At last, I am ready to reveal the details of your final trial of the task and challenge of the competition!
In this trial, you will play the role of a businessman. Specifically, each teams will be competing corporations. So competitive in fact that they will resort to dirty methods to succeed. Like real coprorations.
This trial is somewhat complex, so instead of having a nice concise list of rules at the end like usual, I am going to describe everything in sections:
The Setting:
Each team will represent a business, a corporation to be exact. Now I would like to say that you could all coexist, but let's be realistic. Capitalism? Competition? Pssh! Your goal will be to drive all the other corporations out of business. Monopoly is king, and it is good to be the king!
To this end, each team will be given an initial investment of $2000. Yes, we are using currency again, get used to it. In order to win, you have to make the other corporations go out of business. In terms of this game, that is making the savings of all the other company fall to $100.
The game will be split into an indefinitely repeating sequence of three phases: Trading, Day, and Night. They are described in more depth in the following sections. They will occur in in an infinite sequence until one team wins, eg. T1, D1, N1, D2, N2, T2, D3, N3, D4, N4, ...
The Business
Unlike the previous three trials, there is some independence among the players on each team. That is, the team captains are effectively the CEO of each team, while the rest of the members are just rank and file employees.
The savings for each team is also stored in a vault. This vault can be accessed by a combination of buzzwords known only by team. The combination is 4 buzzwords long, with each of the three rank and file employees knowing just one of the buzzwords by default, with the CEO knowing all 4.
Trading Phase
The first phase for this game is a trading phase. Your main objective is to sell stocks owned by your corporation. Thes price of these stocks is equal to your savings (amount in vault + what your employees are holding, which is at the start $2000) divided by your number of shares (initially 200). So by default, the stock price for your company is $10. You are all publicly traded companies, so your shares are always for sale during this phase. When the it starts, I will post how many shares for what company each company has, and the price of those shares.
To buy shares from another company, just PM me:
Trading Phase X - Buying Y Shares of COMPANY1 from COMPANY2, where Y is the number of shares you are buying, COMPANY1 is the shares the company that the shares originated from, and COMPANY2 is the company that is selling them. Shares must be bought from money in the vault, which at the start of the game is all of it. In case too many shares from one company are purchased, priority will be given to the teams that submit their purchases first. This is a trial that requires decisiveness on your part after all.
Trading takes place at the very start of the game, and repeats after two Day/Night Phases pass. The exact purpose of shares is described more in a later section.
Lastly, there are some special actions that may be done during the second trading phase and beyond. They are very important. No joke. I'll list them here, as well as their costs:
For employees (recruited team members):
Trading Phase X - Leave COMPANY1 for COMPANY2 ($???): You will leave COMPANY1 and join COMPANY2. This action will work only if you are hired by COMPANY2 during the same phase (see below), and you will be forced to pay half of the money you are carrying to COMPANY1 for breaking their contract. If your action fails, your true nature as traitorous scum will be exposed, and you will be eliminated from the competition irregardless of how either COMPANY1 or COMPANY2 perform in the end. You will be punished, of course.
For CEO's (team captains): (Choice of 1)
Trading Phase X - Hiring USER (from COMPANY1) ($800): You will hire USER into your company. USER can be a player who signed up in this thread but hasn't played in the first three trials (That's right Layell, time to start sucking the team captains' dick(s)), or from another currently operating COMPANY1. The action will not work unless USER also has agreed to join you (see above). If you succeed, the benefits are great since you will increase your daily income by $200 for each additional player you hire.
Trading Phase X - Firing USER ($0). You will downsize your company by Firing one USER. Use this action carefully, as reducing your employees cuts your daily income by $200 per employee lost. This action has higher priority than hiring, so if you get fired... you dead. Thanks for playing!
Trading Phase X - Bribing Cops to Arrest USER ($1000). You will bribe the cops to plant drugs in USER's locker, getting him arrested and permanently removed from the game. However, the removed player will not be formally eliminated unless his current company loses, and likewise will avoid punishment unless that happens. These players will be first priority for subs should another one sub out. The CEO (captain) cannot be arrested.
The Day Phase
After Trading, there will be two Day and Night Phases, just like in mafia, and the cycle repeats indefinitely. However, they serve different purposes.
First, at the start of the day, your company will earn a steady amount of income, initially $600. Your income can increase or decrease depending on your company's growth or decline, along with night actions. All of these are explained in the following section. Afterwards, everyone on the team will know how much money is in the company vault.
Your main objective during the day though is to divide up the money between you and your employees from your vault in preparation for the night phase. Any player can do this, though only if they know all of the buzzwords. The proper way to do this to PM me is "Day X - Giving $M from vault to USER, W1-4, where M is the amount you are taking from the vault, and W1-4 are the four buzzwords. Additionally, employees are restricted to taking at most 25% of the contents of the vault at any given time and can only give money to 1 USER per night (including themselves). CEO's, however, can take as much money out as they please and can give money to up to 4 USER's, including themselves.
You can also add any money you are holding to the vault with a similar command, "Day X - Depositing $M into vault, W1-4". Because the employees do not know all the buzzwords at the start, managing this will be one of the first challenges the CEO must face during this trial.
Finally, the CEO must divide up the shares of each company to each of his employees. To do this, just PM me with "Day X - Dividing Shares". In the PM, state how many shares from what company (that you own) will be held by that player during that night. Unlike money, shares immediately return to the CEO at the end of the night phase, so there is no committment to be made here.
The Night Phase
Now let's move on to the meat of the trial, shall we? The night is when all the cool things happen, so to speak. That is, you get to spend some of that money that you earned in income as well as through selling shares of stock. Let's start by discussing what actions you can spend your money on.
However, here is the real kicker. The concept of "night actions" isn't so simple in this trial. Rather than having one set of orders for each company, each company can instead order another company to do certain night actions. All of this depends on how many shares of that company your own company has.
Allow me to explain. Each player on the team has 1 standard night action available to them. When choosing their night action, they must first pick what company you will be targetting. For this, you will need shares in that company. These should have been divided up accordingly during the previous day. The standard night actions below each have a cost. In addition to how much money you are currently holding, the maximum that you can pay will be dictated by the number of shares you are holding from the target company times the stock price of each share. Below I will list the standard night actions available to you:
Night X - Get USER's buzzword from COMPANY ($200) - You will torture a USER employed by the target COMPANY into revealing their buzzword to you. If used on a CEO, he will reveal a buzzword that you do not know, and only reveal the last one if you already know the other three. To prove that you know the other three, include them in the body of your PM.
Night X - Send Thief to COMPANY's Vault, W1-4 ($???). You will send a thief to steal from the target COMPANY vault with the given buzzwords. If successful, you will take everything out of that vault. The hired thief will take 25% of what was stolen as payment, ignoring whether you have enough shares in the COMPANY. If this action fails, this will cost you $500, so your shares in that COMPANY must have a combined value of at least that much.
Night X - Mug USER from COMPANY ($100) - You will steal whatever amount of money USER from COMPANY has leftover after he completes his or her own night action.
Night X - Hire Bodyguards on USER from COMPANY ($300) - This protects USER working at COMPANY from ALL night actions. You can also have bodyguards protecting the vault instead of you by PMing me with "Night X - Hire Bodyguards on VAULT". This will protect the contents of the vault even if the opposing team knows all of the buzzwords.
Night X - Spy on USER from COMPANY ($150) You will know about all night actions that targeted USER as well as the night action they picked themself, how much money they had the start of the night, and how much money they had at the end.
Out of Business!
Finally, I will discuss the mechanic that you will all hopefully try to avoid being a victim of: Going out of business! You see, only one business can surpass the others in the end. You will go out of business when your combined assets (money carried by team + money in vault) goes down to below $100. Should your team lose, each of the employees (including the captain) will be auctioned off to the highest bidder in a bonus Clearance phase. You will use shares for that company as your bidding currency, and the rules are otherwise the same as the fourth task as far as the actual bidding mechanic goes. Such players will still be punished like the others, though their punishment level will escalate if they are picked by another losing team.
Wait, aren't we forgetting something?
Ah, I almost forgot. I will now explain the purpose of the marathon points that you have all accumulated in the previous 3 trials (plus the fourth task). These points, which can be used at the discretion of the team captain, will allow you to do any one standard night action for free, which can target any company regardless of what shares you own.
Finally, your oathes. I have been lenient about that in the first three trials. However, if you idle just once in this trial, you will be subbed out and punished accordingly. If you must idle, please PM me that you are doing so (unless I explicitly say you don't need need to for the specified trial). If you absolutely cannot submit any action, please provide me a legitimate excuse in advance.
Are you ready? Good. Let's begin!
We will now start the final trial. We will begin with Trading Phase 1. Here are the current stocks for sale:
A Rock: 200 shares of A Rock, $10 per share
team name pending: 200 shares of team name pending, $10 per share
zorbees and his superfriends: 200 shares of zorbees and his superfriends, $10 per share
Most Likely To Idle: 200 shares of Most Likely To Idle, $10 per share
Lastly, since this trial is indeed very complex and experimental, balance will be difficult to assess, so I will accept any feedback for proposed changes to the rules at any point in the game, and I will amend them if enough players agree to it. Currently, my biggest worry is that the game will go on too long. Please feel free to ask me any questions or concerns you have at any time. I have gotten somewhat busier with my job, but I will do my best to address them in a timely manner.
Finally, remember that only the last team standing, and the players fully employed by it, will win the secret prize. The others will lose in the end and be punished.
Trading Phase 1 will end in 72 hours from now, which is 11 PM CST, Monday, June 4. Good luck, and please, have fun. Do not slack here!
