BRP Rome + GURPS Gladiators --> Me on the floor twitching and drooling with pure gamer-lust
I'm particularly intrigued by this tidbit from GURPS Gladiators: "Rules for tournament campaigns: the crowd's reaction, the referee's decision, victory-based character advancement, and gladiator ranks and prices."
I know that if I were to go and put on my as-yet-unwatched Season 2 DVDs of HBO's Rome, it would be all over. So for the sake of the stuff I'm working on now, Rome will remain unwatched...for the time being.
It must be karma. I've been bit hard by the gamer-lust bug lately, after realizing that, by your description, BRP would be perfect for this cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic thing I've been working on off and on for years now, and it won't leave me alone.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course now . . . Gladiators, you say? That sounds most intriguing . . . Curse you for your infectious enthusiasm!
Muhahahaha! I do love playing Mephistopholes from time to time. ;)
ReplyDeleteBRP's a great post-apocalyptic setting for sure. You can go really "kitchen sink" without getting, er, sunk by a mountain of rules.
I looked into running a gladiator campaign during my brief flirtation with HERO a few years ago. The nifty thing about it is that gladiators generally only fought a handful of times a year, like boxers today. So that leaves plenty of time for other crazy adventures in between.
Not that I need the encouragement, but . . . how adaptable do you think the mutations/powers/etc. systems would be to, oh, say, cyber implants and robot characters?
ReplyDeleteI've actually been haunted by the idea of gladiators since I read an issue of Dragon all about the idea back in the dead-tree days. It'd be a pretty good excuse to do a bunch of crazy 4e D&D set piece battles, but a generic-er system like BRP would be great for a more historical bent. Good set up for a combo of fights and city investigative adventure.
Very adaptable! The Powers section is basically a little sub-system of point-build abilities, so it's super flexible. The Mutations can pretty much be used as-is for nice, wholesome radioactive mutation-y goodness.
ReplyDeleteThe BRP Central boards are kind of slow, but there are tons of people on there with amazing BRP-Fu. I've found that oftentimes, if there's an idea of something I want to do, it already exists in some form or another in some old BRP supplement.