I'm all about brainstorming. I think EPM has his peeps watching the boards for ideas. Where do you think he got the All-Stars idea?! I'll add to the list, but let me first say my piece on these ideas.<<1) There are two separations of the castaways: by tribe and by camp. Half the members of each tribe live at one camp, and same with the others. RCs are played by camp, ICs by tribe.>>
Bad idea. Automatically creates alliances. Your "camp" within your "tribe" is your alliance.
<<2) Both tribes live on one camp for the duration of the game.>>
Still not good. No opportunity to create a swap or anything different to change tribe dynamics.
<<3) A third challenge type: Tribe Member Challenges. Winning tribe gets to permanently steal one member from the losing tribe until the tribe is dissolved or the merger happens.>>
I like this one. If you win a challenge, then you get to take a tribe member from the other tribe. I think you need to give them immunity from the next tribe tribal council so they have a chance to blend into the tribe.
This has a chance to really mess with the tribes, as one player could be tugged back and forth and never go to TC until the merge. Or one tribe keeps picking people off until the other tribe only has 3 people left (the point which immediately requires a merge).
Let's play this out, hypothetically, with 18 people.
1st TC - Yasur wins. They take Chad, and Lopevi boots Brook
2nd TC - Yasur wins again. They take Brady, and Lopevi boots John K
3rd TC - Yasur wins again. They take John P, Lopevi boots Rory
only people left on Lopevi is Lea, Chris, and Travis. Now, you have to merge, because if Yasur wins the next challenge, then one person will be picked, and there will only be 2 people left who have to vote for each other.
Then they merge, and you have 9 Yasur and 6 Lopevi. You still have too many people in one tribe with an obvious pagonging. Boring television. I guess this doesn't work out well.
But it could work out well for, maybe, the last 2 challenges before the merge.
<<4) The tribe with immunity votes someone off the other team.>>
This really isn't fair. You don't even have a chance to rally votes against someone, which is part of the fun.
Here is my idea:
1 - Have a team immunity challenge in which the teams compete in pairs. The team that has all of its pairs cross the finish line first gets immunity. On the losing team, the first pair is also granted immunity.
2 - Same ideas in competing in pairs, except that the first, for example, 3 pairs are now on one team, and the remaining 3 pairs are now on the other team. This could also work as a 3some, or even as individuals. (For individuals, though, you need to make sure that the challenge is fair for men and women so that it doesn't create the same male/female teams. Or if they are split teams, then maybe you have an imbalanced challenge in order to create a new m/f team!)