I am creating a few adventures for a group of players who are somewhat familiar with BoL. I've run 2 premade adventures for them in the past, and they loved it. I am using the Legendary Edition rules, since I wasn't quick enough to grab a Mythic playtest or shovel money into the kickstarter like I would have wanted to. I plan to come up with about 2-3 individual scenarios for them, and if they seem really excited about it I will extend it into a longer campaign for them. I am going to use my d20 Conan books that I never got to use for their intended ruleset, and set everything in Hyboria.

The first adventure I'm creating begins with the players in a prison that they quickly find out is a holding cell for an arena. I figure they can come up with their own backstories for how they got in there to begin with, innocent or not, and it would encourage them to work together. I have roughly outlined this first scenario, with an NPC prison warden, and a friendly NPC to help them out.

So far, my plan is to give them the friendly NPC (if they can recruit him and don't push him away or kill him for some reason) and pit their "team" against a series of combat situations to sort of familiarize themselves with combat in the game. First, I've set them against a large group of rabble, which could be an interesting opening act for them. This would be followed by some downtime to recover, roleplay, and plan. The next day is against a group of NPC-level enemies that will equal their group size, to provide a challenge and some real danger. I have a purposely weak NPC to toss into this group (a nobleman from Corinthia) to tone it down if the fight is going too poorly. More roleplay, recovery, and planning, and day 3 will see them pitted against a large bear.

With generous use of hero points, they should be able to find some way out and may not even fight all the fights. However, if they have not escaped by the third night, I plan to have the Caliph send wine to the guards of the prison, as a sign of his pleasure for the entertaining games lately. This will provide several opportuities for them to escape.

Just when they are about to escape, the prison warden blocks their exit with a decently large group of rabble guards (all the guards that have not become drunk or passed out). I've equipped him with 2 Villain points and two boons, but he is stats-wise in line with what the PCs would have.

If they manage to take out most of the rabble, or reduce him to half his lifeblood, he will flee to fight again another day and possibly become a thorn in their side for many adventures to come. I plan to have him as an underling of a crime lord of sorts, whose hands are not only in shady kidnappings for arena games, but many other avenues of profit that could cause him to conflict with the PCs in the future.

Since I am a newer GM, I am hoping the scenario isn't too much of a railroad. I didn't want to rehash the meeting up in a tavern route, though. Another concern I have is that a group of NPCs of roughly equal stats might be too difficult for them to defeat.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and if you have any cool suggestions or tricks for me to throw in, I am all ears. I would love to learn and become a better GM for my group.