Squashgoblin

Originally from Tournaments, Fairs, & Taverns, but edited for locality into The Dome.

This game is played exclusively by dwarves; few other races can work stone well enough to make it possible. It is likely that no other culture would care to play it in any case. Curiously, the game is not popular among the mountain dwarves, but instead quite popular among the hill dwarves, specifically centered within the town of Solrest.
It was developed from Dwarven “boulder runs” – worked sections of tunnel used for boulder traps – Squashgoblin involves four teams of Dwarves rolling large boulders through narrow tunnels, trying to use the boulder to crush effigies that represent Goblins.

History

Prior to the times of the more standardized runs, most towns were protected by enormous runs with the tunnels some 20 feet wide (or more) and the settlement's structures would be situated atop the walls of the run. It seems incongruous that this would exist in the lands of the hill dwarves, but several locations exist where the natural land features were snaking tunnels that needed only to be deepened and smoothed out. Once done, placing the structures atop them made them nearly as defensible from the surrounding wilds as walls.
In traditional boulder runs, once Dwarven enemies entered the run, teams of Dwarves would push boulders about to flatten them. A series of gently curving loops was a common feature of the boulder runs, allowing the boulder pushers to build momentum. Different crews of boulder pushers would often compete to see who could squash more goblins. Eventually, Dwarven leaders began holding peacetime competitions in boulder pushing as a useful and amusing bit of defense practice. Eventually it turned from wargame to sport, and the tunnels were widened to allow two teams to run boulders at the same time. The design for the run has now been pretty well standardized, although some regional variations may occur in the placement and number of loops.

Execution

Squashgoblin is played by four teams of three Dwarves each, in a maze of tunnels filled with twenty-five straw or wooden effigies of Goblins, which are strewn and hidden about the run.
Each team rolls a three-ton stone boulder, four-and-a-half feet in diameter. The tunnels themselves are just short of ten feet wide, big enough for two boulder teams to just barely pass each other by, if needed. Usually two Dwarves push the boulder while the third runs ahead, scouting for Goblins and warning of oncoming traffic. Most players memorize the layout of the run and can easily keep track of where they are, so hitting unexpected walls is rarely a problem, even though the Dwarves pushing the boulders cannot even see what is ahead of them. Most teams have detailed codes they can shout to each other so they can know when and where to turn, and how fast.
Teams may not intentionally have their stones contact members of the other team, nor can they themselves take any offensive action toward the other team, and are penalized by losing points if the judges think they were not trying hard enough to warn the other team. Similarly, it is against the rules to use one’s own body to impede the progress of the other team. If anyone is crushed under a stone, the game is immediately stopped, with first concerns going toward the injured. Stones are allowed to contact, however, and crowds love when two huge stones crash into each other, resounding through the caverns. It is wholly against the rules to move Goblins before they are crushed, but team scouts are encouraged to shove crushed effigies into corners to make the path clearer.
Once all the effigies have been crushed, the team that crushed the most is the winner. Judges and spectators watch either through trapdoors, or from high overhead, to confirm the scores. Because of the effort necessary to make a Squashgoblin run, most are equipped with open ceilings so they can be easily observed by crowds, without making the game any easier for the players.

Participants

Unless otherwise noted, all the tunnels in Squashgoblin are about ten feet wide, approximately twelve feet high, with flat floors of smooth stone that have no slope. though the stones are too heavy to push or drag normally, the smoothness of the tunnels and the stones makes their movement possible.

Movement

Accelerating and Decelerating

• A stone’s base speed is 0.
• As a move-equivalent action, a stone may be accelerated by 5 ft with a Strength check (DC 20), and it will start moving in whatever direction the Dwarves push it.
• Each round, a stone will deccelerate by 5 ft unless the Dwarves either increase its speed again (DC 20) or keep up the current momentum (DC 10).

All these Strength checks are move-equivalent actions, but the Dwarves automatically move with the stone. Up to two people can work together, using the assisting rules (one pusher is the main pusher, with any helper granting advantage on the DC 10 STR check). Regardless of how hard it is pushed, the stone will never move faster than it’s pushers (i.e. up to the maximum movement speed of the main pusher).

Reversing Direction

• Obviously the stone will never go into reverse on its own, but a Strength check (DC 25) can slow it by 5 more feet, in addition to the 5 ft it naturally slows down by.
• Alternately, if the stone is already at a complete stop against a wall, the Dwarves can attempt this Strength check (DC 25) to make it start moving backward at a speed of 5 ft.
• This also works if they want to change directions, which usually requires either a full stop (the hard way), or slamming the stone into a wall at an angle (the easy way).

Changing Lanes

Since the tunnels are wider than the stones, they can be shifted slightly from side to side, referred to as ‘changing lanes.’

• Whenever the Dwarves attempt one of the above Strength checks, they may choose to also adjust it sideways 5 ft in either direction, as a free action (Strength check DC 10).
• For example, in one round, the team could use their two move actions to try to accelerate the stone twice to a speed of 10 ft, and shift it over 10 ft as two free actions.
• A team may try to shift the boulder 10 ft as one action (DC 25), but a boulder can shift no more to the side than it moves forward in a given round.

Stopping

When a stone strikes a wall (and it will), the results depend on its speed and angle.

• Straight-On Impact
• If the stone has not ‘changed lanes’ this round, it will usually strike straight on, dealing 1d6 points of damage to the wall and to itself, or 2d6 if it is moving faster than 50 ft per round.
• The same will happen if two boulders strike head on. Since stone has a hardness of 8, this is usually negligible, especially since each team’s boulder has 1,800 hit points.
• Particularly old stones might be a bit more fragile, but Dwarves are picky about these things, so they won’t use substandard boulders.
• Slight Angle
• If the stone has changed lanes in the past round, it is considered to be moving at a slight angle, and so any damage dealt or received is halved, since the stone will roll slightly against whatever it strikes.
• Either way, the stone will instantly stop if it hits a wall or another boulder, even if it only hits half-on, which is often much faster than trying to slow down and possibly back up to go down a perpendicular corridor.
• Curved Tunnels
The one exception to this is when the boulder is rolling down one of the curving tunnels on the corner of the run.
• A boulder that hits the wall in one of these tunnels will slow down 5 ft, but will follow the curve of the tunnel freely at its remaining speed, without the Dwarves having to manually change its angle.
  • For example, if a boulder is traveling at 40 ft per round when it enters one of the roundabout tunnels, it will slow to 35 ft per round, but continue moving.
• It will not slow down beyond the first round it is in the tunnel (aside from normal slowing down if the Dwarves stop pushing), because the walls let it smoothly arc, so the Dwarves must still push it, but it sometimes requires less effort than trying to slow the boulder to a stop and get it moving again.

Specifics

• If a stone rolls into a person’s square, the victim takes 10d6 points of damage (DC 5 DEX save to avoid, with a +1 increase to the DC for every 10 ft the stone is moving).
• Since the Goblin effigies have 5 hit points and are immobile, they are instantly crushed.
• Pushing heavy boulders is about as taxing as running, so count each round of acceleating the boulder as one round of running for determining how long a team can keep pushing it.
• If they are both accelerating it and running (such as if the boulder is traveling faster than 40 ft per round), count each round as two rounds of running.
• Just keeping the boulder at the same speed is not a substantial exertion.
• Whenever a boulder rolls over a Goblin effigy, the team must make a DC 5 STR check or else the boulder changes lanes 5 ft either to the left or right at random.

Observance

Squashgoblin is a regular pastime within several Hill dwarf communities, but the pinnacle of the year is during the festival of Solisday. Several matches are performed throughout the three day festival with the winning team taking home a sizable prize pot and listed as champion for the year.

Primary Related Location

Solrest

Dwarvish generals keep asking for permission to round up real Goblins and employ them in Squashgoblin tournaments, but most thanes forbid such cruelty, because rumours say that Duergar actually do do such a thing.