{I dist'ed this to traveller and put a better subject line on it -- James}
[Perhaps a disclaimer: I'm *used* to be OT illiterate (Isuppose I'm a
verifiable *artifact* by now! Hope I'm not wasting BandWidth.]
Hmm. No one that I've seen has much to say about incidental stuff that
could still be very cool; sports, fiction, bogus news articles,
fashion, entertainment, .... For instance, I remember an oldish board
game called gravball that would be fun to implement. The recent posting
of a grav cycle sparked the idea for this sport:
|GravCycle Polo
|
|GravCycle Polo is played by two teams using [you guessed it] some sort
|of anti-grav devices. These are generally armored but *not* armed.
|Team size varies as a function of the playing field, but might range
|from 5-10 players on a 100m cubic field. The game ball is generally
|10-25m in radius and filled with some lighter-than-air gas to the point
|of near bouyancy with a small gravic device, anchored at the center,
|keeping the ball within the field. The object of the game is to drive
|the ball into the other team's goal (out the other side of the field).
|The duribility of the ball is not entirely standard, but only in rare
|games at higher tech levels can a player ram the ball at full speed
|without risk of deflation (a penalty - applied to the survivor, if
|any).
|
|There are reports of similar (and not-so-similar) sports being played
|at lower tech levels on lo G worlds using winged mounts and/or less
|manueverable forms of heavier-than-air devices.
|
|Other variants include time limits on the gravic's air time between
|rechargings, modifications to the rules (or the ball) requiring the
|use of special (1-4m) "sticks" for ball handling, use of nets (on both
|the ball and opponents), much smaller balls, .... In one particularly
|dangerous version found on <insertyourfavoriteworldhere>, the players
|kneel on small discs that have no armor. The player's legs are
|strapped down leaving his or her arms to use the ball. The disc is
|controlled by head and foot movements. Since the player wears little
|personal armor (disc cannot lift too much for too long; goalies and
|rear defence wear the most), the possibility of knocking the player
|out cold (occasionally resulting in crashes; always resulting in loss
|of the ball) is pretty good, particularly when the attack is initiated
|from a higher altitude.
What are some of *your* high tech sports? I'm really curious how
american football, european football, hockey, and lacross might be
altered by tech advances. I'd also like to see some kind of robot
gladiators (kinda like C-Robots & P-Robots, if you've seen them), an
advanced form of Lazer Tag, PaintGunWars (or Survival or whatever),
BattleChess (ala Star Wars or the recent game of the same name), etc
.... Has anybody seen a fairly aweful cable show called _New Age
Gladiators_? It's pretty outrageous.
I doubt that anything like Roller Ball (is that the name) or the game
in the movie _Running Man_ would ever be played, but ....
Well, the rest later.
- -alan mead