Tournament Scenarios

[doctorscraps]

So...let me spin a yarn for you about what's going on in my 4th edition campaign, and what I was thinking of doing...

So, a Kingdom has lost it's Royal Champion in the end of it's last war, but the only real remnant they had to bring back was his magic sword. Once it was enshrined at the temple in the capital city, it was found that it could no longer be moved, it's weight beyond that of a mere mortal. My players have tried to move the sword themselves in usual player curiosity, but of course, to no avail. They're only 3rd level, and none of players have done anything that the spirit bound in the sword would find worthy enough to allow one of them to wield it.

Besides that, bad mojo is starting to move in the world, old gods and dark forces making their move and all that. The people of the kingdom are afraid, and the previous royal champion had been a sort of inspiring figure of courage and bravery. The Queen, the Champions lover in life, receives visions that it will be her choice to decide whom the inheritor of the Champions mantle, as the right to wield the magic sword, will be. So, my plan was...is that she decides to hold a grand melee tournament to decide who of her realm is the bravest, and the strongest, capable of leading her people in the dark days to come.

Granted, the players could enter this tournament as a group...but there can only be one Champion. There's only one magic sword. If only one person enters, what do I do with the other players? I imagine I'll have the one person enter and everyone else will just have to spectate during matches, or everyone will enter, and then I have to deal with butthurt players upset that they got beat out by their companions.

So then, how would you guys approach a tournament-like scenario like this?

[Joven]

Or one enters, and the rest help them cheat their way to the top.
Sneak into the enemies quarters the day before and sabotage their gear or make them unable to sleep or what have you.
Set them against each other before the fights so they get disqualified.
Change the order of the fights to make it so they only face the weakest and have the strong ones eliminate themselves until the last fight.
Research the opponents weaknesses and come in with a sure-fire weapon to defeat them.
etc etc

Make it mostly about preparing for/setting up the fights, so that everyone can be involved, and then you can gloss over most the fights, and eliminate downtime where only 1 person could do stuff endlessly rolling dice while everyone else watches.

[Cthuluzord]

We just did something like this in EP.  One of the players had to fight in a deathmatch and win because the prize was a massive favor from one the criminal organizations putting on the fight.

Jason was the one to fight, but he had no way of knowing who his opponent would be before the fight began.  So the rest of the crew (Thad, Aaron, and Ross). Went around the betting pit and gamed the odds, strategically being overheard talking about how Jason was doomed, had a cold, etc.  I treated like skill tests to get the odds up before they all put their credits on Jason.

Granted, none of that in any way improved Jason's chances of survival, but that is the RPPR way.

[doctorscraps]

Oddly, I only have one character who is willing to cheat...however no one in the group is willing to go over to the darkside too terribly much, because there is also a quest in play about them following a pilgrimage similar to Ultima 4, and they're afraid that if they do bad things, they'll be tarnished and unable to complete that quest.
Except the Changeling...apparently murder and the persuit of the Virtue of Jusice go hand in hand with her...I digress.

I can imagine two or three of them wanting to enter the tournament, but that's three possible out of five. I would need something to keep the other two busy...The Rogue I can imagine could try stealthy things, but the other is a shaman who took her backstory from Ladyhawk, and remains in Tiger Form during, only being an elf at night...would like to know why I thought THAT was a good idea...

[Setherick]

Personally, I think the quest for the players should be to find the new champion. Perhaps there is a heroic fighter that has turned monk and is living in the harshest part of the country, etc etc etc.

I only mention this because the players are level 3 and there can only be one champion. Instead of possibly separating the group, make them unite to find the champion. That is, unless, you've already let them enter into the contest.

[Teapot]

I had something like  this years ago in a D&D game. None of the players wanted the job (big general or some title) but they all wanted to take part in the games. There were various challenges (I even made two of them play chess) with the ending being a huge melee. All the players took part in that, even the ones who had been disqualified from "winning" because they sucked at chess or jousting or some medieval wargame (just dice rolls).

In the end one of the PCs came in second in the melee because as soon as it started they immediately turned on each other like frenzied badgers in a deli while the NPCs kind of did their own thing with the two major clashes moving in and away from each other. The most let down player was a militant cleric who REALLY wanted to win and then walk away from the prize just to be a dick. Otherwise they had spent time betting on themselves, talking trash and not caring about the prize as much as roughing each other up.

A big part of it was that none of them wanted to stop adventuring and sit around a city all day as the general of an army that didn't go off on campagin that often.

[Shallazar]

While we were planescaping around in  our last 3.5 campaign, we got scooped up by some Mindflayers.

These mindflayers made their slave-things fight in an arena. We had to fight badguys and teammates. We felt good when our mindflayer masters were pleased. Being a Sorcerer... I kind of just fireballed everyone. We then had to band together and escape.