World Hunter's Tournament

[Railak]

I'm working on a thing for my world, it's going to be part of a campaign, but it is also just part of the world.
So it's a tournament that takes the most renown hunters of the world and has them competing against each other hunting beasts.
The only thing I can't quite figure out is how long to have each round of the competition? 24 hours/ 3 days/ 1 week/ etc.?

[zlefin]

Key questions affecting the time:

How dangerous are the beasts being hunted? As the risk of injury goes up, you need longer rounds and/or downtime between rounds.

Are the beasts captured and supplied to the area for the hunting, or is it a see what you can find that happens to already be there kind of thing?

How large is the hunting ground? Sizes of designated preserves/hunting areas vary widely; and have a large effect on both what there will be a supply of, and how long it takes to hunt things in the area.

[brian 333]

Do parties participate, or individuals? I see barbarians and rangers having serious advantages to other classes, with druids and their ability to essentially summon a party at will dominating the solo version.

[Yanagi]

I'm working on a thing for my world, it's going to be part of a campaign, but it is also just part of the world.
So it's a tournament that takes the most renown hunters of the world and has them competing against each other hunting beasts.
The only thing I can't quite figure out is how long to have each round of the competition? 24 hours/ 3 days/ 1 week/ etc.?

Well, it's not a question with a correct answer.

"Hunting" means many different things that take different amounts of time; tournaments are things that create challenges with artificial constraints, including time limits...so it can be whatever works in your story.

So the best answer is to question what the larger ethos of the tournament within the fictional setting and it's function is the story: a time limit is a kind of challenge, but maybe the people who made the tournament are trying to test skill in some other way where they don't want a time limit. So on one hand you can have a competition in which the time limit is vital--bag as many tigers as possible on this royal tiger hunt that will last five days--or a challenge of such high difficulty that a time constraint is counterproductive to the challenge--the first one to go slay the Nemean Lion wins. At the same time, maybe your stories needs a certain number of days so that critical plot events are spaced out properly.

There are subsidiary questions that can further clarify this picture:

- time limit on challenges is downstream of the time limit of the tournament itself, so if you can only get all these people in one place for a short time then it makes sense that the challenges are time-limited.

- structure of competition also affects time limits. If the each part of the tournament is zero sum--everyone has the same task at the same, there is one winner that does the task first--that will take less time than a more complex system of people doing tasks in heats and then being ranked, which requires the tournament itself to do a lot of work to make sure that each round has enough parity of conditions that the competition if fair.

- specifically within "structure" there's the question of if there's an audience for their tournament and what are the gratification demands of that audience. So if the event is supposed to be a spectacle, it would probably have a more, shorter challenges such that there's a lot of excitement and events are easier to follow. Then again it could be that the tournament is by hunters, for hunters, so the whole point is to stick somebody out in the wilds for a long time.

- all of the above can be ignored if you have a time limit in mind, because making an arbitrary time limit the defining aspect of difficulty is perfectly valid. "Go forth into the forest and slay the most dangerous thing you can find and capture alive the most beautiful thing you can find, you have five days" is a pretty good structure.

[Rynjin]

Take a look at real-world hunting competitions for inspiration.

[Railak]

So the competition is built around CR 15, and the group participates together.
I haven't gotten far enough for explaining why there's so many big dangerous creatures in such a relatively "small" area. Each type of creature in the area is worth an amount of points. The two teams with the lowest amount of points get cut before the next round. Each group will have a creature following them that records their kills. There's definitely time between as they are going to be traveling via airship between destinations around the world.

Longer hunts also requires that the groups (NPC ones as well) be able to pace themselves and survive in the dangerous conditions. Spells that you leave the area, like going into a magnificent mansion, disqualifies the group.

The area, definitely needs to be large enough for all the dangerous beasts to be spaced out enough that hunting and tracking would be a thing. But small enough that it's not just a rediculous area. Obviously I haven't actually decided on the area size yet.

[brian 333]

Challenges may take place in different parts of the world. Example:

Round 1: Xorn Hunting
In the labyrinthine mines of Nelchad Mountain, a former nickle mine has been infested with xorn which have hardened external integuments. Tougher than average, these burrowing behemoths must be slain and their diamond-toothed jaws removed as trophies.

Round 2: Ice Worms
The frozen Arctic Ice Plains are home to fierce Remorhaz which are difficult to find and even harder to defeat.

Round 3: Leviathan Hunt
These whale-like creatures are very hard to catch. Good luck killing one and harvesting its oil and ambergris.

Round 4: Run Through The Jungle
Giant carnivorous apes grow very giant on Gnok Island. Can you bag one? Tonnage matters more than numbers, so try to bag a big one!

The various competing groups gather on the world's largest party barge airship for the trips, allowing infighting between them as they move from one round to the next

[awa]

So the competition is built around CR 15, and the group participates together.
I haven't gotten far enough for explaining why there's so many big dangerous creatures in such a relatively "small" area.

maybe the sponsor of the hunt is not a man but a god of the hunt. That explains why their is a bunch of very high level monsters in a set place (he created them) gives an excuse for who could give a good enough prize to make this worthwhile.