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damned
January 26th, 2015, 08:19
Hey my fellow C&C GMs and Players...
(of course if others are reading this and want to join in please do so - if the idea survives it may live as more than one ruleset - a Pathfinder tourney, Castles&Crusades tourney etc)

Bouncing around an idea for FG Con and Id love some feedback as to:

a) worthwhile pursuing or not?
b) helping to flesh out how it would work
c) helping to set some appropriate challenges and pre-gens

So the idea is this:

Interested challengers may sign up for the challenge - open to all comers.
If overly popular limit to 8/12/16 participants.
Challenger selects a pregen and must keep the pregen alive as many challenges as possible

I was working this based on Characters with approx 100,000xp (lvl 6-8)
Round 1 you face a low level easy challenge: 2 Goblins
Round 2 you face a slightly harder challenge: 2 Zombies
Round 3 you face: Bugbear and Gnoll
Round 4 you face: Otyugh and a Dark Mantle
Round 5 you face: Ogre Mage
Round 6 you face: ...
etc

Charcters would typically fly thru the early rounds but would they expend/lose too much in one challenge and struggle in the next?


Each round should be aimed to be completed in 10mins. Early rounds should complete much faster.
Each pregen will be given an amount of equipment appropriate to the others
There is no external healing or resting - if you have healing spells and potions you can use - otherwise you fight with what you have

Another variation might be that you take the last 2 and pit them against each other. Etc.
You would need a couple of GMs to speed it along. They would need to agree on how the more powerful enemies would attack - eg using spells early

The arena might be the same for each round or it might vary?
The arena might have one or more obstacles that could assist the challenger (or the monster) - the obstacles might be as simple as a column which provides partial cover, a chasm with a narrow bridge which assists ranged attackers.

Would you allow other challengers to listen in on TS? If so they must roll each round to determine order as the last challenger would have picked up some extra info.

No prizes for winning - just an honourable mention in the wrap up!

Anyone think the idea has merit and want to explore it with me?
If anyone really hates the idea tell me and tell me why...

Mask_of_winter
January 26th, 2015, 08:31
I know tournaments were popular back in the 80's. I've personally never been involved in one.

I think it could appeal to many gamers who feel like doing some Roll-Playing.

Personally, it's something I have no interest in. It nurtures the idea of winning/losing in RPGS and it's just not my philosophy. Also, in such event I would imagine a GM becomes a referee instead of a storyteller. Again no interest in that either.

But then again, I've gone Ronin and I might be a minority ;)

damned
January 26th, 2015, 08:50
I know tournaments were popular back in the 80's. I've personally never been involved in one.

I think it could appeal to many gamers who feel like doing some Roll-Playing.

Personally, it's something I have no interest in. It nurtures the idea of winning/losing in RPGS and it's just not my philosophy. Also, in such event I would imagine a GM becomes a referee instead of a storyteller. Again no interest in that either.

Certainly i dont think it would appeal to all but likewise I think it would only run for the same length of time as a one shot.
Also the GM would be referee and tactician.
It might also have some interest to other participants - or people who are between sessions and want to lurk.

There can be only one!

JohnD
January 27th, 2015, 18:10
Many of those old AD&D modules had tournament setups with pre-generated characters. These were designed to have 4-6 combat challenges and IIRC 1-2 "puzzle" challenges, and the playing time was supposed to be a specific amount of time (kind of like the PFS stuff but I've never seen a PFS scenario that ends in it's allotted time). Maybe something like this would be a nice throw back?

damned
January 28th, 2015, 09:33
It certainly could be John.
Im just looking for some ideas on other sessions we *might* run at FG Con :)

S Ferguson
February 1st, 2015, 01:04
If you allot a time frame on a game even in the old fashion of D&D Tournament modules (or capsule modules out of the Dragon) there's a lot of railroading going on in order to meet the time limit - TSR blatently came out and said so in Dragon #97 or so (God it's been a while...). I've noticed that tendency in PFS Adventures, (as John mentioned). A good idea is the "conversion" of some of the encounters from the old Pendragon supplements. They had related adventures that had action and puzzle solving that could be done in the requisite amount of time. The Arthurian adventure mold seems to gel well with C&C, with minimal conversion hassle, after all, it is high fantasy. The other thing about the Pendragon supplements is that they have a wide variety of thematic adventure seeds aside from action and puzzle solving. There are maidens to court, tourneys to be held, and honor to defend. Definitely material I'd like to see (and eventually run in a con if I can get away from programming and artwork for a few days of the month - keeping my campaign going is hard enough right now:p).

Cheers,
SF

damned
February 1st, 2015, 01:25
I think all one-shots (and PFS is largely a series of one-shots) require a fair amount of railroading. There just isnt time for distractions :)



https://www.fg-con.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/fg-con-6-150-6.jpg (https://www.fg-con.com/events/)
FG Con 6 – April 17-19th 2015 - register at www.fg-con.com (https://www.fg-con.com/) for all the latest info.

JohnD
February 4th, 2015, 23:27
Waaay back when I had a competition of sorts.

Group of 5 enter essentially a dungeon crawl and have "x" amount of time to gather as much XP and loot as possible. Survival of characters counts. Essentially the group with the most points at the end of the competition "wins".

Used to either do this with 5 players/group or one person controlling the 5 PCs. Depends on demand for essentially a dungeon crawl. Each group has the same 5 PCs to start play with. Probably need to devote a 4-5 hour session maximum to this. I still have my old hand drawn maps from ~ 30 years ago.

Historically, the party make up was always; Fighter/Ranger/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard with a few demi human races mixed in.

S Ferguson
February 5th, 2015, 02:03
Ahhh... The Monty-Hall Dungeon Romp. I miss those days. :)

Cheers,
SF

JohnD
February 5th, 2015, 02:07
Ahhh... The Monty-Hall Dungeon Romp. I miss those days. :)

Cheers,
SF
I suppose... but in my version there are actual enemies trying to end your characters. :)

damned
February 5th, 2015, 02:17
My thinking on this was for something much shorter - hence a series of rounds where you face a single encounter each time. It was more about doing some different things at the next FG Con.
Some virtual cons do speed miniature painting comps, have some guest Q&A panels from publishers and designers.
We introduced a couple of Hangout Intro sessions at FG Con 5.
Im open to other ideas too.



https://www.fg-con.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/fg-con-6-150-4.jpg (https://www.fg-con.com/events/)
FG Con 6 – April 17-19th 2015 - register at www.fg-con.com (https://www.fg-con.com/) for all the latest info.

S Ferguson
February 7th, 2015, 23:09
My thinking on this was for something much shorter - hence a series of rounds where you face a single encounter each time. It was more about doing some different things at the next FG Con.
Some virtual cons do speed miniature painting comps, have some guest Q&A panels from publishers and designers.
We introduced a couple of Hangout Intro sessions at FG Con 5.
Im open to other ideas too.


Sort of like a Gladiator style combat? Trial of the Champions comes to mind but that is Advanced Fighting Fantasy. Yet another rules minimal (beyond rules lite) system I enjoy every now and again. In that game, 20 contestants are pitted against each other to reach a final total of 5 IIRC, who then enter the "dungeon" that basically is fighting one encounter after another. They converted its predecessor Deathtrap Dungeon to 3.5e, so it's fully multi player (nut then again, so is AFF).

If you use your contact net, there is no reason why you couldn't ask have a representative from contributors, discuss, say, "tabletop gaming in the age of the internet." A lot of indie publishers and even some big publishers wouldn't mind discussing and answering fan questions. With the Teamspeak service, you could even have separate "rooms" where various "events" are scheduled. Ask about: especially to owners of companies already "in the know" of FG. I've done a fair number of interviews just by contacting the publicist of a company and asking about possibly having one (and have succeeded more often than not). Obviously you might not get the bigwigs, but gaming authors love media attention, and having a designer of scenarios discuss his trade, is just as good as Stephen Chenault discussing the origins of C&C. You'd probably want this to be booked in advance to mitigate questions, but it *is* doable.

Cheers,
SF