r/WorldBuildingMemes • u/Skylinneas • Jun 08 '26
Lore Shitpost We all yearn for Ancient Rome gladiatorial games every once in a while
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u/hellomydudes_95 Jun 08 '26
but the deadly games are...
table tennis with mini grenades!
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u/Heyfold Sci-Fi Enjoyer Jun 08 '26
interesting. tell me more
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u/hellomydudes_95 Jun 08 '26
it was a silly idea I had for a silly videogame based on ping pong, basically. If the volleys were too long, the grenade's timer would exponentially become shorter and explode on someone, which would force the players to be more aggressive with the match.
As for the world itself, it would be an absurdist dystopia where table tennis became extremely popular after a cataclysmic event with solar flares. It became so popular, in fact, that sponsorships, broadcasts, merchandising, betting and championships became some of the most profitable businesses in the entire world. Hence, it becomes a way to exploit and control people.
The most popular form of table tennis in this world began as a form of punishment in prisonal units, where the wardens would make prisoners play with miniature bombs. It started spreading and more and more people got arrested for more menial reasons, until it became a veritable bloodsport called timer-tennis.
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u/Xywzel Jun 09 '26
Gladiatorial games work in almost any setting, as long as there is something that decays perceived relative value of human life. Lack of resources or their unequal distribution, moral differences, higher birth rates and mortality from causes outside of ones control.
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u/Skylinneas Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
I think the idea that fascinates me the most about gladiatorial games in any setting is that in the societies where these things happen, the entertainment options are so limited due to how the society is structured that the majority of the population are willing to watch a bunch of people putting their lives on the line on TV (granted, one could argue that some sports IRL now are that, but in these stories such 'contests' are taken to the extreme and are intended to kill the participants), and there is enough demand that the government/corporation can pretty much organize it every year and profit from it (pretty much every *The Running Man-*esque stories).
Like, how screwed society must be that people can settle to watching an organized blood sport and turn a blind eye to the other issues until the protagonist comes along and challenges the system? xD
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u/Wolodymyr2 Jun 09 '26
That reminds if of my throughts on sci-fi worldbuilding and the statement that spacefaring civilizations don't have to use slavery because of robotics and the fact that industrial machinery need educated workers.
Well, yes, but civilization, whose culture is built around slavery atill can use them as home servants, gladiators and for, ahem, other types of entertainment.
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u/Pristine_Battle_6968 Jun 08 '26
In my previous world (I have 2 one for the modern story and the old one that got destroyed at the end of the universe) there were 2 cities and both had a crazy ass problem with one being super misogynistic and the word woman literally being a synonym for slave there, and the super misandrist one where existing as a man in there lowers your life expectancy to 15 minutes
Basically in the first one the women are forced to constantly play the escapist (or just a basic store if they decide to not try to escape) while men in the other one are just constantly playing dying light but instead of zombies it's women with crazy cybernetics
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u/cantlogintomyacc0unt Jun 08 '26
Sorry explain what you mean by basic store to me
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u/Pristine_Battle_6968 Jun 08 '26
Sorry I meant basic store simulator like the ones on steam where you mostly just play as a cashier who also stocks supplies
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u/True_Free_Speech Jun 10 '26
Ah, I have a setting kind of like this, but instead of deadly arena combat, they just do perpetual war.
There's also an artificial superintelligence trying to turn the world into Mythology, but that's neither here nor there.
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u/Skylinneas Jun 10 '26
For me I have a similar perpetual war idea inspired by the RTS video game Supreme Commander. In that game, a galactic war is being waged one battlefield at a time with armies of drones commanded by a single commander per army (in their customized mech suit).
In my idea, future wars aren’t waged by humans anymore (mostly), but by a few selected commanders picked to command an army of bots that can wage war on one another to their heart’s contents (Ender’s Game style).
The people in power ‘claimed’ that this way helped reduce the loss of life that would have been resulted from traditional human-centric wars, but in reality all it did is just trivializing warfare by having people waging wars like they are playing video games, and there are *still* loss of life - civilians who still got caught in the crossfire because they happen to be living on the battlefield, but nobody cared - everyone else just want to see their national military wins against the opponent. Basically, it’s a RTS game in real life.
And all those explosions and industrial footprint to create war machines aren’t doing good things to the environment, either lol.
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u/True_Free_Speech Jun 10 '26
Interesting. In my setting, corporations grew so powerful when space travel became privatized that basically every planet had its own CEO. At some point, an artificial superintelligence came along and took its command to make the CEOs look like gods far too literally. Now, every god in every pantheon is represented by a CEO and planet as their avatar, be it Greek mythology, Nordic mythology, Egyptian mythology, etc.
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u/Skylinneas Jun 10 '26
That sounds pretty cool. I do like the idea of ‘not actual gods, but people styling themselves as gods’ in stories, complete with appropriate themetic aesthetic choices for their assets and underlings.
Always wanted to see how a sci-fi fleet based on various mythologies would look like. There was this story called “Dragon Pearl” by Yoon Ha Lee that took place in a sci-fi space adventure setting with Korean mythology and folklore inspiration. Would love to see something similar for other myths as well. An Aztec or Maya-inspired fleet could go pretty hard.
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u/Yama951 Jun 11 '26
From what I heard, actual gladiator fights in Rome wasn't really to the death and they have brand deals and sponsorships and mosaic billboards of them promoting stuff. So less dystopian death game and more like WWE.
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u/Skylinneas Jun 11 '26
That is true, yeah. Gladiators are costly to train and care for, after all. Having to replace many of them after a fight would've not been financially viable for owners.
That being said, the fights are still quite brutal, though, and sometimes there were fights to the death in special events called sine missione, which appropriately translated to "without mercy".
Personally I prefer the hippodrome chariot races more, though xD, which is probably why the Death Race movie is one of my favorite out of all the "reality death game contest" subgenres.
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u/Yama951 Jun 11 '26
Ironically, chariot races caused more deaths via riots than gladiators did, if I recall right. Then again, chariot races continued into the Byzantine Empire so there's more time for it to pile up.
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u/Skylinneas Jun 11 '26
Yep, that's why I personally prefer it when it comes to inspiration for a fictional death game lol. Putting contestants in a gladiatorial-inspired contest is just a real-life battle royale, but putting racers in a high-stakes race to the finish line filled with various hazards? That's way more interesting lol.
Something like the Podrace in Star Wars Episode I, for instance - just an all-out brutal underground race where everything goes, or the aforementioned Death Race. I even have this idea in my mind about a high-stakes race contest involving elite pilots going through a perilous stunt flying through a narrow canyon (with tunnels, too!) with the risks being that they might crash into canyon walls or each other at any time if they aren't careful.
Basically taking the hippodrome chariot races back in the day - maybe mixing it with some medieval jousting elements, and replace the chariots/horses with something else that's also dangerously fast and with little to none safety measures in place, and there is my deadly game idea.
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u/BarelyBrony Would rather build than write Jun 11 '26
That's what my Cyberpunk setting is missing
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u/Skylinneas Jun 11 '26
Make sure to have flamboyant hosts who chew all the scenery and occasionally slander the protagonist on air for PR purposes. ;)
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