Quidditch Variants
I'm intrigued by the concept of a flying sport. I haven't been able to let it go ever since I caved in and read the Harry Potter series last month, and was disappointed by the game mechanics of Quidditch. The Snitch makes the entire rest of the game irrelevant. Rumor has it that J.K. Rowling intended it that way for dramatic purposes.
I will use the term "Quidditch variant" the way I use "Chess variant", as a form of shorthand. Just as Chess serves as the prototype for a radial category* of turn-based strategy board games played on an array of discrete positions, Quidditch can serve as the prototype of a radial category of flying sports. For "flying" sports, a scuba jet, a rocket in microgravity, and a magic broomstick are nearly functionally equivalent for game mechanic purposes. (They might even be equivalent in terms of narrative, at least from the perspective of Clarke's Laws, one of which states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", but that's a thought for another time.)
Here is my description of just one potential flying sport.
Suppose there were four or five members of each team, and no balls of any kind. The players are numbered on each team. Any player may create a goal by calling out the goal spell word followed by two numbers. The first is the number of a fellow team member, the second is the number a member of the opposing team. A magical goal then formes as a triangle of lines in the color of the team that cast the spell, with the three of them as its vertices. Any friendly team member who flies through that triangle, with no extremities outside the boundaries of the goal, scores a point.
This creates an incentive for the opposing player in the triangle to swerve toward the center of the triangle in an attempt to close it off, risking collision with the goal-scoring player.
They are riding vehicles -- this suggests a race element. They play on a racetrack in the shape of a wild knot, with walls knit from trails of glowing smoke. The starting point of the course has snake eyes, and a mouth which is eating its tail.
Touching the wall of the course results in a drop in speed during contact. The players are pursued by a wall of fire, which causes an explosion of fireworks in the tail of a broomstick and an uncontrollable burst in speed, but the broom loses all directional control for three seconds and will follow the curve of the track precisely. A smoke trail is left by a scoring player as he or she is in contact with the goal triangle. Touching that trail on a subsequent lap causes an uncontrollable burst in speed. Scoring a point speeds up the wall of fire for three seconds.
The game ends when one team reaches seven points, or seven laps of the wall of fire, whichever comes first. Whichever team has the most points at game end wins.
Let's see. Flying vehicles: check. A giant reptile: check. Flames: check. Explosions: check. This design could probably be improved in a thousand ways, but I'm not done thinking about it.
* I got "radial category" from "A Political History Of SF" by Eric Raymond, who attributes the concept to linguist George Lakoff. The idea is that there are always exceptions to a radial category, but inclusion depends on how close they are to a prototype. An apple is the prototype of the radial category "fruit", with strongly-bound traits like sweet flavor, and weakly-bound traits like bright color.
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Comments
users on Jul. 16, 2007 3:50 PM
No more Mario Kart and Harry Potter for you in the same month :P
I want to play, but I think the flying vehicle thing (along with, I guess, the magic words thing) could be problematic.
zifferent on Jul. 16, 2007 5:38 PM
Not in a video game.
users on Jul. 16, 2007 5:40 PM
But then I'd SUCK at it... I demand the real thing... NOW! :P
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