Warning: RPG purists may be shocked by this post. Read at your own risk 
I may be not the greatest lover of d&d 4th ed., but this is the game I’m playing right now, so I’m trying to appreciate the good features of the game.
And what does 4th ed. do best? Correct: tactical combat!
To spice up things a bit, my group of players decided to try a new approach to 4th ed., where tactical combat should shine at its best, taking the most out of the simple and easy to remember rules. So, we tried to stop thinking about d&d as a tabletop roleplaying game: we treat it as a pure MMORPG now, and we use it in this way in our sessions.
One of the greates differences between tabletop and massive online RPGs is that the former are mostly cooperative games, while the latter are mostly competitive (or team-competitive at best). What if you play 4th ed. in a competitive way? This is what I call D&D 4: ARENA.
To be started, imagine your players at the table dividing themselves in 2 or more teams. Then, one of the teams designs the shape and the obstacles of the arena, while the other chooses where to place its members first. This is all you need for game prep: in the next phase, players are killing each other in the most fantastic ways, having a terrific fun for the whole night.
I learned that there are just a few basic rules to play an arena game:
- Make balanced teams. The roles introduced with 4th ed. are a great way to help balance. If you have 4 players per team, cover the 4 roles. If nobody wants to play a controller, use 2 strikers in both teams. Balance is everything in this case. One of the last games we played was a 3 striker team against a leader, defender and striker team. Guess what? The 3 strikers soon become hamburger meat.
- Let every player make more than 1 PC. This is incredibly helpful for balance. If a player likes to use just one class or one role, let him do so, but ensure other players can cover different roles to have parties balanced in every situation.
- Beware of ranged characters! If teams design an open-arena, they are most likely game-winners, while they may struggle in cramped fight situations. Ensure each team has his share of ranged PCs.
- Define the rules and follow them. Common rules may cover aspects like: PCs “respawn” or not; PCs gain personal advantages or rewards when they kill or not; the goal is just killing the most or PCs have to fulfill a duty (caputre the flag, dominate checkpoints, collect items…); and so on…
- Be careful with action points! A well spent action point may cause a PC’s death in one round. Nobody likes it. I don’t let players use action points in my arena games.
- Don’t let players go idle when their PC dies! Have a rule for this: if your rules let player respawn, you have no problem, but if they don’t you should find a way to keep everybody at the game table for the night. I use one of these rules: if every player prepared more than 1 PC, I let them play a “tag game” wherenew PCs jump in when contenders die (if one or more players are still dying at an hirgher rate than the rest of the group, I let they re-use a died PC with some kind of penalty); if not, I prepare some critters to spawn. Players whose characters got killed can play BOTs, usually a swarm of minions each, that attack every player in the arena.
- Have a game master supervise the game. This is not strictly required if your players are fine with it, but just a single power player can spoil the night for everybody so it’s better that one of the more respected guys at the table is awarded the title of GM. He still plays in the arena, but he works as a judge for the rules.
That’s it! Your arena is nice and ready.
I’m aware that this kind of gaming is tearing away the R of RPG, but it can be a fun experiment, now and then.
There’s no plot, no or fixed level advancement, no dungeon crawls in these games. Just simple, streamlined, tactical combat.
That’s what 4th ed. was made for, anyway.
What do you think?
