It is the wild west, and you find yourself among a circle of N outlaws all bearing grudges and loyalties from past encounters. In particular, each outlaw has a list of exactly f friends and a list of e enemies (the two lists are disjoint), where e + f < N. Each outlaw has a different list. The friend relationship is symmetric: if A is a friend of B then B is a friend of A. However, if A is an enemy of B, B is not necessarily an enemy of A; enmity could have arisen secretly. Further, a friend of a friend could well be an enemy!
There is a showdown, each of you ready to draw your guns at the slightest provocation. Each gunslinger chooses another gunslinger and fires a shot; alternatively, a gunslinger can elect not to shoot. All shots happen at once, with the bullets in flight simultaneously. Each gunslinger has a shield that can protect against one shot, but not against more than one. A player is eliminated if, on a single turn, she is shot by more than one gunslinger. Otherwise the player remains in the game for the next round.
Players have complete information about who tried to shoot whom on previous rounds. From this information, they can try to infer friendship and enmity relationships. Players do not have direct access to other players' relationships, and do not even know which group's code corresponds to which player.
The showdown ends when nobody has died for ten consecutive rounds. This might happen if all remaining players consistently choose not to shoot. It will also happen if all but one player consistently choose not to shoot, since it takes two bullets to eliminate a player.
At the end of the showdown, players (including eliminated players) score a point for each of the following:
So the maximum score on a round is e+f+1.
For the tournament, we will run many instances of the game with the same collection of players, but with new randomized lists for each showdown. We'll try different settings for e, f, and N and see how they influence strategy.
This game is loosely based on the game BANG!