World's Strongest: Contest of Champions 4

Previously on Contest of Champions: Setup, Landspeed Race, Strength Contest

This may be one of the shorter posts in this series, though I think it took the longest to prepare. I spent a large amount of time drawing up a truly terrible looking set of tournament brackets for the contest. The brackets themselves were pretty easy to randomly generate, but getting a picture to match the image I had in my mind was super difficult. I fiddled with it for days. I have three finished pictures that I hated and one that was finally adequate to the task, though I still hate how it looks. In my head it was going to be so easy, why is reality so much harder than fake, in fake everything, is easy.

I had thirty-three here, so its a bit tricky to get the heroes all matched up right and proper. This meant that there will be a single round zero, sort of, where two heroes will duke it out before moving on to the actual first round. I think the winner of that will be in the last fight of the first round...which I guess is the second round really...but the first round is only one fight...now I have confused myself.

Most Professional Tournament Bracket ever made...by me

I also am waffling a bit on how best to portray the fights. I think I could do it round by round, but that might be boring and take a long time...though maybe not. I think Palladium fights actually take less time than people think if you don't actually have to physically roll the dice. So maybe writing it all down won't take so much. Or maybe I could short form it and just go with a summary description. Let me know what you think. I am on the fence.

The fights will work like this. There is a ring, or a square...some shape, in the center of the arena. I am liking this square ring idea, I may go with that. The ring will be fifty yards(meters roughly) across. The fights will go until one of three end conditions. If they knock their opponent out of the ring they win. If they get their opponent to submit(tap out, whatever) they win. If they drop their opposition to HP(or to half their SDC if they do not have HP) they win. I think that is a goodly set of win conditions, but if you see a problem with it, let me know. I want this to at least appear fair on the surface.

A final note, I may also be making some changes to the various heroes, as I did get some solid feedback on some of the builds. I also might be using some of the optional rules or rulings from various Rifter issues. If I make any such changes I will make sure to note that at the beginning of the post. I hope that doesn't get too confusing.

According to my "fantastic" tournament master sheet, the first fight will be between Wrath and Storm Eagle. I don't think I need to make any alterations to the heroes, but I will be digging into their character sheets before we get to the fight. It should be fun. Stay tuned.


Also, +Megan Bennett-Burks and I just finished a Kickstarter for A Far Off Land, A Fate RPG in Two Worlds. It is a game about special people chosen by Eldritch beings to travel between the worlds and protect or destroy both. They are shapeshifting masters of primordial magics, and they hold the fate of two worlds in their hands. If you missed the kickstarter and would like to check out the game, you can still get it. Check out the Beta Document.