A little too bizarre thematically, for me.

per Kevan. I think staying too closely within the boundaries of the caveman theme will lead to repetitive gameplay and a boring dynasty.

I’m not really sure what you mean by “repetitive gameplay”, or how that relates to theme - the raw gameplay mechanic described here would fit equally well to, say, different hunting styles, or tribal or religious affiliations. If you find that sort of dynasty inherently boring and prefer a bang-crash “We are all actually muffins! With hats! Also, vote for a winner now, this isn’t really working!” metadynasty, though, fair enough.

But I think thematic lurches can be a problem for a typical dynasty - if they contradict an existing aspect of the theme, then it’s harder to reconcile the two, and there’s a risk that either the old part or the new part is going to be neglected, and will atrophy. It’s easier to build strong mechanics that work together in an interesting way, if we’re all working to the same theme.

(This proposal is only a little odd; only the chief of our tribe is clever enough to truly understand that “if you bash a rock against another rock, it makes a noise”, and there’s a sense that more complex rock bashing will be higher up the tech tree, yet we can all instinctively play heavy metal music? I don’t know if Purplebeard thinks we need a new direction and we are now in the Caveman Rock Band Dynasty, or if this is intended more as a beard-stroking-archaeologist “well, these skeletons here with the sharp rocks, which we think they used for social rituals, we call them the Heavy Metal People, that’s just our little joke” thing.)

Kevan made a very good point.
But I like the idea, so I’ll abstain.

CoV per Kevan. There’s a quote by Clucky during yuri_dragon_17’s dynasty that I ought to dig up, though.

Ah, found it. “Ya’ll are too uptight in making stuff fit a rigid theme. The whole point of the shine sprites was they were vaguely islandy, but not within the previously established theme. They were not actually designed to hijack the dynasty in a different direction, but instead to keep it fresh and interesting.” (from http://blognomic.com/archive/back_on_track1/)

Though now that I read the quote again it doesn’t quite apply to this proposal, so I remain against.

For what it’s worth: this was basically just a spur-of-the-moment thing (as a lot of my proposals are) and in no way represents my executive decision on where this dynasty should go from here, which is of course for a quorum of Cavemen to decide.

I just felt like proposing a minor mechanic which rewards teamwork, couldn’t immediately find a way to tie one into the theme seamlessly and so resorted to free association, which has worked for me in the past. For the record, I can enjoy dynasties with a strong theme as well as more surreal ones (and in my opinion there has been a healthy mix of the two over the years), so I’m quite comfortable going with whatever quorum decides on this issue.

I do realize that my proposals carry a bit more weight as Chief, but that shouldn’t preclude me from throwing out a crazy idea once in a while to see how the players respond.

(I do want to distantiate myself from the ‘vote for winners’-camp, though)

with kevan’s update