“The Cain Riscattare-led Knights look to take the Santos’ Intra-Complex Playoff for the fourth consecutive season, which would make Riscattare the only Primary Captain to win every Intra-Complex Playoff in Summit Shotball League history during his four seasons of eligibility.
“But things weren’t always smooth for Riscattare, who also duels in the winter and is part of the speed car circuit in the spring and early summer.
Something about the shotball scenes that really surprised readers is that I included both men and women in the same league and a few have…
Just a little information on how shotball entwines with the plot in Northern Knights….
Okay, since so many of you want to learn more about America’s next great pastime in a sport that’s not being artificially pushed by ESPN, I thought I’d write a little article for you that undertakes the game’s rules and regulations. First off, shotball is a VERY easy game to understand, even if it can be a rather physical and at times violent game.
Bear in mind, you could realistically take the physicality out of the game by playing tag or flag versions of shotball that eliminates the tackling aspect and it’s still every bit as fun, and a great way to get into good cardiovascular shape.
So, I decided to embark on a project that I’m calling the Encyclopedia of Shotball, basically relaying game rules, as this article does, as well as actual strategies, so stay tuned because once I’m finished this product is getting bundled up into e-book form.
The good news for you shotball fanatics is even if the politics of the Lord of Columbia Series doesn’t appeal to your tastes, as it’s a Libertarian-based urban fantasy series that I’m not shy writing influences behind the series (see Libertarian Influences tab), but don’t fear, because shotball will be featured more and more on this site.
So, if you’re a fan of the sport and the Series, we can always agree to disagree on the political aspects and no, I don’t debate online, so don’t even try: I’ve wasted plenty of time doing so in my younger days when I could’ve been doing more positive activities.
I’ll be talking about the game’s history, both how it started in real life (when I wrote the rules of the game), and how it started in the World of Gaia, where Lord of Columbia is set.
I already gave a rundown of the SSL where one of the Northern Conference can be viewed here and the Southern Conference, here, so definitely check that out when you get a chance.
Now, for the rules of the game.
Readers, reviewers, and even those coming to this site have spoken, and I’m listening: They want more shotball content, so I’m definitely more than happy to give it to them. I’ll be honest; I didn’t intend a simple subplot to provide a break from the work’s tension to be a hit, but then again, when doesn’t a good sport, fiction or non-fiction, entertain the masses.
So for that, I’m making a little project out of this called the Encyclopedia of Shotball, and I want to begin with the game’s origins both here in the real world, and of course, in Gaia.
So, let’s get cracking on how the sport that found its way into Lord of Columbia came to be.
Last week, I went over the South Columbian Complexes so this time around, the six North Columbian Complexes are up and raring to go. Today, we’re talking about teams whose members hail from North Columbia, many of whom residing in the same region after the end of each school year.
This might give the North teams bigger advantages, however history has shown that when it comes to wins, losses, and championships, they’re almost as even as their South Conference counterparts.
As I stated in a previous article, Harry Potter had a lot to do with the influences behind Lord of Columbia and Northern Knights in terms of Libertarianism, but it also gave me sort of an idea regarding turning the four Houses into eleven Complexes along with a twelfth commuting team.
Yeah, I needed more than four because I wanted it to kind of resemble the early NFL, which had fourteen teams prior to 1966, but I felt the original fourteen to sixteen was too much.
Anyway, in terms of sports such as shotball, I wanted it to resemble a collegiate/professional sports league, giving the Summit University League the name Summit Shotball League, or SSL, which was inspired by the National Football League, or NFL.
In the SSL, we have two conferences: the North Conference, which is made up of players and residents coming to Summit from North Columbia. There are five Complexes in the North, again with the sixth team being full of commuters. Then, we have the South Division, which we will cover today.
The South is made up of Santos, Leistung, Obranca, Vojaci, Kriger, and Arbete.
For those who’ve been following this blog since its inception, I decided to incorporate a game called shotball, whose rules I initially wrote up back in 2009 when I was eighteen years old, pretty much in protest of NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodell’s increased crackdown on defenses in the NFL.
So, before Lord of Columbia was even thought of, I designed rules to a new game and pretty much forgot about it throughout my college days when I started writing the first drafts of the series way back in 2010 before shelving the project and writing about it only occasionally between late-2012 and July 2015, when I decided to turn the work into a project.
As mentioned in my influences article I created a sport termed shotball, a mixture of American and Association Football, Rugby Union, and Hockey. While it’s going to be a while before shotball becomes the greatest sport in the world someday, this is an interesting game that can be played in a variety of ways.
While many might believe I created shotball as a direct influence from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series, which brought us Quidditch, the true story is I wrote down the rules for the sport long before the Lord of Columbia Series was even thought of.
