New campaign (One-Shot 5e)

[Theredking91]

I’m a DM in couple of games I run. I’m gonna run a two-part one-shot (Ironic I know) It’s gonna be a starting point for three new players and I also have three returning veteran players. I’m basing the campaign after the movie Gladiator, and the movie Thor 3 Ragnarok. Basically a powerful celestial will have kidknapped six players from all across the sword coast and forced them to face off in a public arena for 8-rounds to try and earn their freedom. I was wondering if anyone had advice on story elements that’d add a bit of meat to the story. I also was curious what kind of monsters you think my party should face. It’s a party of 6, level three players who all have a free extra feat. Any advice would be great!

[ruy343]

Kidnapping the players and forcing them to do the adventure... classic D&D, but not necessarily compelling. Were I in your shoes (and I frequently am), I would just tell the players that they're all at least friendly to each other, all agreed to help with some task for a local lord, and are almost at their destination.

However, kidnapping works too; we can work with it. Except... Um... why is a celestial doing the kidnapping for gladatorial combat? Maybe a devil or something - maybe he's got a thing to prove about how humans aren't much better than the devils are, since they're so willing to slaughter all these terrible things. You know... devil-y stuff about corrupting the innocent, the young, etc. to prove the point that they're already evil.

That, or it's some kind of mechanical being, like GlaDOS from Portal, testing her subjects... Oooh... the plane of Mechanus could be fun for that with moving battlefield things and gears to crush stuff between... or heck, the abyss (changing battlegrounds for each encounter on top of that... ooh!), or even the feywild (the faerie lord Oberon has been known to do such things for the amusement of the fae court).

Whether celestial or not, the players will immediately be thinking: the last thing we want is to stay here and see all this fighting through to the end, because who knows what we'll have to face! Why risk our lives sitting here?

See, you know this, so while you tell the players that there are eight rounds of combat, you only plan for 3 or so in the arena, and then prep a harrowing escape sequence. Maybe run the adventure something like this (I'm tailoring it for a three-four hour adventure here)


The players arrive in the arena, they face their first foe, and every round of combat is punctuated by a villainous monologue (because your villain doesn't have time for conversation with the PCs, but you need some sort of reason to hate them)
Just as the players finish their first wave of combatants, they're thrown into round 2 of combat, without even a chance to rest - turning up the tension on the battleground because people are probably running low on spell slots and such, expecting a rest)
After the combat, tell them that they'll be led to a resting chamber, where they're have to leave their equipment and such outside their cell. They shoul clearly see a way out of their host's fortress along the way to their cell, and maybe learn more about their "host" from the things they see as they walk through their domain
The players are given juuuust enough time to try to make an escape, and give them a map of the area they're in, including non-essential rooms.


Regarding the escape sequence: include a little something that'll play to the strengths of each character - don't just make it a stealth mission. If you can have your tank clear a path through bad guys or hold a strategic hallway while the others scurry past, do it. Have your perceptive guy notice a secret door or two. Have your wizard dispel magical wards and force fields to make it to the escape portal. Make the escape loud and exciting. Have reinforcements pouring in overwhelming numbers and then let them overcome the trial in the nick of time. Don't have the villain hold back - it's a one-shot, so characters can die! Kill one or two brutally! Make the escape harrowing and exciting, and they'll be talking about it for years.

That's how I would do it at least.