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 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).
Spike-Rush
Play the the frenetic and deadly badlands sport of spike-rush!
History of Spike-Rush
Spike-rush was the brainchild of the visionary gnoll warlord Ygnarthu Vilejaw, who wanted a way to control and hone her pack’s aggression when they were not actively raiding or warring. Though the first spike-rush match descended into a chaotic free-for-all, it was a wild hit, and after some refinement (such as cutting down on the number of injuries and deaths resulting from a match), the sport took off.
After Ygnarthu’s untimely death at the hands of ruthless, greedy adventurers, her pack members spread the sport to other gnoll communities throughout the wastes, gradually increasing its influence. Eventually, it reached several wild frontier towns and cities populated by orcs, humans, beastfolk, and others, who took up the sport with gusto.
Some twelve decades after its creation, spike-rush is a fixture in many wasteland communities. The sport is as chaotic and violent as ever, and gambling and corruption are its ever-present companions, yet no one can deny the thrill the sport brings to the masses that call the badlands home.
Playing Area
The playing area of spike-rush is a large rectangle, typically 100 feet long and 40 feet wide, split in half and covered in thin sand or barren soil. The various lines, marked with ropes, small stones, or chalk, define the arena. The starting lines are at either end of the playing area, 100 feet apart. Staring lines are often distinguished by different colors (typically red for one team and blue for the other). The center line is typically yellow or green.
Teams
A spike-rush team includes four rushers and six spikers, one of whom is typically the team captain. Some more professional teams have a dedicated coach who organizes team plays and strategies.
In rougher places, each team provides their own referee. Threat of violence keeps them somewhere approaching honest, although a referee is never expected to call infractions on their own team. In more “formal” settings, three impartial referees roam the field and watch for infractions.
Equipment
Every game of spike-rush includes the following equipment:
- A suit of light or medium armor adorned with short spikes. Most rushers and spikers wear studded leather armor.
- Each spiker has a shield studded with spikes (see below).
Spike-Rush Shield. This shield functions as a standard shield but is adorned with short spikes. If you make a shove attack while using the shield, you can choose to deal 1d4 piercing damage on a success.
A spike-rush shield weighs 8 lbs. and is worth 15 gp.
Rules
The basic premise of spike-rush is for your rushers to reach your finish line (your opponent’s starting line) and for your spikers to prevent the opposing team’s rushers from reaching their finish line (your starting line). Your team scores a point when one of your rushers crosses your finish line, and you win the match either when all of the opposing team’s rushers or spikers are removed from play or your team reaches 12 points, whichever comes first.
The following rules apply to a spike-rush match:
- Rushers begin the game behind their starting line. Spikers can position themselves anywhere between their starting line and the center line. No one can cross the center line until the match begins.
- A rusher can’t deliberately attack or damage a spiker’s shield, and must return to their starting line if caught doing so. However, a rusher can grapple a spiker to move that player out of the way.
- A rusher can’t attack, trip, or otherwise interfere with an opposing team’s rusher. A rusher must return to their starting line if caught doing so.
- A rusher who crosses their finish line must exit the play area and return to their team’s starting line. After 1 round, they can reenter the playing area.
- If a spiker forces a rusher back over the rusher’s starting line, the rusher must wait 1 round before they can reenter the playing field.
- A spiker can’t spend more than 1 round within 10 feet of their own starting line. If a referee catches a spiker breaking this rule, the offending player must immediately cross the center line.
- A spiker can’t interfere with or attack an opposing team’s spiker. They must move back 30 feet toward their starting line if caught doing so.
- If any player gains the incapacitated, paralyzed, or unconscious conditions, play stops, and that player is removed from the field.
- If any player deliberately attacks an incapacitated, paralyzed, or unconscious rusher or spiker, the attacker must move back 30 feet toward their starting line.
- Repeated, intentional infractions of any rule can result in a player’s removal from the game.
Multiple variations of spike-rush exist throughout the lands, some more or less violent. One variation popular in frontier towns removes the spikes from the shield, making the game less lethal. In contrast, another variation adds spiked clubs and other weapons to the game.
Adventure Hooks
Here are some ways of introducing spike-rush into a campaign:
- A flight of scorch drakes threatens a wasteland community’s annual spike-rush match. PCs must safeguard the town and the spike-rush match from the rampaging drakes.
- The manager of a local spike-rush team believes that an opposing team is putting paralytic poison on the spikes of their shields and using other dirty tricks to win matches. She hires the PCs to discover whether her suspicions are correct.
- After being taken prisoner by a powerful gnoll tribe, the PCs can earn their freedom by participating in a spike-rush game against the tribe’s best players. The PCs must use the match to reclaim their gear and turn the tables on their captors.
