The Apprentice [Beta!] Signups

[D-Lyrium]

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/368x207/legacy/brand/b0071b63.jpg?nodefault=true

 

So. This is a thing I thought of. It's roughly based on the ideas behind Mafia, but I wouldn't classify it as a mafia game. It's based on The Apprentice (the UK version, because Donald Trump is a massive dick), and is designed as a game that doesn't REQUIRE a lot of activity, but will benefit from it if you can spare the time. All it really requires from the players is one vote during the 'day' phases, and depending on your role, an ability use during the 'night' phases.

 

It might be an utter failure. Or, it might be pretty cool. Bit like the real show. ISN'T FINDING OUT WHICH GOING TO BE EXCITING?!

 

The Concept

One player plays as Lord Alan Sugar, business badass and generally rather nice person (which is why the UK version kicks the US version's arse). He's out to find his next Apprentice, and for some reason has invited loads of former contestants (several of whom have already won once) to join in. Unfortunately, a handful of dicks and tools, plus the occasional Magnificent Bastard have slipped through the net and are in the running again! But for reasons beyond human comprehension, they've all possessed the bodies of GDS forum members, so nobody knows who they are. ¬_¬

 

The important things are these:

 

Lord Sugar is out to find the Evil Candidates from previous seasons of the show before they can ruin his business empire, by firing them before they can be successful. His faithful attack dogs Karren Brady and Nick Hewer will be by his side, but they won't be played by actual people because those roles would be REALLY BORING.

 

The aforementioned Evil Candidates themselves are out to survive, by any means necessary, and trick Lord Sugar into hiring them, apropos to running their own evil empire (or crashing and burning in hilarious fashion and losing Lord Sugar loads of money, as the case may be). It's worth noting that, ostensibly, the Evil Candidates are in fact team members of Synergy or Invicta, but are definitely looking out for number one.

 

The meat of the contest is between the two teams, Team Synergy and Team Invicta (two of the better team names from the 9 seasons so far, IMO), who are legitimate candidates hoping for a (second) chance to work for Lord Sugar and join the entrepreneurial elite.

 

The Game

To do this, we go to the Task Phase (aka, Night Phase), where a randomly-assigned Project Manager for each team will pick two players from his team. The secretly-assigned scores given to each player at the start of the game will then come into play, with each selected team member adding his score to that of their Project Manager's, to give a total for each team. The team with the highest score will win, the other team will lose, and in that team, one of you will be fired!

 

We then go to the Boardroom Phase (aka, Day Phase), where both teams will vote for which player they think sucked the most. They won't know, of course, and the early Boardroom Phases will mostly be slanging matches with very little evidence to back anything up, but that's the glory of The Apprentice! However, the later stages will see trends appearing. Tempers will flare: "You've been on the team every time we've lost!", "How come you've never won a task?!", "You couldn't project manage flat-pack furniture!", "You can't have a score of 5, my score is 5! Liar! Your score is probably 1 or something, you're useless!", "Listen you silly shit!", "I AM YOUR BOSS!", "That is SHAMEFUL!", "You only brought me back to the boardroom instead of Raleigh because you're shagging him!" ...Or nobody will post at all. But the beauty of this game is, nobody posting during the day phase doesn't hurt the actual game all that much, as long as you all vote and the few who have them PM night abilities I don't care. ¬_¬

 

Once the slanging match in the boardroom has died down, the three players with the most votes will make up the Bottom Three. If fewer than three players have votes, Lord Sugar will decide who the other member(s) of the Bottom Three should be. Lord Sugar will then fire the candidate in the bottom three that he sees as the most useless (or the one he thinks is Evil).

 

Then we randomly choose new Project Managers and proceed to the second task.

 

So, which brave pioneers are up for trying this one out?

 

Rather optimistically, I've budgeted 19 places (9 per team and one Lord Sugar), but we can VERY easily adjust that up or down to fit.

 

1. Emark

2. Psycho Sam

3. DeadCeleb

4. Jman

5. Derek B

6. Destiny

7. cappyboy

8. Jaded

9. moon_lit_tears

10. Astil

11. Clarity

12. DaMegaFish

13. SmartBomb

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

[Emark]

I'll give it the old college try. In please.

[Psycho Sam]

Interesting...

[DeadCeleb]

Why not? Sign me up

[Jman2k3]

I'll try.

[Derek B]

Sounds like this could be fun... sign me up, though don't expect me to be very active over the next 7 days cos I'm gonna be pretty busy. But with this format, that shouldn't be an issue.

[Destiny]

Please count me in. I am a huge fan of the Apprentice and particularly enjoyed you quoting the Welsh one from this series.

[D-Lyrium]

Please count me in. I am a huge fan of the Apprentice and particularly enjoyed you quoting the Welsh one from this series.

 

Alex and Jason are possibly my two favourites ever, behind Raef and Tré (because nobody is better than Raef and Tré).

[cappyboy]

Sounds like a good format and I think I understand it much better than I did the last new concept. I'll give this a shot. I've been thinking it was time to go game hunting again.

[Derek B]

Before I forget... D-Koiso, would you like me to move sign ups for this to the Dog Pound with a redirect so that it shows up in both places? Or are you happy just leaving it down here for now?

[Jaded]

Count me in!

[D-Lyrium]

Before I forget... D-Koiso, would you like me to move sign ups for this to the Dog Pound with a redirect so that it shows up in both places? Or are you happy just leaving it down here for now?

 

Yeah, having a redirect would be cool. I figure that the minimum we could run this with to make it worthwhile would be 11 (5 per team), so we're doing quite well but an extra boost can't hurt.

[moon_lit_tears]

Fine. . .

[Psycho Sam]

Ah...alright...count me in.

[Astil]

I'll play

[Clarity]

<p>Been years since I've done a Mafia, but I'm tempted..</p><p> </p><p>

Sign me up</p>

[moon_lit_tears]

Wow not even worth having my whole name spelled like everyone else...Sheesh what's this sexism here? <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

[Astil]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="moon_lit_tears" data-cite="moon_lit_tears" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="36255" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Wow not even worth having my whole name spelled like everyone else...Sheesh what's this sexism here? <img alt=":p" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Right! Chicks get all the luck! Getting there name abbreviated, getting out of parking tickets, having babies. Gosh!</p>

[D-Lyrium]

Pffft. Clearly you're so famous that I didn't think your full name was necessary.

[moon_lit_tears]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="D-Lyrium" data-cite="D-Lyrium" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="36255" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Pffft. Clearly you're so famous that I didn't think your full name was necessary. <img alt=":p" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I'm sexy and I know it. 'wiggle wiggle wiggle'</p><p> </p><p> <img alt=":p" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p>

[DaMegaFish]

<p>Am I missing something in regards to the bottom three? If you have one task manager and two team members that you picked with you and you guys lose, then aren't you all in the bottom three?</p><p> </p><p>

Also, count me in, I'm just a little confused about that part.</p>

[SmartBomb]

As I understand it, you need an odd number of participants so that one team isn't balanced unevenly against another. So feel free to put me in if that becomes an issue, if you have more people in one team than another.

[D-Lyrium]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="DaMegaFish" data-cite="DaMegaFish" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="36255" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Am I missing something in regards to the bottom three? If you have one task manager and two team members that you picked with you and you guys lose, then aren't you all in the bottom three?<p> </p><p> Also, count me in, I'm just a little confused about that part.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Yeah, that bit was a bit of a separation from the show. Nobody except the project manager will know who was on the 'team'. Thematically the entire team does the "task" but game-wise only the two people the PM selects, and the PM himself, have their scores added. </p><p> </p><p> It makes being a project manager risky (as it is in the show), because the teams will always know who their PMs are. So they will usually be targets for votes from the losing team (unless they can successfully convince the team they have a high score and were let down by shoddy team mates). On the other hand, being a PM and winning means you definitely get 'credit' for the win (whereas the rest of the team may not if the PM decides not to mention them in the thread).</p><p> </p><p> The only real change from the TV show is that the players on both teams pick the bottom three, instead of the PM doing it. Makes it a bit more mafia-y.</p><p> </p><p> Anyway, now we have 13, so I'll close signups when I get home (~3hrs).</p>

[D-Lyrium]

Sooo, er... bit of a humiliating cock-up. Contrary to what I was lead to believe, I won't actually have any internet access at the place I'm staying at next week (helping a mate move in). Which obviously means starting a mafia type game right now would be a terrible idea.

 

Sorry about this, but I guess we'll have to postpone for a week. It would've been fine, had there been access, because I'd have had loads of spare time to mod the game. However, it turns out that there isn't any. Soo. Yeah.

 

Assuming no mafia games start before I get back (feel free to jump in if you have one ready guys), I'll PM roles out when I get back and check that everyone is still on board.

 

Sorry about that. It wasn't my fault!

[moon_lit_tears]

Damn Brits can't get a game going so I can play. <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />