“TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MA—err… three pigmen, an ogre, two soldiers, a barbarian, a sabretooth cat, a lizardman, a samurai, and another barbarian… <double checks> ENTER, … <counting> FOUR OF THEM LEAVE!”

The local Lord of Darkness and his Aug-Suul henchtrolls have captured several parties of adventurers and thrown them into the arena to battle for their freedom! Also, the visiting ~~̶G̶a̶n̶d̶a̶l̶f̶~~ err ~~̶F̶i̶z̶b̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶a̶b̶u̶l̶o̶u̶s̶~~ err White Wizard Numero Uno is horrified yet intrigued to discover the evening’s entertainment is NOT simply a skeleton cabaret as he had let himself be led to believe.

A scenario made up on the fly to utilize this ~~̶a̶w̶e̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶P̶l̶a̶y̶m̶o̶b̶i̶l̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶r̶e̶n̶’̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶y̶~~ very serious historical wargaming terrain. A rack of powerful relic weapons is at arena center. Captured adventurers start chained to rocks, with one party member waiting in the entrance tunnel to be permitted in as reinforcements. Monsters appear every turn from underground entrances around the circle. Disabling a monster grants a favor thrown from the crowd (small items, potions, etc). Killing a monster is one point, destroying a character two points, and the party with most points at game end earns the appreciation of the Lord of Darkness and is granted their freedom.

Mechanically we could maybe tweak this a little. Two of the three players (Jesse and I) just wound up in a huge scrum in the middle. Though, to be fair, the other player (Jake) simply walked carefully around avoiding the scrum to kill monsters, gain points, and win the scenario. So maybe the mechanics worked great and the two scrummers are just stubborn and dumb?

Thematically it was pretty cool. To paraphrase Jesse: “Time for all those Latin classes to shine! <starts discoursing at length on the layout and construction of the Colliseum>”

In any event: <SPOILER ALERT> The Lord of Darkness lied (!!!) and at the end sent all the warriors down into the pits anyway because THEY ARE THE MONSTERS NOW.