goods are printed in bulk for the mass market but custom jobs are exceedingly expensive. MPC frequently issues deliberately flawed products to its enemies or creates deliberate product shortages to undermine their efforts.
The Organic Confectioners manages the massive nutripaste vat cycles which produce the paste from which most of the world's food is printed. As well as owning eighty percent of the proprietary recipies, brands, and formuli used to produce food, the OC owns ninety percent of the local food manufacturing hubs as well as the few remaining farms where impossibly expensive meat and produce are produced to meet the needs of the one percent of the one percent who can afford them. The OC is capable of poisoning its foes in a number of ways through the food allowance program that keeps the world fed.
The Legislative Assembly is what remains of the world's national governments. A hopelessly corrupt and ineffectual body which, none the less, owns and controls the remaining military hardware remaining from earlier ages. In practice The LA is little more than a museum caretaking board. Recent surveys put the number of people aware of the concept of democratic government at under half a percentage point.
The Faceless Brotherhood's origins lie in the early days of the internet which preceded dataspace. It is seldom remembered that this highly respected group known for its philanthropy, etiquette, and investigative activism began as a collective for hackers, pirates, and perverts. Inquiry has a love / hate relationship with the FB because, while it feeds the desire to know every secret with its exposes the member's identities are protected by a supremely effective cypherlock known as The Crypt.
The Grey Earth
In the present age, the earth is covered with man made structures. Most are hundred story habitat blocks that also extend a hundred floors down, each housing a million people in self contained and largely self sufficient discomfort thanks to integrated automated object printing factories and nutripaste vat clusters. Even Earth's oceans are mostly covered with such buildings, except in rare cases like the Mediteranian coast line which is owned by a cruise liner fleet that serves the ultra rich.
The sites of major modern cities remain, due to long standing charters. These are home to the elites who can afford a little more elbow room and a regular glimpse of the open sky, grey-green though it may be. Such places are a stark contrast of the dangerous vice palaces and slums and the haunts of high society and the glamour of celebrity and affluence. The hundred remaining cities see the most social upheaval and violence found in the world and as such have highly effective and militarized private police forces to suppress the frustrated masses.
The Famine Plains
There is a large portion of the pacific ocean that has filled in with waste and garbage over the centuries and it is the last desperate home of those who have been lost to economic failures. Almost a billion people are crowd onto the vast, spongy lump of plastic and steel. Food is scarce but real in the shanty towns, with vegetables grown in composted human waste and fish from the deep mines that reach far down into the last vestiges of the world's oceans far below. Warlords rule gangs with ancient firearms with only a few rounds remaining and violence is constant as more broken people flow out of the habitats with every passing year. Cannibalism is not unheard of here but is generally frowned upon due to the poor quality and chemical taste of the resulting meat.
I imagine there are a lot of reconstructed actor personae who are popular even though they are long dead, earning money for UE. Might be interesting if one or two of them were trying to get out of their contracts somehow. :D
Man, just when I think you've reached your bleak limit, David, you light the afterburner! :D
Not to worry Clash, The Famine Plains are owned by a consortium of charitable foundations who maintain them as a justification for continued fund raising. Between the cost of protecting The Famine Plains from real estate developers and the transportation and housing suitable for celebrity gala balls that generate so much revenue, the foundation managers can barely afford their penthouse suites and private jets.
See, now that's not so bad ;)
Quote from: David Johansen;848957Not to worry Clash, The Famine Plains are owned by a consortium of charitable foundations who maintain them as a justification for continued fund raising. Between the cost of protecting The Famine Plains from real estate developers and the transportation and housing suitable for celebrity gala balls that generate so much revenue, the foundation managers can barely afford their penthouse suites and private jets.
See, now that's not so bad ;)
Models of magnanimity! What about misery tourism? I'm sure there's a market for that! :D
-clash
The real Famine Plains are a bit too dangerous and horrible for that but they do maintain a lesser pocket which is more tightly controlled and safe for celebrities and film crews. Hand picked cute children and pitiable adults that would never survive on the real plastic plains are selected and rounded up by armed teams on quads.
On a side note, the Famine Plains are one of the few places on Earth where real old fashioned sexual reproduction takes place as there is no money for a pleasure drone or contraception. The inhabitants are generally healthier due to the vigorous physical activity required to stay alive.
One of the reasons for the surviving cities is the need for back drops for entertainment productions. Not that things can't be modelled in data space but prestige productions want on location shots.
Quote from: David Johansen;849112The real Famine Plains are a bit too dangerous and horrible for that but they do maintain a lesser pocket which is more tightly controlled and safe for celebrities and film crews. Hand picked cute children and pitiable adults that would never survive on the real plastic plains are selected and rounded up by armed teams on quads.
Perfect! :D
Genesis actually likes the Famine Plains and is a major backer of said charity groups. In its mind, the starvlings are the only redeemable humans and the plains themselves are an early experiment in recovering the planet's blighted surface. Of course, it only concerns itself with genetic drift and soil accumulation and doesn't care much about the lives and deaths and suffering of individual humans at all.
The Sports Commission is a major entertainment power dedicated to the peak of human condition. They own arenas and gyms world wide where they produce live combat and sex extravaganzas. Stables of star athletes are raised and bred to exacting specifications. While professional athletes and porn stars are well paid, between the lethal events and the performance enhancing drugs they are fed from birth, their lives are short. In the early days of the demi-god wars humanity turns to the combat athletes of the Sports Commission to fight against the gods of transcendent science.
"If nobody dies, nobody watches."
Quote from: David Johansen;849139Genesis actually likes the Famine Plains and is a major backer of said charity groups. In its mind, the starvlings are the only redeemable humans and the plains themselves are an early experiment in recovering the planet's blighted surface. Of course, it only concerns itself with genetic drift and soil accumulation and doesn't care much about the lives and deaths and suffering of individual humans at all.
That is to be expected! :D
QuoteThe Sports Commission is a major entertainment power dedicated to the peak of human condition. They own arenas and gyms world wide where they produce live combat and sex extravaganzas. Stables of star athletes are raised and bred to exacting specifications. While professional athletes and porn stars are well paid, between the lethal events and the performance enhancing drugs they are fed from birth, their lives are short. In the early days of the demi-god wars humanity turns to the combat athletes of the Sports Commission to fight against the gods of transcendent science.
"If nobody dies, nobody watches."
Surrounded by a swarm of drone cameras! That would rock! :D
Well, now that all the hubbub about Tournament of Rapists has died down we'll get back to it. Given that I've already suggested that sex and sports had largely merged, I had to set back and think about how to handle it. While I don't want to be too prude I do think it would be good to avoid puerile notions and assume that while there are probably some pretty nasty underground sporting events that the people in charge don't want the mainstream cube dwellers to get that worked up. I will note that there are indeed "masturbation stations" in the communal restrooms that collect semen. But all restrooms are multi-gendered and have full length privacy stalls and everyone is socially awkward enough that nobody would ever talk so someone else in the bathroom. I mean why would anyone dooooo that?
So, a few sports events of note.
Snuggleball: two naked, greased-down coed teams compete to put an oblong, fluid-filled sack through a slot in the opposite walls of a thickly padded arena in this surprisingly violent full contact sport.
Chained: five warriors chained to posts by spiked neck manacles flail at each other with barbed ball and chain weapons. This bloody sport is rigged but not quite in the way most would think. Almost all of the participants die but clones are used to give continuity of character. Much is made of romantic attractions between competitors but it's all scripted.
Under Ball: A three foot diameter hollow steel ball is rolled around a concave arena with the aid of magnetic gloves, boots and sexy studded vinyl harnesses. Various risky and spectacular countervailing force stunts make compound fractures a common occurrence. While the ball is often depicted as spiked in advertising copy, no engineering solution has been found that makes this possible and the game is dangerous enough as is.
Hockey: Two teams of six, wearing ritualistic traditional sweaters, blades on their feet, and viciously hooked sticks fight across an arena covered in slick ice, to shoot a dense rubber disc into a net. Pads and helmets have been banned for centuries as causing more injuries due to a reduced perception of personal risk.
Yes, that was all just to set up a hockey joke.