Brainstorming a Tournament Fighter one-shot

[JPL]

I’ve been kicking around an idea for a one-shot...the martial arts tournament. It’ll be d20 Modern, using some combination of Blood & Fists I and Martial Arts Mayhem as the main supplements. Help me brainstorm this thing, Enworlders. Here’s what I have so far:

- PCs will be pregen 10th level characters. Simple roleplaying hooks provided for each character...my regular guys do well with the funny accents.
- I might cast this like a movie — Jason Stathem, Tony Jaa, the Rock, Ray Park, etc.
- Early fights will be done as montages...each player gets handed a card describing his enemy, and has to improvised a description of the PC winning the fight. Good fight gets you an action point.
- I definitely want the whole Bloodsport “Fighting Round the World” feel — exotic fighting styles from around the globe.
- Still trying to figure out the actual storyline — there needs to be a point to this beyond “last man standing wins.” A murder mystery? Recovery of an artifact?

 

[Ilium]

You definitely need another plotline, I agree. One I've seen done before (I think it was in GURPS Martial Arts) is that the tournament itself is illegal and the PCs are infiltrating it. The guy running it is a big international crime lord (as well as an accomplished martial artist himself) and the PCs are trying to find evidence while at his island fortress for the tournament.

Actually wasn't that the plot of Enter the Dragon as well? Can't go wrong with a classic.

You could make it more personal by having one or more of the PCs blackmailed into participating by the crime lord. Either through secrets he threatens to reveal or even kidnapping associates, etc.

 

[JPL]

I thought about "Enter the Dragon," and I may end up going that route.

I'm a big fan of the "G.I. Joe" ninjas, and I thought about doing something like that, too --- an ad-hoc team of CIA or military martial arts experts assembled for this special mission. After running a few of these one-shots, I've decided that it works better with PCs who are sort of thrown together for this one mission --- you can let the players roleplay those first reactions, and even build some friction into the back stories of the PCs.

 

[Ilium]

The nice thing about giving the characters different reasons to be there is that it builds in tension. One character wants to bring down the bad guy, while another is more concerned with rescuing a loved one, while a third just wants to escape with his own skin intact.

Ideally, of course, their motivations converge. But it can lead to some good RP friction early on.

 

[JPL]

If I adopt the team approach, I might follow the structure of either the "Mission: Impossible" team (leader, tough guy, tech, pretty girl, man of a thousand faces) or the Special Forces A-team (leader, intelligence, medic, tech, engineer, weapons).

I ran a very well-received one-shot a while back where everyone played brothers. I might do a variation on that and make everyone members of the same martial arts school or ninja clan. There could still be a diverse range of styles represented --- maybe the school is a mixed martial arts operation (where they actively recruit fighters of diverse backgrounds), and maybe the ninja clan could include some "adopted" members with alternate backgrounds.

But more of an "every man for himself" structure would be more in-genre, I suppose.

 

[jezter6]

I agree with Ilium on this one. How much fun is Paranoia when everyone knows that everyone else is a commie mutant traitor, but can't really do anything about it because THEY are commie mutant traitors.

I would put together a list of secret agendas (or if your players are clever, let them create their own), and divy them out to each player. No player may divulge their secrets to another player. Some of them conflict with each other (one guy is tying to take down the crime lord, the other is the crime lord's personal spy who thinks someone is out to get the boss), but nobody knows who has WHAT secret. Let everyone know all of the secrets, even. Keeping them guessing as to who is doing what is 90% of the fun. Don't forget to divy some secrets out to NPCs so they have people to battle with, but try to make it so the NPC is tied to one of the other PCs secrets so that there's some internal squabbling.

 

[Vigilance]

Well, if you look at the advice I give in B&F, I do give several different plotlines and character hooks for characters to be in a tournament like that, some of which were addressed above (wanting to be Best of the Best, seeking a loved one, infiltrating an illegal tournament for the government).

Another might be a test for a Legendary Master. He might *assign* them to a gritty, bloody illegal tournament as a test of their "true character".

This could allow the players to enter as disparate group who do not know one another and leave as a cohesive team to study under the Master.

This is also very Enter the Dragon, if you think about the black character and John Saxon and Bruce Lee, all three had different reasons for being there, didn't know one another but came together through the tournament.

Chuck