Ideas for a gladiatorial type tournament?

[Gruns]

Hey all.
I DM a small party of three- Lvl 5 Favored Soul, lvl 5 Ranger, lvl 5 Rogue- that has just finished up a fairly long dungeon crawl, which lead to them finishing their current "quest". Right now the door is wide open for what to do next. Since I don't want to jump into another dungeon crawl, I've decided to have them enter a Team Gladiatorial style tournament. Has anyone done this sort of thing before?
Right now the idea is fairly simple: 3vs3(convenient, no?). Win and go on, lose and your out. I plan on making 31 other teams of assorted makeups and abilities. Fights aren't exactly "to the death", but I imagine the possibility for death is high. No worries, rez insurance is available before each round. 10,000gp will cover your whole party!
My main issues right now are: Why are they "invited" to participate? Who is running this thing? What prevents much higher level NPCs from playing?
So any tips or pointers? Is this idea dumber than I think it's going to be?
Later!
Gruns

 

[frankthedm]

2E Dark sun Gladiator's handbook has some cool ideas for Gladiatorial style tournament and areanas. piazo has an electronic download, i would assume.

Why? Those aranging the bloodletting want the PCs to add to the game. Players fall under most interpretations of Knowledge local. Since they are 5th level, ID’ing them takes a DC15

Who? A Cleric who has found a way to cut corners on Raising the dead's costs and needs some willing souls to try it out on.

What prevents much higher level NPCs from playing? Nothing except from my line of thinking, higher level NPCs know not to advertise their prowess since that may land them in a handicap match

 

[jollyninja]

for why, perhaps they have reason to believe there is something shady going on behind the scenes at these tournaments? people who bought the rez insurance coming back acting differently then they did before or suddenly leaving the area under mysterious circomstances? you could even have a childhood friend of one of the characters commit a heinous crime and have no memory of it saying that that night all he did was dream of the glory he gained before falling in a tourney. being imprisoned, he has no way to prove anything is going on but there's another tourney going on this week........ HOOK!

as for who, the above works into frankthedm's suggestion of finding a way to cut corners on the rez costs, perhaps the cleric doesn't even know the side effects that his new budget rezzing is having, or perhaps he does and that was the whole point?

prohibitively low prize value would be the main reason i would use for high level guys not to enter. there is allways the chance that some young upstart might get the better hand in a battle and ruin the reputation of a hardened merc. make the prizes good but nothing a level 15 fighter would need unless he was broke due to rust monster attacks.

high level characters usuallyhave a level of prestige in the community that would be "above" this sort of thing. the other possibility is that there are multiple circuts for these gladiatorial tourneys and the high level guys have their own with bigger prizes. also it might be that you have some ficle crowds that turn on a combatant if he stays around to long, culturally it could be that these are the proving grounds for a warrior who then goes on to bigger and better things, crowds tend to get bored if the same guy wins all the time. you could also institute a "one entry per person per lifetime" rule for the tourney.

 

[Gruns]

Good, good.

Thanks for the ideas!
While I think the "Test of Tactics" tourney will be a fun night of dice rolling, it'd be even cooler to have some darker, hidden plot going on behind it. And best of all, I get to come up with all kinds of weird "teams". Time to bust out the grapple rules...
Later!
Gruns