Building an Arena Campaign

[Adam J Wells]

So i've read through the section in Ultimate Combat about performance combat, and played through the Ruby Pheonix Tournament using these rules. I fell in love with the system, and want to write a campaign about it.

While the storyline is fairly easy (Lulz, you're gladiators, don't die!) to write, the trouble i'm having is coming up with enough varieties of combat to keep things interesting on both ends.

So, i need ideas for all levels to make the most interesting combats possible. Any ideas, forums?

[jlord]

read/watch dragon ball.

Seriously. I think it's storyline has the best way to approach a arena campaign. Have a huge arena tournament every few years, and make them the highlight of the game, and in the off time have training adventures. Have some people they meet out adventuring be possible participants.

something like this...

Arena tournament (The one that you just ran)
Adventure (anything you want, maybe an evil cult gets taken down or something)
Arena tournament (remnant's of cult are in attendance. They are not above breaking the tournament's rules to get revenge. Can the pc's defeat them while still able to stay withing the rules of the tournament? imagine their faces when that 1 npc that got away is there!)

rinse and repeat, making each adventure and each tournament more epic.

Obviously Dragon Ball is about martial artists and not gladiators, but a tournament is a tournament. If you make it arena battle after arena battle, I'd imagine that players would get tired of it quickly.

Hopefully this helps a bit.

[J3Carlisle]

if the players of your campaign enjoy roleplaying as well as fighting, then throw in behind the scenes politics.

have at least one fight that takes place in a water arena, just because. You could have it set up like a sports league, Start the players in their "home" arena, and let them practice there for a bit, but then get them into the championships. Send them to differnt towns or countries to compete, which then opens the game up to playing outside of the arena, even leaving them open to attacks from other competitors and their, or their owner/managers, lackies

have at least one fight that takes place in a water arena, just because.

Make a maze arena, or some other compition with a goal other then just bashing in the other guys head.

If they are slaver gladiators, let them escape, and then send bounty hunters; Or, send them to retrieve escaped slaves

[Sethious]

I would recommend checking out Coliseum Morpheuon. It is an adventure based on a Coliseum in the Plane of Dreams. 17-20th level adventure, but has a lot of interesting arena encounters you could get ideas from. I haven't run it yet myself, but I have mined it on several occasions for some interesting encounters.

[Ross Byers]

This is a duplicate thread. Please use this one.