The Tournament Game (yet unnamed) is a live boffer combat game being developed by Cram and friends.

Overview

The game product will have two components

• a single-sheed PDF which functions both as a character sheet and rule book
• a longer document which explains how to run a tournament / combat scenarios and gives advice on running them

The model: anybody can download the rules and start a tournament arena in their hometown.

The designers will capitalize off the game by selling merchandise, and providing a website where registered players can be ranked.

Combat takes place with padded boffer weapons. There are a variety of scenarios for tournaments, but squad-based combat is primary format.

RPG Elements

Players will build a "character" in the sense that they will pick a class, skills and choose a weapon style. They may rewrite their character sheet at each tournament, giving each player the flexibility to try different classes and combat roles.

Skills are categorized to assign players into one of several combat niches, borrowing from D&D's combat roles. (blocking, striking, controlling, and support styles) These roles are tied to weapon styles - for example, the two sword style is for the traditional rogue, focusing on flanking and dealing large damage in a short time. Quarterstaff users will have access to packet attacks.

Players are encouraged to attend tourneys in costume. Teams receive bonuses for attending in matching costumes. Costumes do not have to be period costumes, they can be silly or tongue-in-cheek. Team concepts such as "star wars", "harry potter", "zombies", and "robots" are all acceptable. An entire team composed of people in darth vader outfits is fine too. Despite this non-genre variance, combat roles and skills (like the weapons being used) borrow from traditional fantasy RPG tropes.

When a character wins a bout, he may pick an additional skill for the next bout only. Likewise if he dies during a bout, he'll be down one HP for the next bout.

Character advancement is capped. After a certain point, additional victories provide you with nothing but status ("levels") and ranking. Because tournaments can take place anywhere in the country, and may involve varying levels of skill, we want to avoid a NERO Texas-esque situation where pockets of players grow excessively "high level" because they are able to regulate their own speed of advancement.

Generating a Character

The character sheet will look something like this

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| Name, OOG info, Stars                                     |
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| Pre-game skills                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
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| Tournament Skills                                         |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
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| Post Game Skills                                          |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
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• revision - on second thought, the pre and post game skills should just be incorporated into the skill columns. They should all occur on the same rows.

The skills are arranged into columns which look something like this

 -------------------------------------------------------------
| Sword & Board  | Bow       | Staff    | 2 swords  | Mace    |         
|________________|___________|__________|___________|_________|
| Skill 1        | Skill 1   | Skill 1  | Skill 1   | Skill 1 |
|________________|___________|__________|___________|_________|
| Skill 2        | Skill 2   | Skill 2  | Skill 2   | Skill 2 |
|________________|___________|__________|___________|_________|
| Skill 3        | Skill 3   | Skill 3  | Skill 3   | Skill 3 |
|________________|___________|__________|___________|_________|
| Skill 4        | Skill 4   | Skill 4  | Skill 4   | Skill 4 |
|________________|___________|__________|___________|_________|
| Skill 5        | Skill 5   | Skill 5  | Skill 5   | Skill 5 |
|________________|___________|__________|___________|_________|
                            

At first, a character will only be able to pick a weapon skill. Once he wins a tourney (i.e. ends the tournament with more bouts won than lost), he unlocks the skill beneath it. When he wins a tourney using that skill, he unlocks the skill beneath that. A player may only unlock one skill per tournament.

When checking in at the tourney, a player will select up to three skills he has access to from the column under the weapon style he's chosen for that day. (you can't select from other columns. So if you picked Fighter for the day, you can't pick up rogue skills... but you can just be a rogue in the next tourney)

Players have 5 hit points, but if you died during the last Resolution phase you played, you only have 4 hit points.

Once you have every skill in a column, you earn a level in that "class" and that column resets. This means that at any given point, "low level" fighters may in fact have more skills than "high level" fighters.

The Bout

A bout (one match within a tournament) consists of three phases: a set up phase (in which players jockey for starting position and determine field effects), a combat phase (the actual fighting), and a resolution phase (to see who survived the bout).

Pre Game Phase

This phase determines where within the arena players start, and what effects are on the ground to begin. Players that can define zones must supply streamers, rope, or other ways of demarcating zones.

Every participant gets a Starting Placement card. Every player with a pre-game phase skill gets a card for that skill. All the cards are shuffled together, and the referee turns them over one by one.

For example, maybe your card comes up first. You pick a spot on one side of the field and stand there. The next card that's drawn allows a teammate to place himself next to you. The next card is the enemy warrior - he picks a spot on the other side of the field. Then the enemy wizard's LAVA PIT spell comes up. He draws a 10' big circle on the ground around where you and your ally are standing. Now you'll take a point of damage when the match begins (for starting in lava) and must quickly scurry to a new position.

Some examples of cards played during this phase

• Healing font - once per match you can step in the healing zone to receive 2 pts of healing
• Resurection font - once per match, a healer can drag a body into this zone to bring him back to life with 2 HP
• Hiding Spot - a ranger's arrows do 2 points of damage while he is kneeling in a hiding spot.
• Wall of Force - the wizard draws a line on the ground which cannot be crossed.
• Crit Zone - a fighter standing in his own crit zone may swing for 2 damage.
• Curse Zone - a wizard may throw his packets for 2 damage (instead of 1) if the target is standing inside a curse zone
• Arcane Nexus - a wizard's packets do 2 damage (instead of one) if he stands within a nexus.
• Ambush - this card is not shuffled with the others. It is always played last and allows a rogue to position himself anywhere in the arena.

The intent of these zones is to create terrain on the battlefield which will modify the way the game is played. Tournaments may be largely influenced by the strategy and luck of the draw prior to combat. In this way, a strategic team may trump good fighters.

Tournament Phase

This is the actual match. A referree will signal when the match begins, and then all combatants fight until only one team is left standing.

There are several tournament styles, including:

• Tag Team
• 2 on 2
• 3 on 3
• 4 on 4
• 3 on 3 on 3, etc
• Monster - a party squares off against 2 or 3 monsters with predetermined stats/skills. Certain monsters will only be "available" after you have earned a certain number of stars. Teams compete by both facing the same monster and trying to beat him in quicker time or with less casualties
• Capture the Flag - two teams face off to retrieve an object from the other's territory. This involves resurrection points which you may walk back to after you die.
• other sport-style events like boffer soccer or Defend the Castle

Post Game Phase

Much like the pre-game phase, the post-game phase involves drawing cards in random order to determine the outcome of combat. Every character also has a card called "bleed out" which they contribute to the deck.

Any player with a post-game card may submit it during the pre-game phase. The referree holds this deck until the match is over. At this point, everybody freezes and the ref begins drawing cards. The ref only draws half the cards in the deck (therefore some players will not act in the post-game phase).

Some examples of cards played during this phase

• Execute - you can use this to kill a disabled character within 10 feet of you.
• Heal - you can bring one character back from unconsciousness
• Resurrect - you can bring one character back from the dead
• Bleed Out - if you are disabled and your Bleed Out card comes up, you "die" and will be down by one hit point in the next bout.
• Possum - Unless someone has already executed you, you actually survive the match. This has no effect if you were standing at the end of the match.
• Final blow - you do 1 point of damage to someone within ten feet of you. This can, in rare events, result in a stalemate.

At the end of the match, players will be in one of four states:

• Conscious - You won the match and were standing at the end. If your team won the bout, you get to pick a fourth skill for the next bout only
• Unconsciousness - You may have won or lost the match but were unconscious at the end of the bout. You did not die in the resolution phase.
• Dead - Someone executed you during resolution. You start with 4 instead of 5 hit points in the next bout only