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This book completely supplants the rules and background from GURPS Imperial Rome, Second Edition. Which is a good thing, as that material can charitably be called ahistorical.
OVERVIEW
Gladiators is broken into six main chapters, roughly divided as either background/historical information or game mechanics.-
Gladiator Games: This chapter gives the history of gladiatorial games in the Roman world, from the Republic to the Dominate. If you want to be picky, the material is biased towards the state of the games during the height of the Principate - which is understandable given the limitations of our source material.
The text does not shy away from the darker side of the games, without repeating the scurrilous, unsubstantiated attacks from some moralists (both past and present). The chapter is almost completely rules-agnostic (just a few GURPS references here and there) and could be dropped into any fantasy campaign.
This material will be of the greatest use when you wish to integrate gladiator games into a game and maintain the social background that gave rise to them (for example, adding a history of gladiator games in your D&D campaign). Perhaps ironically, this chapter is a bit less useful for other Roman roleplaying settings (such as Fvlminata or Rome: The Life and Death of the Republic) as they usually cover the high points of gladiator history.
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Styles: The meat and potatoes of the book, and the reason you will need GURPS Martial Arts - as these make extensive references to perks and rules from that book.
This chapter adapts every gladiator fighting style I've heard of (including those that are very obscure, such as the crupellarius) into Martial Arts styles. Although there are no illustrations of the fighting styles (unfortunate), the descriptions are well-written, and include game-mechanic notes for representing the fighting style in GURPS terms (Maneuvers to use, opposition counters, etc.).
As gladiator fighting styles are ludicrously specialized, each entry is rather short - and cinematic lenses are bare-bones given the lack of any known "super gladiator" tales. The GURPS references are rather self-explanatory, so the style entries are rather easy to adapt over to other game systems. For example, the basic andabatae (blind fighters) style entry is as follows:
Skills: Shortsword.
Cinematic Skills: Blind Fighting; Power Blow.
Perks: Style Adaptation (any gladiator style); Sure-Footed (Sand).
For tactical advice we are told:
"Andabatae are greatly handicapped by their helmets. Stylists move about, attempting to hear their opponent – a challenging prospect in a crowded arena – and probe the darkness with quick attacks, trying to locate a target. Defensive Attacks are the rule, and Wait, simultaneously listening with Hearing rolls (see p. B394 for details on combat Hearing rolls). Andabatae who sense their opponent go for a quick, hard, crippling strike to win their fights."
Clearly, this information is useful to any game system.The final section of the chapter discusses existing GURPS Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills as applies to a gladiatorial game. This is well done, and the integration with Martial Arts and Basic Set is well-handled -- it doesn't degenerate into a huge list of cross-references and exceptions.
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Rules of the Games: This is the "arena sourcebook" chapter. Right off the bat we are given guidance on how much area a fight takes place in (no running all over the arena) and a completely new GURPS rule that lets you emphasize defense for one side of the body.
This Focused Defense rule is a bit fiddly, but it adds a surprising amount of depth to GURPS - among other things it makes wearing armor on single limbs as useful in game terms as it was in the reality of the fights. It can even be applied outside of Gladiators, for extra detail in close-order formation fighting and other situations.
As you would expect, there are some rules guidance for dealing with crowd reactions -- using stylish moves and grandstanding, for example. Finally, we are given GM guidance on advancing in gladiatorial rank and pricing for slave gladiators.
This chapter may be difficult to adapt to other game systems, as it makes extensive use of GURPS for tactical combat and social modifiers. Even so, there are some good generic rules that can be adapted, and historical facts that may have an impact in even the most free-form game.
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We Who Are About to Die: The books statement that: "Everybody knows the line “We who are about to die salute you!” Not a lot of people know prisoners sentenced to death, not professional gladiators, spoke it" is not only misleading, it's incorrect. It was spoken once, and is never attested to again. Nitpick aside ...
This chapter has a brief intro on who was chosen (or voluntarily chose) the gladiator life, their day-to-day schedules, and even their life after retirement. These are handled in broad strokes, but are gold to roleplaying. All of this material is completely rules-neutral.
The templates themselves are familiar to anyone who has played GURPS 4e, although it is interesting that they range from a generic base 'Gladiator' to the owners, and even a boxer. Each template has multiple lenses and customization notes. The only annoyance here is that all of the templates are 100 points or more.
A nice surprise was that at the end of the chapter were NPC writeups for personnel you would expect at a games, including the clowns and referees! This was a nice touch!
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Equipment: This is basically a list, in Martial Arts style, of weapons you would see a gladiator using. From Bow to Trident, and even descriptions of the various helmet types used. Even the (highly!) conjectural so-called quadrens is given stats.
The last section provides a useful breakdown of the equipment for each gladiator type, written up as a "kit" with a total cost and weight. As with other sections in the book, the writers did a good job of taking the make-work out of creating a gladiator character. You could pick a gladiator style, the gladiator template, add an equipment package and have a fully-functional character.
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Campaigns: This chapter is the endcap for the primary rules chapters. The bread on the rules sandwich so to speak. Its very easy to adapt this material to any game.
There are the usual campaign seeds (of varying interest, your milage may vary) and crossover information of course. I will note that the crossover information was actually rather good - I find this section in many GURPS books to be rather atrocious and tacked on, but here they actually appeared to take some interest in how you could adapt the book to various GURPS settings, including GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.
The material on running a gladiator campaign was very well done, and I was especially interested in the fact they put considerable weight on running a campaign based around the entire gladiator school - with the players controlling individual fighters as they come and go, die or retire.
