Animal Games

Had a great session Saturday night.  My players gave up on the Undertavern after a cleric was brutally mauled by the Gulo.  They sought out the old Animal Arena and much absurd fun was had.  First bout Spirit Bear vs. Black Panther, and the only match to ever go into overtime (I forget now which won, but one player lost 300 silver on it).  Second bout, the arena was flooded and jelly fish were set upon by a pack of wolves trained to kill invertebrates.  Wolves won.  Third bout was truly a nail-biter a koala vs. tortoise.  Tortoise won.

My players have decided they want to enter the animal fighting business.  So they headed back to the magical chest that leads to Animal Island and ended up encountering more Headless villagers in a favorable way.  They obtained a third scroll for the animal making machine.  They had Dog and Elephant, and now have Panda.

I have nothing prepared for animal fighting houses or tourneys, this was all originally a mingame meant to be entertaining.

I suppose there could be groups of citizens with colors like I've seen medieval Italy had competing, but that doesn't fit the tone exactly.  That would be better if it were humans performing races or tumbling etc.

I could have it set up like Roman gladitorial houses with trainers and lineups.  But I wonder if the absurd waste of animal life would better suit a few rich playboys amusing thmselves by competing in ostentatious displays of waste.

Not sure.  What would you find most fun? 

Some ideas:

• make transporting animals from the island difficult and dangerous
• have dangerous rivalries, animals poisoned- party jumped on day of fights
• have win-loss records for animals and animal heroes
• I could tie XP to how ostentatious the player displays are
• make players want to search for specific types of animals- we need x to combat y
• could make strategy involved-- players have a stable of animals to choose from for each fight

This is sounding more and more like Pokemon, isn't it ;)  Whic is one of the things I was thinking of when I designed animal island, trying to tap into things kids find fun.
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Also, props to ZakS, I used a technique I saw on his blog where a player rolls on a random chart and can keep the result or choose the one above or below the number they rolled.  Worked awesome, was hilarious.  Was a great mix of randomness and player choice.  The cleric that was resurrected had to choose between Bleeding, Boils, and Arousal as a permanent side effect.

Happened again with determining the newest animal scroll.  The players had just been laughing it up about how a parrot would be funny, so they could make a parrot-headed elephant-- and also because long ago I introduced a parrot-pig to annoy them with which they summarily drowned in quicksand.  And I'll be dipped if they didn't roll Parrot!  But out of Panda, Parrot, and Peacock they chose the first.  Not sure why, guess cause it has claws and might fight better.