Games people play

hi,

I had a thought a couple of weeks ago about what kinds of sports and
games will be played in the Traveller universe.  I discussed this over lunch
with a friend and we came up with a few decent ideas for sports.

While most planets are going to have local games played mostly by themselves
and nobody else, I would be surprised if some form of Imperium wide sporting
event wasn't held.  The recent Zhondani teleport hunt is one such possible
game even if it lacks the violence essential in a real sport ;-) and it would
not be popular in the Imperium for some small reason.

The biggest change I can see is the invention of grav plates which
allows zero gee fun on any sufficiently high tech planet.  A few obvious
candidates come to mind:  zero gee squash is definable (although some
of the rules have to be warped quite a bit) as is a real life version
of the classic arcade game pong.  Some other games will not convert over
very well, zero gee golf would be almost as interesting as the real thing
(-; and wresting (the real thing not that stupid acting version) would
not work.  High jump is another one that wouldn't be all that much fun
(for similar reasons javelin, discus and the other throwing athletic
events would require gravity).  Combat sports (boxing, martial arts)
also tend to rely heavily upon gravity and thus couldn't go to zero gee.

Of course, not all games would convert over to the gravity less alternative,
even when the conversion is possible and simple.




ZG-Squash
=========

	Played in a pleasent sealed room.  Three walls (in a U shape) are
the live walls and the ball can impact with these any number of times.
The three remaining walls are the equivalent of the front wall and floor.
The ball must hit them once before the other player can play at it and
it must not hit any of them more than twice before the other players
hits the ball.  Zero gravity will again make life interesting (think
of the reaction when you swing at the ball :-) and moving around will
require considerable bouncing skills.



ZG-Pong
=======
	Two players or teams in a room (or a long thin starship corridor)
with some form ball that bounces nastily and of course no gravity is
present.  Each player/team is allocated a home wall and they are not
allowed to touch the ball if they are too far away from that wall (paint
a line around the room to mark the safe zone).  If the ball touches your
home wall you lose.  Naturally, no form of locomotion except the players
themselves is permitted (which makes for interesting timing problems in
zero gee).

	An alternative would be to mark goals in the middle of the players'
home walls and the ball must be kept away from there.  Also, catching and
throwing ball may or may not be permitted.  Finally, allowing only kicking
instead of throwing would result in a football (soccer for those plebs amongst
us :-) like game.




Any other suggestions?  Comments on the above?  Any possible non-zero gee
sports that might be interesting, what other technical developments could
lead to new sports??? (grav belts have a lot of potential in this reguard).

Zero gee aerobics? --- you too can watch overweight people damaging themselves
when they lose control ;-)   Some form of dancing would have to be possible
though.





        						Pauli

Paul Dale                       | [email removed]
Department of Computer Science  | [phone removed]
University of Queensland        |
Australia, 4072                 | Did you know that there are 41 two letter
                                |     words containing the letter 'a'?