D&D tournaments at any wargames convention seem to draw a
large number of eager contestants ready to pit their skills and knowledge
of D&D against the challenges developed by the diabolical designer of
the adventure. Having been heavily involved in four such large
tournaments, I would like to share my thoughts and ideas with those who
have participated in or may be called upon to run such an event.

One major problem evident when a large tournament is to be staged
is scoring. It is of vital importance, as whatever system you use is going to
determine the winner, and should be as fair and as reasonable as possible.
Victory criteria should reflect the overall mission of the players in the
adventure, be it slaying monsters (or only certain types of monsters),
gaining treasure, solving traps, or whatever. One of the easiest and most
desirable means is to have the scenario set up in such a manner that it’s
either a “do or don’t” situation. This usually involves procuring a certain
item, solving a trap, or some other tangible goal. Using this kind of
approach puts the designer to the acid test if attaining this goal means the
team will advance to another tournament round, and only a certain
number of teams are desired in that round. It must be difficult enough to
make advancement meaningful, yet not too difficult.

Subjectivity, i.e., DM assessment of party performance, is the least
desirable means. It requires a meeting of all participating DM’s at the end
of the adventure, each discussing their team’s performance, then voting
for the best one. This is very time consuming, and the results could be
quite arguable by the losing teams.

Strict objectivity, the use of point values for monsters slain, treasure
gained, etc., is better, but still inadequate as such things may warp the
intent of the design. Also, the quality of play may be lowered in that
certain nuances of smart D&D play can be ignored by a team and they
may still advance or win. But the idea of “points” is most viable.

The best approach is a combination of subjectivity and objectivity.
The result is a point total for each team, thus it is easily discernable who
won or advanced. In order to determine the points, the adventure must be
dissected and carefully examined beforehand to determine the most
correct approach to solving each critical phase encountered, then
determining how many points such a solution is worth in regards to the
whole. Even then, be prepared for some surprises, as a super clever team
may come up with a method far superior to any you envisioned and
correspondingly would deserve a greater reward!

A few examples would be in order to illustrate the above points. The
GenCon X tournament was an example of a “do or don’t” system. In the
first round, two teams were competing against each other in a town
adventure to find a magical key that would allow one team to enter a
tower in the second round. In the tower, they were to find a skull (actually
pieces of a skull that had to be assembled) that would act as a guide in the
final round, a wilderness adventure. Some fudging had to be done at this
point, as few teams managed to get all the pieces. In the wilderness the
skull led the party into a trap which had to be solved in order to win. Only
one team managed to come close to defusing it, thus they were declared
the winners.

At Origins 78 we used Advanced D & D Modules G1-G3, and the
scenario was such that the party had two objectives in each round; kill as
many giants as possible, plus discover, by way of clues, who was behind
the uprising of the giants. With these things in mind, I developed the
following scoring system:

(G=R=C) x S= VP

“G” was giant kill points, “R” was the number of rooms examined
times the room value in that module (this was a measure of the verve with
which a team pursued its objective), “C" was the value of clues found, “S”
was the number of survivors in the party, and “VP” was victory points.
Point weighting was as follows: the total room value plus the total clue
value was equal to the total giant value available to be slain in that module
of the adventure.

The D&D tournament at GenCon XI posed a different problem.

We used Advanced D&D Modules D2 and D3 for the scenario, and the
adventurers were to follow the trail of the Drow from Module G3
through the vast system of underground labyrinths the Drow call home.
The trail led them to the Shrine of the Duo-Tao (D2), through which
there was only one way to pass unscathed, and this was worth a
considerable number of points. Any other approach resulted in fighting
with the Kuo-Tao. If the party eventually passed through the shrine. they
received points for doing so, but not as many as a “perfect” team, and
additional points for slaying Kuo-Toa, the rationale being that the fish
people and the party mutually disliked each other. But besides this, not
much was known on the surface of this race, and any information the party
could take with them regarding their strengths and weaknesses would be
of value, hence points for tournament considerations. A survivor
multiplier was also used, casualties being counted as those slain outright or
captured and hauled away for eventual sacrifice.

Round two of the tournament shot my scoring system all to
________ (pick your favorite outer plane). Briefly, each team but one ran
into a horrible encounter with a demon and died. That one team managed
to survive that encounter with but one casualty and continued on, so they
were declared the winners. But the difficult problem was what to do with
the others; the winners had a bye in the third round, but second and third
place slots were left to be filled. What had to be done was to have that DM
meeting, hash over each team’s performance, then pick two teams to vie
for second place. Previously in this article I mentioned the shortcomings
of the subjective approach (which were my pre-formed opinions of the
method), one I’ve never used in a tournament before and one I’ll never use
again, if at all possible, considering how difficult it was to choose the
advancing teams. I do believe we picked the two best teams, but I would
have much preferred to have used some other means. A prime example of
Murphy’s Law!

There is one other area that bears some discussion in regard to
competitive D&D and that is DM consistency. It is as important as scoring
in ensuring a fair tournament, and much harder to achieve. Large
tournaments require correspondingly large number of DM’s. Fifteen
were needed at GenCon X, 16 at Origins 78, and 20 at GenCon XI. Their
quality must be high to assure unbiased judging and to minimize errors.

Briefing sessions are a must, as most DM’s will not have been able to
participate in playtesting the adventure, and the designer’s intent may not
be clear at times. The level of intricacy and complexity of the design may
also cause problems in that each DM may handle a given situation
differently, especially if there are numerous variables and modifiers to be
kept in mind. So the purpose of the briefing session is to explain the
adventure to the DM’s so all are clear as to what is happening, thus
eliminating inconsistencies as much as possible. These sessions tend to be
long and tedious, especially if there are many traps to explain. Those who
have struggled through one of my four hour plus meetings will readily
attest this fact! But whatever time is spent readying your DM crew is well
worth the effort if consistency is to be enhanced, if not actually fully
achieved.

Another item that promotes evenness of DMing is a short
compilation of standard rules that will be used during the tournament
and to which each DM will adhere. Included in this should be movement
rates/distance travelled, order in which various actions will be handled in
each game turn (melees, spell casting, searching, etc.), and any special
rules modifications peculiar to the scenario that differ radically from
usual practice. All these facets are doubly important if you will be assisted
at the tournament by DM’s not of your usual circle of gamers.

So there you have it — scoring and DM consistency, two vitally
important considerations in staging a D&D tournament, and two things
I constantly strive to improve with each tournament I’m involved in. I
hope that the foregoing will be of help to you when your club president
says to you, “Hey Fred! You’ve been nominated to organize the D & D
tournament for our next convention. Plan on, oh, about 400 people!”