How do I make the whole "Party is forced to be combatants in an arena" thing interesting?

It's simple. If they don't fight, bring in the trucks.

Easy. It's not gladiatorial combat, it's chariot racing!

Holy shit that could actually be kinda interesting having the party go with chariot combat
>Any spell or weapon is allowed
>You fall off the chariot you die
>Both combatants fall at the same time they fight to the death

Make them have a mission in the arena. maybe keeping someone else alive?

Short version: Don't.

Longer version: The whole reason an arena fight would be exciting is if fighting to the death without the possibility for escape is a rare occurrence, and considering how most campaigns work, this is absolutely not the case. So you should take the first chance to make it about something else.

Fighting a big bad monster and once your players prove they're not a pushover, it loses interest and goes for the crowd. Alternatively, there's a fuckup backstage and the gladiatorial monsters and (armed) gladitoral slaves are now in a huge three-way clusterfuck with guards that is spilling out into the civilian crowds.

Party has to decide who they want to side with, or just book it out of there, maybe even an uneasy truce with your former opponent. Lots of ways the party can take it. Gives the GM extra flexibility to make interesting monsters appear for no good reason, or add factional combatants at random to hinder or help the party if they so want.

Have the players make new characters,as broken as possible. Bring the min maxed characters out as the gladiators the PCs have to face. Let the player that made the gladiator role play it.

Seconding this.

The problem with arenas is that they're not actually dangerous because of behind-the-scenes-it's-an-RPG reasons.
Moreover, not all characters work in an arena. Some don't want to be in an arena at all, and being in one implies horribly failures on their part. See: the assassin. The cult leader.

If you come at it from the punishment angle, i.e. the players have been arrested/kidnapped/etc. and made to fight, then the result is the players scheming to escape. The actual arena fights are a distraction from this. Even if you have a character who would work in an arena, i.e. a barbarian or fighter archetype, to those players it's a horribly transparent railroad.

Use arenas as events. Things that occur in the world that the players can choose to partake in or not. As world-events, it means a large amount of trained warriors, slaves, wild animals, etc. all being moved into one city. It also distracts everyone while the events are occurring.
It's the more violent equivalent to a sporting event, if your setting doesn't allow for the Olympics or the Superbowl.

As an event, it gives the players cover to sneak mercenaries into the city, to kill people of importance, etc., because everyone is distracted by the games, and/or the mercenaries seem like part of the games, whatever.
There's a reason that big events tend to get cancelled when they could be used as a screen for a coup attempt or similar. IIRC, it happened in historical Rome a few times.

But making the players fight in an arena?
Nah.
It's shit every time.
There's also dozens of other festivities or events you could choose from if you need a major event on the calendar the players can use as a distraction.

>thanks for showing up this season everyone
>today we're going to take a break from our regularly scheduled roleplaying and instead run math calculations and probability scores.

Combat is math. Math can be done outside of a narrative structure. Math inside a narrative structure can be fun, but does not appeal to everyone.
See: Primer.
Movies about time travel that ignore the science behind it have historically appealed to wider audiences than a movie that tries to make the science as accurate as possible.

Have them fight individually and make the other PC's play the enemies combating them?

I've found a lot of entertainment from having PC's run solo or pairs and the other PC's playing peons, support troops, guards or sometimes enemies. Keeps everyone engaged and can give incentive for them to play well and pay attention and can end up creating notable NPCs.

>clear exit routes
>from the floor of an arena

Y'know, the point of an arena having walls, or of a boxing ring having ropes, is to keep the combatants inside until the matter is finished.

>throw a javelin and impale the Emperor
>maybe escape if the Emperor was popular enough and/or your fellow conspirators can be trusted to help you out.

>make the other Player Character's play the enemies
Misuse of game terms aside, the problem is making the players with non-combat characters fight in an arena. Unless it's D&D where everyone is a combat class, this is a colossal "Fuck you" to those players.

It would be better to simply let the players control the gladiators you've made, same as how you've had PCs who controlled support troops, guards, etc., rather than making the PCs fight gladiators.

If you weren't already have the arena change randomly. Bits are slid out of the floor or back in again. The arena could change from barren desert with ruins to sparse jungle to faux cityscape very quickly.

If you get the Jindosh Mansion from Dishonored 2 you have done it correctly

Well, certainly like everything on Veeky Forums the idea must be adjusted for the game.

Throwing out some pencil-pushing desk jockey into an area isn't very good sport. You could chain them to a more physically competent character as a handicap. Lots of options.

The main idea is keeping all the players involved in the action.

Fuck arenas.

>have a good campaign going
>party is working for a shadowy group of merchants
>end up going into a god's lair in order to bargain with him
>the merchants want him to smith for them, and will return one of his avatar's corpse in return
>etc.
>playing politics between a stupidly powerful guild, and the gods.
>favors getting traded back and forth, sometimes making terrible deals in exchange for short term gain
>"oh, you want my help? Sure, but I'll have your support for an unspecified job in the future. Sign with your soul, please and thank you"
>and then one day
>"there's a tournament in [city]"
>"Cool GM, hey, were we going to hear back from our spy in [god's domain] any time soon? He's overdue on his report by a week, but it's against the god's temperament to have killed him or taken him prisoner
>"Nah, not yet. Hey, so this tournament that's going on is pretty big. Gladiators from across the lands are going there"

We ended up helping him make two dozen gladiators using all the splatbooks and sometimes converting things across games and edition.
We had two sessions of the tournament, then the campaign died because none of the players wanted to be there.
It was essentially build wankery that could have been done in the group chat. Instead we spent session time on it.

The worst part? The GM started up another campaign a year later, and he pulls another tournament on us.
We got through the tournament this time (it was only two fights) but the campaign died again after a few sessions because the GM kept forcing us into unwanted situations.

Simply put: arenas, tournaments, or whatever else you want to call them are railroaded combat encounters. There's no pretty way to say it, and there's no way to make them fun.
It's more productive to do things outside of a narrative if the goal is to role dice and kill things. That's why wargames work.

Set up a situation beforehand with one of the players (preferably one with a stupid or non-combat character) and make him owe a lot of money to someone important like a major investor in the arena and the party has to win in the arena to pay it off.

Toss a few quest hooks throughout and let players gravitate to their preference, maybe they catch the eye of a merchant in trouble and he offers them a job during their post-battle celebrations, or one of the prisoners is there for political reasons and they do a jailbreak (making an enemy of the guy they owe money to so they can fight bounty hunters in the future), or maybe they just do really well and get rewarded with some sweet weapons because their fights entertained the king/queen and he wanted to show his appreciation.

Why would you not expect a combat heavy session if it's set in an arena full of gladiators?

Make the conditions for victory be something other than just kill the other guy(s.)

...

ooh! my DM actually had a good idea for something like this. We sailed up to a port "Kings Port" and encountered a parade where you could get any item you wanted for free but you just had to play a little game of chance to get it. However at the end of the parade you got sent to an Arena. Depending on how much gear you got for free the weight of it indicated the type of enemy they would release for you to fight against for the amusment of the king. Kings Port, King Sport (He loves puns and word play). It was fun and pretty clever until one of the party members was so greedy there was a monster big enough to break out of the arena.

You make it interesting by not forcing the combat. Instead, imagine:

>Great tournament/fair
>Royalty and nobility present
>Players can fight on foot or on horseback
>Tone is festive and spirits are high, battles only last until first blood and jousts until unhorsing
>Duels to the death MAY be arranged if there's an existing feud between combatants
>Participation is voluntary and can end at any time
>Non-combat characters can mill about the crowds, learn interesting shit, pickpocket or develop their character through roleplay