Hey everyone. The guild is a place where we try to run all kinds of games for all kinds of players. Some of those players want long epic arcs with storytelling and name-dropping. Some of those players want brutal combats with death lurking around every corner. Many want a mixture of these, but today I would like to introduce a new style of games in the guild. While we have had adventures like this in the past, we are going to be using the [Arena] tag (and I'll be using the Story Arc Heading 'Blood and Sands') to make sure everyone has the proper expectations set when they go to sit down in a game. What is Arena? This is not PvP combat. These games are likely to be short, very combat focused and allow for a scaling difficulty for the players who want to participate. The reason we are tagging them as such is that we want people to be aware that these are going to be story-light and heavy on the combat. We don't want people who get more fun out of the story being disappointed when the game is almost exclusively combat (And we will have plenty of story-driven games too!). Arena in Heroic As a general rule we want the Heroic Arenas to be a bit easier. Not just because heroic PCs have less tools at their disposal, but because we want to have the option of increased difficulty to primary be based around the idea of 'additional waves'. If the players are good at the end of combat X and they want to go on to combat X+1 that will be one way to up the ante. One note from this will be that the adventure needs to have the default number of encounters set low enough that the game can still be fairly short (a really long arena should last no more than 5 hours) and that there is an understanding that the adventure can only continue to the next round if all players and the DM have time to keep going. We will be scheduling them for the shorter time period for a reason and people shouldn't feel pressured to continue and play longer. Arena in Paragon Paragon players have a different form of difficulty available to them. That is the Glory System. Players in paragon can choose to play Arena adventures at Aggressive or Glory settings (see This Post ) to earn extra glory. Just like in adventures you cannot earn additional money or exp for playing higher levels of difficulty and the increase in challenge is only meant to serve as bragging rights. Since Arena is, by design, going to have harder combats and be more focused on the combats themselves, it is highly suggested that players who wish to up the adventure to Aggressive or Glory should have tried those settings in a normal session where things can be a bit more forgiving. If you are going to play in an Aggressive Arena game, it is recommended that you have completed an adventure on Aggressive. If you are going to play in a Glory Arena game, it is recommended that you have completed an adventure on Glory. These are not hard-and-fast rules but merely suggestions. If a player or group of players wants to attempt an adventure at a higher difficulty, they are welcome to do so.
