How do?
Not entirely sure what reminded me of him, but this evening thoughts turned toward Bullgorg.
Those new to the game might be wondering who he is...
well you can read about him here.
From there, I got to thinking about how one might handle a Slave Rebellion in our own campaigns.
Of course, currently we have no rules for Pit Slaves, either as hires guns or Gangs in their own right. So at the moment, this is all going to be a bit Half-Baked by necessity.
My first thought involved looking up captured fighters. Those rules are pretty straight forward. And my current idea would require Fighter Cards to be completed for each Gang Member, or at least whenever a Ganger is captured.
Should the rescue mission fail, and the poor sod is sold to the Guilders, the card is passed to the
GM for ‘safe keeping’. From there, the
GM can build up a library of captured fighters. And when they’ve got enough, they can start to introduce different narrative missions building up to a Slave Revolt, or just jumping straight to it.
From that simple narrative overview, various suggestions come to mind. They either form a new
NPC Gang. They retain their skills and advancements, but their equipment becomes very basic (pistols, simple close combat weapons). After all, their original kit would’ve been seized at the point of sale.
The
GM then has to round up a posse from the Gangs - but without telling them what the mission is. Once it’s underway, it’s for the players to fulfil their Guilder Contract, or attempt to assist the Revolt to reclaim their lost members. How easy or hard that is I’ll leave to you. You know your players best! Though I reckon some kind of comeuppance should be in the offing should the Guilders find out you’re harbouring a fugitive...
Wilder ideas involve devising rules for the old Pit Slave weapons, either lifted wholesale from the past, or inspired by the new profiles and weapon traits. These are then randomly determined for each escapee. And I’d suggest Hatred being gained for the gang that sold them - possibly also for their
own Gang for failing or refusing to rescue them.
Of course, my ideas are a bit out there. This is what happens when you’re fanatical about a particular game! You feel free to dial it up or down to suit your local scene. My only truly solid recommendation would be to have this happen fairly late on in a Campaign Season. By that point you’re not simply filling out starting/young Gangs with harder fighters!