I've got competitive tree felling, log flume riding, and caber tossing. There's archery and boxing/wrestling. There's chess, there's a pie eating competition, even an obstacle course.
That gives me all the mechanics I'm interested in settling the players into immediately - ranged and melee attacks, skill checks, saves, skill challenges, and roleplay - but I need more fun side bits to help set the scene. There's food stalls, a bar, a little gambling, and I'm probably going to have a children's storytime place the players can go and make up wild tales, but what other kinds of flavour do you pepper around your festivals for the players to interact with?
The campaign is Abomination Vaults for anyone with setting specific ideas.
Unfortunately quite a few of these roles are already taken by campaign NPCs, and I don't want to open the campaign by taking player's meagre belongings, but I'll definitely be stealing the monster roast (it's a seaside town, so I'll use something aquatic) and fantasy candies, they sound great.
The festival is solely a playground for the players to get used to things, before the campaign-triggering event as dusk falls. The module opens with the PCs already investigating spooky lights from the old abandoned lighthouse, but I want to give the town it's in and the PCs some characterisation instead of jumping straight into initiative - every NPC I have at the festival so far is someone who will (/can) help the PCs later once the plot gets going, and they're going to stay in the same town for all 10 levels so I want to give the players a personal attachment to the place and people.