Help with gladiator style campaign

[Delgar]

Hi everyone!

What I was hoping for was to pick everyones brain and just steal, errr I mean borrow some ideas. I'm thinking of starting a gladiator style campaign, how and why the players are in the ring I'll leave up to them and hopefully they'll give me some juicy plot hooks that I can take advantage of, err I mean use to help design adventures. Who am I kidding I don't have any players yet, but I'd like to have some background and ideas in place before any dice are rolled!

I have a copy of the recent dragon magazine that talks about gladiators and it's fairly useful and I'll probably steal some juicy tidbits from there. What I'm looking for is, some interesting things that could happen in the arena and outside.

Basically what it boils down to is I'm looking for

- Interesting Plots, small to gradiose.
- Cool NPC's, for both in and out of the ring.
- Strange adventure ideas
- Exotic Arena locales/Events

My goal is to create a campaign that centers around gladiator games, where the players live, breath and die in the arena.

"Please Help me ENWorld, your my only hope!"

Thanks in Advance

Delgar

 

[Igarashi]

I once played in a game centered around gladitorial combat, it turned out to be quite fun. The players started the game as adventurers, but were quickly defeated by a group of ogres and sold into slavery. A wealthy merchant bought us, and entered us as combatants in the local arena. The slaves were all kept in a common area, so the PCs had to carve out a living space for themselves in the already crowded dungeon that the gladiators called home. The slaves battled, and the winners were tipped by the audience if their performance was extrordinary (skills and powers 2nd edition, they often were ; ) Collect enough in tips, and one could buy their freedom! Unfortunately, we never got that far in the campaign, but it was fun while we played it.

 

[Sagan Darkside]

Do you have any ideas for what your world is like? Perhaps with a rough idea I could make some suggestions.

Have you looked at the X-Crawl product? It is a d20 setting set in modern fantasy time where the biggest sport is televised dungeon crawls. That book may have ideas for you to steal.

Plot ideas-
Well, if the gladiators are slaves, then you could have them treated like cattle. Owners are constantly trading them- and they have to deal with the odd natures of each owner.

You could have a gladiator whose enemies die mysteriously in the arena- without him touching them. The pc's need to figure out how he is doing it and how to avoid it- since they fight him next week.

If you are using a high magic world- then you could use magic to make the arena's more.. fun. Like small portals to the plane of water flooding the battle area of the arena - and bringing some outerplanar creatures along for the fight.

Or an arena that has a floor that randomly disappears at places- causing people to fall to their deaths. OR the arena floor is a series of wooden squares held by think ropes at each corner. There is a deep spiked put under the squares- allow fighters to defeat enemies by cutting the ropes of the squares they are on. This could lead to a lot of swinging about and such.

Semi-thick ice over freezing water containing some kind of monster would also be fun- as the ice breaks apart, they have to worry about falling in and what might come out.

Or battle the desert scene from Star Wars- a whirlpool of sand leading to tentcled monster at the bottom. There are pieces of jagged stone jutting along the sides of the sand- the fight continues until one side wins or both are eaten.

Good luck
SD

 

[Hand of Evil]

It all has to do with the road. Players start small, the farm leagues, small towns, entertainment for the troops, face all challangers, type of stuff. Then as they learn and get better they go to bigger arenas to face greater foes.

Treat them like sports stars, they have contracts and the person who buys them owns them, so they fight in this arena against this foe. Their contract can be sold, which means they meet other NPCs, maybe going somewhere not so nice. If they are slaves they don't have much choice, if they are free they still may not have much choice (break those legs).

Adventures - meeting people. Big stars press the flesh, visiting local temples, signing things, selling their sweat ((big seller in Rome) but mix with x, y, & z and maybe a potion of strenght).

Locations - standard, water, ice, hell? In a fantasy game you can have them all due to magic.

 

[DragonSword]

NPCs

Hmm... NPCs.

Well, firstly, there's the arena master(s). They sort out all the matches and 'referee' them. They might be high-level mages, or just businessmen out for a laugh.

Next, other gladiators. If they are free to roam around, they might ambush the PCs, trying to weaken them before a fight. There could be loads of match fixing and interferance as well. The PCs might have to make alliances with gladiators against ther gladiators. Could be fun!

This is one of those campaigns where if it was me I'd try to come up with loads of details, then let it run, without a definate adventure outline. Just let it flow.

DragonSword

 

[Delgar]

Wow, thanks for the replies so far.

Just in response to your comments and questions:

My plan is to make it a rich, immersive environment, with loads of detail and interesting NPC's, both Villians and Allies alike. I want the players to come up with their own reason why they are in the ring, but for the most part they'll probably be slaves or little better.

As far as the world itself, I have little detail in mind, I'm planning on starting small, very small, very unimportant. But then growing to possibly very vast magical arena's etc. In the begining I want to start out small.

Initially, I would start out the campaign like in movie Gladiator, where the slaves are tossed into the ring as fodder and they make a showing for themselves (hopefully). Also, it will hopefully give them a chance to work as a team. From there the sky is the limit, if I have interesting NPC's, some interesting plot's, dangle freedom, wealth and power in front of them, who knows where it will go.

Thanks for the ideas so far, keep them coming. I'm looking for anything. NPC personalities, sinister plots, or anything that you think is interesting.


Thanks in advance

Delgar

 

[Delgar]

No really does anyone have any more ideas? NPC's?

Really! Speak up!

Delgar

 

[gpetruc]

An idea for opponents could be to create enemies very specialized in a fighting style and so at the first time the PCs might lose (supposing they don't fight to death or similar) and later they'll have to find a good tactics against them
One fighting style that I wanted to try is using a quarterstaff as a double weapon and going spring-attack and so on.
Of course the spiked-chain guys are good also.

How about the (not very new) idea of couples of bonded fighters, with a little variant: every gladiator is bonded (with a chain ?) to a monster (all different kinds of monsters; CR equal to the PC level, probably).
(The monster should be friendly to the PC; this can be obtained through some magical spell researched by the arena leaders).
Example: Barbarian bonded to a dire bear fighting against a rogue bonded to a displacer beast ... or similar things.

 

[Sagan Darkside]

You could have a married couple- a rich and powerful old man with his beautiful young wife. She is enchanting and uses her beauty to manipulate men for her pleasure., and she has an eye for gladiators. He is incredibly jealous and has used his power to arrange deadly matchs for those he even suspects are thinking about his wife.

A pair of twins- one wants the other killed, so he (a capable fighter) signed up as his not so capable brother. The young gladiator promises to reward the pc's if they can keep him alive while he figures a way out of this situation.

A new cult is spreading throughout the lands- it is critical of the local governments, and the crime of worship soon becomes punishable by being thrown into the arena.

Good luck
SD

 

[Delgar]

Oh yeah, now that's the stuff, keep it coming!

My initial plan is to have all the PC's thrown into a ring, basically start the campaign off with a bloody battle royal, hopefully the PC's will all survive (deaths door and all). What I need are some interesting thugs/villians/allies to throw at them on the first day. Someone that they will despise or aspire too. Anyone have any good ideas here?

Thanks,

Delgar