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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8292098" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, the original Native American game was basically a sort of 'sacred ball game'. It was a type of religious festivity which included a warlike component. The field was simply a LARGE area (sometimes up to several kilometers in size) where 2 sides engaged, with the teams ranging in size up to 1000 individuals. I'm not sure what other rules there were, but from these descriptions I'd say it only faintly resembled a European-style field sport. Settlers began to take up and systematize the game from a pretty early point, and it is considered to be the oldest organized sport in North America (at least by some people). Modern rules have existed since the 1800's. The standard rules are for 'field lacrosse', although some other variations exist (indoor for instance, or 'box' lacrosse). As a field sport it has clearly seen heavy influence from other modern European field sports. The field is roughly the size of a soccer (football) field, there are goals near each end with playable space behind them (ala hockey) and each team is 10 people who are divided into goalie and offensive & defensive team members. The field is divided (again very similar to hockey) into 3 basic zones with rules governing who is allowed in each zone depending on position and possession of the ball, as well as rules concerning how long a team can possess the ball without taking offensive action, face offs, etc. As I say, the parallels with field hockey are quite strong.So this shows how specific games can kind of 'merge' or cross-pollinate each other. Lacrosse actually means "the stick" in French, and was probably taken from the French name for field hockey (which I forget exactly, it is a phrase including the term "la crosse"). Field hockey itself was probably the precurser to ice hockey, and bears a pretty obvious relationship to football. In its primitive form it would presumably have been "football with sticks instead of feet." The salient part being hockey requires the stick to be used against a ball on the ground, and carried low. Lacrosse sticks are carried high, the ball is caught in the net on the stick and thrown. Otherwise they are pretty similar in a lot of ways.Right. If you go far enough back, before the 19th Century when leagues first started in baseball etc. you find that every village and town had its games and rules, maybe they agreed with the ones nearby so they could play each other. Such games were mostly children's games, and the rules were probably pretty fluid, maybe agreed on for each specific game before play. Stick and ball sports were the same, and as they all evolved they got more codified and became specific discrete sports, so nowadays it would be hard to combine baseball and cricket, but if you were to go back to 1820 you'd find that the 'baseball' they played back then was a heck of a lot more cricket-like, often it had 2 bases, etc. Back then it wasn't 2 different games, though 2 teams from different areas would have had to negotiate the exact rules they would use. I would liken MOST RPGs to 'field sports', they might use different kinds of 'ball', slightly different arrangements of fields, players, handling rules, etc. but you can find some sort of common ground and either merge them, or graft things together. I mean, Gygax gave some fairly usable rules for merging Boot Hill with 1e, and they are QUITE different games, mechanically, yet it is pretty obvious what the issues are and the choices are merely how to translate something like a rule for how ai 6-shooter works into D&D vs trying to fuse together field hockey and baseball (how would you even approach that, their processes of play are COMPLETELY different).</blockquote>

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