Hunger Games Simulator - Trouble Cube Edition

[Kafkaesque]

Trouble Cube proudly presents

THE HUNGER GAMES SIMULATOR

Because everyone loves a good blood sport!

What's a Hunger Games Simulator?

There's every chance you know this already. If you don't, here's a basic explanation.

The Hunger Games Simulator is, as its name suggests, a little web-game hosted on BrantSteele.com that simulates a round of the Hunger Games, the titular gladiatorial battle royale from Suzanne Collins' book series and the adaptations and spinoffs thereof. Enter a roster of characters as "tributes", with their names, pictures and genders all customisable, and they'll proceed to do battle in text form via a sequence of randomised events, drawn from a pool you can also customise and add to. Tributes will die and be removed from the sim, until eventually, one winner remains. If you want a more hands-on idea of how the simulator works, go to this link and run a round of the default sim. Basically, it's a random number generator, except with considerable violence. And considerable wackiness, depending on what events you choose to add to it.

This thread is Trouble Cube's home for Hunger Games Simulator rounds. Our users will suggest tributes to fight in the Hunger Games, suggest events for the tributes to go through during the game, and then sit back and watch the carnage unfold.

The Phases of a Season

Each of these phases will be dissected in more detail in a different folder.

The first phase of a given season is the nomination period. This is the period where the users of Trouble Cube nominate characters they want to see as tributes in the HGS. The nomination period lasts for twenty-four hours, starting from the moment the previous season ended. Only tributes whose nomination post is uploaded during the nomination period will be counted for the next season.

During and following the nomination period, there are also the event suggestions. During this phase, you can suggest any events you want to see added to the simulation, using sim markup so that the events can be copypasted into it directly. The event suggestion phase does not have a strict length, but it's advised not to let it run on too long.

After that, there is a gap as the season is prepared, then it's time for the season proper! A chosen host narrates the events of the season, post by post, until finally, we have our winner(s). Then the cycle starts anew.

Nominating Tributes

Nominating tributes is a simple process. All you need is their name, a picture to use in the sim (preferably hyperlinked to avoid clutter) and a specification of their gender and watchlist flag. (The watchlist will be elaborated on soon.)

Avoid hotlinking images from Fandom/Wikia wikis, they're notoriously finicky. Avoid hotlinking from anywhere that isn't explicitly an image host - this leaves your image under someone else's control, and they might remove it or mess with it - but especially Fandom/Wikia. Copy and paste the image into a private Discord chat if you have no better solution. (Don't delete the message later if you do that.)

✨Trouble Cube has its own image hosting that's actually just for this purpose, try it out immediately~ if you want to✨

Each player can nominate up to two tributes per season. Note the "up to" - if for whatever reason you want to nominate only one tribute, that's acceptable. Nominating zero tributes is theoretically not a breach of the rules, but doing so will probably lead to the other players questioning your state of mind.

You can only nominate tributes during the designated nomination period. Any nomination post outside that period will simply be ignored. You can, however, change your tributes at any time between making a successful nompost and the beginning of attempts to run the season proper.

Optionally, you can add a "death pic" for your tributes in the nomination post. This will be shown in the Fallen Tributes section when/if said tribute dies. (This doesn't literally have to be a "death" pic, it could just be the tribute being sad/angry/injured/ect.) Again, this is fully optional, and if not used, a grayscale version of the tribute pic will be used instead.

A season of the simulator can have up to 200 tributes, though Brant Steele has gone on record as saying he has plans to expand the limit to at least 1000 in the near future. As of right now, it seems unlikely TC HGS will ever hit even the 200 limit, but keep it in mind nonetheless.

What can be a tribute?

Basically anything! I'd say within reason, but even reason isn't a limit on who or what can be nominated. You can nominate a fictional character, a real person, an inanimate object, a fictional inanimate object - whatever tickles your fancy. A tribute doesn't even necessarily have to be one person - a pronoun option within the Simulator accounts for groups nominated as one tribute.

There is only really one hard rule - do not nominate controversial figures. This doesn't mean you can't nominate any tribute who's ever been associated with any kind of controversy; that's not what "controversial figure" means in this context. A Controversial Figure©, trade snark for emphasis from this point on, is any potential tribute who is so deeply associated with terrible or hotly debated real life events that the act of nominating them could never be in good faith. This means the vast majority of controversial fictional tributes don't fit the definition of a Controversial Figure© - most heavily contested works do still have their legitimate fans who'd nominate their characters with good intentions. We're talking along the lines of Donald Trump or Adolf Hitler, where their mere presence in the simulator would be, at the very best, deeply uncomfortable. You cannot work around this rule by nominating a fictionalised version of a Controversial Figure©, either. Stupid Jetpack Hitler is still Hitler.

Aside from tributes you can't nominate at all, it's also forbidden to nominate tributes too often. After a tribute has competed in a season, there is a cooldown period of three seasons before the same player can nominate that tribute again. This cooldown period does not apply:

• If the tribute's only recent appearance was the Battle Royale or the Death Battle, since you didn't nominate them by hand in that case.
  
• If someone else nominated the tribute. The three season cooldown only affects the specific player who nominated them.
  
• If you switched the tribute out for a different tribute before the running began, and they thus never competed in the season proper.
  

The Watchlist

Something else you need to keep in mind when nominating tributes is the watchlist. Borrowed directly from the TV Tropes version of this game, the watchlist helps ensure romantic events don't end up accidentally injecting some major creepiness into what's supposed to be

good-natured funWell, as good-natured as a virtual gladiatorial arena can be, anyway.

.

The watchlist is based around a series of coloured "flags". In addition to specifying which sim pronoun should be used, you also need to state what flag the tribute falls under when nominating. The flags are based on the age of the tribute, plus a certain consideration for other factors.

• Safe: The tribute is an adult aged 21+, or there's no reason to believe otherwise.
       
  
• Green: The tribute is on the hazy border between a teen and a young adult (around the 18-20 age range).
           
  
• Yellow: The tribute is a teenager (13-17).
       
  
• Orange: The tribute is a preteen (10-12).
       
  
• Red: The tribute is a small child, below orange flag age but above...
       
  
• Black: The abyss from which no shipping returns. There are two different kinds of black flag. One is extremely young children - that is to say, infants and babies. The other kind is group tributes where there's a large enough age gap between the youngest and oldest member of the group that no pairing involving them could ever not have creepy implications.
     
  
• Special Cases:  In addition to the regular flagging system, certain tributes will need or can use additional conditions for who they can and can't be shipped with. The most common examples of these are:
  
  - Non-sapient animals, who are considered their own flag of sorts - shippable with other non-sapient entities, but nothing else.
  
  - Related tributes: If two tributes have a family relationship, whether biological or adopted - say, you nominate a pair of siblings - you can add a note to not have them shipped with each other, including unrequited crushes. This also applies for if one person nominates one character and another nominates the other. Note that for siblings, cousins, ect. this is optional, but parent/child tributes will always need to be special case flagged for this.
  
  - Elderly tributes: Old tributes (typically tributes 65 years or older) should also get a special case flag, letting the runner know to be careful about who they can potentially be shipped with.
  
  If your tribute doesn't fall under these three cases but still needs to be flagged this way, don't hesitate to ask the mods on how to flag them properly.
  
  (Special case rules from the TV Tropes HGS thread)
  
  

Tributes are, for the most part, only allowed to get into romantic events with tributes in the same flag group. There's a certain amount of leeway if the tributes are close in age despite being different flags - especially with green flags, who can be shipped with a fair percentage of safe and yellow flags - but not a massive amount. Black flags are an exception; black-flagged tributes cannot be shipped with anything, other black flags included.

Some notes regarding the flagging system:

• If a group tribute is composed entirely of members of similar ages, put them under the appropriate flag. If a group tribute is composed of members with a considerable age gap between the oldest and youngest, it's a black flag.
       
  
• Flags are assigned according to the tribute's physical age, as opposed to their actual age. A thousand-year-old vampire with the body of a twelve-year-old would be flagged orange. If a tribute doesn't have a canon age, determine their flag according to their physical appearance/portrayal to the best of your ability.
       
  
• Inanimate objects are considered safe. Cargo ships are cracky, but they aren't usually squicky, at least not in the way the watchlist is designed to curb. This only applies, however, to inanimate objects that are not intended to represent a living, sentient thing. Plushes of a character, for instance, would be flagged as if they were the character themself.
       
  
• If a tribute ages enough over the course of their source material to change flags, flag them as the age they are in the picture used for them.   
  

   

Event Formatting

After the nominations are over, you can submit any ideas you have for new events. For the first round, the limit will be fifty events per user, allowing for us to pad the event pools out a little on our first go. For all subsequent rounds, the limit will be 30 per user.

Unfortunately, this isn't as simple as just writing the event in plain English. The Simulator uses some rather obtuse formatting, and for the sake of easy copy-pasting, it's advised that you write your events using the formatting in question.

• Use (Player#) to represent the names of the tributes involved. (eg. (Player1), (Player2), (Player3)...)
       
  
• The simulator supports five different pronoun sets - he/him, she/her, singular they/them, it/its, and plural they/them. Pronouns are formatted (he/she/they/it/they#), or (him/her/them/it/them#), or any other possible grammatical variation of these pronoun sets. The # will check for (Player#)'s sim-assigned gender and automatically use the appropriate pronoun. Awe921 has made a helpful helper thing for this purpose.
   
  • Similar formatting should be applied to any word that will grammatically change depending on the pronouns of the tribute. (e.g. "(Player1) (goes/goes/goes/goes/go1) hunting.")
    
      
  
• There are shorthands for several of the most common pronoun permutations:
  
  • [typeA#] = (he/she/they/it/they#)
    
    
  • [typeB#] = (him/her/them/it/them#)
       
    
  • [typeC#] = (his/her/their/its/their#)
       
    
  • [typeD#] = (himself/herself/themself/itself/themselves)
     
    
  • Note the square brackets for the "type" formatting. Most sim markup uses round brackets, so make sure not to mix them up. Yes, I know, it's pointlessly overcomplicated.
    
  
  
• [Players], in square brackets, is a piece of markup used by one of the two types of special event to denote every single living tribute.
  

Special Events

There are two types of special event - Arena Events and Endgame Events.

Arena Events are massive events that span the whole arena, involving every tribute. If you're familiar with the original Hunger Games books, that event near the end of the first book with the mutant wolves is an example of an Arena Event. They occur at random, at any point after a Day or a Night phase, and claim many lives whenever they show up.

Each Arena Event consists of a prompt, which describes what is happening during the event, and a series of sub-events, showing how the tributes react to the Arena Event and whether they survive or perish. The sub-events use the same formatting as regular events. You can have between 1 and 100 each of fatal and non-fatal sub-events per Arena Event, but need at least one of each. Just because you can have two hundred sub-events all in all, though, doesn't mean you should; only suggest as many sub-events as you think the Arena Event needs. An Arena Event, regardless of the number of sub-events it has, counts as one event suggestion for the suggestion phase's "thirty events per player" cap.

Endgame Events also draw a parallel to an event from the Hunger Games books. In this case, that event is Katniss and Peeta's suicide pact, where they give the Gamemakers the choice of either declaring two winners or no winner. Endgame Events run on a similar principle - every surviving tribute unites to perform a single action, which could lead either to every tribute winning, or to a mass death that leaves no winner at all.

Endgame Events have a similar structure to Arena Events, though simplified significantly. You have a prompt describing what's happening, a single "success" scenario that declares every tribute alive a joint winner, and a single "failure" scenario that kills them all. Each Endgame Event has an adjustable percentage chance of success, from 0% (the tributes always die) to 100% (the tributes always live). They also happen to be where the [Players] markup comes in handy. Indeed, these events are the only time you're ever likely to use it.

Endgame Events are not typically used in Trouble Cube HGS, but they are definitely not never used. More on that later.

A Guide to Writing Good Events

This is a collection of guidelines for writing enjoyable events. They aren't hard rules unless it's explicitly said they are, but you should still keep them in mind.

• HARD RULE: Avoid duplicate events! If you think someone may have suggested your event before, check the existing event list (the "search page" keyboard shortcut, whatever it is on your OS, is your friend here). If a duplicated event is discovered, the dupes will be pruned until only one remains.
         
  
• HARD RULE: No really offensive events. Dark comedy and profanity are a-okay, as is basically any horrific act of violence you care to name - this is the Hunger Games. But if an event contains, for instance, a slur, or other actively bigoted content, it will be rejected right there and then. Overtly NSFW events are also no bueno.
         
  
• HARD RULE: No events that cause one tribute to permanently change into another - body swaps, "X was Y all along!", et cetera. If a tribute who underwent such an event gets on the Hall of Fame, figuring out who technically reached it is going to prove to be a MASSIVE headache. Then there's the matter of how to count the tribute's kills. It's all a lot of confusion we'd like to avoid. Temporary events involving shapeshifting into/disguising as other tributes are fine.
       
  
• The character limit for events is 500. That's enough space to write quite a lot, but nonetheless, try to make your events summarise what happens as concisely as possible, and cut down on detail that isn't necessary. Less is more.
         
  
• An event can be coded to feature up to 200 tributes. Once again, just because you can involve this many tributes doesn't mean you should. Events are best when they involve a relatively small number of tributes.
     
  
• Try to make your events grammatically correct. If you're not sure of the correct grammar for an event, there is no shame in asking, especially if you are an ESL speaker or something along those lines. An exception can be made for events where bad grammar is the joke, e.g. references to hilariously bad translations.
         
  
• Make sure it's obvious what an event is supposed to be. Whatever it is you're aiming to convey, convey it as clearly as possible. Again, an event where the whole point is that it's nonsensical is fine - just make sure it's evident what kind of nonsense is happening.
         
  
• References are fine, but they should not be the sole purpose of an event. The primary reason you submit an event should be because you think it would be a funny or interesting thing to see in the simulator. Before you submit an event that references a moment from something else, think to yourself - will it stand up on its own this way? Or, robbed of the context of its source material, does the event make no sense, or just not come off as well as you'd like? If it's the latter, you should probably rethink the event to make it less fan-myopic.
       
  
• If an event could be either fatal or non-fatal, specify which it is, either within the event's text or as a note in the post where you submit it. For fatal events, make it clear who killed who.
         
  
• The simulator calculates deaths in numerical order - if an event kills, for example, (Player1) and (Player2), (Player1) will die first and receive a lower ranking, regardless of what the event text seems to imply to a human mind. Thankfully, this comes with an obvious solution - swap player numbers around so all deaths happen in the right order. Always write events so that the sim calculates deaths in the order you intended; not doing so could lead to confusing anomalies in the final placements.
  

Setting Up A Save

Adding The Cast

Before adding the cast, go into "Adjust Settings" on the Simulator's homepage. From here, you can set the number of tributes and districts to match the number of tributes nominated for the season. TC HGS's policy is that each player's tributes are placed in their own district - and yes, this means Troubadours who only nominated the one tribute will end up with one-tribute Districts. Then click "Submit" to save your changes.

To edit the cast, click the "Edit Cast" button on the header bar. You'll notice there are several different options for the layout presented; use whichever one works best for you. For starters, taking advantage of the new HGS's ability to rename districts, our policy is to name every district after the Troubadour who nominated its tributes.

Now to add the tributes themselves. Each individual tribute has five parameters you can edit:

• Their full name, as it will appear on the Reaping screen at the start of the season.
         
  
• Their nickname, aka what they'll be called in events.
         
  
• Their pronouns. As previously mentioned, the five available pronoun options are he/him, she/her, singular they/them, it/its and plural they/them.   
         
  
• Their picture. Insert a link to the image you want to use as the tribute's picture into this field. (This is why you're supposed to hyperlink a picture when nominating tributes.)
       
  
• Their death picture, which will be used on the "Fallen Tributes" screen after the tribute dies. If you don't feel the need to give the tribute a separate death image, simply write "BW" in this field and their "Fallen Tributes" picture will be their standard picture in monochrome.
  

Once you've done all this, hit the "Submit" button.

Adding Events

To add new events, click the "Manage Events" button on the home page/Reaping screen. You'll see links to lists of all the current event pools, plus an "Add New Event" button for whatever event pool you're currently looking at. The actual act of adding an event is as simple as clicking this button, copypasting the event's text, and setting it to contain the appropriate number of tributes. For fatal events, you also set which tributes die, and who killed them.

There are four "standard" event pools, Bloodbath, Day, Night, and Feast, each separated further into distinct pools for fatal and non-fatal events. Arena Events and Endgame Events go in separate pools. The Bloodbath is the beginning of the game, and the Feast is an event that occurs in the late game; both revolve around the tributes fighting over the resources in the Cornucopia at the centre of the arena. In this sim, the Feast is also where food-related custom events happen, such as tributes eating or cooking food (...or each other). Their difference from Day and Night is purely flavour-based, at least when it comes to custom events.

If you don't specify which pool an event should go in, it will generally be assumed that it goes in the Day and Night pools. If you want it to appear in a different set of pools (e.g. only in the Bloodbath, only at night, Day and Night and Feast, etc.), specify which.

The Regular Save and the Clean Save

Another little idiosyncrasy TC HGS borrows directly from its TV Tropes forefather is the use of two separate event pools. The only difference between the “Regular Save” and the “Clean Save” is that the Clean Save contains no events with romantic undertones. Otherwise, it's all the same events. The Clean Save exists for cases when a large watchlist is making finding something usable with the Regular Save take an unfathomably long time - or sometimes, if the watchlist is so huge you don't even want to try for Regular, it's the one you go for immediately.

Please mark an event as “blacklisted” if you want it to be kept out of the Clean Save. It's easier than making the one setting up the save scan every event for Clean suitability, on top of every other duty save setup entails.

Running A Save

On the simplest possible level, running a save is as easy as clicking the "Re-Simulate" button in the header once you've added the tributes and events. But since we have certain standards for what counts as a usable save, it's ultimately more complex than that. The runner's most time-consuming duty is to scan the save they create to ensure it doesn't contain any questionable events, severe glitches, or other disruptions.

If you are a save runner, here's a run-down of the things you are expected to catch while trying to run the season. If you find a clear-cut example of one of these things, the save is a bust and can't be used. Click "Re-Simulate" and try again. If you find something where you're not sure if it goes against these rules or not, ask about it. If consensus says the save is busted, it's busted; if you're told whatever you were worried about should be fine, then keep going.

• The most common obstacle comes in the form of the Watchlist. If an event comes up that implies a romantic pairing with... uncomfortable implications, that's the save wasted. The Watchlist exists as an easily accessible way to check whether a pairing is kosher or not, though note that it is merely intended as a guide. It cannot be stressed enough that leeway for different-flag pairings where the tributes are nonetheless close in age can be given.
  
  • An exception can also be made if an event implies a tribute has a one-sided crush on another tribute with a higher flag. It can be assumed to be precocious, unrequited love. Needless to say, the inverse is not acceptable.
    
             
  
• It is unfortunately common for events to end up broken. Sometimes you get a death event that kills the wrong people. Sometimes the number of tribute pictures and the number of tributes involved in the event doesn't line up. Sometimes the event has completely broken formatting. Whatever the case, if a glitched event along these lines comes up, tank the save and fix the event before retrying.   
         
  
• Arena Events are big. Arena Events are spectacular. But Arena Events, if they occur too early, also have a bad habit of ruining the season's pacing. They can easily take out half or more of the starting lineup in one go, and from there, the season either ends disappointingly quickly or it succumbs to a severe case of, to slip into TV Tropes lingo for a second, Ending Fatigue. To avoid this, Arena Events are not allowed to occur before Day Four.   
   
  • Again, there is a certain amount of leeway to this rule. If there is an early Arena Event, but it has an unusually high amount of survivors, there's an argument to be made that it does not completely butcher the season's pace. This should be determined on a case-by-case basis, by bringing it up in the server whenever you think an early AE could potentially be acceptable. But keep in mind that cases where an early Arena Event doesn't claim a huge body count are very rare; most of the time, it's a guaranteed save killer.
    
• There are very rare occasions where a save's pacing ends up completely whacked, even without an early Arena Event getting in the way. These should be brought up with the community to determine whether they're usable, as with most things where there's no clear delineation between "acceptable" and "unacceptable".
  

   
Once you have a usable save, rather than giving it to the designated host themself, the runner is expected to take screenshots of each individual stage, which are then uploaded as a single album to the image hosting site(s) of their choice - historically that's been PostImage and Imgur (✨and here's an obligatory plug for TC's own image host✨). If you are the runner and you are incapable of screening, due to time constraints, tech issues, or any other valid reason, you are allowed to give the link to the save to a third party who can take screens. You should also privately give the original save link to the host, just in case of emergency.

The runner should use the first viable save that comes up. Re-rolling viable saves just because you dislike the result is save rigging, and is absolutely one hundred per cent forbidden. Anyone caught rigging saves will receive swift, harsh punishment.

It's common practice for the one setting up the save to create "dump" save links that they post to the server, tracking their progress. These links also serve as a convenient point for the runner and the one who sets up the next season's save to jump onto, and, in general, are how changes to things like the event pool are preserved. Since they exist solely to capture these changes, dump saves are subject to absolutely none of the restrictions imposed on the "real" save.

Hosting the Season

Now for the meat of any given HGS season - the hosting. The runner and the host tend to be different people due to the workload doing both entails, though it's entirely possible for someone to host and run the same season if they want to, or if they have to fill in for a previous host who was forced to step down.

If the runner chooses to host, they must select someone to send the save to as a backup in case they are unable to finish the season. This person won't necessarily have to take over as host, but they'll be able to send the save to the new host if the original runner-host somehow can't.

So how does hosting work? Well, that's among the more flexible parts of the HGS formula. It's supposed to be narration of the events taking place in the season, but the style of that narration is entirely up to you! Indeed, the differences in how people approach hosting are part of the game's charm.

The host does not deliver the season all at once. Standard procedure is instead to give regular post-by-post updates, with the "Fallen Tributes" screen as the typical cutoff point. If it's near the end of the season and a tiny clutch of tributes are all that remains, you can have updates cover a longer span of time for the sake of avoiding Ending Fatigue, if you feel it's necessary. The host provides hyperlinks to the relevant screenshots, as well.

There are very few strict rules for what you can say as the host. Just don't say anything you would generally regret and you should be fine.

✨We are once again plugging Trouble Cube Image Gallery, which you can use to host relevant screenshots including snips of individual events~ Try it immediately if you want to✨

Hosts must update in a timely manner. The generally-expected update rate is two or three per day. A host who goes two or more days between updates, especially without prior warning, may be forcibly replaced.

Special Seasons and the Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame is where the best performing tributes of each season have their deeds enshrined

for all timeOr at least for as long as we bother to maintain the database.

!

There are two different kinds of Hall of Famer - Podium Finishers and Mass Murderers. Podium Finishers are the first, second and third-placed tributes of the season; Mass Murderers are each tribute in a season who had the most kills. Note the "each" - there is no limit to how many tributes can be Mass Murderers per season, and every single one will have their feat acknowledged in the Hall of Fame.

But a great performance doesn't just earn a tribute the right to have their name placed in a spreadsheet. It also gives them the chance to come back for another round, and face off against all the other tributes who made it to the top. This is where the special seasons of the HGS come in. The Battle Royale is fought between the 36 most recent Podium Finishers - or, to put it another way, the Podium Finishers for the last twelve standard rounds of the HGS. The Death Battle, meanwhile, is a showdown involving the last 48 Mass Murderers; it occurs the moment there are enough Mass Murderers for it to happen. If a single standard season pushes the Mass Murderer count above 48, roll randomly to determine which Mass Murderers get in until the current Death Battle has exactly 48 competitors, then set the excess MMs aside as the first competitors in the next Death Battle.

Things in the BR and DB go down slightly differently to how they do in the normal seasons. For one, since it would create something of a feedback loop, the Hall of Fame tributes from special seasons do not get entered into the next appropriate special season. For another thing, remember the earlier mention of how Trouble Cube HGS does not normally use Endgame Events? Well, special seasons are the exception. Endgame Events are enabled for these seasons, partially because the fact special seasons don't impact each other means Endgame Events don't cause confusion regarding things such as Podium Finisher placements, partially just to impart these seasons with that little bit of extra gravitas. To ensure they take place in the endgame, per their name, the one setting up the save should have Endgame Events set up to only occur from Day 7 on - and whoever sets up the next season needs to be reminded to turn them off again. Oh, and to clarify - every survivor of an Endgame Event is a "podium finisher" when it comes to Hall of Fame entries, which does happen to mean that, if the event ended in every tribute's death, there are no HoFers except the Mass Murderers for that season.

Aside from the Battle Royale and Death Battle, we also hold themed seasons. As the name implies, it is a season that revolves around a specific theme. It consists of two types: Preset Themed and Player-Voted Themed.

A Preset Themed season is a themed season that is held without going through a voting process, as it happens during a specific time of the year or because it celebrates a thread milestone. Here, we officially recognizes five: Valentine's Day (around February 14), Halloween (around October 31), Christmas (around December 25), Anniversary (around March 10, the date when the thread was found), and Troubadour Game (every 50 seasons. Troubadour self-inserts/Author Avatars, while always allowed, are especially encouraged here)

Meanwhile, a Player-Voted Themed season is a themed season that is held every 10 seasons and where a theme is chosen through a voting process 5 seasons prior. This means there is a 24-hours period where a Troubadour can suggest up to five ideas for the theme. Afterwards, the mods will collect 10 of the most interesting ideas that can be voted on through the following criteria:

• Does it give way for tributes that violate the rules of this game?
  
• Is it overplayed, as in suggested too many times before at this moment
  
• Is it a subjective matter?
  
• Is it either too broad or too specific?
  
• Any other factors?
  

The voting process lasts for 24 hours and the theme with the most votes will be chosen. However, if there is a tie, we will hold another round of voting between the tied themes to break the tie.

Please note that while following the theme is encouraged, it is never mandatory for a Troubadour to always follow the theme. You are free to nominate off-theme tributes if you don't feel like doing so.

Check the Hall of Fame out here. It also happens to contain some additional tidbits of TC HGS trivia.

I heard something about a roleplay?

A roleplay themed around Trouble Cube HGS - and perhaps the other BrantSteele games with TC branches, too - is indeed something in the works. As of this writing, though, it's still in the planning stages. There's no estimate on when it might actually start up, but we'll try to inform you when we think the time is nigh.

The Most Important Rule

This is a simple game. It is intended to be purely for fun. If at any point you aren't having fun, say so. If you have more important commitments, that's no big deal. Don't let a silly forum game ruin your life.

With that said... fun. Go have some.

And the nomination period for Season 1 of Trouble Cube HGS starts... now.

• Vanessa Voss (female, safe)
  
  
• Loona (female, safe)
  

[HypeKitty1]

1. Pyra and Mythra
2. Achievement Hunter Cast (note only the ones in the picture)

[Billy5545]

Going to nominate my first ever other HGS tributes, Giorno Giovanna (Yellow, 15 years old or 16 at the end of the the story) and Marinette Dupain-Cheng (Yellow, 14-15 years old)

[PowerStroke6001]

Hailing from the TVT branch of HGS is PowerStoke6001, with her favorite tributes, Twilight Sparkle and Toriel!

[Cassie]

Ocarina (Real Life)

Thunderdrum (How To Train Your Dragon), is nonsapient

[KungFuCutbug]

• Skid & Pump (group tribute, orange flag since they're of unknown age but established to be pretty young)
  
• Pico (male, death pic, is around age 20 by the time Friday Night Funkin’ takes place so light green I think is the right flag?)
  

[Zanreo]

My first tributes here will be... Neptune (hundreds of years old but yellow-flagged for looking like a teen) and CATS!

[Oggy123]

Kirby and Ribbon .

Both are kids.

[psychedelicate]

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu and Kazuichi Souda. Both male, both safe.

[artsyGeek]

Mahiru Koizumi (female, safe) and Agent (non-binary (uses they/them pronouns, assuming this sim has it), safe-ish? They're a sapient penguin but I.. Kinda feel iffy with them being shipped with a human? Idk.)

[Kennifer]

This will be fun since I have yeeted them into the current TVT one too, heeheehee.

Have...

Kennifer (female, safe) and
Amanda (female, safe)

Both are my original characters. Kennifer was created for the Murderverse (specifically for Your Final Frontier) and Amanda existed prior to the Murderverse (and is just... an original character.)

[TheSleepyDreepy45]

And what better way to start my run here than with some good old fashioned Vinesauce memes:

* Bonzi Buddy 

* Mr. Dink  (KO)

[MemeGuy]

Krang and Demi the Demoness. Both are safe.

[ThatIdiotMan]

Shouta Aizawa and Mr. David Van Driessen (both safe)

[MadeOfMilk]

Fuck it, I'mma nominate Charles Calvin and Tamama (Charles is safe but Tamama's age is unknown, probably teenager-ish)

[B-Doe-1998]

Lamar Davis and Johnny Gat. Both safe.

[Subparman]

Noi and Childe, both black fla—just kidding they're safe.

[~okami~]

I nominate Cecil Terwilliger and Kowalski (both male and safe).

[Dookie]

*

Dookie

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/i...f42d5.jpeg

*

Ice Bear

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/i...bear_7.png

Both safe.

[PlasmaGuy]

Poe de Spell and Don Karnage (Both safe)

[Despair's Archon of Memes]

Team "Holy frick, both of their initials are H.S. lol"

My first ever tribute for TVT HGS, as well as my character for the (ultimately doomed) murdergame The Mockingbird Watches: Henry Stickmin! (Male, Safe (28))

And my character submission from the Murdergame Last Summer, The Goddess of Tropes herself, O-Haruhi Sama: Haruhi Suzumiya! (Female, Yellow (16))

[awe921]

i nominate Cube Awe. he will slaughter all that there is. he's more ancient than any of the contestants (if theres anyone older his age magically warps to be way beyond them) but since this indestructible monstrosity has taken in my form (who is a 16 year old at the time), he's a yellow flag.

[Guma]

Nominee 1: Cell
Nominee 2: The Camel with the Wrinkled Knees
(both he/him; both safe)

[SapphireStarblazer]

Team Snakemouth (Pair, Black (Vi is confirmed by word of god to be a late teen while Lief has clearly been around for a while))
the Deltarune Party (Pair, Black (i think Ralsei is significantly younger than Kris and Susie?? Yellow if my judgement is wrong))

[Scipion3]

er_crocomire_sm.png (903×928) (metroid-database.com): Crocomire

pr_nightmare_mf.png (1105×1256) (metroid-database.com): Nightmare

(I have yet to see how I can show the tributes's pictures like I do with the main thread)