Morturi: Beyond the Arena

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Morturi Te Salutant is ultimately a miniatures skirmish game designed to deal with miniatures combat. However, it can also be used as a roleplaying game, and introducing roleplaying elements will often add a greater sense of story and reality to a campaign year.

Battling Outside the Arena

When setting battles outside the arena environment there are a few things the Imperator player should consider.

Why are we fighting?

Generally, battles outside the arena happen because of the actions of one lanista or another. Perhaps the battle occurs because a lanista has sent his Gladiators to demolish another school's kitchens. Perhaps the battle occurs when the school's Champion is trying to convince a bandit chieftan to join his school, and the bandit demands that he first beats him in a duel.

Regardless, Imperators should beware of inflicting battles on schools arbitrarily. If he does so, he should always consider whether he is unfairly penalising a school, and whether he needs to send an encounter in the direction of another school as well, to balance things out.

What do we get out of this?

While arena battles have formal prizes to compensate for the inherent risk of battle, an out-of-arena battle may not. The Imperator should always consider what reward a school gets for winning such a battle. Generally this will be clear from the circumstances of the battle itself. For example, in the kitchen-demolition example above, a successful raiding party will destroy another school's kitchen improvement, and a successful defending school will save that school resource.

Who fights?

Unlike an Arena Battle, where the number of Gladiators is set, an outside Battle will have participants determined by circumstance, which requires a judgment call by the Imperator. As a rule of thumb, its worth allowing each School to decide whether send each of its Gladiators out "on a mission", or to "keep them back at the school", and to allow only gladiators that are kept back to defend against any attacks on the school.

Additionally, the Imperator may allow additional warriors who are not Gladiators to take part in a battle. For example, three or four thugs of the Peregrine Collegia might accompany a school that has the right contacts. The Imperator can stat these warriors as he wishes, but generally he should make sure he does not allow them to overshadow true gladiators in fighting skill. For example, a typical "Peregrine" might be armed and armoured like a Gallus or Secutor gladiator, but have no Tricks.

How do we modify the arena rules?

There are a lot of differences between arena battles and real world battles. The most obvious will be that there is usually no crowd - generally the Crowd's Favour rules are ignored. Another consideration is that once a battle is done, there may be little opportunity to collect the wounded. Gladiators who are taken out of action outside of the arena are generally killed outright if their school loses a battle!

Roleplaying

The Morturi Te Salutant game doesn't provide any dice-based rules for carrying out non-combat tasks. There are no rules for socialisation, scholastic study, thievery and the like. Generally its recommended that any such activities are handled in an arbitrary fashion by the Imperator, based on common sense and storytelling. Roleplaying should generally be centred around that which doesn't require dice - face to face conversations, for example.

However, the simple rules system can be implemented as below, if Imperators think it appropriate, which can allow some dice-based outcomes to occur.

The Skill Check

A skill check is a single D6 roll. If the D6 rolls 5+, then the Gladiator succeeds at this task.

Palus Gladiators receive a +1 bonus to their roll, to represent their general competence. At Primus Palus rank, this is increased to a +2 bonus.

If a Gladiator's Role suggests that they ought to be good at this sort of task, they gain a further +1 bonus to their roll. For example, a Bestiarius is likely to be good at tracking and hunting animals, so would gain this bonus in tasks of this sort.

If the task is difficult, the Imperator can inflict a penalty to the roll, of between -1 to -3.

The Competed Skill Check

A competed skill check has opposed gladiators each making a single D6 roll. The highest roll wins.

Palus Gladiators receive a +1 bonus to their roll, to represent their general competence. At Primus Palus rank, this is increased to a +2 bonus.

If a Gladiator's Role suggests that they ought to be good at this sort of task, they gain a further +1 bonus to their roll. For example, a Praegenarius is good with people, so would gain a bonus in tasks to persuade or entertain.

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