Sport in campaigns

(Trust me, this will get to roleplaying.  Bear with me.)

Following the exchange with one of my kind readers in the previous post ... I joined an APBA dice baseball league in 1981.  For those of you unfamiliar with such sports simulation games, there are companies – most notably APBA and Strat-O-Matic – that every year put out a set of cards, based on their private algorithms, that seek to duplicate the performances of individual players from the previous season.  This is primarily done with baseball, which lends itself well to the approach, but has been done for other sports – you use dice and charts to determine the results of individual plays.  Some play solitaire replay seasons with the original teams, but the league I was in had the players draft new teams, and we’d keep them year after year, drafting new players and holding trades and suchlike.  I took over my team in mid-season that first year after another player dropped out.

Anyway, Jim was one of the managers.  He also happened to be an Empire of the Petal Throne GM who decided to base his team on Tekumel and out of Jakalla – the so-called “Jakalla Saints” – and did a good bit of roleplaying during his games.  The crowd would chant "Vimúhla!  Vimúhla!" – the “evil” flame god of the pantheon – 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.  (M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel is not your bog-standard D&D "lawfulgood" setting, not by a long chalk.)

I was charmed – go ahead, say it, you know you want to – and the next season moved my team into one of the cities on my gameworld.  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.  He 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.  I promptly picked him up off the waiver wire.  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:

    JR'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 magical flame every time the Dragons hit a home run.  Anyway, I was in the league until 1988, when I moved out of the area ... but I did win the championship that season, with the best record in league history (50-14), averaging ten runs a game, and racking up the single most dominant game imaginable (27-0, where my starting pitcher, the aforementioned Nolan Ryan, pitched a one-hitter; those readers who are baseball-conversant will understand how mindshattering that is).

For other sports on my gameworld?  Shinny's also a popular game in winter time: in effect early pond hockey.  There’s also a sport, not for the faint of heart, played by rock trolls.  Since they’re pretty much RuneQuest trolls, they play Trollball, and at least one party has seen a Trollball match.  Freaked the party pacifist out, too, especially when one enterprising troll spiked the “ball.”  (No, I’m not explaining further – look it up!  Consider yourself warned.)

So, given that mortalkind is given to sport, I’ve done up other sports.  Village football’s a favorite, and soccer is as low-tech as it comes – one just needs goalposts and a leather ball.  Warwik City, in Byzantine fashion, has “factions” operating out of the gladiatorial arena, competing not only in arms but in racing, athletics, martial arts and, well, baseball – the standings for the combined sports are the talk of the town, as well as a major venue for betting.  The party's about to be in an area where the local popular sport is a type of polo, played on sleeths (riding lizards that pretty much have the size, configuration and gait of Star Wars taun-tauns), and using effectively lacrosse sticks. 

Heck, if we stick to Tekumel, there's a custom known as Qadàrni, where a full-scale battle is held to settle a score, satisfy a point of honor, or adjudicate an intractable dispute or legal case.  The competitors can be any entity – private individuals, clans, temples, societies, and even political polities.  Honor demands that the sides start (nominally) even, and it gains little honor if one’s forces are known to be a great deal more capable than their foes.  Cheating, treachery or otherwise dishonorable acts are not allowed.  Such a battle begins at dawn and takes one hour, or when one side is either disabled – or slain – to a man or concedes.  These matches are major spectator sports, and occasions for a great deal of gambling.

Adding sport to your setting gives just that extra bit of local color, and also serves to divide locals into factions that have nothing to do with the hoary old RPG classics of religion and race.