Barroom brawl > Jail > Gladiators Arena

[jsepeta]

I'm building a 1 night 4E adventure for 5th level characters that I'm planning to run before our regular DM leaves us for another state. So far the 3 encounters I've planned include a barroom brawl, some jail time, and duking it out in an arena. I'd like the barroom brawl to be a free-for-all with ad-hoc weapons, the night in jail to be some kind of skill check, then the arena battle will be modeled after the crazy shtuff that Emporers Nero and Caliguila did during their reigns (this adventure is not for kids). Any suggestions? I'm designing the maps and encounters this week and hopefully will get some time to write the color text this weekend.

 

[Desdichado]

Ah, man! I misread the thread title as Barsoom brawl. Sorry! I popped in under false pretenses.

 

[Gilladian]

Barroom brawl - make sure you know how you're going to handle such items as chair legs, small kegs, sawdust or straw from the floor, oil lamps or candles, etc... being used as weapons.

Be prepared to give bonuses for higher ground (jumping from the bar), cover (ducking behind overturned tables), and how to assess damage from a person flying through a window.

Also know what penalties to give for various levels of drunkeness. And have plenty of NPCs to use - from the musclebound bouncer to the hapless barmaid, to the drunk wizard who can't quite get his spells off correctly.

However, if you want the brawl to end up with them in jail, make sure you wave some sort of carrot at them to encourage them to go peacefully - maybe a pretty girl (the barmaid?) sort of begs one of them not to let her be hauled away all alone and unprotected? Or at the last second the wizard offers one of them some reward for bodyguarding him in jail? Or an NPC stuffs something into a PC's hand and says "give this to Jack at the City Jail - he'll explain!" before vanishing...

Otherwise, PCs have a way of NOT wanting to be arrested while alive and in one piece... them or the guards!

 

[jsepeta]

gladiators in the arena

last night I did some historical research on wikipedia apparently the Colosseum was built AFTER Nero died on land that he had taken from the people to turn into a lake. so in a correction to my previous post, neither Nero nor Caligula used the Colosseum for staging military battles and gladitorial contests. and it appears that Christians weren't thrown to the lions there either.
Colosseum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

however the romans did do some pretty amazing things, as i had learned during my Latin class in high school.
1) they filled it with water and staged naval battles
2) Emperor Trajan staged 123 days of contests involving 10,000 gladiators and 11,000 animals
3) for theatrical performances, convicts who were given life sentences would be the "actors" put to death via methods as per the myths that were performed (set on fire, beheaded, etc)
4) somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 people would fill the Amphitheatrum Flavium. that's a huge crowd to control.

I'm expecting to stage a few "rounds". It will start off slowly, one pc vs. a lightweight, then doubling up, then throw in some animals and beasts. For our story, the pc's don't necessarily want to be in the arena, and they've been coerced to participate. For the final or next-to-final battle, I think throwing in a rust monster and some kind of other monster that dazes or immobilizes would make it more exciting. The emperor is "crazy", but crazy like a fox; he knows that since a lot of people paid good money to come to the show, he's going to give them their money's worth. The trick is to make each mini battle not take too long or be too complex, so that by the final ruckus the players will be a little spent but still have the capacity to battle.

**

as for the tavern, there will be NPCs who are trying to stay out of the fray (waitstaff, the barkeep's daughters). then there may be a few who are trying to get the place back under control (bartender, cook). players will be warned that they may not want to use lethal methods of protecting themselves and others. and improvised weapons are obviously part of the fun (chairs, tables, silverware, beer steins, stemware)

 

[jsepeta]

the Blood-Festival of Bane

So far the Blood-Festival of Bane is getting off to a good start. I've built a small Filemaker Pro database for dropping in the stats of the opponents and the condemned, and have written up about a page of intro and rules borrowing from the nice D&DI/dragon annual vol. 1 story on gladiators. The cleric of Bane is availing himself to the contestants to provide healing BUT whether or not he helps the player characters is based upon a roll of the die plus / minus buffs they get from their performance on the field. Obviously the blood-lust of the crowd must be satiated!

The tavern brawl may or may not occur, given the time constraints. It appears that the arena battle is the central focus, and it should give the pc's a good chance to meet out their mettle in glorious combat. They will be allowed to use their own weapons or any items which are dropped upon the field, and I'm going to use some nifty Gale Force Nine markers to change the terrain of the battlefield with various effects (bursts of poison & smoke, walls of flame & ice). Both the tavern map and arena map are GameMastery products. Today I'm mostly filling in the numbers and typing up some written "flavor" that may eventually be useful in a campaign setting somewhere down the line, or perhaps at a convention.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The brawl would be a great way for the PCs to end up in prison, and thus, the gladiatorial ring...you really shouldn't ditch it.

Consider starting the brawl in a dockside tavern- the PCs (for whatever reason) are in this dive, right off the bay- and when the action gets started, let things go a little "sandboxy." IOW, don't just keep the brawl in the tavern, let it spill out into the streets. That way you get a bigger variety of weapons (belaying pins, large fish, boxes & barrels, etc.), participants (sailors passing by, fisherman on their way home, criminals doing business, etc.), altitudes (rooftops, boats, the water itself, etc.). Who knows, maybe someone even smacks a Lamplighter by accident, sending his oil and wick skittering along the (wooden) dock.

That way, it can even turn into a riot that justifies calling out the Watch and the Firefighters, etc., as well as the harsh justice of the bloodsports.

For giggles, you could also add a twist to the bloodsports themselves. Just like modern sporting events, there could be concessionaires who sell things to help the crowd support their favorites. Only since its a FRPG, instead of noisemakers and pennants, what they're selling could be projectiles to throw into the ring. 1 CP gets you a rock. A SP gets you a bag of rocks. 1GP gets you some kind of weapon or buckler to toss to your fave. 1 PP gets you something alchemical- a tanglefoot bag, a vial of alchemist fire, a trogstink bomb, etc.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

BTW...not all Tavern owners & families were innocent.

I was watching one of those true crime shows on I.D.- I don't recall which one- that detailed the story of a family that ran an inn in the frontier of the American West...kind of like a "roach motel." Some travelers went in and didn't come out. They were robbed and killed.

When the scheme was discovered, the family fled...only to be revealed to not be a family at all, but rather a group of killers who pretended to be a family in order to put their targets at ease. (They were never caught, btw.)

Now...imagine that "family" running the bar in which your brawl is to be set...