From toaster@pvv.unit.noFri Oct 6 14:37:30 1995 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 17:31:15 +0200 (DFT) From: Thomas Oesterlie Reply to: The wfrp mailing list To: "Mailinglist. Warhammer FRP" Subject: WFRP: A day at the fights The following material is copyright(c)1995 Thomas Oesterlie. It may only be used in the GM's home campaign. A DAY AT THE FIGHTS =================== Having read Graeme Davis' excellent article in White Wolf Inphobia issue 57, I felt that there were some fleshing out of the environment around the Pit Fighters that were worth detailing. Take a tour with us to the wondrous world of pit fights: BETTING Most people who go to pit fights, do it for the sake of the show, and to bet. In all pit fighter arenas there are Bookmakers. These bookmakers calculate the odds before the fights, and collects the spectators' bets. Deciding the odds is up to the GM. The writer of this article must confess his inability at this point. I have never been to any horse races. Ever. I haven't actually been to a place where people bet at all, so I am left in the dark when it comes to calculating odds. That is why I will not try to give any good ideas to how odds should be calculated in WFRP Bookmaker (Basic Rogue Career) The Bookmaker is the person people turn to when they are going to bet in a pit fight. Be it a legal or an illegal one: Bookmakers are everywhere. It must be said that betting with a Bookmaker in an illegal fight may be risky business. It is not unknown for Bookmakers to sneak out in the middle of a fight taking all the money with them. Where the pit fights are more organised, there are guards or even sentries to make sure that no Bookmakers try to sneak out with the money. Most pit-owners will have to approve of the Bookmaker's presence at their arena. In the more organised arenas of the legal and semi-legal pit fights, the Bookmakers are all pit-owner approved, and there are usually someone making sure that there are no non-approved-of Bookmakers there. Usually Bookmakers have to pay percentages of their earnings to the pit-owner. This is rarely more than five to ten percent of the night's earnings. Advanced Scheme M WS BS S T W I A Dex Ld Int Cl WP Fel +10 +1 +1 +20 Skills Embezzle Evaluate - Pit Fighters Numerate Flee! Palmistry Silent Move Urban Trappings Pouch for money Dagger License with a pit owner for bookmaking Career entries Random Basic Career Career exits Charlatan Racketeer Slaver THE FIGHTS Not only is the main activity for the Pit Fighter to enter the pit and win, it is actually his main responsibility, too. Pit Fighters rarely arrange their own fights. The main reason for this is that they very often do not have the right connections to do it. They do not, in addition, have the credibility they need in the pit fighting-establishment. Few are willing to fight against an unknown, never-heard-of-before Pit Fighter who wants to fight in the pits. No one knows how good this guy is, and it is bad for most established Pit Fighters to fight too good opponents, as well as too bad opponents. There is actually a group of people who have made it their profession to take care of Pit Fighters and arrange fights: the Stablemasters. Stablemaster (Advanced Career) "Someone has to take care of these guys! They're almost my sons! What can I do for them that I don't already do? I give them shelter. I feed them. I make sure they're in the best physical shape. And you say I rip them off!?" A Stablemaster may be independent, or he may belong to one Pit Fighter school. Independent Stablemasters rarely have more than three or four Pit Fighters in their stable. Stablemasters belonging to a school may have twenty to forty Pit Fighters in their stables. The Stablemaster is always on the look for new talents. Hanging out at bars scouting for talents is a major part of their job. Wealthy Stablemasters hire their own talent-hunters to take care of the job. He takes good care of the boys in his own stable; never letting them fight unworthy opponents, but not too skilled opponents either. The longer a fighter is able to go into the pit and fight, the more money the Stablemaster will earn. It would be a waste to let a Pit Fighter that has been invested with lots of money in training and developing, get killed in his first or second fight. Of course: some Stablemasters earn their living by drafting poor men in desperate need of money. Not giving them any training, and letting them directly into the pit. These speculators seldom ever move from warm-ups to the big-league. Some of them do earn lots of money, though. A Stablemaster makes his living through percentages of the bookmaker's earnings and percentages of the vendor's ticket money. Usually the bookmakers have to pay five to ten percent of their profit to the vendor. This money is then distributed to the Stablemaster's. Stablemasters do rarely take less than fifty percent of the money from the vendor. It is not unknown that they might even take up to eighty- eighty-five percent. This might seem as a rip-off to most, but remember every Stablemaster is responsible for paying instructors, physicians, surgeons, weapons and armour for the Pit Fighters in their stable. Now, does eighty percent seem un-reasonable to you? The Stablemaster's job is not always as straight forward as it may seem. Being a big-league Stablemaster is easy going, but trying to fight one's way up from nothing as an independent may be rough. The Stablemaster will have to find people willing to fight unknown Pit Fighters. Most independent Stablemasters start off in the illegal Pit Fighting business where there are lots of other small-time independents trying to carve their way up to the big-league. The greatest problem for these Stablemasters are scouts from more established stables and schools stealing their Pit Fighters. Finding opponents for unknown fighters can be dangerous sometimes. There are always someone willing to fight if one seek out the right places. It is a known fact that many an independent Stablemaster trying to carve his way up, has gone into the sewers of the Old World's cities in search of opponents. One never know what creatures lurk down there. In addition to the things mentioned above, most Stablemasters will have to keep their own Pit Fighters out of trouble if they are into the illegal/semi-illegal pit fighting business. Bribing local Watchmen are for these the order of the day. Stablemasters forgetting to bribe the local Watchmen are sure to have no stable left at the end of the week. Being a big-league Stablemaster means lots of money. Some Stablemasters having made it in the semi-illegal Pit Fighting business, use their money and their fighters to build an organisation around themselves - taking control of the semi-legal and illegal activities of an area, making themselves Crime Lords - like Horatio 'The Hound' Hohenzee in Nuln. Other Stablemasters use their wealth in a more constructive way as traders. Needles to say: there are no Stablemasters taking care of the religious Pit Fighters. The ceremonial pit fights are arranged by the cult concerned. Advanced Scheme M WS BS S T W I A Dex Ld Int Cl Fel WP +20 +1 +2 +2 +20 +20 +20 Skills Charm Blather Bribery Embezzle Evaluate - Pit Fighter* Gamble Heal Wounds Numismatics Read/Write Wit Career Entries Bawd Charlatan Fence Pit Fighter Career Exits Crime Lord+ Trader Merchant *New Skill - Characters with this skill may be able to judge the ability of a Pit Fighter by studying them. +10 to all Estimate tests when judging the prowess of Pit Fighter. +Career taken from the article 'Behind the Scenes' by Alfred Nunez. The article is available at the Warhammer Archives (ftp.pvv.unit.no /pub/warhammer/Careers/ BehindTheScenes.txt Thomas Oesterlie toaster@pvv.unit.no PVV - The Software Workshop, University of Trondheim, Norway