It's largely the same but without the hit points. Just as one individually judges whether or not their characters can dodge an attack, they also decide how much damage their character can take. There's also no standard rules on poison, you would just specify in your CS what it does and how quickly. Basically, the core mechanics are the same but it's far more arbitrary, which has its up and downsides.

Personally, i would be willing to try Emote, if only i wasn't kinda busy already. I'm only one person anyways though. If you used T1 you might attract more of the common arena-goers. Then again, maybe not, it's hard to reliably get a group of people together in the arena in general. It hasn't had a large population in a looong time.