Need some gladiatorial inspiration

[Oryan77]

Check out the old AD&D adventure Sea of Blood.

It was an underwater Sahuagin city based adventure but it had a cool gladiator arena scenario in it. There were several different "games" that the PC's had to run through in the arena.

I modified these a bit from what the book had, but here are the basics:

One was a race around the rim of the arena inside a tube. There was a monster chasing them in the tube and guards poking spears through holes into the tube. The monster is fast & might catch up to you before you make it to the end of the track. You had to dodge spears and the monster behind you.

There was a battle between a large monster and several gladiators.

There was the 1-on-1 gladiator fights in the bottom of 10' deep pits with only daggers.

Then there was the game where 2 gladiators are paired up to fight 2 other gladiators (like in the movie Gladiator).

 

[Thanael]

Here's a nice Half Orc Barbarian Pit Fighter NPC from d20 NPC wiki. (Neill the Orc Barbarian anyone?)

And here's a link to two excellent Arena NPCs (Arena Manager and Arena Conjurer) from the great Dagger Guild generic Thieves Guild NPCs on DMTools.org. (For anyone interested here's the compiled backstory of the Dagger Guild including some info on the arena)

 

[taferial]

Heres a thought,

If you want to promote actual gladatorial showmanship, rather than rutheless combat effecienty. You could be quite heavy handed with bonous's and penalties imposed by the collective will of the watching masses, and as this is a dream sequence, you can justify it very easily. As the crowds opinion of the fighters swings back and fourth you could grant one side or the other DR for example, have a unlikely reversal when an dirty move is used, that kinda thing.

I might also prepair some lines of dialog from an anouncer to give em some clues "Uh oh... look like team dead meat are all ganging up on Tabulazon the over endowed, the crowd isnt going to like that..." (tabulozon suddenly gets dr 10) "Wow... what an amazeing move from the tatood terror, and the crowd go wild! (tatood monk gets to add d4 stat (charazma could be nasty) damage to his next sucessful hit).

Dialog from the bad guys can realy help too (tabulazon rolls to hit - hits, bellows "MONKEY PLUCKS TWO PEACHES!" dm describes a rather nasty punch (or grapple, crowds love grapple fights) to the batheing suit parts, and rolls damage as normal. I like to use "trade mark" moves whenever a critical hit is scored too, nat 20 = the most electrifing move in sports entertainment today... I Describe the blood, smell and noise fairly constantly as well as the ever present food vender selling ocolots noses.

I also have this image of a kind of selection board, where the crowd gets to choose the oponents and the battle ground for the party, where the party gets to watch, death itself, in the form of 6 halflings and 4 groups of 99 bezerkers roll past. possible battle grounds like a flooded arena filled with aboleths, or lava pools and fire giants and so on. All the time talking to yourself "diddnt anounce the name of your trade-mark move... mutter... no flashy acrobatics...mutter" rolling D20's like mad, and suddenly look up from your home made tables and look worried.

In the above senario id even try to encourage the players to try to influence the crowd for a prefered fight, they try to go for a wussie fight and the half dragon titon gains a few votes, to brave and the comedy encounters gain a few (germalians with a joke shop!) till they hit on your prefered fight. No harm in letting em feel they have some controll of their destiny.

As you can probably tell, I love gladiator encounters, I dont do em too often though, I have too much fun.

 

[Ilium]

This is great stuff everybody, thanks! The Dream Arena plot line starts tomorrow. I'm going to have the PCs all "wake up" in an impenetrable fog on sandy ground. The real arena is in a city on an island and the dream arena reflects this, so with the sand, fog, smell of the sea and maybe a gull cry in the distance, they should assume they're on a beach. But then they'll hear the announcer's voice, the murmur of the crowd, and the fog will lift to show their opponents for the day.

First fight will be a bunch of orcs led by the frenzied berserker Dyx linked to (thanks). I'll be incorporating as many suggestions from everyone I can, including Taferial's ideas about letting the crowd influence things. That should get the bard involved (when his player shows up for the next session).

Oryan, I love that idea of the race against the big monster while bad guys try to skewer the racers. Could encourage the old "I don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than you" mentality.

Edit: I'll let everybody know how it went next week. Wish me luck!

 

[Ilium]

Ok, so it's been a few days, but here's my report:

Things went pretty well overall. We had a small turnout of actual players, so we only had the fighter/duskblade, the favored soul and the monk. So I turned down the opposition a little. THere was the 10th level barbarian/frenzied berserker that Dyx linked to, plus three more orc barbarians (5th level). At the last minute I realized that I had a supply of perfectly good maps with interesting terrain: My DDM maps. They're perfect for a magically-created arena that can look like anything. I trotted out Field of Ruin and had the announcer explain that the audience was seeing a re-creation of the barbarian wars of the north. He played up how exotic the PCs and their opponents were (calling my wife's character a "noble savage princess" really went over big ).

The fight went well, with people using the terrain to their advantage. All the orc fodder were taken out in fairly short order (mostly by arrows from the fighter). The favored soul and monk both ended up being knocked to negative HP and the berserker was climbing up the side of the tower the archer was on when she finally filled him with enough arrows to stop him. Actually, I wasn't sufficiently prepped and didn't realize that the frenzy ability lets you ignore death while the frenzy is underway! If I had done it right, I'm pretty sure he would have gotten all three of them before collapsing.

It put a good scare into everybody. The next one will be a fight against weird monsters (owlbears, maybe). At that time, I'll try to introduce the mechanic of using crowd approval to gain DR or other bonuses.

Thanks again for the help everybody.

 

[Quartz]

You could always have audience participation! Low-level spellcasters in the audience might cast spells at or on the PCs - nothing more than 2nd level spells, though.

Or every other round or two, there's a Dispel Magic cast that affects everybody.

 

[taferial]

Sounds great, im glad it went well.

I realy like the noble savage princess bit too.

Frenzied berserkers scare me a lot too, think ive seen and read more third edd TPK's involveing FB's than dragons.

Best of luck for your next session.

 

[funkysnunkulator]

depends on how twisted you are. what kind of pathos are you aiming for?

plymorphed children who look like orcs?

big big badass at the end.... looks like an orc... sort of.... waitaminit!!! it's a thousands of... bugs.... waitaminit.... they're growing..... GODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they're ALL orcs... armed ORCS!!!
- the invasion begins.... -