This guide should be helpful to players who either have little to no knowledge of survivor or are new to playing ORGs.
What is an ORG?
Unlike a regular epicmafia game, ORG is played over a longer period of time, simulating what would be a survivor experience. You’ll have more time to socialize and strategize with your fellow competitors. There will be a full jury at the finale, and no blacklists.
This will be played over a period of 2 months, and is run on Discord. The challenges will also be different from what you usually see on EM, including flash games, endurance, creativity, etc.
How does survivor work?
In the simplest form, survivor is a game of social politics where your only weapons are your words and your vote. What you do from there is completely up to you, and that’s what makes survivor such an interesting game. There are countless strategies and tactics that you can use to try and win the game, all of them with their own merits. You are not forced to follow any particular playbook.
Let’s dive into the mechanics of the game.
Part 1: Premerge
At the start of the game, the players are divided into tribes. Your tribe is like your family. You work in the challenges together, you win together, hang around camp together and you go to tribal together. In fact, you can’t even communicate with members from other tribes.
Each round is divided in two parts: The immunity challenge, and tribal council. Tribes face off against each other in the immunity challenge, where the losing tribe will have to attend tribal council while the winning tribe(s) are spared from it. As a general rule of thumb, you want to avoid going to tribal because it’s the only place where you’re at risk of getting voted out. At tribal council, the tribe votes out one of their own, where the person getting the majority vote is voted off the island, and that ends the round.
Part 2: Merge
At a certain point in the game, the tribes will merge into one, and that’s where the “individual” portion of the game really kicks in. This round works similarly to the premerge phase, where we hold an immunity challenge and tribal council. Except this time, only one individual wins the immunity challenge, making them immune and unable to be voted off at tribal council. Since there’s only one tribe now, the tribe always goes to attend tribal council, voting out one of their own. This continues until there are 2 or 3 people left in the game.
Hidden Immunity Idols While this is technically a twist, it’s become so popular to the point where they’re incorporated in every season and considered to be a regular element in the game. Depending on the season, the method to find it changes, but the power it holds is the same every time. Also, there are usually multiple idols lying around in a single game, and anyone can be holding one at anytime.
The hidden idol can be played on anyone including yourself, and all votes cast against that person will not count. So for instance, if 7 people voted Bill and 3 people voted Jon, and I played an idol on Bill, we would be left with 3 votes on Jon and Jon would be eliminated. What makes the idol tricky is that it must be played before the votes are revealed - It can never be played afterwards, so you can already see how difficult it can be to play the idol correctly when you aren’t sure where the votes are going to land.
And that’s it! I will also share with you some standard practices to get you off on the right foot, because while it’s cool that you can do what you want, it would also be cool to avoid running around like a headless chicken.
Hidden Immunity Idols
While this is technically a twist, it’s become so popular to the point where they’re incorporated in every season and considered to be a regular element in the game. Depending on the season, the method to find it changes, but the power it holds is the same every time. Also, there are usually multiple idols lying around in a single game, and anyone can be holding one at anytime.
The hidden idol can be played on anyone including yourself, and all votes cast against that person will not count. So for instance, if 7 people voted Bill and 3 people voted Jon, and I played an idol on Bill, we would be left with 3 votes on Jon and Jon would be eliminated. What makes the idol tricky is that it must be played before the votes are revealed - It can never be played afterwards, so you can already see how difficult it can be to play the idol correctly when you aren’t sure where the votes are going to land.
And that’s it! I will also share with you some standard practices to get you off on the right foot, because while it’s cool that you can do what you want, it would also be cool to avoid running around like a headless chicken.
Basic tips for new ORG players.
“How do I avoid being one of the first people out?” is perhaps the most important question I can answer. I could say that you’ll learn about the intricacies of the game as you play and talk with your fellow competitors (which is true) but it won’t amount to much if you don’t last long.
You need to be someone that your tribe wants to keep around. Otherwise, you’ll become an outsider and an easy vote out. You have to integrate in your tribe, whether that’s by being a fun presence in camp, making an alliance, or building strong bonds with other individuals. And I want to stress this as much as possible: You need to talk with your tribemates, not only in the camp channel but also in DMs. Talk about life, things you could have in common, the game, banter, or whatever else you want. The strong relationships come from a connection you build together, and you can’t have that if you stay in your corner. An outsider is a member who’s expendable to the tribe.
I also want to touch on the cutthroat nature of the game. Alliances are built and broken all the time. Some people tell the truth, others make up stories. Nothing is set in stone and the only thing you have to go off of are words coming out of other people’s mouths. There’s no contracts and no way to prove anything. I say this because I see many newbie players take other people’s words, or alliances they are part of as guaranteed when it’s not. Trust your gut. Some people are deceitful and others are trustworthy - It’s up to you to figure out who you should put your trust into.
Whew. If that was a lot to take in, don’t worry and just remember this: Don’t be afraid to reach out to your fellow tribemates and maintain a connection with them. Everything will unfold from there. Good luck!
Thanks to HighSpace for writing this down. I have just converted this into a thread so as to help Sandbox and new players and those who visit EpicMafia site.
Here is a link to EMVV 8 Server : https://discord.gg/8Px2ama
The apps are closed for EMVV 8 but you can still join the server and follow the season. Also here's a link to SBVV server which is another EpicMafia based ORG:
https://discord.gg/xCRbhWJ