Need help describing a pit fighting arena!

[papa_laz]

So the PC's descend a wooden staircase and find themselves in the basement level of the tavern. The room is circular with a 50ft diameter, and descends steeply towards the pit, 20ft diameter, which is located in the center of the room. At this point my brain refused to function. I want to describe how large stone slabs, which give the spectators places to sit, descend incrementally, sort of. You know how in amphitheater's usually have perhaps a dozen rings of stone blocks that descend, forming seats for the spectators. Can anyone come up with an eloquent way of describing this?

 

[papa_laz]

BUMP!

Is there a more appropriate forum I should post this?

 

[Sigurd]

Most arenas of this sort were probably open air.

Have you considered how it would be lit? How the roof above it would be supported? Of course you don't have to be realistic, but I find that sometimes realism gives me many of my details.


For example, if it were like the coliseum of Rome, it might be a pit open to the sky surrounded by rising concentric circles of elevated seating

-S

 

[Leif]

I'm certainly willing to try....

So the PC's descend a wooden staircase and find themselves in the basement level of the tavern. The room is circular with a 50ft diameter, and descends steeply towards the pit, 20ft diameter, which is located in the center of the room. At this point my brain refused to function. I want to describe how large stone slabs, which give the spectators places to sit, descend incrementally, sort of. You know how in amphitheater's usually have perhaps a dozen rings of stone blocks that descend, forming seats for the spectators. Can anyone come up with an eloquent way of describing this?

This should get you started good (hopefully):

In the back of the tavern, you descend a narrow, rickety wooden staircase. As you step off of the last, squeaky stair you find yourselves in a round, earthen chamber approximately 50 feet across. The chamber is lit with flickering torches in sconces spaced evenly around the room. The room is filled with a pall of smoke that gradually drifts up through a grate in the center of the ceiling. The room itself is arranged like a theater, with concentric circles of stone benches and several aisles leading in towards the center, and with the floor of the room gradually sloping downward as you near the center. The focus of the room is its center, which is the lowest part of the room. It is a circular area approximately 20 feet in diameter. A couple of feet inside the innermost circle of benches is a raised, stone ledge two feet high, which serves as the edge of the innermost pit, which drops some five feet below the bottom of the ledge. The floor of the pit appears to be sand.

How's that look to ya?

 

[papa_laz]

Thanks mate, that sounds great. Though I'll probably have to dumb it down a bit to fit in with the my writing.

 

[Leif]

I'm very glad that you like it! My co-DM and I have said that we may use it to describe something in our game, too, you wouldn't mind us doing that, would you?

 

[papa_laz]

Of course you may use it my good man! Remember, sharing is caring.

 

[Leif]

Roger that!