Goreans love to have fun and be entertained. I insist: they really like it and take advantage of it at the first opportunity. It sounds obvious when you say it like that, but it doesn’t always seem so clear in the minds of players who embody characters in Gor’s Second Life role-playing game. And I’ll still be busting myths and rectifying Gor SL errors and onlinisms along the way, but you must be getting used to that by now, right?

That said, these games and hobbies are strongly marked by three things, which we’ll reiterate here:

– Goreans aren’t prudish

Only free women are, and more by duty than by nature; if they could, and they don’t lack the desire to do so since their situation is so frustrating, they would undress without hesitation, but they can’t in order to maintain their place in society. For a Gorean, being naked is no problem at all, and all Goreans admire and venerate the beauty of the body, male or female, including the genitals. Their works of art reflect this admiration for naked beauty, and free men and slaves alike have little concern about nudity.

– Leisure is for men

Gor is a man’s world. While the arts and leisure activities were accessible to all, they were primarily designed for male, not female, spectators. In fact, many of Gor’s leisure activities and games could compromise women’s honor, and they can’t take an interest in them. As for those which are a priori intended for both men and women, if something in this leisure activity is likely to bother a woman, she cannot demand that what bothers her cease if it is to the detriment of the male spectators. It’s up to her to step aside, with the prevalence always going to the men first.

– Goreans see no harm in mistreating slaves for fun

As we’ll see in a number of examples of their leisure activities and distractions, goreans treat slaves as toys in their games, including consumable ones; in other words, there are hardly any dramatic consequences, in their eyes, to endangering the physical or mental integrity of slaves when playing with them at leisure. At worst, it simply costs money to compensate the owner if the slave is ruined and has to be destroyed. Sacrificing slaves for fun is, in a pinch, included in the price of the leisure activity concerned. After all, that’s what they’re there for, no matter how horrible the idea may seem to us.

1- Competitions and championships

Basically, games organized to bring together large crowds to compete against each other and win prizes and prestige.

1-1 Tarn races

Tarn racing is Gor’s aerial rally, and is far more popular than gladiatorial combat; in fact, tarn pilots are Gor’s greatest sporting heroes. And it’s nothing less than a race, with everyone betting on it. But the craze for these races is real, very real. Fans wear patches in the color of their champion sewn to their shoulder to support him! And during major championships, the host city’s population soars as fans follow their champions to the finish.

Everyone knows the names of the great tarn-racing champions; they are sponsored by powerful merchants or high-castes, criers, newspapers and books sing their praises and their portraits are painted on the walls. The inns where they stay ask them to print their hand on a canvas to be framed or in fresh plaster on the wall, and men fight to offer them their most beautiful slave, so that they can boast afterwards that she served the great champion with prestige.

Tarn racing is not only a sport but also a profession, requiring long and complicated training, and employing its own racing tarns. The major training schools are keen to train the best drivers, because the prestige of victory also represents fortunes in terms of earnings. Racing tarn schools employ small tarns with limited endurance as mounts, unlikely to lift more than one man, but incredibly fast and agile.

A tarn racing track is one pasang long. It’s delimited by rings, either suspended from the highest towers or perched at the end of long masts above the tallest buildings. Each narrow ring is padded and a solid net is placed underneath, to save the pilot in the event of a fall. There are twelve rings in a lap, and each rider must pass through them with his horse. The rings are not always the same shape or diameter, to complicate the ordeal. In other words, these races are dangerous; bad falls are not uncommon and there are regular fatalities.

Two things are worth noting: on the one hand, there are sometimes women competing. Some towns forbid it, but others are proud of their female champions. And fighting is generally forbidden in these races: attempting to unseat a rider during a race is then cause for elimination, even if it does happen fairly regularly. However, some races do allow fighting between riders.

1-2 Arena games

Arena games are played in venues adapted to the general shape of ovoid amphitheaters, such as Rome’s Colosseum. The wealthier the city, the more lavishly equipped its amphitheatre. The most famous, with a capacity of 50,000 spectators, is the Stade des Lames in Ar. That said, given the price of these structures, most arenas have less than 5,000 seats.

An arena is primarily used for fighting games. Wild animal fighting, gladiatorial combat, but also free fighting and kajirae combat. Unlike Roman arenas, public executions are never held in these amphitheaters.

Gladiatorial games were the most popular, ahead of free-fighting games. Gladiators are slaves, but among the kajiru, they occupy the highest possible rank. The most famous among them are renowned and adored, and may even regain their freedom in the process. But most of them will die on the sand, as fights are often to the death. The Goreans are much crueler and ruthless than the Romans with their gladiators, unless the latter are highly rated and their death would represent a heavy loss of money or prestige.

Beast fights are organized with animals fighting each other, gladiators, kajirae or prisoners. Barring exceptional cruelty, beast fighters are always armed. Surviving a beast fight for kajirae or prisoners is a feat honored and noticed: the master of the kajirae will be greatly honored and pampered, and the victorious prisoner will undoubtedly be granted a pardon.

Free fights are between free men, sometimes also against gladiators, and against criminals who have obtained a trial by the sword or mercenaries wishing to prove their strength (and make money on bets). Although they are less highly rated than gladiatorial fights, they are very well attended, and bets can be very high between reputed fighters.

Kajirae fights are nothing less than bare-knuckle melees between naked women, with a few subtleties thrown in to keep the spectators busy when they need time to switch from one show to another. Killing is forbidden and theses fightings considered highly entertaining, but of lesser value than other arena games. It’s rare for a kajira to be staged in armed combat or against men, but it does exist.

1-3 Tharlarion races

As a reminder, the tharlarion is a large bipedal carnivorous lizard, whose various wild species live in wet marshes as well as in the driest deserts, and which has been used as a mount by goreans for thousands of years. In the wild, the tharlarion is a gifted hunting predator. In the domestic state, it is a nervous but docile animal, although rightly feared.

So it’s only logical that races of these animals should be organized, with every town and every kennel taking advantage of the prestige to sell its best animals. These races are held on tracks designed for riders and their mounts, usually on a half-pasang where several laps must be completed to win. Tharlarion races are violent and allow any means to throw off and eliminate competitors.

Tharlarion racing is highly prized, but the champions are far less honored than those in tarn races. The main purpose of these races is to promote the merits of a particular breed and thus increase the price of the animals. This is a far cry from the craze for tarn races or arena fights.

1-4 Palestrae

Ever wondered how Goreans get their athletic build? The answer is simple: they go to the gym: the palestrae.

Gyms are only open to men, and often only to certain castes. There’s a palestrae for builders, another for scribes, one for merchants, etc. Each caste maintains its own gym and takes pride in it. People come here to exercise, train and stay in shape, practicing wrestling, weight lifting, running and gymnastic exercises, javelin throwing, long jump, high jump, etc. Think of Greek gymnasiums and you’ll get a perfect idea.

And of course, these gyms organize competitions not only between themselves, but also between cities. Clearly, for a few days during a trade fair, the idea is to offer what are akin to athletics games, with prizes that are more symbolic than anything else, but that go hand in hand with great prestige, both for the winning city and for the champions. And, of course, you can make money on the bets.

1-5 Girl-Catchers

Yes, of course, among all the championship games, there had to be one that involved the Gorean concepts of capture and enslavement, or sexual recreation.

The first is simply a rather private pastime, or arena game, which we’ll briefly describe below, while the second is a fairly complex game pitting vast teams of men and women from rival cities against each other at major trade fairs. The aim of City-catchers is literally to resolve a dispute between cities, with nothing less than the women of the losing side at stake, who quite simply risk enslavement in the event of defeat.

As City-Catchers is a real institution, and a game described in detail by Norman, described in at the end of this article (chapter 4)

The other version is a betting game, very popular and widespread everywhere, which requires only one lane to play, and involves both free men and slaves: in this game, a slave is wearing a hood that blinds her, and decorated with numerous bells. She is then released onto the dance floor for the free men, also hooded, to chase and capture. The slave is forbidden to stand still for any length of time, usually a few Ihn. She is under the control of a referee who uses an electric prod to make her run or mark her position. In general, there are around ten participants per round, for one slave.

The man who captures the slave wins the right to rape her on the spot, which he doesn’t mind doing in public. He then leaves the ring to the cheers of the betting winners and the crowd, and the race begins again with the remaining candidates. The last man to fail to capture the girl will have to do without her.

Slaves who are forced to take part in this game and who survive a few rounds of this ordeal try to hone their escape skills in this game, and some girls become very good at it, so much so that it’s more on them and their ability to dodge for a long time that we’re going to place our bets. But for many of them, the intrinsic violence of the game, which can only be described as cruel, often has such an effect on their minds that they lose their sanity and, becoming useless, are of course killed.

1-6 Dancing

Free men and women don’t really dance on Gor. Except in local and traditional cultures, dancing is exclusively an art form for slaves. Even in theater, the dancers are always kajirae.

Slave dance has only one purpose: to please men and encourage them to use slaves sexually. The dances recount feelings, emotions and moments in the lives of the slaves, but their primary aim is to arouse male lust. There may be dances that are pleasing to women, for their beauty, but they will always be very sensual.

There are dance competitions. Organized by the most prestigious slave traders, their purpose is to enhance the prestige of the slave owners and their households, and to increase the market value of the slaves for sale. More often than not, a dance competition will precede an auction of all or part of the dancers who have competed, and whose masters have been rewarded by the prestige of their victory.

There is usually no jury, although notables may be appointed to take on this role. More often than not, victory goes to the master of the slave who has won the most acclaim. It’s a well-known fact that there’s a certain risk involved in taking part in a dance contest with a slave you don’t intend to sell. Indeed, if she’s one of the best dancers, she’ll be highly coveted, and some men may be offended to learn that she wasn’t for sale.

2- Social activities

Activities enjoyed with friends and in public.

2-1 Hunting

Goreans enjoy hunting and, above all, it’s rarely a solitary activity. The reason is simple: Gor’s wildlife can quickly turn the hunter into prey if he’s careless or isolated. It’s worth noting that women also hunt, and no one objects. They also train with bows. But this custom is quite common in northern Gor.

For the hunt, men and women wear practical outfits, including shoes and pants, which allow them to camouflage themselves. Hunting is carried out with stalks and bows, or with hunting stakes and traps. Small game, such as poultry and tabuks, are the most common targets. Wild tarsk is also hunted, but the beast is very dangerous if you don’t know how.

2-2 Bathing

Goreans generally like water, like to wash and, to put it bluntly, like to be naked. City baths are very important social places. People go there not just to wash, but to relax, chat with friends and even settle business or political issues!

The baths are segregated between men and women. But only for the free. Slaves of either sex may, depending on the customer’s wishes, serve either side of the bath, although the role of the kajirus is rarely to look after the customers, but to wash and maintain the premises.

The baths don’t just offer basins for bathing and washing. There are perfumeries, massage rooms, steam rooms, exercise classes and gymnasiums, recreational gardens, art galleries, walkways, merchant arcades, doctors’ offices, reading rooms, music rooms and more. A Gorean bathhouse can be a veritable palace dedicated to relaxation, culture and business, with complex underground structures ensuring the heating and water quality of the pools.

Bath girls are all slaves. Their collar is a chain with a plaque giving their name and the cost of their services. They have medium-length hair to dry faster, and are dressed only in simple towels. Bath slaves are there for the men’s pleasure. Sometimes the girls pretend to swim away from the men for fun, only to be caught again. This is done on purpose, as most girls could easily avoid the men if they wished; for long-serving bath slaves, they are all excellent swimmers.

2-3 Paga taverns

A paga tavern is part bar, part restaurant and part brothel. That’s why no free woman will enter one without a good reason.

But contrary to what Gor SL players often believe, a paga tavern is not generally closed to women! Some, despite their business, welcome them, and even welcome whole families! In this case, the owners of the place will simply make sure that a certain discretion reigns in the most erotic activities of their business; it’s enough if the main room is specified as not being dedicated to sex, only the alcoves on the upper floors and in the basement. All the same, it remains a place for men. The kajirae dance on the tables and dancefloors, they are often lascivious because they have been bought and trained for this, etc… which is why, even if there is only very rarely a formal ban on a woman entering a tavern, she will often be reluctant to do so.

It’s also worth noting that, although the price of a slave’s sexual use is included in the price of the drink, most of the time, a gorean doesn’t go there for that, but to have a drink, chat with friends, get to know each other, hear the gossip of the town or region, play dice, wrestle or kaïssa, and sometimes talk business.

Finally, we don’t necessarily skip the slave who comes to serve us the paga, or one of those in the service room who prepares the meals, dances for the men and serves the customers. More often than not, the price paid gives the right to go into an alcove where the paga sluts (yes, paga whores, literally) are chained, freely destined to the customer for as long as he wishes. And, yes, it’s one of the most miserable spells a slave can have. In fact, it’s often used to train a reluctant slave, rather than renting her out for a few weeks to a tavern owner. To use a service slave or dancer, for example, you’ll have to ask the bosses, and sometimes pay extra.

Note that these alcoves are equipped with all the sex toys favored by goreans: ropes, handcuffs and shackles, blindfolds, hoods, whips and so on. Damaging a paga-slut will just lead, unless you’ve really gone too far, to paying a supplement, either in advance or after use.

2-4 Libraries

Most cities have a large public library containing thousands of carefully organized and catalogued manuscripts. These libraries are open to men and women of all castes. The most precious and forbidden documents, however, are not accessible and are isolated in closed and guarded sections.

It should be noted that even slaves are allowed to enter a library if their owner has come to pay the price of access for his slave and has therefore given his consent. Many literate goreans will spend time in these buildings, reading, learning or chatting in a hushed atmosphere. Most libraries are comfortable, functional places, often rivalling in beauty and luxury.

2-5 Theater

Theater is a popular and highly appreciated form of public entertainment, ranging from sophisticated forms such as drama and mythical allegories, to lighter forms such as comedy, stand-up, storytelling and mime. Free women are not allowed to perform on a theater stage: it is claimed that their voices don’t carry far enough, but the reality is that the artist caste doesn’t want to offer its lucrative prerogative to women: so female roles are played by men with suitable voices and masks. Kajirae, however, are employed for dance and extra roles.

Otherwise, Gorean theater resembles both the highly codified Greek tragedy theater, accompanied by music, and popular theater à la Molière. Costumes and props are very important, but sets are often non-existent, left to the audience’s imagination and mimed by the actors. A frequent theme in Gorean theater is the rise and fall of a free woman of great power, then her final fulfillment in servitude, under the yoke of the man she despised when she was still free.

Most theater seats are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with the exception of certain sections, the places of honor, reserved for the city’s powerful. Audience participation in the play was commonplace, and even highly encouraged: they would whistle at the traitor, boo the villain, throw fruit at the jester. Fights even broke out in the audience between those who approved of the play or its characters and those who didn’t. The largest known theater is the Theater of Pentilicus Tallux in Ar. Its stage is so vast that it can accommodate 1,000 actors, animals and chariots!

2-6 Music

Music is popular on Gor, and everyone tends to know how to play. It’s worth noting, however, that Goreans don’t write music scores – there’s no such thing: music, its technique and its tunes are always transmitted orally, even among the musician caste.

Music is played everywhere, but is most often found in the theater, where it accompanies the plays. It is also played at parties and banquets to entertain distinguished guests, and a small group can often be found playing in a public garden, baths, or even a street corner. Gorean music has one outstanding characteristic: it is highly sensual and most often adapted to allow slaves to dance to it. For Goreans, music and sensuality go hand in hand. The king instrument is the czehar, followed by flutes, voice (singing), kalika and all forms of percussion. There are no bowed instruments on Gor (the violin doesn’t exist), nor keyboard instruments like the piano.

Music is so important that in the theater, the name of the principal flautist who accompanies the plays appears on advertisements, immediately after those of the main performers.

The musicians’ caste unites the singers’ caste: “A loaf of bread for a song” is the caste motto; it’s rarely a profession that makes you rich, but it never lets anyone starve, so much do the goreans respect this caste loved by all. For the goreans: “No musician can be a foreigner”, which is why it’s customary for them to be freely allowed in almost every town. Also by custom, they cannot be enslaved, and woe betide anyone who chases away or injures a musician without having a very good reason for doing so. They are rightly considered the happiest caste in Gor, as even their women have virtually nothing to fear from the terrors and injustices of men.

2-7 Public gardens

Gor people love nature, even the city-dwellers of the big Ar. So they always devote space to gardens and green spaces. These gardens are more like natural gardens, like English gardens, than aligned, geometric gardens like French gardens.

Public gardens are very popular, with benches, fountains, sweet stores and lots of flowers. Birds and small animals, often tame, are allowed to live in them.

2-8 Plastic arts

Art is an essential element of the urban view of Goreans. Bas-reliefs, statues and murals are everywhere. Art and the artists who create it are considered an integral part of urban life and the civic prestige of every city. And since Goreans love beauty and nudity, they put it everywhere!

It’s worth noting that artists don’t see the need to sign their work. Each has his or her own style, and considers that sufficient. Artists remain craftsmen: they’re there to decorate, embellish and transcend reality, but not to talk about themselves or put themselves forward. This does not prevent artists from being courted by the powerful, and from earning a very good living from their work.

It’s worth noting that the codes concerning the musician caste, especially those concerning enslaving or attacking them, also apply to artists, although not necessarily everywhere. This caste is also highly respected and loved, but is considered less “pure” and less free than the musician caste. They are more closely related to other artisan castes.

 3- Games

Goreans love to play, whether as adults or children. Many of them, from childhood onwards, encourage the development of privileged traits in boys, such as courage, discipline and honor. Other games encourage boldness and leadership and, of course, many others aim to teach them about the nature of women and slaves and encourage them to assimilate manliness and mastery.

A few other games include the shell game: three cups or shells are used and a pebble is hidden under one of them. The cups are shuffled and you have to guess where the hidden pebble is. Good sleight of hand can ensure you never win. Another popular game is Gianni’s Cradle, which can be found as far away as Torvaldsland. Even the panthers like it, that’s for sure. In this game, you try to create complex patterns with the same length of string, the aim being to make them as intricate as possible.

2-1 Dice games

Gorean dice are cubes, with six faces, like ours. The Goreans give each face, from 1 to 6 points, animal names: larl for six, urt for one, and so on. Most of the time, the dice are carved from verr bone, sometimes from ivory.

As everyone plays dice, with 1 to 6 dice depending on the game, and everyone bets on them, dice are the object of a veritable industry that signs its dice, to prove they’re not rigged. Otherwise, Norman doesn’t describe any dice game precisely.

2-2 Kaissa

This is the king game on Gor, similar to Earth chess. Many of Gor’s most cultured people, in fact, and probably all the high-castes, know how to play kaissa. The game is very complex and highly prized. There are clubs, strategy manuals, competitions and a caste of its own, the Kaissa Players caste, which organizes all these tournaments.

Contrary to popular belief on Gor SL, both men and women can play kaissa. It’s being a member of the Kaissa Players Caste that’s closed to women. There is a vague reference to a ban on women playing kaissa in Assassins of Gor, but it’s brief and very vague: it seems to be more a ban on inter-city competition. On the other hand, no slave may ever play, or even touch the game and its pieces without express orders, under severe penalties, including death. For a slave to touch the game of kaissa is a grave insult.

2-3 the zar

Basically, zar is a game of checkers on a kaissa board. It’s a common game in tahari. The aim is to take the place of all the pieces of the opponent’s starting point, and it remains relatively simple, far removed from the strategic complexity of kaissa.

2-4 the stones game

The stones game is a guessing game in which a certain number of stones are held in one player’s hand, usually from two to five, the maximum number always being specified before the game begins, and the other player must guess the number.

The game isn’t just a silly pastime. Featuring a number of rules and subtleties, such as reaching a certain number of points (i.e. guessing right several times in a row), answering in a limited time, or playing on the questioning between even, odd and even prime numbers, it introduces strategies based on observation, psychology and cunning. Entire villages have changed hands in the course of a stone game, and there are tournaments… and famous champions!

4- The girl-catch between city, rules and principles

Girl Catch is a Gorean game played according to two distinct rules. One involves only free people, men and women, the other only men and slaves. Basically, in both cases, the game is cruel in our eyes, without the slightest equivocation, but proves to have a certain coherence and great utility in its version with free people. It’s played everywhere, but especially along the Vosk River and around Ar, where it’s a tradition.

The role of this game is obvious and very simple: to find a relatively peaceful way of settling a conflict between two city-states without ending in war and slaughter, but ensuring honor, glory and… captures! And, no doubt, in my opinion, a tribute that the loser offers to the winner of the game which is, after all, a symbolic war, quite serious, since any participant caught cheating can be executed on the spot!

The girl-catcher between cities

City Catchers is a sporty and violent game, but one that forbids weapons and is strictly controlled by referees to avoid as many deaths as possible. Involving up to 200 participants per side (100 men, 100 women), there must always be exactly the same number of participants on each side. The playing field is surrounded by a palisade around 60 cm high, with a capture pit at each end, as described in the novel quote below.

The purpose of this game is clear: to settle disputes between opposing towns without resorting to war and the drama of death, since the stakes are nothing less than the girls of the opposing camp, and the honor of victory. The loser also loses all the free young women who have signed up for the match!

The aim of the game? Capture all the girls from the opposing camp, tying them up and throwing them into your camp’s pit. To do this, you have to get rid of the men from the opposing camp, by taking them out of the playing area; to do this, any means are good, but without using the slightest weapon. Injuries may occur, and it’s very violent, but deaths are rare. Any man who crosses the palisade is eliminated and, should he try to return, the sentence is death. During the fight, the women are, of course, forbidden to interfere with the men. Their role is to complicate the task of the opposing camp, to avoid capture and to help the men of their camp by their running and maneuvers to get their opponents out of the playing field. But they must not fight in the men’s melee.

* Note: I don’t suppose they let themselves be captured without defending themselves. Since all blows are allowed, they shouldn’t be shy about resisting, while avoiding the worst, that said. Gorean men are strong, violent and, forgive me for saying it, but i’s a reality, cruel and unmerciful.

The first side to have captured all the women is the winner, and apart from the great honor of winning a duel between cities, the men of the winning side keep the women they’ve captured. They will then be enslaved by each of the men who captured them.

It is assumed that to recognize the captured women, each participating man has links to a small tag or plate with his name, or links to his colors, but this is not detailed.

Participants have no choice of outfit: men and women are dressed in tunics of the color chosen for their city. Women’s tunics are clearly designed to reveal their curves and charms. The women may wear reduced masks, such as wolves, but clearly, as indicated in the quote below, this is not customary. On the face of it, this spoils the fun for participants and spectators alike.

Of course, nothing that can be turned into a weapon is allowed on the playing field. It’s even likely that both men and women will be barefoot, to avoid being hit by boots or thick-heeled shoes. Belts and harnesses, with iron buckles, are probably also completely forbidden. Only participants wearing tunics with rope belts are allowed, to avoid any risk of accident.

Finally, there’s no indication that the girls are single. The quote just specifies young men and women, which makes sense given the violence of the sport and the stakes involved. One might assume that no young female volunteer would be able to take part without the agreement of her family and companion, but in principle, this is false; given the great importance of these games, the city authorities and the rules of honor must no doubt impose that each person nominating herself as a volunteer cannot be forced to give up by her companion or family.

Note: the capture and enslavement of the girls on the losing side is not necessarily the end. It goes without saying that the families of the captured girls, along with representatives of the losing city, will come forward to offer tribute to buy the girls back, in order to free them and return them to their families. Goreans respect free women, even if this is a golden opportunity. So it’s safe to assume that most of the girls will regain their freedom, as long as they haven’t submitted to their kidnapper. But it’s not automatic: between personal desires and inter-city rivalries, it can happen that many of these girls remain enslaved.

This is an obvious point to bear in mind. The participants in this city girl-catch game are all volunteers! So, beyond honor and duty, since this game helps to avoid bloody wars and resolve conflicts, the girls, who know what they’re risking, participate because they know that if their city loses, they have a good chance of returning home as free women.

Note: some participants do it for no other reason than to be enslaved! Yes, it sounds strange, but the life of a free young woman, whether low-caste or high-caste (and it’s even worse for the latter) can be so heavy, miserable and oppressive that, frankly, the romantic illusion of the life of a slave loved by her owner and free from the shackles of the free woman is clearly preferable. As a result, the latter get captured on purpose, resisting more or less, and if their city loses and they are enslaved, immediately perform the rituals indicating their submission to their captor and owner. Once this has been seen, no Gorean parent worthy of the name, honor clinging to the soul, will want to reclaim the girl who has voluntarily submitted to enslavement.

A girl catcher on Gor Second Life

The most interesting thing about such a game isn’t the match itself, but what happens before and after it – as you’ll realize when you know why these games are played, in what context, and what they lead to.

The problem with Second Life is how to get two teams, each with exactly the same number of men and women. It’s best to try and keep the number of men and women in each team the same, e.g. 8 men, 5 women. Clearly, however, a minimum number of players must be present on each side for the match to be interesting: 10 against 10 is a minimum.

The problem with girl-catch is that it’s a fight. It is refereed, since the aim is to eliminate the men by taking them off the field (the participant can then no longer return to the game) and to capture the women by throwing them into the pit (where the opposing team is forbidden to go). The referees are there to ensure that the (few) rules are respected. But first and foremost, it’s a fight!

So, to simulate the game, you need to use Second Life’s fighting tools, such as the zCS HUD. However, this HUD does not allow you to simulate unarmed combat. So, for the melee simulation, each male participant must be armed, unlike the game in Norman’s novels. The men with conventional weapons, but only for melee, the women without any weapons at all.

The playing field must be large enough and well defined, so that participants can run, some to catch, others to dodge and escape. Remember that any step outside the boundary of the playing field leads to elimination for male participants. For women, they simply have to return to the playing area immediately.

• Combat is played out in the same way as simulated combat in Second Life: to eliminate the men, you have to “down” them.
• The defeated male participant, “down”, then leaves the playing field, and is eliminated.
• To capture a female participant, you also have to defeat her, the “down”, and use the “bind” of the combat HUD employed.
• I suggest imposing a few emotes to describe the bind time, say three, one to bind the arms, one for the feet, a third to catch the girl in her arms.
• Pulling the captive into the pit of her camp is done with the HUD’s “bind” tool.
• The “heal” action is not allowed on male participants. Once down, they are eliminated.
• The action of removing ties from a girl who is “down” and tied, but left on the ground without having been taken to the pit, is authorized, as is the “heal” action.
• A female participant may not be armed; she may only run, flee or help other “down” women.
• No ranged weapons are permitted under any circumstances.

The game ends in two cases: if all the women on one side have been captured and taken to the opposite side’s pit, or if all the men on both sides have been eliminated.

If all the men on both sides have been eliminated, the game is reset and restarted.

Victory goes to the side that has captured all the women on the opposing side. From then on, the women captured by the losing side belong to the men of the winning side. The losing side’s negotiations to buy back its women can begin. Everything else is a matter of role-playing, interpretation and politics.

Of course, spectators are invited to place bets before and during the match! There are three types of bets: which city will win, which man will capture the most girls, which girl won’t be captured, or last in her group. These bets are validated by the referees, and large sums of money are wagered – including, incidentally, by the participants before the match begins!

Excerpt and quote on a game of catch between cities:

“Make way! Out of the way!” exclaimed the muscular young man, laughing. He had a naked girl over his shoulder, her hands and feet bound. He’d won her in the girl-catcher, in a contest to decide a trade dispute between two small towns, Ven and Rarn, the former a river port on the Vosk, the latter renowned for its copper mining, located southeast of Tharna.

The competition involved a hundred young men from each town, and a hundred young women, the most beautiful from each town. The aim of the game was to protect the women from the enemy. No weapons were allowed. The competition took place in an area outside the perimeter of the great fair, as no one could be enslaved in the sacred space of the fairs.

The playing area was surrounded by a low wooden wall, and spectators watched from this boundary. When a male participant was thrown out of the boundary of the wall, he was removed from the competition and could not, on pain of death, return to the area for the duration of the contest.

When a girl was abducted, she was bound hand and foot and thrown into one of the two girls’ pits at the far end of each town’s “camp”. These pits are circular, about 60 cm deep, with a sandy bottom, and delimited by a small wooden fence. Once in the pit, the girl could not extricate herself from her bonds, considered trapped and captured, under the supervision of referees.

The aim of the game is thus simple: for the men, it’s to remove their opponents from the field and capture the girls from the other town, tying them up and throwing them into their pit. For the women, of course, the aim is to escape capture.

“Make way!” he shouted. “Make way!” I stepped aside, as did the rest of the crowd.

The young men and women were wearing tunics suited to the sport. The young women’s tunics are cut short, the better to reveal their charms. The young men wore ties wrapped around their left wrist, which enabled them to win prizes.

Young women, who are free, generally wore masks, if the rules of the match allowed, so that their modesty was less seriously compromised by the bare appearance of their tunics. However, if the girl was caught, her mask was torn off. The girls’ tunics were not removed, however, until the end of the match, when the winning city was announced.

Victory was determined when one side managed to take all the women from the “enemy”.  Once tied up and thrown into the girls’ pit, a woman could not be retrieved again until the end of the match, and then only on condition of victory. Captured women from the victorious city were freed, given back their clothes and honored; girls from the losing city, of course, were stripped and made slaves.

The sport may seem cruel, but some consider it superior to war: it’s much cleaner, with little risk of loss of life; it’s also a more honorable way of settling disputes.

Honor is important to Goreans, in a way that Earthlings might find difficult to understand; for example, Earthlings find it natural for men to go to war over gold and wealth, but not honor; Goreans, on the other hand, are more inclined to submit questions of honor to the judgment of steel than questions of wealth and gold. The explanation is simple: honor is more important to him. Strangely enough, the free girls of the cities are eager to take part in this sport. No doubt each of them believes that her side will be victorious and that she will return to her city covered in honor.

The young man brushed past me. The girl’s hair was still coiffed and knotted; it hadn’t even been freed yet, like a slave’s. Curled around her neck and locked, was a thin, common, gray steel slave collar. He’d put a label on it so it could be identified as his own. She had been from the Rarn, probably of high caste, judging by the delicacy of her beauty. Now she would be a slave in the river port of Ven, owned by a young man who seemed to be a sailor. Her lips were delicate and beautiful. Kissing her would be a pleasure.

This was the first year, incidentally, that masks had been allowed for young women in this tournament. The masks, however, had been feminine and reduced in size. They hid little and had no other purpose than to excite the men and stimulate them to the pursuit of beauty, culminating in its crude assault, capture and unmasking. Yet I suspected that the innovation, next year, would be abandoned. It was easier for spectators to bet on whether given girls would be caught, and how long they would still remain free, if their beauty was more visible to punters.

I looked after the young man. He was on his way to the stockade. There, he climbed onto one of the platforms and, placing the girl on her knees, ankles and wrists crossed and tied, at her feet, facing the Sardar, he untied her hair. Then he lifted her in his arms, hair untied, before the mountains of Sardar, rejoicing and giving thanks to the Priest-Kings that she was now his.

Magicians of Gor “