SangoProduction
2022-12-28, 12:13 AM
Well. Day 2 of my purgatory starts close enough to now. And I have no where near enough to do... at least that I care to do, or is time-applicable.
So, I ran across "fantasy football." Which, strangely enough, has a striking lack of elves and orcs, let alone vampires.
Fair warning: I am very sick and tired. This is pure off-the-cuff rambling. Certainly didn't go in the direction I expected. I find it interesting.
But that got me thinking... What do sports and similar such bouts of 'friendly' physical competition look like in a fantasy world?
Let's start off with that first one: American Football. Lots of physical contact. Indeed, its rate of physical injuries rival actual fighting sports like Boxing, if memory serves. So, the first impulse is that one would add a bunch more leagues, but I'm actually thinking that might not necessarily need to be the case, due to each race having distinct advantages (or at least inclinations which, when pushed to their physical maximum, result in statistically significant advantages) that might result in slightly different takes in their approach to a game.
Although it doesn't actually work that way in the D&D ruleset, because strength is both attack and damage for melee attacks, so whatever advantage an elf may have in twirling about is equally matched by a half-orc's ability to just bash the elf's face in. And everyone has the same speed, unless they are magically enhan-... Ok, that creates a whole 'nother layer of complexity.
Would magic buffing in these sports be treated like juicing is in real sports? Except it's a lot easier to notice and dispel. Unless the magic used was a magic effect that created a nonmagic result. (Except that it will somehow make more sense than magically summoning "nonmagical" fire that deals more damage than mundane fire - seriously who even thought of the orb spells?) Sort of like how "doping," and hyperbaric chambers, aren't drugs, and so don't come up on drug tests. And that's before even getting into actual extraplanar performance enhancers. The list of things to test for would be absolutely bloody insane.
At which point, you probably either give up, or you create a league where you are specifically encouraged to take the enhancements. and simply leave it to the honor system for the other leagues (or perhaps handle it with some devil contract binding or... something).
Well, that was quite the tangent. But yeah, the D&D system doesn't really fit the concept of an asymmetrically balanced video game. Instead, for the given role, you're either better or worse (or equivalent) at it than the opponent... so perhaps tying ourselves to D&D isn't the best move when considering "fantasy football." But for now, let's do so.
Due to the notable and consistent (dis)advantages certain races have to playing the sport, they are either going to be pushed out entirely, or there's going to be a few leagues specializing in either the lesser performing races in general, or in the particular races. I mean, who doesn't want to see halfling basketball? They have bonus to thrown weapons!
What happens when a halfling gets a druid to kill and reincarnate him until he's a giant? So much for leagues, and that was a horrible idea. Let's not even continue this discussion.
... You know? There's a really easy way to negate all those racial bonuses... except the mental ones... oh boy, this isn't going to look good on twitter. lol. But, True Polymorph to a standard form or Mind Swap with a team of regulation-puppets. Works even for the LA+ races.
That's right: The way to play football is full dive VR. But unironically. And now it comes down to the skill, and time and dedication to the sport... although mental stats are not affected. Which means that, despite being exactly physically identical, in every regulation-applicable way... there are going to be noticeable racial differences at the very peak - which is what competition of the sort sifts through.
So, even if a group of Orcs really does love and devote their lives to the game... they simply are never going to be able to compete with the team of pit fiends, even with equivalent forms. At the very least, they won't beat a team of pit fiends of even remotely the same dedication to the game as them.
Unless they try mental warfare- nope. Because if bad sportsmanship is tolerated on the professional level, then the races with penalties to wisdom and charisma are even more disadvantaged than before.
-
So ultimately?
Sports in fantasy will, in all likelihood, not adhere to our strange obsession with everyone somehow being equal, or even having an equal chance. You either have what it takes for the sport, or you don't. In the same way we don't have the real NBA for short folk. And the races will naturally separate out into their own preferred sports that they can actually compete in, even if they enjoy watching those that they can't compete in. Of course, like real sports, those in the top competition, the number of even qualifying applicants, is marginal relative to overall population. Truly, there is almost no minority smaller than the billionaire sports stars, other than "the individual"... but that is simultaneously equal to 1 and to everyone. So is it actually a smaller group?
Also, there probably won't be global sports institutions. I mean, sports started off very much as not-an-institution. So why would there even be one to handle how you kick around the ball of tormented souls across the plains of asphodel?
Well, I mean... there are some very long-lived races who particularly like to create rules, and have others follow them.
But when problems arise, rules often change to address those problems. (Even for Evil races, those "problems" might be of different nature to what we might consider... but there can still be "problems.")
So, I think that when literal gods declare that they will join the league... there's probably going to be some rules around that going forward. And some groups will choose which rules they actually care to follow. Especially for "nonprofessional" games.
So that's probably what I mean by there not being an institution. They will generally just be games, and probably not an actual career... which makes perhaps all too much sense given the context of this semi-coherent ramble.
Anything to add or comment on?
So, I ran across "fantasy football." Which, strangely enough, has a striking lack of elves and orcs, let alone vampires.
Fair warning: I am very sick and tired. This is pure off-the-cuff rambling. Certainly didn't go in the direction I expected. I find it interesting.
But that got me thinking... What do sports and similar such bouts of 'friendly' physical competition look like in a fantasy world?
Let's start off with that first one: American Football. Lots of physical contact. Indeed, its rate of physical injuries rival actual fighting sports like Boxing, if memory serves. So, the first impulse is that one would add a bunch more leagues, but I'm actually thinking that might not necessarily need to be the case, due to each race having distinct advantages (or at least inclinations which, when pushed to their physical maximum, result in statistically significant advantages) that might result in slightly different takes in their approach to a game.
Although it doesn't actually work that way in the D&D ruleset, because strength is both attack and damage for melee attacks, so whatever advantage an elf may have in twirling about is equally matched by a half-orc's ability to just bash the elf's face in. And everyone has the same speed, unless they are magically enhan-... Ok, that creates a whole 'nother layer of complexity.
Would magic buffing in these sports be treated like juicing is in real sports? Except it's a lot easier to notice and dispel. Unless the magic used was a magic effect that created a nonmagic result. (Except that it will somehow make more sense than magically summoning "nonmagical" fire that deals more damage than mundane fire - seriously who even thought of the orb spells?) Sort of like how "doping," and hyperbaric chambers, aren't drugs, and so don't come up on drug tests. And that's before even getting into actual extraplanar performance enhancers. The list of things to test for would be absolutely bloody insane.
At which point, you probably either give up, or you create a league where you are specifically encouraged to take the enhancements. and simply leave it to the honor system for the other leagues (or perhaps handle it with some devil contract binding or... something).
Well, that was quite the tangent. But yeah, the D&D system doesn't really fit the concept of an asymmetrically balanced video game. Instead, for the given role, you're either better or worse (or equivalent) at it than the opponent... so perhaps tying ourselves to D&D isn't the best move when considering "fantasy football." But for now, let's do so.
Due to the notable and consistent (dis)advantages certain races have to playing the sport, they are either going to be pushed out entirely, or there's going to be a few leagues specializing in either the lesser performing races in general, or in the particular races. I mean, who doesn't want to see halfling basketball? They have bonus to thrown weapons!
What happens when a halfling gets a druid to kill and reincarnate him until he's a giant? So much for leagues, and that was a horrible idea. Let's not even continue this discussion.
... You know? There's a really easy way to negate all those racial bonuses... except the mental ones... oh boy, this isn't going to look good on twitter. lol. But, True Polymorph to a standard form or Mind Swap with a team of regulation-puppets. Works even for the LA+ races.
That's right: The way to play football is full dive VR. But unironically. And now it comes down to the skill, and time and dedication to the sport... although mental stats are not affected. Which means that, despite being exactly physically identical, in every regulation-applicable way... there are going to be noticeable racial differences at the very peak - which is what competition of the sort sifts through.
So, even if a group of Orcs really does love and devote their lives to the game... they simply are never going to be able to compete with the team of pit fiends, even with equivalent forms. At the very least, they won't beat a team of pit fiends of even remotely the same dedication to the game as them.
Unless they try mental warfare- nope. Because if bad sportsmanship is tolerated on the professional level, then the races with penalties to wisdom and charisma are even more disadvantaged than before.
-
So ultimately?
Sports in fantasy will, in all likelihood, not adhere to our strange obsession with everyone somehow being equal, or even having an equal chance. You either have what it takes for the sport, or you don't. In the same way we don't have the real NBA for short folk. And the races will naturally separate out into their own preferred sports that they can actually compete in, even if they enjoy watching those that they can't compete in. Of course, like real sports, those in the top competition, the number of even qualifying applicants, is marginal relative to overall population. Truly, there is almost no minority smaller than the billionaire sports stars, other than "the individual"... but that is simultaneously equal to 1 and to everyone. So is it actually a smaller group?
Also, there probably won't be global sports institutions. I mean, sports started off very much as not-an-institution. So why would there even be one to handle how you kick around the ball of tormented souls across the plains of asphodel?
Well, I mean... there are some very long-lived races who particularly like to create rules, and have others follow them.
But when problems arise, rules often change to address those problems. (Even for Evil races, those "problems" might be of different nature to what we might consider... but there can still be "problems.")
So, I think that when literal gods declare that they will join the league... there's probably going to be some rules around that going forward. And some groups will choose which rules they actually care to follow. Especially for "nonprofessional" games.
So that's probably what I mean by there not being an institution. They will generally just be games, and probably not an actual career... which makes perhaps all too much sense given the context of this semi-coherent ramble.
Anything to add or comment on?