By Jesse Alexander — 2026

The Design Rule

Every sport in this book has a core that cannot exist anywhere else.

A sport that would work unchanged in our world is a reskin, and a reskin is not worth adding to a setting this specific. Where a real sport is named below -- football, boxing, strongman, squash -- it is there to make the shape legible in one line, not because the sport is a copy of it. MARCH is not football with a coat of paint. MARCH is football where the referee is a surveillance grid and each side may legally lie to it three times a match. That is the whole difference, and it is the only reason the sport is in this book.

Test every entry against this before you run it: what does this game do that could only happen in Terra Conflictus? If the answer is nothing, cut it.

What This Book Is

Fourteen games this world plays, outside the two that already have full treatment elsewhere in the line. Raid Race has its own companion, Raid Racers. The Crackerjack has its own chapter in the core Setting Guide (CH15, "The Crackerjack"). Neither is restated here.

Pt. I, the sanctioned tier, is the tier four billion people actually watch: franchises, owners, title sponsors, broadcast partners, shirts with somebody's name on them. Pt. II, the underground tier, has no franchises, no broadcast deals, and in one case no governing body at all -- the gap between the two tiers is most of what a sports desk in this world actually writes about. Pt. III covers four circuits that were already in the Brand Bible before this book existed. Nothing in that section invents new lore. In all four cases the central mechanic was sitting in the published description already, and the only work was noticing it.

What You Need

The Operator Tactics core rulebook. Six-sided dice. This document.

How It Runs

Every circuit resolves on the same D6 engine as standard OT play: meet or beat a threshold, natural 6 always succeeds, natural 1 always fails. Good is 2+. Ordinary is 4+. Bad is 5+. Nothing in this book replaces combat, the wound track, or Edge Tokens. These are new action families that run alongside them when a scene calls for a match instead of a firefight.

Standalone. Run any circuit as a one-off: a Catchwater meet the splice gets pulled into, a Stack game that turns into a shakedown, a Long Count challenge that costs somebody their patron.

Campaign frame. A season of any sanctioned-tier sport gives you a ticking clock and a cast whose personal dramas intersect with faction politics, the same way Raid Race and the Crackerjack do. The underground tier works better as texture and complication -- a Catchwater meet that exposes a contaminated Tier One supply, a Half Lap eligibility fight that becomes a splice-composition argument nobody wanted to have out loud.

Betting and the Feed. Every circuit in this book is watched, priced, and bet on somewhere. The Syndicate's book prices circuits before the card runs and settles after -- it never adjusts a result once it exists, and it never invents one that hasn't happened. If your table cares about that layer, a circuit's outcome is exactly as fixed or unfixed as everything else in this world's spectacle economy: rigged by whoever has leverage, watched by everyone regardless.

The Voice

Bold Term, description, mechanics. Second person where the text is talking to a GM or a player directly. The point callouts are not flavor text sitting next to the rules -- they are the rules' reason for existing, and they should never be cut for space.

MARCH

Where. Global. Eight clubs. Title sponsor IRONWELD COLLECTIVE, broadcast on FLOOD CHANNEL. Shape. Eleven a side. Four checkpoint lines. A weighted ball. Pitch. "Football, except the referee is a checkpoint grid and you are allowed to lie to it."

There are no human officials. Possession, offside, and the line itself are adjudicated by a surveillance grid, the same class of system that runs a district checkpoint. In a world where spoofing that grid is a consumer product, the sport did the only thing it could: it legalized the spoof and rationed it.

Ghost calls. Each side has three per match. A ghost drops the ball off the grid. For that phase the officials genuinely do not know where it is, play continues on the honor of two captains, and the grid re-acquires at the next line.

Ghost phases are +1 to advance, and anything that happens inside one is unreviewable forever. Roughly one goal in six is scored inside a ghost and cannot be checked by anybody, which is the single most argued-about fact in the sport.

Each phase, roll ADVANCE. Success moves a line, natural 6 moves two, natural 1 concedes the ball and a line. Four lines scores. Sixteen phases a side.

HIGHSIDE

Where. Arcology atria. Six clubs. Title sponsor VEKTORA, broadcast on CABLE MOUTH. Shape. Five a side, played upward. Pitch. "Basketball up the side of an atrium, where no single template can play every position."

Three targets.

The high target cannot be reached by a baseline or a heavy body. The low target cannot be held by a climber, which has no mass to defend ground with. A squad bred from one template physically cannot compete. A side that cannot reach a height also cannot contest it, so an opponent shooting there is unopposed.

THE SQUARE

Where. Global, pay-per-view. Title sponsor BURNER, broadcast on NULLCAST. Shape. Single combat, limited contact, template classes, ten rounds. Pitch. "Boxing, where the thing that makes a fighter great is the same thing that will strip their licence."

Four rival sanctioning bodies: the NAF Board, the Continental Council, the Free Zone Commission, the Open Register. Four belts. None recognizes the others. Unification has been attempted twice and collapsed both times over whose medical standard counts.

Drift is the career clock. A fighter's template keeps moving after they are grown, and it moves the same way for nearly everyone: reflexes sharpen, impulse control degrades.

A stoppage requires a natural 6 while the opponent is already three points down. Roughly two bouts in five end inside the distance.

CLEAN RUN

Where. The GSOTC, year round. Title sponsor BURNER, broadcast on FLOOD CHANNEL. Shape. One runner, eight obstacles, no opponent. Pitch. "An obstacle course that watches you fail and rebuilds itself to make sure the next one fails the same way."

Eight obstacles, ramping: the Slip, Cantilever, Dead Hang, the Shear, Rolling Face, the Gap, Tower, Last Wall. The opening obstacles are +2 and +1 to clear. Tower and Last Wall are -2.

The course learns. Any runner who fails at obstacle five or later causes that obstacle to be hardened by one grade, to a maximum of two, permanently. The adaptive terrain reviews the telemetry between attempts and rebuilds against whatever nearly worked.

About one attempt in a hundred and fifty reaches the end. There have been three clean runs in the sport's history, and two of them belong to the same woman, who has since retired and will not discuss it.

CATCHWATER

Where. PCU territory and the water blocs. Shape. Teams work a district's rooftop catchment network inside a rain window and deliver sealed allocation drums. What it is about. Nobody controls the clock.

The meter, not the scale. Inspectors don't check for dirt. They run a resonance meter over every drum, because catchment downstream of a Lumicite site carries trace substrate, and water that reads hot is barred from the allocation network. It is also worth several times the prize money to buyers who don't care about the allocation network. The best catchment on any card is the one the crews aren't supposed to work, everybody knows where it is, and the meter is the only thing between a district's drinking water and a very good payday.

About one entry in sixteen is barred at the meter.

Roll D6+3 for the rain window in rounds. Before that, roll 2D6: on a 3 or less the front breaks up and the meet washes out entirely.

Each team starts with 3 Seal. Each round, a team either presses or reseals.

Press. Roll the team's HAUL rating. Natural 6: +2 volume. Success: +1 volume. Failure: lose 1 Seal. Natural 1: lose 1 Seal and take 1 Contamination -- grey water in the drum is a deduction and everyone can see it.

Reseal. Roll the team's SEAL rating. Success restores 1 Seal, to a maximum of 3.

At the end of any round before the window closes, roll 2D6. On a 3 or less the rain stops early and everything still on the roof stays there.

Scoring. volume x seal, minus 2 per contamination. A team at 0 Seal delivers nothing at all, whatever is in the drums.

LOAD LINE

Where. Contested zones, everywhere. Shape. Two-person timed carry over a fixed route of five segments. What it is about. Registration.

Weight class is set by declared genome, verified against HELIX STANDARD.

Each turn, roll the pair's CARRY rating at -1 if carrying 110kg. Natural 6: clear 2 segments. Success: clear 1 segment. Failure: a drop -- the load goes down and they reset it. Natural 1: a drop, and the turn is lost as well.

Fewest turns wins. Drops break ties. A pair that has not finished in 18 turns is recorded as did not finish.

The unclassed division. An operator whose template has drifted past its registered range cannot be classed -- not because anyone judged them dangerous, but because the paperwork has nowhere to put them. The unclassed division exists to hold them. Everyone carries 110kg regardless of what they are. Roughly half the field does not finish. It is the best-attended event on any card and its results are not recognized by anybody, which is a sentence worth reading twice.

STACK

Where. Everywhere. There is no governing body and there never has been. Shape. A heavy ball and a vertical stack of salvage crates. Take theirs down while yours stands. What it is about. The rules change street to street, and that is the culture rather than a defect.

The crates are real salvage. Nobody in this world has spare purpose-made sports equipment, so a stack is whatever the district pulled out of the ground that month, and the contents are not always known. Most of it is inert. Some of it is pre-Upheaval and sealed for a reason.

On a natural 6 topple, roll two D6. On double 1 a crate splits on the pavement and starts reading: the game is abandoned, no result, everybody back up the street. This happens in about one match in thirty and it is the only thing that stops a game of Stack.

Both sides start with a stack 3 crates high. Roll D6 for house rules before every match. The house rules are not optional and not negotiable, and the visiting side does not get a say.

Twelve rounds. Each side throws once per round, rolling THROW. Success takes a crate, natural 6 takes two. A toppled stack scores 1 and both stacks are rebuilt.

The decider. Nobody walks off a tied stack. Play continues until one side scores. Every district settles it this way, and it is the one rule none of them argue about.

HALF LAP

Where. Gorodskie Ekho. EO and Kavast territory. Shape. A four-leg cold-weather pack relay run by mono-type genomic cohorts. What it is about. Genomic cohesion, and who is allowed to have it.

Eligibility. A cohort must be of one template. Scrutineering refuses anything else. A splice cannot enter this sport. That is not an oversight in the rules -- it is the rule.

Each cohort starts at 3 Cohesion. Each leg, roll PACE with a +1 at 3 Cohesion, +0 at 2, and -1 below that. Natural 6: 1 time unit. Success: 2 time units. Failure: 4 time units and lose 1 Cohesion -- somebody has come off the back.

At 0 Cohesion the cohort is Broken. They finish as individuals and are scored as such.

After every leg roll D6. On a 1 the cold takes a leg out of them: 1 extra time unit.

Lowest total time wins. Cohesion breaks ties.

DEAD AIR

Where. The UNSO Traveler, low Earth orbit. The mid-sphere corridors. Shape. A twelve-person league on a ship of nine hundred people, broadcast down. What it is about. There is no friction, so every action commits you to a vector.

Each competitor tracks Vector, from 0 to 5. Nine rounds.

Commit. Roll VECTOR at -1 per point of current Vector. Success: score 1, natural 6 scores 2, Vector +1. Failure: Vector +2. At Vector 5 you hit the bulkhead -- lose a point, reset to 0, and the corridor makes the sound it makes.

Shed. Roll SHED. Success reduces Vector by 2.

THE LONG COUNT

Where. Global. Kept by BAFO. Shape. Not a league. A record book. What it is about. The only leaderboard where the holders keep dying.

Three standing records.

A challenger declares a record and makes an attempt. Roll their rating. Failure is an attempt that came up short -- nothing changes. Natural 1 and the challenger does not come back. Success is not enough on its own: the mark only falls on an exceptional run, a natural 6 on the attempt or a clean attempt backed by a 6 on the measure. Then roll D6 for the margin.

A record falls roughly once every year and a half. A challenger dies roughly every other session. Both of those numbers are the point.

TRAVERSE LEAGUE

Where. Contested cities. Flooded London hosts the flagship twice a year. Pitch. "Urban crossing judged on style, where nobody is allowed to ask who you are."

The League runs on callsigns and has no genomic registration policy, deliberately. That makes it the one circuit on Earth where a competitor barred everywhere else can still compete: an operator whose template has drifted past its registered range, one on a detention list, one whose genome is claimed as property by a faction that would like them back. They enter under a callsign and nobody at the desk asks.

Roughly a third of any Traverse field cannot legally be competing somewhere else. This is the exact inverse of Load Line, which exists to class people by genome, and the two circuits are the clearest statement the sports world makes about registration.

Five crossings. Roll CROSS for each. A failure ends the run there. Each cleared crossing scores 2 points and triggers a STYLE roll worth 1, or 2 on a natural 6, at +1 if the crossing itself was a natural 6. Style is judged, not measured, and it is half the sport.

CANAL SPRINT

Where. Flooded London, the submerged lower city. Pitch. "Two-person boat racing where the course is inside a drowned building and the tide decides which rooms still exist."

Roll D6 for the tide and D6 for whether it is rising. The tide moves one step every leg, across four legs. Five routes, each passable only inside a band of water levels.

The navigator rolls first and picks the line. On a success they take the fastest route that is actually open. On a failure they take whatever they took. If the route has closed by arrival the boat backs out and loses seven, which is a leg and a half.

The engine then rolls for the leg time.

BURN RUN

Where. Flooded London, Gorodskie Ekho, the Amazonian Metroplex. Pitch. "Competitive tagging through a live contested zone, where the tags are indistinguishable from real operator marks."

Six relay points inside a fixed window. Roll RUN to reach each one; a failure ends the run. Each point reached scores 2. Then roll MARK: a legible signature scores another 2, and a natural 6 adds 2 style.

The misread. On a natural 6 mark, roll 2D6. On a 4 or less that signature is clean enough that somebody takes it for a real station mark. It happens about once every four events.

THE ROPE

Where. Flooded London neighborhoods. Pitch. "A circuit with no bracket, no purse and no organizer unless somebody volunteers, where the only prize is a line in an archive."

First, roll 2D6. On a 4 or less nobody volunteered to organize it and there is no meet. No announcement, no fixture, nobody to be annoyed at. This happens about one meet in six.

Otherwise pick an organizer from the field and roll the category: rope traversal, load carry, timed crossing, or contested weather. Three attempts each, rolling ROPE. Success scores 2, a natural 6 scores 3.

The top three go into the Burn Archive's quarterly documentation, and that is the entire prize. There is no money and there never has been. Being on the Burn Archive leaderboard is the whole point, and the leaderboard is the only thing that accrues.

The Fixed Names

IRONWELD COLLECTIVE. Title sponsor, MARCH. Also fields a Canal Sprint boat -- buys engines, not navigators.

VEKTORA. Title sponsor, HIGHSIDE. Also sponsors a Canal Sprint boat.

BURNER. Title sponsor, THE SQUARE and CLEAN RUN. The green-label energy drink brand that isn't a company so much as a recipe in wide circulation (see the core Setting Guide, CH05, "The Brand Bible"). Sponsoring two circuits at once is on-brand: BURNER shows up at every table regardless of theater.

FLOOD CHANNEL. Broadcasts MARCH and CLEAN RUN.

CABLE MOUTH. Broadcasts HIGHSIDE.

NULLCAST. Broadcasts THE SQUARE -- pay-per-view, appropriately opaque.

BAFO. Keeps the Long Count. Not a sponsor. The only institutional presence in this book that isn't selling anything.

Clubs Worth Naming

Ekho Ascent. HIGHSIDE club. Hasn't fielded a climber-template player in two seasons, grinds low and mid targets to win anyway, hasn't scored a three in that entire stretch. The crowd counts.

The Interchange market's boat. Canal Sprint, unsponsored. Top three finish four years running on navigation alone -- an ordinary engine paired with a navigator who knows which arcade is open at tide four. The book everyone else buys does not cover that.

District Stack teams. No club structure exists -- Stack has no governing body and never has. A team is whoever's district pulled the crates that month. House rules travel with the district, not the team.

By Sport

Reading This Table

Most circuits use one or two named rolls that stand in for the specific skill the sport tests -- CARRY for a Load Line pair, PACE for a Half Lap leg. Where the source material didn't name a roll (Highside's shooting, The Square's exchanges, Canal Sprint's navigation and engine work), run it on the closest standard OT attribute and let the height, drift, or tide table carry the modifier instead. The circuit's texture lives in its track and its modifiers, not in inventing a new named stat for its own sake.

Tracks that cap eligibility, not just score:

• The Square's Drift track ends a career at 5, not just a bout.
• Half Lap's Cohesion track breaks a cohort into individuals at 0.
• Catchwater's Seal track can zero out a team's entire delivery regardless of volume hauled.

Tracks that reset rather than accumulate:

• Dead Air's Vector resets to 0 on a bulkhead hit, at a cost.
• Clean Run's obstacle grades ratchet up permanently but the runner's own progress resets on every attempt.

GM Note on Voided Results

None of these sports invent a "the GM decides" outcome. Every track above resolves from the dice as written. If a scene needs a circuit result and nobody wants to run the full mechanic, use the sport's stated base rate instead: roughly 1 in 6 MARCH goals inside a ghost call, roughly 1 in 150 Clean Run attempts finishing, a Long Count record falling about once every year and a half. Treat these as flavor, not as replacement math -- they describe what a season looks like, not what any single roll should do.

The Underground Tier

The Sanctioned Tier

No published season calendar exists for the sanctioned tier the way it does for the underground -- franchises run on broadcast schedules set by their title sponsors, and those shift year to year with the sponsorship deals. Treat MARCH, Highside, and The Square as running roughly year-round with a season climax that a GM can place wherever the campaign needs it. Clean Run is the exception: it runs at the GSOTC continuously, sharing terrain with the Crackerjack Competition (core Setting Guide, CH15), so it's always live and always available as a cold open.

Legacy Circuits

Canon Anchors

This book draws directly from:

• tc2066_sports_desk/NEW_CIRCUITS.md -- the source manuscript for all fourteen sports, their mechanics, and their "the point" framing.
• tc2066_sports_desk/sim/sportnotes.py -- the canon one-and-two-sentence descriptions shared with the live site (THE LINE, THE SPREAD). This book's tuning-fork lines stay aligned with these.
• tc2066_sports_desk/sim/circuits.py, crackerjack.py, raidrace.py, canoncircuits.py, bigleagues.py -- the simulator adapters that actually run each circuit's fixtures. Sponsor names, tier assignments, and fixture structure here should match what the sim runs; if the sim changes, this book's specifics should be checked against it before the next printing.
• Core Setting Guide, CH05 "The Life" -- the Feed, flicker-paint culture, and the underground economy of spectacle that all fourteen circuits sit inside.
• Core Setting Guide, CH15 "What Plays Here" -- the Crackerjack and Raid Race campaign frames, which this book does not restate.
• RaidRacers_Print_Edition -- the full companion for Raid Race, referenced but not duplicated here.

Design principle: a sport earns its place in this book by doing something the real world's version of it cannot. Everything else is a reskin, and reskins don't get a chapter.