Monday 11 January 2016

Campaign

The starting positions of the first contestants.
This month saw my #1 son and I start an on-going campaign for gladiatorial combat.
We each "diced-up" the stats for five gladiators that ranged from volunteer Senators to criminals condemned to the arena.  Once their stats were known we allocated them to generic  roles of a 'light', two "mediums", a "heavy" and a "retiarius". - after they had fought once ib their 'generic' mode they could specialize into a specific  role after they had fought once in the arena.
Maneuverings leads to some interesting situations.
I had hoped for at least four participants but the two of us went ahead anyway. In my campaign, the number of ludi (read players) determines the prize money to be paid out to winning gladiators in addition to the fees paid for gladiators attending. As there were only the two of us he winning gladiators were paid 125 sesterces and another 200 sesterces were paid to the ludi for each participating gladiator, Has we had more players the fees would have been the same but the prize money increases up to a maximum of 1000 sesterces per winning gladiator.


The inevitable conclusion.
 The campaign is all about cash, with each player trying to accumulate the most cash .
To avoid the obvious problem of those winning combats accumulating so much wealth that they can outbid others at the auctions for new gladiators I've set the limit of how much cash can be held by each player's ludus at 2000s) and anything in excess of the 2000 that is gained goes into an untouchable  'deposit' account. This latter account is the milestone by which we determine 'winning' the campaign.
The rules do allow for the individual gladiators to accumulate "experience" (i.e. Experience points or XP) so that they can slowly get better statistics.
The start positions of the second bout
The stats that are used are Training, Strength, Agility, Constitution and Wounds. The number of combat factors (the points we use for attacks) is calculated from the addition of the training, strength and agility factors. Training factors range from 7 to 13 with an average of 9; Strength from -3 (yes it's a minus) to 5, average of 1; Agility from -3 to 4, av. 0; Constitution 1 to6, av.3; Wounds 8 to 15, av. 10.
And another one bites the dust...erm sand
One of the 'newer' ideas was to add in social origins to character generation, (as mentioned above), which not only gives a little more 'colour' and background to our gladiators, but also allows adds minor adjustments to a few of the stats. For example a gladiator that was a soldier has a training adjustment of +2, whilst a criminal has a -1 adjustment to his constitution stat.
There is also a "Prestige" (popularity) statistic that we have adopted, that gives a bonus in both combat factors and when appealing for a missus.


So that's it for this time, my campaign is off and running and in case you're wondering, I did win two very closely fought fights, the first by manoeuvre and the second by very good dice rolling !

12 comments:

  1. It all makes for very interesting reading!

    I would certainly love to be taking part in the campaign, as I love the whole ancient Roman gladiators genre, and XP -gaining tabletop games.

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    1. I would love to be have a regular participant too, so far no luck, but it's difficult finding an evening that suits everyone - like herding cats. - but I'm still hopeful
      If you or anyone else would like a copy of the rules I'm currently woring on, 9either the game rules or the campaign rules) just let me know. I use Microsoft Word btw but they can also easlily be put in PDF.

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    2. Thanks for the offer. I'd certainly not turn them down, as I'm collecting gladiator rules where I can so hopefully to piece together bits and pieces when I get around to playing with my own stuff [Lord knows when that will be :( ]

      If it isn't too much of a hardship for you, and when they're ready, I'd certainly welcome a .PDF copy of your rules. I don't have any Microsoft software on my laptop, unfortunately.

      Thanks again.
      Roy

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    3. Np Roy I'll send the rules after a quick tidy-up and after an amendemened has been added after our experiences in the campaign. It'll be no problem keeping you supplied with updates either (I'm on version 5 of my own sets.

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    4. Okay, cheers.
      Here's an email address which I use for blogger contacts.

      play [dot] by [dot] blog @ gmail [dot] com

      Obviously the above dots represent .

      Thank you
      Roy

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    5. OO, thnks I'll get yhose sent to you soon.

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  2. Sounds good and makes sense to cap the spending. Have fun!

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    1. Thanks Brummie, the cap n the spend I think is indeed a good idea that I'm still working on.

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  3. It sounds rather complicated on the paper, but I'm eager to see how this goes on. It would probably be more fun with more players, but at least there's 2 of you.

    Go #1 son!

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    1. Thanks Mattyoo, ideally I'd have liked more players at the start as it takes about twenty minutes for a player to set yup, which is time that couldbe spent fighting! Also the more gladitors attending an vevent the gigher the prize money each gets for winning !

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  4. A very nice scenario & minis. Greetings!

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