(far from optimised, generated for a table with a 100 euro budget as its limit, also made it yonks ago now and havent updated it)

You might get a kick out of my Bearntropy deck. Its all about creating infinite bears using combos very similar to this one :)
moxfield.com/decks/mKplJ-...

Also this guy. Hes very important.

I mean probably just historic trial by combat right? Then chuck in the term gladiators because its cool as hell

This setting also gets round the problem Stella raised elsewhere of item descriptions being weird to have diageticly by having magic be derived from a big guinesque true name approach. These things exude a written truth, its why they have power in the first place.

I agree strongly that people often try to translate the struggle, learn, die, rest, repeat loop with mixed success. The worlds, the exploration, and the relic based stories are far more compelling to me personally.

Weird answer but this is very much what im planning to do with DQ&D. Still in early dev stages though. All character progression is linguistically ressonant treasure based, all items found in key areas, and the world itself is being designed as an interconnected thing.

@juniper-c.bsky.social is running a game jam for almost exactly this!

itch.io/jam/old-scan...

Ha ha, jokes on you, I can print 31 blog posts off for free

You'd probably need some kind of sicko who isnt running a phractslike who has a copy and a vested intrest in learning more about that style of play to run it for you... Who could be anyone 👀