Welcome to The Break-Knuckle Pit

It's easy to place a whole, and bizarrely shaped, city into your high fantasy or science fiction roleplaying game. The look of it, and the general attitude of the people that live and work there are enough for some game masters to get started running many sessions in them. Some need a little further inspiration. I am on hand to take a little closer look at special corners, unique locations within a city, maybe Oculus, maybe elsewhere. Maybe even a city all of your own. Not all locations are nice places to be.

The Break-Knuckle Pits

Speak Easy's are always a familiar place to imagine. The low lit interiors, the haze of smoke lingering at the ceiling. Vices legal and not on tap for every patron. The Break-Knuckle Pits are a lot like that, but also not. There could be just one, or a chain run by a network of shady NPCs across your world.

The low lights and excited crowd speak volumes. Club Interior photographed by 573p5

As players enter the Break-Knuckle Pit, round tables fill the floor up until the balcony. Those edge tables usually have very tatty 'reserved' signs on them, because they have the best view of the eponymous pit. Peering over the edge, you'd see the other layers of the pit. Usually between four or six, depends how much underground space they could get.

That lowest level, right next to a sandy pit roughly thirty feet in diameter, is where the magic happens. Or the bleeding. Usually the bleeding.

An establishment like this doesn't get its name without the fight club it's built around being the source of the action, the main entertainment, and a lot of the establishment's income. To enter, the owners and ringside medic need to clear you for action, make sure you're physically fit and will only fight hand-to-hand. No strange magic or illegal upgrades here, to keep things fair between skilled fighters. The club also wants to keep things clean - lazer blasts and magical fallout are very hard to repair. To keep the action consistent, being a regular fighter is usually a sustainable job, with its own pay plus tips from appreciative spectators and lodgings here in the Pit. Pretty decent going for a practice illegal in many lands.

Though the vast majority of fights in places like this are kept upstanding, there may be the odd special event night. Fights with a less serious tone can happen on the local holidays or at the request of someone willing to sponsor the Pit a very heavy sum of money. When that happens, costumed fights, or even fights against magically or cybernetically enhanced beasts can happen.

“My favourite client! How ya been?“ - Arena Bookie by SIXMOREVODKA

Unfriendly Faces

In a place like this, or even somewhere unfamiliar and unsafe, it's less about what you know and more who you know. Some of the likely faces you'll get in The Break-Knuckle Pit are sources of ready information for players, possible quests and missions waiting to happen, or some they really don't wish to provoke. I'm going to leave the NPCs anonymous for anyone reading to fill their own names in as I'd likely give names for the version I've used.

One figure characters can talk to between fights is one of their regular fighters, and one of the best. There's no prestige or championships to fight for in the Pit. Many fighters treat it like their own grind. He's is the least physically imposing of any of the regular fighters. Long limbed, wiry, judging dark eyes. His martial arts mastery makes him unassuming but never to be underestimated. He's generally very humble and cordial to player characters.

“Fill ya boots my old son! Never guess who was just in here n’all!“ Back Alley Barkeep by SIXMOREVODKA

A place like this has to have the loud talking barmaid who is made of gossip and local secrets, right? Wrong! That trope, while good, has done to death. A wired remix is the idea of the mad scientist type of person, who was never actually good at the mad science, but instead turns that frantic, and scientific attitude to mixing drinks like chemicals and brewing beverages like potions. He's got all the secrets the characters may need but the manic energy the players will love.

A den of inequity like this almost always has an equally unscrupulous individual in charge. I like my gangsters to be very unassuming but with a bold personality. In my own games, some of the greatest examples of scum and villainy have been an overweight dark elf and a sentient brain in a jar. The owner of The Break-Knuckle Pit is always here for a deal, and is a respectable businessman, but one you do not want to cheat or defraud. You may not live to regret it.

Wrapping Up

Who else would populate a place like this? We'd love to hear from you. What shady organisations would hedge their bets in The Break-Knuckle Pit? Would your characters hope to go toe-to-toe with a strange combatant in the ring? Let us know in the comments below.

Adam Ray contributes for adventurers at Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com , he writes about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out himself. On Youtube, he can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Follow his Twitter @IzzetTinkerer.