Sports RPGs: A Match Made in Heaven?

[Jonathan Walton]

So yeah, a good fantasy ("mmm...rich sports hero") doesn't necessiarily make for a good troop-style game.

I beg to differ.  This has been on my mind for years now.  Roleplaying is tailor made for the world of sports.  This comes from its root in playing games.  Roleplaying is a game.  Basketball is a game.  Making a roleplaying game about basketball is almost too easy, because they both share similar languages.

Frex:

BB -- players are divided into small groups
RPG -- ditto

BB -- the game is governed by a social contract, a set of rules mutually agreed upon
RPG -- ditto

BB -- physical abilities and shooting accuracy are often measured statistically
RPG -- ditto

BB -- there are persons whose job it is to arbitrate play, not play themselves
RPG -- ditto

BB -- there is more involved in the game than winning and losing, i.e. the inherant drama in the "story" of the players' ordeal
RPG -- ditto

Finally, specific advantages of a sports RPG:

1. Most of it is already in place.  Rules for targeting and shooting at things.  Rules for movement.  Actions opposed by other players/NPCs.  Having to listen to arbitrary calls that you don't agree with, as part of the cost of playing.  Etc.

2. Can you imagine 2 five-man teams of roleplayers meeting together, under the auspices of an "impartial" GM, to play out a match?  And later, the groups would seperate and play out the personal reactions of the teammates to the match's aftermath?  Living Campaigns anyone?  Running Con games would be a snap.  Hand out characters to 10 people and let them play each other.

3. Potential for a non-traditional audience and many non-traditional styles of play.  Think of the wide variety of basketball movies and the different tones they have: "White Men Can't Jump," "Hoop Dreams," "The Pistol," "The Air Up There," "He Got Game," "O," "Space Jam," and even "Forget Paris."  And those are just the ones I could think of based on a single sport (basketball).

So what am I missing here?  Heck, I think a Basketball-based roleplaying game would be possible under the d20 license ("Hey, I want to multi-class in Center and Forward, since my character's been working on his versitility, playing all kinds of positions."), not to mention what you could do if you were creating a system from scratch. But a bunch of people on this thread, quoted above, seemed less than enthused.  Are there unforseen issues that I haven't considered?

[quozl]

I guess the issue for me would be:

Why play a basketball RPG when I could just play basketball?

[Jonathan Walton]

Why play a basketball RPG when I could just play basketball?

To me, this is like asking "Why play Soap when you could go involve yourself in romantic intrigues?" or "Why play Unknown Armies when you could go join a cult?" or "Why play Spycraft when you could just go around spying and shooting people?"

They're completely different experiences which are unique in their own ways and offer different kinds of enjoyment.  Why play sports video games when you could just go play sports?  Because they're completely different things.

[Lxndr]

The difficulty in getting 3 to 4 people together is enormous.

I can only imagine trying to get ten players, plus an impartial GM.  Wow.  Ouch.

[Marco]

Well, unlike being a spy, I actually *can* go out and play hoops when I want to. Same with cults and magic (joining a cult would be a poor substitute for Unknown Armies--maybe becomng seriously paranoid would work but that's kinda hard to just go and "do").

But here's my issue:

A Basketball *wargame* might be fun. Choose players (or stat them up) and then play them on the court. That all works. See Frag for an extreme example of this when it "kinda shouldn't be as much fun as it turns out to be."

But as an RPG ... it leaves me cold. What do I do off the court? I understand the "combat" part of it--but what's the story like? Note: an *individual scenario* where the PC's were part of a sports team could be very cool (for one my favorite games we started out as on-the-way-up rock stars)--but a whole game, session after session? I don't see much appeal to "live that life."

I mean, I'll play a temp-office-worker if the GM swears it'll be a cool game--but as a staple? I don't see it.

-Marco

[quozl]

To me, this is like asking "Why play Soap when you could go involve yourself in romantic intrigues?" or "Why play Unknown Armies when you could go join a cult?" or "Why play Spycraft when you could just go around spying and shooting people?"

Are you serious?

My serious answer: My morality prohibits me from doing those things in real life, not to mention that there are dangers in those activities I do not wish to subject myself to.

I think my question is important as the subject of existing RPGs are always things that one does not do in real life.

[Matt Snyder]

Why play a basketball RPG when I could just play basketball?

To me, this is like asking "Why play Soap when you could go involve yourself in romantic intrigues?" or "Why play Unknown Armies when you could go join a cult?" or "Why play Spycraft when you could just go around spying and shooting people?"

No, I really don't agree with that at all. Basketball is a game/leisure activity. Roleplaying is a game/leisure activity. Why not play basketball, indeed? It's much healthier, anyway.

Romance and espionage, on the other hand, are not supposed to be a game. They're some serious shit. You will hurt people's feelings, for real, in one. In the other, you will inevitably hurt people, for real. Soap, emphatically, is not serious shit (nor is Spycraft) really. If you're hurting people's feelings, you're playing dysfunctionally. If you're hurting people playing Spycraft, you should be arrested.

Your analogy of computer games is much better. The answer? You can BE the pros you like to watch on TV. You can literally watch your favorite team win the Superbowl, even if you do like the Bengals (I mean, c'mon! The Bengals?!?). Also, you do not need 21 other friends to play football, then. You need one other friend, perhaps none.

This is not a condemnation that sports do not belong in RPGs. See: Kayfabe, of course, for one example of something close to, if not quite, sport.

Rather, this is my observation that the actual play of the sport IN an RPG seems really unlikely to be successful. Computer games are much better suited, and already much, much more popular. Playing the real sport seems to me to almost always be a better alternative than playing a pen-and-paper version of the game.

Rather, I think it likelier to see workable sports RPGs in which the players become the people in the sport, doing things like dealing with contracts or fame or the strategy of the season, for example. This seems to me to be why Kayfabe is not all about just being in the ring.

[Mike Holmes]

I love playing basketball. I wouldn't play an RPG that had only basketball play.

OTOH, add some of these elements and I would:

[*]My character is an NBA player. Or just as good or better, a college prospect trying to get into the NBA.
[*]I get to play out the backroom deals and interpersonal relationships. See that HBO TV show (can't think of the name) for inspiration. Also see Kayfabe, which has accomplished this all already.
[*]Futuristic, and/or Combat Basketball. See the old FASA game Gravball. Can't do that IRL.[/list:u]

I think that there's a lot of ways to make it marketable.

Mike

[Marco]

I would play a game where I was a super-star rollerball player. But there'd have to be the showy elements of Kaybefabe and some good stuff "outside the drome" for me to bite. Stuff like future death-cults that appear in your name. Stuff like martial-arts out-of-the-ring challenges by people to see if you're "for real."

Colorful nemesises and lots of non-sports conflict. Anime style love-triangles.

Stuff like that.

That'd be hard to get in a modern day play a baseball player RPG, I think (this may be due to the fact that I know relatively little about athlete's private lives ... so y'know, surprise me--but I wouldn't be too interested in playing out the licensing deal for a basketball hero, I don't think).

-Marco

[Valamir]

I would play a game where I was a super-star rollerball player. But there'd have to be the showy elements of Kaybefabe and some good stuff "outside the drome" for me to bite. Stuff like future death-cults that appear in your name. Stuff like martial-arts out-of-the-ring challenges by people to see if you're "for real."

So like White Wolf's Street Fighter game on skates...I'm there, when do you want to run it?

[Comte]

Wow there is a cool idea here that is trying to wander in the wrong way.  RPG is kinda about escapist fantasy type things.  We play unknown armies because cults are scary and I don't want to go out and shoot people.  

However, someone brought up Soap, I would like to add to that Wuthering Heights.  Why play these things?  Because some people find social intruigue, and back stabbing politics fun.  So maybe instead of foucusing what goes on, on the courts the game foucuses what happens off the courts.  After all if I make that pile of money then I most certainly am not going to go put on a brown sweater with patches on the elbows and read a book by the fire.  Terrible things happens in these sports peoples lives every day.  They are hunted by pararazzies, drug use, smack talking, movie deals gone sour, break ups, cheating, bribes, lies, money, all centered around one game where you try to get ball A in hoop B.

The game could go back down to three or 4 players.  Put the players on one team and the GM plays thier rivals.  It can move along the sime lines of my life with master and the scene framing.  However, the drives of the players are to make more money, get more fame, and to win.  There are a certain number of player driven scenes before a game hits.  Depending on what happenes during the scenes might effect the players preformance during the game.

It is awfully hard to get that rebound when half of your assets are on the divorce table because number 12# on the opposing team just stole your wife away.  The game could become tje foucus point where all the horrible things that happen in thier real lives get let out.  What's cooler is that it can all escalate twords some major player on player back stabing with the gm swooping in and throwing a game on thier face.  

This could be a game of social intrigue on an epic level.  Of course I would have no idea how to desighn such a thing.

As it stands.  If the foucus is left on the game then one of two things may happen.  One there would be so many rules you might as well make it a minature game with smack talking rules, or two foucus is still on the social and the game is lost.  I dunno it really captured my imagination, and I think a seriously cool game could come of this either way.  After all Wizkids is making sportsclix for a reason.

[Marco]

I would play a game where I was a super-star rollerball player. But there'd have to be the showy elements of Kaybefabe and some good stuff "outside the drome" for me to bite. Stuff like future death-cults that appear in your name. Stuff like martial-arts out-of-the-ring challenges by people to see if you're "for real."

So like White Wolf's Street Fighter game on skates...I'm there, when do you want to run it?

The JAGS Chi Martial Arts rules 2nd Ed, actually :)

Umm ... how many players? One night a week on indie rpgs, I figure. What's the name of the game? Zone Ball?

-Marco

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Here the thing. I've been thinking about this whole thing and while there may be an audience for this sort of RPG, that audience is not the mainstream.

Let me see if I can explain:
First of all, are sports a mainsteam pasttime and a billion dollar business? Yes.
Do people in the mainstream sometimes wish they were sports stars?
Sure
Would they find it interesting to pretend they are a sports star?
Unlikely.

I do believe there is a audience who would like to play an RPG where you play a sports star or a movie star or... a Rock star. Yeah, a rock star. But the mainstream has no desire for such a thing beyond simple daydreaming. Part of the reason is thus: what would a rock star RPG be about? It could go completely fantasy, like Rock n Roll comics where our rock stars defend us from aliens, but that's too fanciful for the mainsteam. It could be grounded in reality and go the Behind the Music (BtM) route, but this is even less appealing to the mainstream. They prefer to think that being a rock star is great. You have millions of dollars, teenagers are constantly sneaking back stage to have "encounters" with you. It must be great to be a rock star. This kind of everything-is-good stuff makes for great daydreaming but piss-poor roleplaying and the BtM cycle of rise, fall, redeption or death shatters this illusion of how good it is to be a rock star. They don't want that. Hell. I don't want that.

But I think that for a mainstream audience the very idea of pretending to be someone else, anyone else is either foreign or childish. They don't want to be someone else.

[DevP]

There's always Fightball, for inspiration.

[Mike Holmes]

Wow there is a cool idea here that is trying to wander in the wrong way.

Are you saying that I'm "lasersharking" the concept?

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7072

Because, yes, that's what I'm doing. :-)

There's always Fightball, for inspiration.

Ah, cheese! Leave it to James Earnest to beat ya to the punch.

Mike