Any "fictional" games that are widely played?

The discussion about Quidditch making no effing sense as led me to think: are there any widely played, well thought out, games or sports that only existed in the first place as background to a fictional setting? I’d exclude games like 3D Chess and Thud! in which the rules were never given within the work of fiction, but were created retrospectively.

Jetan – Martian Chess from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars novels, has been played by enthiusiasts (although I’ve never known any). ERB gave the rules in, appropriately enough, The Chessmen of Mars

The Wiki page gives similar “invented” games

There were some 43-man squamish squads in the 60s, but I don’t know if they actually ever played a game.

I honestly like Three-Cornered Pitney more than 43-Man Squamish.

“I now roll my whirtling toward the kitchen.”

There is a comic book called Knights of the Dinner Table, which depicts 4 people sitting around a table playing a game called “Hackmaster”, which is a parody/homage of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Despite the fact that it sounds absolutely dire, it is a pretty good comic, or at least it was when I read it years ago.

At a certain point, the publishers of the comic decided to go ahead and publish the rules to Hackmaster. I never looked at it, since I thought they were pushing the joke a little farther than was prudent. However, I think that at least some people might have started playing the game.

I would guess that

is not going to work, because no work of fiction is going to give the rules in complete enough form to play the game without some additional work.

Not true – Burroughs gave the rules for Jetan in the story and an appendix to the book, as it states in the linked Wiki article.

Calvinball

Does Mornington Crescent count?

Apparently Assumption Poker is popular at some science fiction writers’ workshops, which just weirds the hell out of me.

Quidditch is actually really popular right now. No, seriously, it’s being played in high schools and colleges (recreationally).

You have to be straddling a broom as you run the whole time. The snitch is represented as some guy runnning around with a gold flag in his pocket. Sensibly, catching the snitch is only 50 points. I don’t know if catching it ends the game or not.

You know I just had to go and find a link for that, dontcha know.

The Hackmaster RPG is largely based on the 1E AD&D rules (and, yes, indeed, there are people who play it).

As I understand it, Wizards of the Coast ran into a copyright problem with Kenzer & Company (the KotDT folks)…KotDT ran for a while in WotC’s Dragon Magazine; when WotC issued a CD compilation of old Dragon issues, they included the KotDT strips which had run in old issues. Apparently, they didn’t have the right to do so, and Kenzer filed suit. At any rate, the settlement included allowing Kenzer to use the old 1E AD&D rules as the basis for Hackmaster.

How.

Fucking.

Lame.

And that’s coming from a fat, geeky, lame-ass loser.

Joe

Has anyone ever managed to actually win a game? By the rules as written, it should be ridiculously easy to play for a draw. Just send your Warlord on a rampage through the enemy pieces while you let your opponent do the same. If you never move your Warlord into range of your opponent’s (and really, why would you?), then that win condition becomes irrelevant, which means that the only way it’s even possible to win is by caging in the enemy Princess, a feat which would be approximately as difficult as checkmate in conventional chess, except that because of the Escape special move, you effectively have to do it twice. While you’re rapidly losing pieces to the enemy Warlord that you dare not kill, of course.

I figure that the only reason it even works as a game at all is that Barsoomians are all too testosterone-poisoned to even consider the possibility of playing to a draw.

As I said, I don’t know anyone who’s played it. The afterwords to the Mars books claim that there have been enthusiast fans, and if you google jetan or follow the links in the article I link to you can find sites of jetan players. Presumably they’re smitten by the joy of playing a Burroughs game, or else have worked out some dodges that make the game interesting. I know that some folks make some minor changes in the rules.

A simplistic view. Using your Warlord defensively would assume a strategic importance similar to King versus King play in chess endgames. King and Pawns versus King and Pawns doesn’t usually result in a mad pawn massacre by both Kings blind to what the other is doing. I’ve never played Jetan, but I’ve heard it described as playable by enough people to convince me that before you write it off you should attempt your killer stratagem against them.

It’s a shame that Kaissa, the Gorean equivalent, is never fully described. Enough of the rules are stated to allow a couple of game fragments to be meaningfully presented in Beasts of Gor and Players of Gor, but there are pieces left undescribed in both cases and, for instance, the Tarnsman and the Scribe are never fully actualised although from context they are of similar value and differing power just as are Knight and Bishop respectively in Earth chess. Some people have attempted to codify a playable game, but it’s not quite canonical.

Intercollegiate Quidditch Rules and Guidebook

The difference between the Warlord and the King is that any piece, even a lowly pawn, can attack a King with the same effect, but if any piece other than the enemy Warlord captures your Warlord, that’s a draw. You can’t massacre your enemy’s pawns with your king because the pawns are likely to be protecting each other, and you’re not allowed to move into check (and even if you were allowed, it’d be suicidally foolish to do so). You are, however, allowed to move your Warlord into a threatened space, and if your opponent is playing for a win, there’s nothing he can do about it.

Nor do I claim to have a killer strategem, just that I can force draws. I certainly couldn’t win against someone else attempting to force a draw, and I probably couldn’t even win against someone who was also trying for a win.

Double you tee eff?

Cripple Mr. Onion and Thud both apparently have devotees.

Diamondback from the Cerebus comic books by David Sim