Ever had a sport (real or fictional) play a significant part in one of your campaigns? Was it just fluff and flavor or did the PCs participate in any way? Did you just wing the rules or did you develop any sort of mechanical system for it?

not yet but the campaign may soon be going to ysgard tournaments count as sports right

Baseball, both using my baseball game rules and in a Blood Games II campaign set in Boston during the first World Series. One of the PCs was a member of the Red Sox team.

-clash

Just off the top of my head...

We used Swoop Racing in a couple of Star Wars D6 adventures we created. The PCs were using Swoop Racer as their cover on some undercover Rebel mission (IIR, Caythnar Landrox was my PC's cover ID). They had to actually race and we worked up a track with various obstacles to negotiate, set number of rolls for position and speed and what not.

Call of Cthulhu we had 1920s auto racing as a non-Mythos adventure. There were various shenanigans by some of the opposing race crews. Like what you might expect from race genre. Also did an airplane race or maybe it was stunt flying - the details are a bit fuzzy.

Runequest had Trollball, though it was nothing we ever saw in play, just some setting fluff for NPCs. We routinely used a Coming of Age contest in our Balazaring campaign though that wasn't really a sport. There was a course (differed for different tribes) with various tasks like swimming, stalking, running, climbing, target shooting, etc.

In Honor+Intrigue the PCs participated in a shooting contest in Brussels that was sponsored by the Archduchess Isabella. I worked up some rules for the contest that took account of the affects of different types of weapons from regular army matchlock muskets to elaborate, engraved wheellock hunting rifles. There was some cheating by one of the NPCs and a gun exploded. I have the rules at hand which I'll put in the H+I Q&A thread.

A Marbles shooter type game played by dwarves, halfings and gnomes.

Darts. Lots of darts.

Interestingly enough an obstacle course racing sport elves liked. Lots of acrobatics needed and surprisingly rough for an elven game. Held yearly for huge event. Smaller 3 times a year for holidays.

In the Spelljammer campaign Im in one of my characters has participated in now four rather gruelling and dangerous fantasy horse race competitions. As the horse each time. Twice by force for a chance to get the hell off the planet was stuck on.

One wanted to do but never got the chance to participate in as the campaign folded just before. Was an Aztec style ball game held in the Mechica setting introduced in Dragon way back.

My old fantasy setting had a popular sport involving halflings dressed as chickens with sharp metallic beaks... in a pit... pecking at each other.
Also, dwarf tossing.

My more recent homebrew has lots of pit fights/gladiator arenas... racing on various sorts of animals. One area, full of nomadic herders, has seasonal 'rodeos' that involve all sorts of competitions involving livestock.

Most all have seen PC participation and betting.

I have had joust and archery contest in fantasy games.

A slashing bloodsport in a sci fi game on a run down world, very cyberpunk dystopic.


Have had kids playing games quite a few different games. Gave a way to introduce and show how certain worlds were based on the violence of the game or if there was lots of cheating etc. A reflection of the larger world.

Probably have others that I am not remembering.

Never. I did once have a CoC character who was an ex-baseball player, he had skills such as 100 throw and 100 swing bat, etc. Fun character. He kicked ass when I used him in a bring-your-own-character game at Gen Con once.

I got really turned off by the idea when I encountered one of the worst plot lines in any fantasy novel I ever read. In one of Terry Goodkind's later Sword of Truth novels the main hero decides to give up saving the world and instead spend months participating in the evil guy's sports teams. A true WTF? moment.

It does make sense to include sports though. Across history and in most cultures sport has been an important part of society. Even the colonial Puritans played a baseball-like sport they called "The Massachusetts Game." A popular form of exercise after Sunday church. So I have nothing against the idea of it. But GMs don't bring it up and source books never mention it, that I can recall.

Quote from: Doughdee222;818006It does make sense to include sports though. Across history and in most cultures sport has been an important part of society. Even the colonial Puritans played a baseball-like sport they called "The Massachusetts Game." A popular form of exercise after Sunday church. So I have nothing against the idea of it. But GMs don't bring it up and source books never mention it, that I can recall.

Right, I think this is a neglected or even deliberately avoided element of flavor and I wonder why.

I use buzkashi, ulama, and chariot-racing a lot in my games, depending on the culture.  I also baldly steal from history in sometimes linking politics to sports, especially from Byzantine history.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;818252I use buzkashi, ulama, and chariot-racing a lot in my games, depending on the culture.  I also baldly steal from history in sometimes linking politics to sports, especially from Byzantine history.

The The Blues and the Greens, talk about people who took their sports way too seriously.

Quote from: Bren;817997Call of Cthulhu we had 1920s auto racing as a non-Mythos adventure. There were various shenanigans by some of the opposing race crews. Like what you might expect from race genre.

That sounds really sweet to me. But then again Im a sucker for 20's and older race cars. Like this.

Quote from: Ronin;818259That sounds really sweet to me. But then again Im a sucker for 20's and older race cars. Like this.

Nice. If I recall the PC drove a Bentley.

Car Wars had a BMX armed paintball sport.

Battletech has the Solaris arenas.

Couple of articles in Dragon on fantasy sports. Chariot Racing, Jousting, Wrestling, a article on Gamma World sports.

Baseball.  When I joined an APBA dice baseball league, a player who was an EPT GM had his team based out of Jakalla, and did a good bit of roleplaying during his games.  The crowd would chant "Vimúhla!  Vimúhla!" if a pitcher was doing poorly and about to be pulled, and instead of placing players on waivers, Jim would say that they were impaled on one of the three impaling stakes in center field, pour encourages les autres.  

I was charmed, and the next season moved my team into one of the cities in which I based parties, and the "Warwik Dragons" were born, playing in the city's gladiatorial arena (thus insuring short porches down the foul lines).  A PC wizard begged to be added to the team's staff, so Larindo the Witherer became (then as now) the Team Necromancer, who helped out materially when I made a waiver wire pickup.  The cards were based on the previous season of play, and in 1980 J.R. Richard -- a star pitcher for the Houston Astros -- was having a magnificent season before he had a stroke, and would never pitch in the majors again.  

So, while in 1981 Richard's card was excellent, we all knew he was damaged goods, and the Jakalla manager cut him during the stretch run for a prospect.  Since Richard had been "impaled," Larindo reclaimed the body and raised him as a zombie during a gaming session (which took some doing, since creating Unlife within the kingdom's boundary was illegal) for the team.  The following quote during an APBA match was repeated down the seasons:

QuoteJR's Zombie:  "I ... pitch ... good.  I ... live ... again?"
Warwik Manager:  "No, sorry, J.R., you're still dead."

PCs have attended games down the years (matches are social register events), and one got singed for being too close to the edge of the outfield wall, which erupts in a sea of flame every time the Dragons hit a home run.

Shinny's also a popular game in winter time, in effect early pond hockey.[/COLOR]