HEXBOL

 What do the lumpen masses like? What silly gadgets and hypnotic amusements draw their attention away from the Great Works to be done? Where, you ask, is the mass moving?

In honor of the conclusion of the World Cup and the failure of football to come home for the fifteenth consecutive time, I give you:  

Football

This one is pretty much the same as the existing one, actually. Given the mass popularity of the existing game I can only assume that it was a matter of time before someone invented it on the Hex and it probably got about as popular. 

A brief digression on football: the game was not built for VAR, it is an abomination and it is the devil's work (when not used in moderation). The rules of the game were built by humans with eyeballs for other humans with eyeballs. When the rule says "you can't be offsides" the thing it is trying to prevent is a degenerate (in the math-y sense) strategy where you just park your best striker in the opponent's box and feed them long passes. If you were allowed to do this the scores would be really high I bet, football'd become a high-scoring game like basketball, which would be interesting but not really the thing we're going for usually. 

 What it is not particularly intended to prevent, though, is a guy's hand being outstretched past the line of the last defender. Like, be so for real right now, if you're reading this blog you're a game nerd and like to think about rules and what purpose they serve—do you genuinely think that there is enough "unfair" advantage garnered from a guy's hand being outstretched such that it is slightly closer to the opponent's goal than the furthest-back body-part of the last defender that it's worth revoking a goal over? 

The thing is when you have a human referee with human judgment then these kind of things aren't as relevant because these tiny little fractional differences are neither detectable nor really worth pursuing. It's like how cops almost always ignore you jaywalking even though it's technically illegal in most places, and we're all better off for it. By the way, "jaywalking" was a psyop by the millionaire robber baron automobile clubs who were responsible for the conquest and depopulation of the streets to make way for the automotive. Rules designed for the eye actually break down when enforced with machine precision. I guess this is broadly the same thing that prevents CRPGs from achieving what TTRPGs do.

Anyways, on the Hex it's played in 12-person teams, internationally gender-desegregated (though adoption of that particular reform has been patchy at the club level), and in addition to yellow and red cards there are also green, blue, black, white, and the dreaded infrared card, only issued for the most heinous of infractions and enough to warrant you a lifetime ban in all but the seediest leagues.

It's often colloquially called the hideous game. This isn't because people find it aesthetically unpleasant or anything, it's just that at the time it got really big "hideous" was a really big youth culture slang term, like how we call things "sick" or "ill" or say we have "landed a baddie," etc..., and it stuck. Oops! 

I can't find my tablet pen so picture a guy kicking an orb or smth