Multiplayer Battle Arena scenario?

hi there.

we are four players in our gaming group and I'd like to do a scenario that roughly goes like the following:


1) each player nominates a certain amount of warriors from his warband (e.g. 4).

2) Their names are put into a "tree" (as in football world championship for example), distributed randomly but in a manner fighters dont have to battle others from the own warband (although that might be fun also ... hehe)

3) so all warriors are assembled into starting pairs whereas they fight until one goes ooA. (much like in the event "pit fighter" of the serious injury chart).
the winner goes one round further and encounters the winner of another pairing and so on until two warriors stand in the final.

4) the winner (and maybe also the 2nd and 3rd rank) win some nice prize.

*the question is if a winner gets one experience point for every model he puts ooA (or maybe 1/2, rounded up)?
*what happens to ooA-ed models: do they have to roll on the injury chart?
*instead of duels should there be one warrior of each player beating themselves up simultaneously?


---> what do you think of the scenario? is this "thrilling enough" after all or should one implement the certain possibility that the spectators may run into the arena and participate in the beating up?

as you see this whole scenario is still very much in the beginning of development. therefore any suggestions would be highly appreciated. or maybe you even developed such a (similar?) already...

PS. I know about the Pit Fighter Game of Mordheim but thats rather not what I am looking for, as it tends to be a game on its own and a single game with it does not make too much sense. Its rather made for a "campaign" of pit fighting games IMHO...

These two questions are, to my mind, fairly closely related:

*what happens to ooA-ed models: do they have to roll on the injury chart?

*the question is if a winner gets one experience point for every model he puts ooA (or maybe 1/2, rounded up)?

I have reversed the order you asked them because I think you need to decide on your answer the first one before determining the second one.

Do OOA models roll on the serious injury chart (which I think is what you meant)?

If the answer is NO, then they should not earn experience for taking someone OOA. No real risk = no real experience reward. You might cobble something up in terms of experience, but you would need to be conservative, i.e. semi-finalists earn 1 experience point, the 2nd place guy 2, and the winner 3. I think a better way to handle it would be to require each warband to pay an entrance fee, and have the money divided up according to some formula - and just forget experience.

So, say four warbands, each sending forward four members to enter the competition. The entrance fee is 4 g.c. per warrior. In effect, the loser of the first round loses all his fee, and the winner gains it. In subsequent rounds, the loser loses half his current winnings, and the winner gains half the loser's winnings, rounded up.

You win round one: you have 8 g.c. (including your starting 4).
You win round two: you have 12 g.c. (you lose, you have 4 and break even)
You win round three: you have 18 g.c (you lose, you have 6)
You win round four (the final with 16 warriors): you have 27 g.c. (you lose, you have 9).

If the answer is yes, they do have to roll on the serious injury chart, then they should earn an experience point every time they take someone OOA, because everyone is actually risking life an limb.

You could combine yes/with experience with some sort of monetary reward like the one above, of course.

One potentially interesting wrinkle: if a warrior has an opponent knocked down or stunned, the warrior can ask the disadvantaged warrior to yield. If the down warrior yields, there is no serious injury roll, but the victor only receives half an experience point (although the full monetary benefit for winning the round).

The spectator angle you mention is an interesting one. It might be fun to have some sort of tracking system to see how popular/unpopular a team is, based on results of match-ups and other variables (a bonus for scoring a critical hit, for example). Someone who has been chivalrous and allowed two victims to yield who himself is stunned and offers to yield - but is taken OOA by an experience-greedy opponent, might increase the unpopularity of the victor's team. You would need some element of random variation in how the crowd reacts (they being fickle and all). But you could work up tables of random happenings that can occur when a warband becomes extremely unpopular (people throwing bricks, with a chance a member of that team goes OOA) or extremely popular (a wealthy member of the crowd gives a member of the popular team an ithilmar rapier).

Could be fun. I'm looking forward to seeing how you develop this idea.

My group did something very similar to your idea a few years back. We used it as a way to make or break higher Warbands. The fluff idea behind it was, that Warbands could enter into the arena and do battle. The Arena Owners and Spectators would gamble on the Warbands fighting. Each Warband at the end received 100 gold for fighting. The winning Warband also received an additional 1D6X10, gold. The battle was to the end. Every member of the enemy Warband had to be OOA to win. The game started by lining up your Warband members in any order you choose outside the arena gate on each player’s side. At the start of each player’s turn, 1 more fighter enters the arena. This includes everybody in the Warband, whether they are Fighters or Shooters. This did exclude those with Old Battle Wound (if rolled), and those missing games. Just like adventuring into Mordheim. Also, the Pitfighter Skill was in play for those that had it.

The Arena was a 2x2 foot square. We used Dwarven Forge pieces. In the Arena, we put barrels, crates, short length walls. There were no dead ends, so everyone could move without being too cornered. Also, every fighter had to move at least every other round. This was to prevent shooters saying in a corner and just shooting. The Spectators wanted Blood, not to watch target practice. If a fighter violated the move rule, that fighter received d3, S3, arrow shots, with no range or cover penalty from the Arena Guards.

After battle, there is no exploration, because there wouldn’t be any Wyrdstone in the Arena. Just take you gold and go. OOA’s are rolled as normal. Treat Captured and Sold to the Pits as full recovery.

We used the regular Mordheim movement and fighting rules, just in a smaller area.

so far I found a system to distribute the 16 warriors in 8 groups of 2 in a manner so it is guaranteed that each player fights against each player at least once.

its a bit complicated to explain, but i can do of course, if someone should be interested.

once the 8 pairs have been established by random, they fight against each other 1:1.

only 2 players are playing at a time with 1 warrior each, the two others "watch" (see below for details).

the losing warrior quits the tournament (without any further penalty), whereas the winner wins 10 gc for each victory.

playing four rounds (as described above) would grant a player a maximum of 110 gc as he plays 11 games at most. 110 is a lot but on the other hand: this only happens if he wins EVERY game with EVERY warrior. in this case he deserves this amount of money, as i think

to keep the interest of the two players that are not playing right atm or are out of the tournament, because all 4 warriors have lost a battle, i introduced bets:

the two players that are "idle" can place a bet of 5gc on one of the warriors before the duel starts. if he doesnt want to bet he doesnt have to. Both players may bet on the same warrior if they like.

if the idle players "win", they get 10gc, so they effectively earned 5 gc. if they "lose" they effectively lose their invested 5gc

by introducing bets the financial loss should be mitigated a fair bit for those players that leave the tournament at an early stage and should be more interested what happens "over there" if they their money is involved.

a player can gain a maximum sum of 55gc if he loses every game (and therefore can bet on a maximum of duels).

----> so each player can earn either 10gc by winning a fight or 5gc by winning a bet.

right atm i'm not sure if players earn too much money this way. but on the other hand: as there is no searching for wyrdstones, money must come from somewhere...

my questions:

1) what do you think about it in general? any questions?

2) should i rather drop the 10gc for a won fight and provide a nice price for the first three ranks?

3) compared to a classic mortheim match, their is a lot fewer action going on / far less strategy needed. so i'm a little unhappy with that.

so i wonder if i should introduce a final mass battle where all the remaining warriors (who did not fight in the duels) of the 4 warbands run into the arena and fight each other until only 1 warband is left.

fluffwise the spectators (remaining warriors) are too emotionally engaged to stay back peacefully on their seats...


btw: winning a duel grants an experience point to the winner and the loser must roll on the serious injury chart...

after the tournament every participating warrior gains one xp (much like in a normal scenario for "not dying" )

@Shadowphx: your manner of playing out such a scenario seems very interesting indeed. so i got some questions:

would you also recommend it for beginner warbands (we only played 2-3 games so far)?

how long did such a game last on average (in case you remember)?

I also wonder what would be a suitable size for an arena. neither to small that it becomes a boring "won the initative roll, so I run to you and hit you first (and most probably will win the duel), nor too big so the two spend five turns chasing another in circles...