Puffles

*Puffles are small furry pets native to Club Penguin Island. Puffles were first discovered in November 2005, and were first adoptable in March 2006, being sold for 800 coins, which had since been reduced to 400 coins. Puffles are small, limbless creatures who ate Puffle-O's and other foods native to Club Penguin (Club Penguin Wiki).*

## Puffle Gameplay

Puffle contestants act like any standard CPORG competitor, in that they can be voted out at any time, or could go all the way to win, however unlike standard or penguin contestants, puffles take on somewhat of a fictional role in seasons, acting as their own entities. They are often added to a cast in order to fill up the season size and make the game last long enough to be worthwhile, however on some occasions like Season 3 and Season 7, puffle contestants were not included in the cast at all, while other occasions like Season 4 and Season 9 see puffles making up the entirety of the cast.

### Current Puffle Mechanics

#### Voting

A puffle's vote will be randomised between all eligible players. If a puffle's vote roll lands on someone that they voted with at the previous tribal council (or last tribal council they visited with that person in the case of swaps seperating people), then that vote randomisation will be re-rolled so they're not immediately turning on an ally and there is some benefit to people keeping loyal puffles around.

On the re-roll, if a different person comes up that the puffle also voted with, that person will also get a re-roll to keep things fair. If, however, the same person that has already been rolled once gets rolled again on the re-roll, that will be that puffle's vote and they will just be turning against an ally.

There is one additional re-roll that can happen once all the votes are tallied, however, and that's in the case that there are puffles that are alone in their vote (e.g. one of the 1s in a scattered 4-2-1-1-1 sort of vote). In this instance, any name that has more than one vote will be entered into a re-roll for that puffle's vote, although the target of their original vote will also be an option so they do still have a likelihood of being out of the loop on the vote.

#### Jury Votes

The way puffles' jury votes work can differe from season to season at the discretion of the host, but for the most part their votes are determined by a weighted randomisation.

Each finalist will be given a rating for each juror's vote that will determine the likelihood of them voting for that particular finalist (mostly at the host's discretion as to how this will be determined, but mainly just having to do with criteria like the juror more likely favouring a finalist that sided with them in votes and worked with them over finalists that voted for them repeatedly or spoke badly about them in chats).

For the most part, the rating will be between 0-3, with 3 meaning that finalist's name will be entered into a randomiser three times, making it more likely a puffle votes for that finalist than someone entered two times or just one time. For the most part, though, there really wouldn't ever be a reason someone would have a zero for a puffle's vote unless they repeatedly were rude to said puffle, meaning there's still always that chance of randomisation of a puffle voting someone that they didn't seem particularly likely to.

#### Challenges

For the pre-merge, puffles just mostly won't compete in challenges, since it's mainly unnecessary for them to participate. For individual challenges, however, different systems can be used at the host's discretion.

For some seasons, challenges have been specifically adapted off of the actual *Club Penguin* game and instead just run through chats on Discord/Facebook/Skype that have allowed for randomised guesses or moves from puffles (e.g. Coconut Chop or Flip Out from US *Survivor*, games of Battleship, etc.) so that puffles can compete on even ground.

Otherwise, the most recent system used for puffles competing in challenges is that the host will compete in individual challenges on behalf of all puffles, and should they beat every other player so that no real player win immunity, then the immunity necklace will be randomised and given to a single puffle who will be declared as having won the challenge.

Additionally, sometimes a penguin who has already been eliminated from the game is given a similar opportunity to compete on behalf of a particular puffle, allowing them to still participate in the game in some regard and to give the puffle some agency in challenges where they may need it. Though this is sometimes may include eliminated players that are on the jury for challenges where real players controlling puffles is entirely necessary, for the most part this right to compete for a puffle is reserved only for pre-jury boots, since jurors still play a major role in deciding how the game unfolds.

#### Idols/Advantages

For the most part, puffles finding idols is up to the host's discretion as to whether or not it can work with how finding idols will work in a particular season. For some seasons, puffles just realistically aren't able to search for idols. If a format permits it, however puffles can absolutely search for, obtain and play idols (as an example; the idol hunting method in some seasons of finding a pin or penguin in-game that's hidden somewhere doesn't work for puffles since they can't physically search for it, but a method like submitting a random guess of a location each round *does* work for puffles, since they can just have a random guess submitted).

For puffles playing an idol, the system is usually determined by a random roll based on the amount of votes cast at that tribal council and the amount of votes that puffle received. If a puffle received four votes at a tribal council at the final six, a roll from 1-6 would be rolled, and if the number was anywhere from 1-4 the puffle would play the idol. If it was anywhere from 5-6, they would not. This makes it more likely for a puffle to play an idol if the votes are all piled onto them (see Pom Pom in *The Elements*) but far less likely to play one and even able to go home with one in their pocket if votes are split and they don't receive many (see Charlie in *Blood vs Water*).

This is essentially just to balance out puffles having idols or advantages into not just being get-out-of-jail-free cards for them and there still being a way to counterplay around them.

### History of Puffle Mechanics

#### Season 1 - Season 5

Puffles were first introduced into Season 1, with three competing alongside the four actual contestants, each of them bringing a puffle from their igloo to compete alongside them, with the exception of Aren who did not own any. In this early format, the owner of a puffle would control their votes, and if that player was voted out would compete for their puffle in challenges, which Zach ultimately ended up doing for Rogi. With their voting, however, restrictions were placed upon them in order to keep having a puffle fair and balanced and not just allowing you to double your vote each round, and so a rule was put in place that while you could control your puffle's vote, they had to vote differently to how you had voted. This was a format that continued on throughout the first five seasons of Club Penguin as puffles continued to compete alongside their owners, but following Season 5 the format changed.

One exception to this was Season 4, which was the first installment of Puffle Island (a theme that was later repeated in Season 9). For these seasons, no penguin contestants were present, and instead people were allowed to choose a puffle to champion, having them represent them in the game. Four puffles were chosen before the season began (Snack, Chocolate, and the two returnees Greeny and Ms. Plum), with players controlling those puffles, leaving the rest of the eight puffles to have their votes and decisions in the game completely randomised. This randomised puffle format ultimately was then adopted for future seasons.

#### Season 6 - Season 9

With season six featuring six real contestants, most of whom were new to Club Penguin and as such didn't own puffles, three puffles from previous seasons (Shapeshift, Lucifurry and John Cody) were added to the season. Given that they weren't owned by any of the contestants, having their votes be controlled by someone wouldn't have made sense, and so similar to the puffles that weren't chosen by anyone in Season 4, their votes were randomly generated as were their scores in challenges. Ultimately, this is a format that continued for a while, with puffles no longer being owned by contestants and instead just existing as their own randomised entities, even having speeches and jury questions randomly generated for them in Season 8 using the predictive text feature on iPhones.

#### Season 10 - Season 12

Puffles will still have their votes randomised, however there is a semblance of logic added to this. Anybody that a puffle votes alongside at the previous tribal will be considered an ally to them, and as such the chances of them casting a vote for that person will be greatly reduced, in order to keep the game moving along somewhat realistically and have there be some benefit to people working with puffles if they can.

Due to some fairly contentious jury decisions in the past, this will also extend into puffles casting their jury votes. Each finalist will be rated in the likelihood that the certain puffle would vote with them based off previous votes together, whether they were directly voted out by that finalist, etc. There will then be a randomisation of their vote with these ratings translating into increased or decreased odds of the juror voting a certain way, meaning that there is still randomisation involved and puffles could vote strangely, but it's more likely that if you treat a puffle well, you'll earn their respect.

#### Season 13 - Present (and Big Brother)

While the voting mechanics behind puffles' votes behind randomised did not change, the way that puffles compete in challenges had. In early seasons, some puffles simply did not compete in challenges at all, were championed to compete by eliminated contestants or their owners, or were simply given a randomised score for minigames with 10% rise and fall on either side of the highest and lowest scores of penguin competitors, effectively giving them a 5-10% chance to win the challenge. Due to this latter method especially being rather unfair to both penguin and puffle contestants and making immunity wins simply luck, as of Season 13 a change to this that was already present in Big Brother was included in which the host (or an already eliminated player) would compete on behalf of puffles as an entirety, and should they win, each of the puffles in the game would be entered into a randomiser, with the one name pulled out being the puffle that wins the challenge, effectively taking some of the randomness of puffles' scores out of the mix and making it so a penguin couldn't lose a challenge despite being the top scorer solely because a puffle rolled higher than them. With the newer scoring method, it meant that the second place penguin would have lost fair and square.

## Puffle Seasons

Various seasons of CPORG feature entirely penguin casts, so to offset this, the Puffle Island series was created within the *Survivor* canon, with a similar theme also occurring in one of CPORG's spin-off seasons, Big Brother 3.

Due to the fact that puffle contestants have their votes randomised and as such a full cast of puffles would essentially just be a randomised game with no real gameplay to it, both past or new players are called upon to play in the puffle seasons, choosing a puffle to represent them as an alias. This will be considered a seperate entity from their main-stay CPORG appearances, allowing for people to essentially return without it effecting their legacy and without needing justification for a returnee season, allowing for people to play without having previous games effect them given they're playing under a new identity, and allowing for the puffles themselves to have more of a sense of purpose and character by being their own identities within the CPORG canon.

The first of these puffle seasons took place in Season 4 and since has taken on the pattern of occurring every five seasons following this, with Season 9 and Season 14 being further incarnations of the Puffle Island series. In Season 4, Snack, Chocolate, Greeny and Ms. Plum were the player-controlled puffles, in Season 9, Twinkerbelle, Reindilf, Ÿęêt and Lindsay were the player-controlled puffles, with the rest of both casts being the usual randomised contestants.

## List of Puffle Contestants

*Gold = Best, Silver = 2nd Best, Bronze = 3rd Best, Red = Worst. In the case of a tie, the contestant that played for more efficiently (e.g. more days played for the same votes against) will be coloured.*

## Trivia

* Every time a puffle has made it to final tribal council, a puffle has won the season.
	+ In the case of Season 4 and Season 9, this was due to the fact that only puffles were cast.
* The most common puffle colour is blue, with 5 different puffles all being blue.
	+ Crastal Math, while technically coloured blue, isn't actually classified as blue and instead as a crystal puffle. In this case, the most common colour would be a tie between blue and red, with both then having 4.
	+ Both Snack and Lindsay are the only uniquely coloured puffles, being a golden puffle and chicken puffle respectively.
	+ Every brown puffle that has played has made it to the final tribal council, but only one of these was able to win, that being Matthew.
		- Ironically, Matthew was the only puffle of these to play in a non-Puffle Island season, meaning he had to compete against a cast of actual competitors and puffles.
		- Inversely, pink, orange, green, black, white and yellow puffles have never made it to the end.
		- This also extends to the CPORG spin-off seasons, as Guy, the winner of Big Brother 3, was also a brown puffle.