9 Fictional Games We Wish We Could Play

I’m not a sports guy. Sorry, 90 percent of everyone, I have no idea what you’re talking about on Facebook. Baseball, football, hockey—I recognize that these things exist and that others enjoy them, but they are not for me. If, however, someone wanted to televise Quidditch…
Whether you like sports that actually exist or not, it’s difficult to deny that fictional games have their allure. Below, find a list of nine fictional games we’d love to play…if only they weren’t, you know, fictional.
Quidditch (J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series). A given, perhaps, and the sport I’d wager most of us would kill to play (well, maybe not kill, but I’d consider one of the other Unforgivable Curses). Capture the Flag meets dodgeball meets football/soccer, all on broomsticks. What’s not to like? You even get to throw things at Draco Malfoy.
Welters (Lev Grossman’s The Magicians). Grossman’s book has been likened to an adult version of Harry Potter, where instead of fun with wands and words, doing magic is intricate, complicated, and boring. It stands to reason, then, that his version of a magical sport, Welters, would be equally complex and tedious. The rules are unclear but involve a lot of standing still for hours on a giant chessboard while your teammates attempt to cast delicate spells. Most of the characters hate it. Maybe I don’t want to play this one, after all.
Interstellar Pig (William Sleator’s Interstellar Pig). Not for the faint of heart. In this game, each player takes up cards representing a particular alien race. The goal is to end the game in possession of one very special card, known as the Piggy. If you don’t have the Piggy, the alien civilization you’re playing for gets destroyed. Literally.
Azad (Iain M. Banks’ The Player of Games).  As you might have guessed from the title, Jernau Morat Gurgeh, the main character of Banks’ second sci-fi novel, takes games very seriously. As well he should, when there are games like Azad, which is so complicated and difficult to master that an entire civilization has based its social and political structure around it. Banks offers only a glimpse at the gameplay, which is understandable considering it takes Gurgeh months of interstellar travel to even begin to grasp it.
Jumanji and Zathura (Chris Van Allsburg’s books of the same titles). Jumanji is a jungle adventure that sees players face off against stampeding herds of wild beasts, while Zathura sends them off on an interstellar adventure. Playing either of them is probably ill-advised, since they come to life and will probably result in some pretty serious property damage (at least make sure your homeowner’s insurance is up to date).
Castles (Stephen King’s Dark Tower series). Judging by the way our reality leaks into the weird monsters-and-steampunk-interdimensional-western world of King’s magnum opus, “Castles” is very likely another name for chess, but we can’t really be sure, since no one ever discusses the rules. Regardless, I wouldn’t play with Roland. Never challenge a gunslinger strapped to two giant revolvers.
Eschaton (David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest). A nuclear wargame that involves throwing tennis balls at targets. The game is said to be intended for 12-year-olds, but if you’re going to play it you’d best brush up on the Wikipedia entry for the intermediate value theorem of mathematics. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Foolishly, a bunch of geeks tried to play it once in real life.
Calvinball (Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes comics). This outdoor sport, which seems to be a mix of tag, hide and seek, croquet, volleyball, and whatever other lawn games were lying around in Calvin’s parents’ garage, is one of two games on this list you can recreate exactly, since there are only two rules: you make up the rules as you go along, and you can never play the same way twice (oh, you also have to wear a mask). In the words of Hobbes, “No sport is less organized than Calvinball!”
Poohsticks (A.A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner). This would be the other game you can play for yourself. All you need is a body of water with a bridge over it and some sticks. Each player drops a stick in the water, and whichever one crosses under the bridge first wins. Not the most elegant game, I’ll grant you, but what do you expect from a bunch of stuffed animals?
What’s your favorite fictional game?