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View Full Version : Are there still D&D Tournaments?



Chess435
2011-01-23, 08:05 PM
I know that in the (very) early days of D&D, special tournament modules would be used for competition. Do you know if anything like that still exists? If so, could you point me in the right direction?

Dusk Eclipse
2011-01-23, 09:09 PM
I think they were played in gaming conventions but I am not sure; other than that there are the D&D Encounters, that are run in some Gaming stores, figure you should look into them before anything else.

Kurald Galain
2011-01-24, 03:30 AM
I believe they still exist on the major conventions. You get a scenario and are given points for how fast you complete it, and possibly for some side goals. Other groups on the same con do the same, highest score wins.

Expect heavy optimizing. For example, a party consisting of four elven rangers (with MC feats for the occasional heal) tends to obliterate encounters before they can even blink.

Stone Heart
2011-01-24, 05:34 AM
I've run into some things like that at Cons, and they gave out prizes for different levels of success, like in our game there was a TPK and we still got prizes, but they were just miniatures or d20s, the people who completed got better stuff.

Gnaeus
2011-01-24, 06:59 AM
Cheesegrinder is a tournament that runs at DragonCon & GenCon. It runs groups through a series of over ECL challenges, and every time a PC dies, a new PC teleports in, keeping the table at 6. There are various prizes earned in play (Longest run (good), Longest run (evil), Most damage dealt, fastest death, etc), and the people who won the prizes come back at the end of the con for a final round to determine first, second & third place. Now running in Pathfinder format)

(Currently the only repeat winner of Cheesegrinder) :smallsmile:

Erom
2011-01-24, 08:31 AM
At PAX East last year WOTC ran repeated delves for prizes (basically you got points for completing each encounter, and the delve was maybe 3 encounters long) and at the end of the weekend you could cash in your points for minis or various other prizes. Unfortunately, they only let you use premade characters. I'd love to try one that is harder but expects optimized characters, cause as it was it boiled down to a reward for time invested, basically. It was still pretty fun though.

Kislath
2011-01-24, 12:02 PM
I ran a tournament dungeon at Dragon Con once. It was a super-deadly deathtrap of doom, with the goal of seeing who could make it the closest to the end. Nobody made it all the way to the end. It ran all weekend, with over two dozen parties trying their luck.

Keld Denar
2011-01-24, 12:26 PM
Back in 3.5, I played in (and subsequently won) the D&D Open qualifier at DDXP in Washington DC in 2008. We were given pregen'd characters, about 15 minutes to talk strategy, then played through a module. We crushed it, mostly by rearranging character gear. We ended up with a stacked TWFer with great source of bonus damage and swift movement each turn, and everyone else playing control/support. Our TWFer crushed every foe in one round, and everyone else kept the foes coming only one at a time. It was about as elegant as one of those NINJA blenders, and about as messy.

I got a book out of it. City of Stormreach, IIRC, which I took to Barns and Nobles and swapped out for Tome of Battle (score!). The rest of my group went to GenCon to play in the finals, but I had moved and couldn't make it to GenCon, so someone else played for me. I never heard how they did.

We were also one of 2 groups to beat the young adult black dragon in the delve encounters for the 4e preview, with a group of 1st level pregens. That was pretty epic!