Dungeonbowl League Idea, Advice needed

[malki]

I've been thinking of a way to tie in the concept of the 2nd edition Dungeonbowl with a Blood Bowl League, keeping the Dungeon-plan and the mixed race teams in too. And I think I have an Idea!

It's similar to the NFL Europe. Blood Bowl League teams send Rookie and Experience players to compete in the Dungeonbowl League to gain experience. As Dungeonbowl is probably more leathal than Blood Bowl (with all the spiked traps), teams would be happier sending lesser experienced players that more experienced players.

They system would work very closely with the DB rules seen here, http://www.specialist-games.com/bloodbowl/articles.asp

Each coach would pick a college of magic. A coach cannot pick a College that has already been chosen by another coach unless all the Colleges have been chosen, This could also be done randomly.

Once each coach has chosen or been allocated a College, the player selection begins. Using the positions and Races allowed for the College each coach takes a turn to select a player from the pool of players allocated from the Blood Bowl League teams. After all players have been chosen or instead of a Blood Bowl League player, a coach may choose a Rookie Dungeonbowl player. Rookie Dungeonbowl Players may not go to Blood Bowl League teams once the DB League has finished. (if the DB League commissioner is willing to keep records may return the the DB league in following seasons).

All players cost their original cost no-matter what skills or SPP they have earned. Note this will mean teams will start at a higher team rating that 100. I see two ways of combating this.
1. Using the Handicap Table
2. Find the team with the most skills. Each team is given a number of Magic items (which grant a skill) to bring them up to the same number of Skills as the team with the most skills in the beginning. The magic items can only be used for the DB league and are simply given back when the season is over. This means all teams start level.

Players are Bought in the same way you would start a new team. Each Coach has 1mil to spend on players, re-rolls and fan factor.

The fan-factor is replaced by the magic-factor. It works in the same way, but represents the College of Magic's power, amount of money they will contribute.


I'm working on a Handicap Table, and a version of the Kick-Off table that would be rolled on every time a chest is opened. It would incorporate wandering Monsters and Cave ins!


Unfortunately I'm not in a Blood Bowl League here, so I can't unfortunately test them. Please give me any feedback or suggestions.
Please let me know if you find any of the above confusing.

[Trob]

I only have experience running the Dungeon Bowl as a mid-season tournament for the last 3 seasons, so I'm not sure about how it works for a full season. I would love to see it run like a regular BB season though.

As far as chests go, besides the fireballs, we use a lot of ZAP spells in the chests(turnover) and these have proven popular & a lot of fun (who doesn't relish the thought of killing that nasty chaos warrior when its turned into a ST 1 frog!). I also added a magic gem that gives the team a re-roll since they tend to run out with no half time in the game. For the finals, we play a 4 player game & include a solid gold football (-1 to everything attempted with it - damn heavy!) that's worth d6+1*1000 gold if you return it to your own endzone.

Another favourite is the trampoline pit trap. All our traps are on the back of what appears to be a chest (illusion), so you don't know what they are. If you land (or are pushed) on the tramp, we use the throwin template for direction and d6 for distance - then see if you land (just like throwing a team-mate). In the finals, I have one large room filled with around 20 tramp traps & the ball - the coaches love it when a player flies off one tramp & onto another, then into another player causing mayhem!

For the next season, I'm debating having a treasure search for the final with lots of magic items to be found. Some ideas include:
+3 holy/unholy avenger = same as chainsaw except you don't have to start it
magic helmet = +1 to armour for the game
cursed items = negative modifiers to armour/injury etc.
might take it even further & make it super-silly over the top with items.

Dungeon Bowl IS quite a bit more deadly with pit traps, chasms, fireballs, etc. which is why I have the solid gold football as a prize - teams needed some incentive to enter the tournament vs. the risk.

Another thing I found is that teams were avoiding the teleporters (which is too bad cause they're fun) because the chance of getting lost in the warp was too high (1 in 6). I bumped up the number of teleporters to 8 for 2 players & that solved the problem.

Jervis' advice to keep hallways fairly open (at least 2 wide) is good advice. Some of the most boring games happened when players got bogged down in a corner where there was too much stuff. This resulted in rules for chest & teleporter placement (not right next to walls,etc.)

Wandering monsters are a little more problematic. We have a young dragon in the finals & I've found that it's easier to have a neutral player control it, but you have to be careful that they don't have a beef with any other coach.

All in all, the feedback from the coaches is that it's a ton of fun- so I'm trying to approach it in a way to keep it that way.

Hope this helps.