While popular medieval pastimes like jousting and archery often feature in campaign settings and adventures, other organized sports barely rate a mention.
Even in fantasy fiction, sports get a short shrift, with a few notable exceptions, such as Quidditch from Harry Potter and Ja’la dh Jin from the Sword of Truth series.
It’s a fun change of pace to get your PCs involved in a game within the game! Players can experience competition without life or death stakes, and a GM can set up rivalries and enemies without worrying about whether they’ll be killed by the end of the session. That’s already a win!
Each article in the Sporting Goods series introduces a sport that a GM can incorporate into a fantasy campaign. Given the high fantasy nature of most campaigns, many of these sports have magical or monstrous components. Most are also team-oriented so that a group of PCs can participate (perhaps with some persuasion or modification).
Tishako
Competitions between rival monk orders can attract hundreds of spectators ready to cheer on their chosen team. Games of tishako are often spectacular affairs, particularly those involving extra rules to make the game more exciting.
History of Tishako
Some six centuries ago, the Monastery of the Golden Rune was attacked by a horde of spear-wielding hobgoblins intent on leveling the building. Many monks died during the battle, and the survivors vowed to prepare themselves for the next attack. To do so, one of the survivors of the conflict, an elven monk named Tishako Willowstaff, devised a training regimen that included a game involving throwing giant iron darts at opponents to score points.
The monks used the game for training throughout the decades, and it traveled to other monasteries and holy sites across the lands. Eventually, the game became so widespread that monks from opposing monasteries began challenging one another to matches, turning the training regimen into an actual sport named after its inventor.
Playing Area
A tishako field is a grass or dirt rectangle about 50 feet long and 25 feet wide. Other surfaces can be used but are rarer. A center line runs across the field at the 25-foot- mark. A shooting line for each team is marked 5 feet away from the center line. The area behind a team’s shooting line is their territory. The area between the shooting lines is called the serenity zone, extending 5 feet from the center line on each side. Lines and field boundaries are typically marked with chalk or rope.
Teams
Tishako is played between two teams. A tishako team can have anywhere from 3 to 12 players, and the number of players does not need to be equal between teams. The number of players typically does not change the size of the playing area, though it does alter the number of points a team needs to win the game and the number of tishako darts that a game starts with. Every team includes a captain who represents the team in the event of challenges or unexpected sudden death scenarios.
Equipment
The main equipment for a game of tishako is one or more large, iron tishako darts. A tishako dart is a large, hollow iron dart with the same statistics as a regular dart but costs 1 gp, weighs 1 lb, and deals 1d8 piercing damage on a hit. It is considered a monk weapon and during a tishako match ONLY, a monk adds their level to the damage rolled. Tishako darts may seem like good ranged weapons, but they’re fragile due to their hollow construction. A tishako dart is destroyed on a natural 1 or 2 on an attack roll.
Rules
Goal: The goal of tishako is to score a winning number of points before the other team or injure all players on the other team by hitting them with darts.
Scoring: A team scores one point when a team member catches a dart without being injured or injures a player on the other team by throwing a dart. In other circumstances, a referee may award points as a penalty to the other team or a reward for excellence. A referee calls all points, and their decision is final. The number of points needed to win is based on the number of players on a team at the start of the match.
| Number of Players | Points to Win | Number of Darts Added to the Game |
| 3–5 | 10 | 1 |
| 6–8 | 15 | 2 |
| 9–12 | 21 | 3 |
The total number of darts in a match is determined by the number of players. Each team brings their own darts to the game, usually colorfully painted in a monastery’s style. Being struck by your team’s dart is considered embarassing.
At the beginning of the match, the captains toss a coin or play some game of chance to decide if their team starts with the darts or receives first.
Players injured by a dart during a game must immediately withdraw from the field and cannot re-enter, even if healed. A player who crosses the outer boundary, thus exiting the playing field, must also withdraw.
A player can only throw a dart from their team’s shooting line, but can catch it from anywhere within their territory.
Any player can pick up a dropped dart, and can throw it if they are on their team’s shooting line. In situations where a player would have been wounded by a dart but wasn’t for some reason, the referee can still award a point to the throwing team.
A player can’t throw a dart at anyone in the serenity zone. A player may enter the serenity zone only to retrieve a dart or to help an injured player and must leave the serenity zone either into their own territory or to exit the field. A player may leap or fly over the serenity zone to enter the opposing team’s territory. The other team scores a point when this happens, but play continues. A player can throw a dart at an opposing team member in their territory.
If a dart breaks, play continues with one fewer dart and the player who threw it (or last touched it) must withdraw from the game. In the event that all darts break, the team that threw (or last touched) the final dart forfeits the match. Being struck by a dart does not count as touching, but catching it does.
No weapons other than tishako darts are allowed, but unarmed combat is permitted. Killing is a major offense and results in the player’s removal, but usually does not forfeit the match for the killer’s team. However, honorable teams sometimes forfeit voluntarily in this case.
Monk techniques are often strange and unpredictable. Some monk orders have been known to perfect strikes and effects that can affect creatures and objects at a distance. Spells and magic effects that target opposing players, alter the playing field, or affect the darts are not allowed. Teams caught cheating in this way forfeit the match. Spells and effects, including magic items, that enhance a player’s capabilities are allowed with permission from the referee. In the spirit of mystery, permission is not required in advance.
Winning: The first team to reach their required number of points wins. If all members of one team are withdrawn or unconscious, the opposing team wins.
Adventure Hooks
Here are some ways to introduce tishako to your campaign:
- The PCs are tasked with retrieving a sacred relic from a monastery, but the monks there only let them have it if the PCs can beat them in a game of tishako. To even the playing field, the PCs need to get their hands on magic items like gloves of missile snaring.
- Two bitter rival monk orders are holding a tishako match to determine whose philosophy is superior. The PCs are asked to watch over the game lest hostilities between the orders break out.
- An archfiend challenges an archangel to a tishako match for the right to conquer one of the Outer Worlds of the Labyrinth. The archangel needs high-level PCs to take on the archfiend’s tishako team that includes a powerful marilith demon who can shoot tishako darts with each of her six arms at once!
