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Tournament arcs are a staple of the fantasy genre for good reason. They allow the main characters to demonstrate their skills on a national or international stage, win grand prizes, and meet worthy rivals. InDungeons & Dragons, it is one of the few acceptable times where you’re allowed to beat up your party members.
Running a tournament can be a challenge, especially for medium or large groups. Dividing a session into a series of small contests means most of your players will spend their time watching each other compete. Here’s how to keep them engaged during what is meant to be a hyped-up event.
Have Stuff For The Noncombatants
Not every character is going to be in every competition of the tournament, and this means a lot of downtime for characters.
There might also be skill-focused competitions as part of the tournament. Depending on the tone of your game this can be a rap battle, pet familiar show, trivia, or craft contest.
An important thing to do for these non-combat events is to make them more complex than a single skill check.Make it interactive the same way you would when designing a social encounter or combat.
Events
Crafting Contest
A craft competition would feature a direct skill check to make something that wins but should also have additional things to do, likefinding the best materials, learning the judge’s criteria, and scouting out or sabotaging competitors.
Performing Arts
A bard might be given a specific theme to compose around, using their performance skill. The execution of their piece would requirechecks using their instrument proficiency, with acrobatics for choreography.
Trivia or Knowledge Contests
Knowledge checks can rely on a variety of different skills.History, arcana, nature, religion, languages, and tools can all be relevant. Characters might have bonuses or penalties to recall knowledge related to their character’s backstory and history.
Keep The Pace Quick For Combat Events
There are going to beparts of a tournament that aren’t especially interestingto the audience or the participants, on top of large parts of your group not being direct participants.You want to keep these moving quickly.
Details
Montage through the prelims
Skipping past the boring fights that players are guaranteed to win saves a lot of time.You can still choose to describe them, but rolling initiative and attacks for fights with a known outcome is very time-consuming.
Use the extra time this earns to describe the stronger competitorsthat the party will be facing later.
Use Bloodied Rules Instead Of Knockouts
Combat can often run slowly in Dungeons & Dragons.The bloodied condition refers to a character being dropped below half HP and makes a good stopping point for a show fight.
It also makes sense in character, as you generally don’t want a martial arts competition to keep going until someone is knocked out or killed.
Allow Alternate Win Conditions
Allow ways to win that aren’t reducing your opponent’s hitpoints.This could mean a series of grapple rolls to throw them out of the arena, bribing them to throw the fight, or goading them to break the rules and get disqualified.
These rules also help a lot if Player vs Player content is a focus of the tournament.Skip past the fights that don’t pit your party members against each other, use bloodied rules to stop them from killing each other, and let them be clever wielding their unique abilities to steal wins from each other.
Have At Least One Person Cheat
Much like Wrestling events, a tournament in D&D is defined by its villains as much as its heroes.Having an antagonist who overtly or covertly flaunts the regulations and ideals of sportsmanship is a great way to set up an enemy.
Here are a few ways you may handle this, along with ways to engage players both inside and outside the arena:
Win Conditions
Hidden Device/Mechanic
This character is somehow giving themselves an unfair edge. It could be they’re microdosing on strength potions, have a knuckleduster under their boxing glove, or an audience member shining a mirror into the eyes of their enemies.
The party can resolve this by working out the trick and exposing it to the judges.
Players not in the ring might be better able to sneak around behind the scenes and discover how they’re cheating.
Bribed Judges
This antagonist, using either money or social clout, has got the judges looking the other way whenever they’re doing something wrong.
They can cheat overtly, hitting below the belt and using banned items or spells.
The party can’t rely on the judges to resolve this so mayneed to resort to their own underhanded tricks or win fairly with the handicap.
Literal Magic
Somewhere away from the stage, a spellcaster is concentrating on empowering their chosen combatant.
Spells like Enhance Ability have no visual component but give a massive edgein most competition settings.
Their chosen participant might not even know they’re being given an unfair edge.
The party needs to find and stop the spellcaster.
They could also use some method of revealing the magic, but this can be combined with Bribed Judges (who probably have their own method of detecting cheats).
Part Of The Show
The unfair advantages wielded by other contestants aren’t breaking the rules but are a crowd-favourite part of the show.
This is especially fitting in illegal and underground sports.
The party will be able to flaunt the rules too,but only if they do it in a flashy way that gets the audience on their side.
