Hunger Games - how to?

[Jodah]

How would you guys go about doing a Hunger Games style campaign? I'm talking one-on-one, battle to the victor. I am tempted to try it, but I feel like it would be unmanageable. What say you playground?

[Talentless]

what do you mean by one on one? just that, only 2 players and a bunch of npcs?

Or do you mean every man for himself where all the player's are working against each other as much as the npcs?

[Reluctance]

Paranoia might work, but really, just don't. Splitting up the party is hard on your attention span as DM, and PVP tends to degenerate too quickly. Which can be fun for a one-shot, but games with involved character generation (like WotC D&D) tend not to make good one-shot material.

[Tvtyrant]

I would probably run it, and frame it as, a very different then normal game. Everyone has to roll up a mundane, and you are in a wizards personal dimension. It is some environment with traps (rare), monsters (semi-rare), and the other players. Last player standing wins. Once per day there is a "boss," which is either a much tougher than normal monster or a trap that hits a random area (like a lightning storm that knocks out a random sector of the arena).

It shouldn't take that long to run, but would be fun as a one off.

[snoopy13a]

How would you guys go about doing a Hunger Games style campaign? I'm talking one-on-one, battle to the victor. I am tempted to try it, but I feel like it would be unmanageable. What say you playground?

You could do it with a single player (with the rest NPCs) easily enough. The problem is if you have more than one player. You'd need to handle each player's exploration separately, which would be a mess logistically. Second, if you're controlling NPCs, it'll be difficult for you to avoid metagaming--either by finding the players too easily or overcompensating the other was and playing the NPCs as morons.

[Duke of URL]

If you're dealing with multiple competing players, it's going to be a logistical nightmare. Best bet for that is a PbP game with extremely strict posting rates using a site/system that supports private threads and/or messages. I'd also strongly suggest co-DMs to help manage the overhead and coordination.

[Kasbark]

As others have said this would work best as a single-player game. If you have multiple players, i think forcing them into a group for a certain amount of time would be the best solution. Tell them they can't PVP untill they have killed the NPC's, and then have them duke it out to find the victor.

A way to overcome the problem with too clever or too dumb NPC's would be to have the players skill checks/challenges decide how they encounter NPC's. successfull checks would allow the players to avoid NPC's or engage them on their own turn, while failed checks means they get ambushed.

[Wyntonian]

I think I'd run this as a solo game, probably on these forums. That's the only way I really see this working all that well.

[Invader]

I don't think it would be terrible to run as DM but you'd have to really reign in builds/classes/items/etc. to make it somewhat balanced. Personally I think something like this would work best with all martial classes and very few magic items.

[Fluffy_1.0]

Unless it's a solo game I wouldn't. I'd make it a team sport with competitive dungeons. Where the teams work together to undermine the other teams while still advancing on their goals. You'd still get the same feel of competing for your group and all but you would keep all your players engaged.

[Dark Elf Bard]

It would be a pvp. A DM would be there for rules clarification. One long, long combat. Maybe every ten rounds would be a sleep?

[GnomeGninjas]

It would be a pvp. A DM would be there for rules clarification. One long, long combat. Maybe every ten rounds would be a sleep?

That means you stop to sleep every minute. A round is 6 seconds.


If its one long combat it could work better but the DM would have to make a massive battle map and since the PCs can see the whole map they couldn't hide from each other or anything. It wouldn't have the wilderness survival-y feel of the hunger gamse, it would just be a PVP game on a really big map.

[Drelua]

My group did this, and it worked out great. Mostly because the DM was the only one who read the book. We were all in a group, though our meeting was kind of forced. Basically, we fought together and co-operated after being sent to a plane made by the archmage, and we were too low level to really mess things up. He rolled every night when we rested to see how many of the NPCs had been killed off during the day. Oh, and there were rich people watching us that could send in gifts if they wanted to help a certain person.

When we got to the end and refused to kill each other, explosions started raining down on us, so we all stood in the same spot so they had to either kill none of us or all of us.

I think my favourite moment was when my Swashbuckler decided to help the Rogue search for traps, rolled a 1, pointed at a random leaf, and yelled 'It's a trap!" Then the Rogue thought I was just being retarded and grabbed one of the leaves, and got poisoned. So I rolled a 20 on a bluff check to convince them that I actually knew what I was doing. Some say Swashbucklers are a weak class, but I think they can convince everyone that they contribute just fine. :smallcool:

[Answerer]

3.5 strikes me as a particularly terrible system for this. It abstracts away things that are critical to the Hunger Games (like, for example, most things related to hunger), while it has a ton of rules for things that won't come up (like, for example, everything to do with magic – which you should not allow if you want there to be any challenge).

Moreover, for the most part, I don't think the Hunger Games would make for a very good tabletop game in general, since it's inherently unfair and most of the most important things are extremely time-consuming and require incredible care and attention to detail – both of which are gripping in a narrative, but problematic and tedious in a game.

But if you insist, please find another system. 3.5 is awful for this.

[Morithias]

If you want some kind of "entertaining show" as the basis for the game. Google "X-crawl", it should fit your purposes.

[grarrrg]

Here's my take.

It's basically a prolonged Arena Match.
(please feel free to adjust some of the numbers, they are approx. and have not been actually played/tested)

Limit it to low/mid levels, probably 10th at the highest.
No magic, or at the most VERY limited magic. Maybe maximum caster level is 2 or something.

To really capture the feel of the books, characters ONLY get 1 set of clothing, EVERYTHING else must be found or made (may want to relax Improvised weapon penalties).
Or, if desired, give everyone WBL 1, regardless of what level they really are.

Characters will move in secret, either passing notes in a RL game, or PM in a PbP game.
Have a 'Big Grid' and a 'Small Grid'.
The Big Grid represents the entire arena. It's used for general movement.
The Small Grid is for combat, each space on the Big Grid is about 100 squares on the Small Grid (to try an eliminate confusion, the Big units will be called "spaces" and the Small units will be called "squares").
Characters will move on the Big Grid at the rate of 1 or 2 spaces per day (in Initiative order).
Characters movement options and approx. modifiers are:

No move, Character can see a max of 3 spaces away for Terrain purposes (River? hilly? plains?), can see 2 spaces away to spot other players/NPC's, get a bonus on Search/Survival checks within the same space (to find Food/Equipment), and can Search spaces 1 away at penalty to find stuff (Food/possible Equipment).

1 Space, Character can see a max of 2 spaces away for Terrain, 1 space away to spot other players, cannot search adjacent spaces, and no bonus on Search/Survival check in spaces passed through.

2 Space (running), Character can see a max of 1 space away for Terrain, penalty on Search/Survival checks within spaces passed through. Cannot search adjacent spaces for Players/stuff.


If 2 (or more) players enter or pass through the same Space then an Encounter starts. Basically, they will either fight to the death, or strike up an alliance.
Players can decide for themselves, the NPC's should have an Affinity/Friendliness chart for interaction with Players and other NPC's (so NPC #5 may be hostile towards NPC #3, but friendly towards NPC #2).
If one side tries to be 'friendly' when the other tries to be 'hostile', then the hostile side goes first regardless of initiative rolls.


Players should have a "support" score/modifier to determine if they get Gifts, every day roll a die+Support to see if they get a Gift and what cost/type of Gift.
CHA gives a bonus/penalty to Support.
Killing opponents gives a bonus.
'Running away' or multiple turns without an Encounter will (temporarily?) lower Support.

[jaybird]

Try Classroom Deathmatch.

[Salanmander]

I like the idea of a prolonged arena match with a huge area, especially since relating it to the hunger games puts people in the mindset of forming temporary aliances, which would be nifty.

Now, the big problem, the HUGE problem with running stuff like this is *hidden information*. I like the big grid/small grid idea, but this sort of thing really relies on not everyone knowing what everyone else is doing. There are a few different ways of dealing with hidden information (everyone keeps track in their head, roleplay like you didn't know, introduce randomness to player actions), but none of them are particularly good.

I think in this case, it would probably be best to run it in a side room, when something else is going on elsewhere. Perhaps have a general board/card game party (or super smash bros, or firefly marathon, or whatever your group prefers), and call people in for 10 minutes at a time when it's their turn, or when someone else runs into them. It might need to run over multiple days, but that's okay if people enjoy the other stuff. Of course, you're still letting people have the information of who is in contact with who, but I see absolutely no way around that.

As to the comment that you should find a different system, it's probably true that there's a better system for this. But I completely sympathize with wanting to use 3.5. I /like/ 3.5. Plus, learning another system is overhead and hard to convince people of, especially when you're already having a strange concept.


tl;dr version, run it a little bit at a time, with only the people who are near each other in the room at one time.

[rweird]

PbP might be a good way to do it, though you don't need to completely duplicate the book, you could have some wizards throw together an arena on the Plain of Ida (DMG p. 158) and invite people in to play, and if you break a rule you just get disqualified. You start with just your clothes though there are weapons to find and spectators can give equipment and such, in limits. The party could enter as such trying to defeat all the other groups, and they collectively get a reward, though if you want it to be each person is alone, definitely PbP or have something other activity people can do while your aren't with them.