Lots of interesting ideas here.

Thanks to all these suggestions, I have a plan now.  As I mentioned before, I don't want to act immediately, since there's another tournament due to start soon... but once that's wrapping up or dying down, I'm going to try and kick off a new project. The goals being:

- Attract new people, give them a chance to experiment with fighting without getting immediately squished by more experienced members.
- Give more experienced members a chance to get in some good fights as well.
- Set things up in such a way that the event can continue even if a few people leave.
- Give people compelling reasons to stick around- so that they won't drop from the event in the first place!
- Have a story that feels like more than just a framework, and that encourages interactions outside of just combat.

Have an idea that will hopefully tie all of those together. Any other suggestions/thoughts?  It's just a concept right now, but I can work on it while the TZDL kicks off and have the rules, arenas, structure, and overarching plot written up in detail within the next month.

If anyone's curious or interested in helping out with this, let me know and I can fill you in on some of the details.