Entertainment, Sports, and Recreation

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Artemis
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Entertainment, Sports, and Recreation

Post by Artemis »

What do people like to do for fun in the 2270s?
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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Artemis
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Posts: 392
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Savannah, Georgia
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Re: Entertainment, Sports, and Recreation

Post by Artemis »

Dockey

Dockey is a portmanteau of "Dock Hockey," though this term is a bit of misnomer. Firstly, only pickup versions of the game are played in orbital docks anymore, and secondly, the rules of the game are quite different from that of hockey, though there are enough similarities that one can see where the term comes from. It is the first microgravity sport that Terrans ever really codified, and remains one of the most popular, especially on space station complexes and small moons and planetoids.

The rules of Dockey are simple: Two teams of eighteen players, including a goalkeeper, all equipped with a maneuvering suit, take the field (another misnomer, as the play area is is a 530 cubic yard cylinder, but hey, who's counting?) against one another with the intent of scoring a goal on the other team. This is done by getting one of five balls (lightweight, bouncy, and about the size of a baseball) on the field past a circle of sensor cones on either side of the play cylinder. Complications arise from the inclusion of "strikes": when a ball hits a player on one of his or her strike surfaces (padded sensors on the knees, palms, and lower back), that player's is "locked up" for ten minutes, during which any use of their maneuvering suit or any intentional interaction with the balls is considered a penalty. While the overall point of a play is to score a goal, few players would miss an opportunity to lock up an opponent and keep them out of the game for a while. The strike surfaces also provide a secondary obstacle, as the balls cannot easily be thrown or caught, as this would require the use of the palms. This encourages players to kick, punch, elbow, and head-butt the ball, making for the more dynamic and fast-paced game. The goalkeeper has only the strike surface at the small of his back.

Dockey started as a method of teaching microgravity techniques to dockers and construction workers in the days of the early space station complexes around Earth and Mars. The strike surfaces (there used to be many more, including on the back of the scalp, the groin, the entire spinal column, etc.) existed to teach a player awareness of his own body in microgravity, enforcing the danger of flying objects in such an environment. The game took on a life of its own before long, and veteran micrograv dogs began to set up small leagues. Before long, corporate sponsorship got involved as the game's popularity spread, and thus was born the United Dockey Federation, the premier league for the game. The UDF currently has four divisions - Inner Sol, Outer Sol, Three Paradises, and Telemachus - each with twelve teams, and every Martian year, these teams compete for Hancock's Spanner, the name for both the championship game and the trophy awarded to the winners. Numerous minor and local leagues also exist, and the game is still played casually between youth organizations, pub-clubs, and friendly rivalries between various corporations or organizations.
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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