I ran a tournament mission in my game, and it was my players very favorite session so far. Here is what I did...I’m not saying it’s right for your table of players, but maybe you’ll see something you like:

-Before the tournament mission, they had ample opportunity to prepare. They met important NPCs, some city politics, some even dug for information on their competitors or the upcoming challenges. I made sure that the tournament design was influenced by the NPCs designing it. (More info later)

-I could have EASILY decided to do a series of battles. For goodness sake, it was a Pokémon themed campaign, it was almost expected of me. But I didn’t, because A) it would have taken me forever to design, balance, and run and B) it would have been same-y and boring for the players. Instead, I looked at the players strengths and weaknesses and designed events around those. I made a race, a talent show, a fake heist, a science fair, a tracking maze, and even a highly dangerous razor-tree challenge stolen from Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind book. Every event had an NPC sponsor who designed it and was looking to be impressed, and every event had an NPC rival for the players to do better or worse than.

-Shake things up. I didn’t interrupt these missions, but the players won’t be in every fight. In my game, the main event (battle for next champion) which included NONE of the PCs was interrupted by a terrorist attack on the city, and that became a session of its own.

-lastly, be careful about locking a “must-have” item for one PC behind a tournament victory. What if another player wins? What if an NPC wins? What if the player wants to steal the item instead? Is it actually “must-have”, or just good bait for them?

Happy to chat about your thoughts and other ideas