I don't know which forum to post this in, but I thought it might be fun to share.
I teach a middle-school afterschool program where kids play tabletop RPGs, and every semester we have a 2v2 tournament. This semester, the kids have gotten involved designing the arenas themselves.
Possibly inspired by the NBA playoffs, and my own adaptation of the arena from Catching Fire with random events last fall, one of my students came up with the idea of our next arena being a basketball court! He had a lot of other crazy ideas too, including turning the court into an ice hockey rink, but I had to limit the concept so that it didn't overshadow the optimization choices made by the players.
I made up a ruleset for Pathfinder characters to play basketball, only "without those fussy rules that get in the way of violence."
Just thought folks might enjoy this!
(And we don't yet have an idea for our Championship Arena! I'd love to hear some of your ideas!)
Why? I kind of like the idea of a game ruled by something other than optimization.He had a lot of other crazy ideas too, including turning the court into an ice hockey rink, but I had to limit the concept so that it didn't overshadow the optimization choices made by the players.
In the class, we already have adventures set up where role playing and creativity are the norm. The tournament is a place for some fun competition, and if I were to have an ice rink then the characters who had the ability to fly would have a distinct advantage, and the potential fun created by the ice rink would be transformed into an annoying and unfair disadvantage for some players.
Time and place and all that.