Tribes (simulation game)
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Tribe is a multi-player role-playing game designed to simulate the life of early hominids. It can be played on any table and no game board is necessary; only things are needed are dice, rules (since there are many rule they are extremely difficult to memorize), pen and paper to track the game.
[edit] Game Play
Tribe is a game that requires group work, and the competition is between groups (or tribes, as it is called in this game). The object of this game is to survive and raise any many children as possible. Theoretically, this games can be played by a minimum of four people (two tribes of two), or just two people without competition. However, to make this game more realistic and enjoyable, each tribe should have four to eight people. Each person in a tribe can play the role of hunter, gatherer, or craftsman. Hunter hunts for food; it’s a high risk but high revenue work. Gatherer gathers grains; it’s a safer job compare to hunter but cannot earn much. Craftsman makes a live by selling tools; the quality of life of craftsman can be determined by how rich other members of the tribe are. There are many areas. Some area for good for hunters and some are good for gatherers. A tribe can choose where to live. An area can be hunted out after a period of time. The tribe needs to move at that time and it cost a lot to move.
This game has “rounds”; a “round” represents a season in the game. There are two seasons in each game year, a warm season and a cold season. Hunters and gatherers get less food or grain in cold season. Every player do three thing in one season: work, eat and reproduce. Work is for getting food. Hunters and gatherers roll three dice and the total food they got is determined by the sum of the total number of the dice. Player needs to look up a chart in the game to see how much food they actually get in that particular area. Every season, each adults need to consume four points of food or grain and a child need two points of food or grain. After eating, people in the tribe can reproduce. One player can only attempt to produce with another player once each season. At the end of each round, three dice are rolled for “chance”. Events like food spoil or wild animal attack can occur.
[edit] Characteristics
One of the unique characteristic of this game is that it player can do many things and many different events can occur, just like in a real hunter and gatherer society. A hunter could buy spearhead to earn bonus when hunting. Gatherer can buy a basket to carry more grain. A group can hunt to earn more bonus. However, spearhead and basket could be lost or damaged. When the food in a tribe is running extremely low, cannibalism could be done.
[edit] Criticism
Since many thing could be done in this game, there are a lot of rules and sometime it's hard to manage. Most events in this game are determined by rolling dice, thus many the factor of random is relative big, and that causes the game to be relatively unrealistic. A hunter could hunt eighty points of food (enough for 20 seasons) if luck enough, or a hunter could be hurt if the dice did not cooperate well. There are some event which is likely to occur at that time did not include in this game. One example could be the mother always survives after giving birth in the game.
