BY LETTER
Physnet
A zero-gravity ball sport involving two players, magnetic grappling apparatus, maneuver jets, 5 kinetic "disabler" balls, and the score-causing "Good Bit".
Each player takes turns sending the Good Bit and up to 5 'disablers' at their opponent, until either 10 'Good Bits' are captured by one side or the other, or until a player had been hit with 5 disablers. To increase the random 'fun' of the game, each contact with a disabler shuts down 20% of a player's reaction jets chosen at random. Additional rules allowed the placement of visual obscurement, physical deflection devices (both motile and stationary), addressed the total power, number, and reactant capacity of suit jets, among many other issues. Currently out of favour in many known areas, it maintains some popularity in baselinophilic clades and polities due to the ease of fully augmented beings' capture of the Good Bit.
The sport's name comes from 'physical networking' according to the lore of the game. It is supposed to represent binary ("bit") data and filtering out the 'good' data. It is a common myth that this sport started out with people concerned with the flow of data across physical data connections, and is based in some degree on other paddle & ball type games.
Each player takes turns sending the Good Bit and up to 5 'disablers' at their opponent, until either 10 'Good Bits' are captured by one side or the other, or until a player had been hit with 5 disablers. To increase the random 'fun' of the game, each contact with a disabler shuts down 20% of a player's reaction jets chosen at random. Additional rules allowed the placement of visual obscurement, physical deflection devices (both motile and stationary), addressed the total power, number, and reactant capacity of suit jets, among many other issues. Currently out of favour in many known areas, it maintains some popularity in baselinophilic clades and polities due to the ease of fully augmented beings' capture of the Good Bit.
The sport's name comes from 'physical networking' according to the lore of the game. It is supposed to represent binary ("bit") data and filtering out the 'good' data. It is a common myth that this sport started out with people concerned with the flow of data across physical data connections, and is based in some degree on other paddle & ball type games.
Related Articles
Appears in Topics
Development Notes
Text by John B
Initially published on 30 June 2003.
Initially published on 30 June 2003.
