This goes towards the NOVA Open style of player rewards, all the prizes are raffled off. You get more tickets the more you lose. I strongly believe a tournament is about the players, more so about the players that don't take first, because there is only one of those but a tournament takes more than one person.
Also, learn to paragraph Shea, your walls of text crit me into not reading this thread for at least a week.
This is where I'm at with it currently, be forward, be clear and be upfront about it.
If you want to run a fluff based event, go ahead, that's not the event I plan on running. People not wanting to travel for the same old thing, fair enough. People don't like to travel for crazy either, one of the reasons I stopped going to TSHFT was the crazy missions and because the event is expensive. If we want to inject fluff into the event, I'm all for it, but I do not believe that fluff being the center point of the event will draw. Do something to the tune of giving extra prize raffle tickets to the people who write up the fluff, have a prize for the best allies fluff story, all great ways to interject fluff into the event. But I strongly believe, especially in these times of GW money crazy, that we need to have a clear concise and basic tournament for the first year out and then drink them all under the table, that is the stuff of legends.