Fwurg

Post to pad thread.

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Test 1 2 3.

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For my own information; posted here so others can use it as well when thinking about things.

The new minimal requirements jedi progression table is as follows:

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@Pixie: That is a nice one!

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A rough idea for a Union project: Research into orbital preservation centers for flora. The research could unlock a technology that allows worlds to preserve native species of plants, that are e.g. under threat of extinction due to development or climate change, in a space station near the planet. The centers could give bonuses on information and/or on development of organics and healthcare products production, as well as add some fluff.

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For logistical organizational reasons I had to take down the fwurg server this afternoon. If you are reading this, it is now back up. Apologies for the inconvenience.

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Err, right. Fixed that! (Also fixed it in Write-up: Force Power Rules Issues..)

(The problem was that I added the image URL as https:// instead of http://... technical mumbo-jumbo... Well, this will have to do.)

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Forgot to mention this yesterday: There seems to be a problem displaying the image in the analysis...

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Note that some more freedom will be gained due to the upcoming tweaks for issues described in Write-up: Force Power Rules Issues!

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Thank you for sharing!

At first glance I think I like what I'm reading. With the changes it seems like there is more room to explore characters a bit, without it costing many, many OOC years to progress.

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Now that we have some Force Power designs, and some time has passed to think them over and see how they would work out for Jedi characters, I have some changes I want to make to how we go about Force Powers. These changes are informed by the newly designed force powers, the design goals of the game system in general, and the way players approached Force Powers in OldFWURG.

This post is structured by first discussing several issues with the current proposed rules, followed by a short conclusion and the actions I will be taking to adress the issues.

tl;dr: The Force Power rules have some issues that have been highlighted by designing force powers for them.



Before diving into issues, a bit of analysis is in order to highlight the data underlying the design choice of having three types of abilities (that is: Skills, Combat Styles, Force Powers). This choice stems from the Jedi careers in OldFWURG. After tallying these three categories for each character in OldFWURG, we have the following overview (note that this is overview is far from a comprehensive analysis):



As they are no longer a concept in the rules, We have elided OldFWURG attributes and their XP quivalent. Furthermore, we include the starting abilities in this analysis. Conceptually it does not matter whether a Jedi gained some ability as part of their starting package or not, they have it, and players will adjust what abilities they acquire next based on what they already have. (For accuracy: in OldFWURG the XP equivalents of starting skills and force powers are both 9xp, and the combat styles are 6xp).

From this analysis we can see that the common pattern is that Jedi characters have roughly one-third of XP invested in each of these three categories. There are some characters who clearly favour a specific type of ability, but overal the XP investment—which we take to be the value a player attaches to the abilities—is evenly divided.



The current tall-and-narrow shape of Force Power trees allows for very good thematic clustering of powers. Each tree shows a clear theme and purpose, while allowing for different facets of that theme to be brought to the foreground.

With tall trees comes the side-effect that they require that a player decides early on which force powers they will be taking and how they will go about getting them. This runs counter to the freedom to pick and choose powers we have in OldFWURG. And together with the other access restrictions on Force Power, this produces something akin to "power lock-in" from the start.


The examples I wrote up are clearly in the same tall style. For several reasons, these were the wrong examples. I wrote the examples like this because, at the time, it seemed to fit the "natural progression" of Jedi characters over longer periods. (I was most likely also influenced by two other systems I have worked on/with that feature tall trees and work out really well...)

Furthermore, the examples I wrote were not actually good examples: they were archetypes of different categories of Force powers. They showed Universal powers, Light powers, and Philosophy-related powers; while those archetypes are valuable in their own right, they are poor "adapt me for your ideas" examples. I should have made their role in the design space was not made explicit.


Jedi have only a single resource which they use to advance their abilities: training points. And they have three broad categories from which they select abilities: skills, combat styles, and force powers. We want to keep the "items" one can acquire from each of these categories priced the same (at a basis of 10 training points each).

There are already enough limitations on access to force powers (virtue requirements, rank requirements, holocron/trainer availability), that an additional limitation in the form of the tall-and-narrow tree shape is undesirable.

On a more setting-related note, a Jedi's powers are less thematic than other groups of force users, Jedi are not characterized as "water benders" or "energy manipulators" or "magic users". From a rules perspective they can cherry-pick their powers from a broad pallette of options, instead of being forced to choose from a small menu of themes.



The current rules state that there are three ranks (Padawan, Knight, Master). This is not the best choice for two reasons.

First off, there is an actual rank "Initiate" in the advancement rules. This discrepancy creates an unclear situation. Either Initiates are not allowed to train force powers at all, which is not the intention. Or the rank padawan actually means "padawan or initiate", which makes it a simple misnomer. Or, even worse, the rank padawan actually means "padawan and lower", which creates unclarity about the relation between Initiate rank and "not attuned to the Force"-rank (for beings that are not attuned to the Force, and cannot become Jedi).

Secondly, the OldFWURG ranks (Initiate, Padawan, Knight, Master) created a natural progression from the lowest Force Power, through the ranks to the highest. This natural mapping from advancement progression to Force Power progression makes designing and understanding force powers easier. Even though, in practice, we never got around to designing Master-level force powers, it was clear to all where they would go, and what their relevance would be.



While working on the virtue analysis I realized that the current way we go about virtue requirements is completely arbitrary. Since virtue requirements are one of the access-limitations on Force Powers, I think that a more principled approach to them is necessary.

As can be seen from the proposed Force Powers, nobody is really clear on what virtue requirements should work out well. The exact principles used to guide virtue requirement determination are not clear to me yet, but I have a strong idea of the direction this needs to take.

To support this more principled approach I have written up a "ladder of specificity". This ladder is based on systematicly narrowing the set of possible virtue configurations that can still satisfy the requirement. The least specific type of requirement is at the top, and the most specific type of requirement at the bottom:

1. Any Virtue at X+ (This is very broad, as puts no restriction on what virtue needs the rating)
2. Any Light Virtue at X+ / Any Dark Virtue at X+ (this restricts the virtue that needs the rating to a set of 5 virtues, one of which must satisfy the requirement)
3. Virtue A at X+ OR B at Y+ (this can be extended to 3, 4, 5, etc. virtues, only one of which needs to be satisfied)
4. Virtue A at X+ (this indicates a specific virtue that must be at least X)
5. Virtue A at X+ AND B at Y+ (this is even more restrictive, as two specific virtues are indicated; obviously this can be extended to 3, 4, 5, etc. virtues)

(For the mathematically inclined among you: 2 and 3 are actually the same type of restriction, with "Any Light Virtue at X+" translating to "Benevolence at X+ OR ... OR Perseverance at X+". However, since disjunctions have proven less intuitive to understand in general, I have included the much clearer 2.

Also, Mercury neatly pointed out that there is a reversed-polarity variant of this ladder as well, by stating "No virtue at X+", "No dark virtue at X+", etc.)



It is clear that the "forest" of a few tall-and-narrow trees of Force Powers is counter-productive with regards to having players pick the powers they like. Furthermore, it makes it harder to balance the Force Powers against Skills and Combat Styles, both of which have forests of many short-and-wide trees.

The issues of the tall-and-narrow tree shape, the uncertainty produced by the missing Initiate rank, and the lack of principled virtue requirement determination show that there are still some issues with the Force Power rules as they are currently written. The proposed Force Power designs have been immensely helpful in realizing these issues!

Unlike the virtue analysis, I cannot currently give a clear-cut solution for each issue. The missing Initiate rank is easily fixed, and I have a few ideas on the other two issues (which, in my mind, are related). I am somewhat hesitant to write them out here, as they might change once they come into contact with the actual world. Rest assured that we will address these issues as we finalize the Jedi rules!

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I like the proposed Force Sense powers, I'm sure we can fit them in, maybe a minor adjustment here or there, but they seem neat and I like the concept.

Btw, we've not posted updates in a while, but we're working hard on the new Fwurg site! We've got our base covered, working on some clean-up, expect to see something soon!

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I finished my write-up on the Virtue Requirement analysis. A separate post on Force Powers (that will discuss Force Power access and structure) will be forthcoming as well.

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In the Force Power ideas thread Pixie raised some concerns with regards to the way Virtue points and promotion requirements currently interact with getting Force Powers. As I explained there, a lot of the numbers in the proposed rules are not set in stone yet, and a bit of fiddling and discovery is necessary to get them right. This post is a write-up of the discoveries I made. It concludes with the changes I will be making to the Jedi rules to allow for a better progression through a Jedi's career.

tl;dr: Padawan start is corrected and Promotion requirements are relaxed.

A separate post on Force Powers is forthcoming. It will discuss Force Power access and structure.


This sections lists all relevant rules information at the moment of writing. (Since I will be updating the rules, this is necessary for the post to make sense later on.)



Note: the words "move" and "shift" are both used in this text to indicate taking a virtue point from one virtue to another.



We investigate some progressions, so we need some characters:

• Odya, a smallish green initiate of indeterminate species with a curious lack of understanding of Galactic Basic's grammar rules. Has shown great aptitude for predicting what will come of choices yet to be made.
• Kyle Natark, a human mercenary that discovered his inner strength, basically wears the same clothes all the time. Only joins the Jedi later on, but for the purposes of progression and virtues he starts out as an initiate regardless.
• Labas'in, a twi'lek became an initiate of the Jedi at the age of 2, and has been in several "purple glowy ball" incidents, as well as knowing the complete and full layout of all ventilation ducts in the temple by heart.

For the purposes of this post, let's assume that the players of these characters already know what philosophy they want their character to end up with: Odya will follow the Unifying Force, Kyle Natark will follow the Universal Force, and Labas'in will follow the Living Force.

I wrote out the progression for Odya and Kyle Natark in full, including several "mistakes" for Kyle Natark (i.e., virtue moves that did not help them reach promotion and in fact moved them away from it). Yup, we'll skipped Labas'in completely. Unless there's something really new about the way Labas'in's player would move virtues, it wouldn't help us a lot with new insights.

For brevity (hah, as if that is every going to happend in an analysis-post written be me...) I will omit the fully written out progressions for Odya and Kyle Natark. From writing out the progressions I have gleaned the following insights:

• It appears you need at least 7 missions to be eligible promotion to Knight with respect to your virtues (This also follows from basic math...)
• Making a more than one "mistake" is a problem with regards to time to promotion. The first "mistake" is not an issue since you also need to accumulate 50 training points. Correcting multiple "mistakes" will take additional missions.
• Floundering around not knowing what your character stands for will stand in the way of promotion. (E.g., first going for the Universal Force and then deciding to go for the Living Force might require you to move over points from Serenity to Tolerance.)

Note that "mistake" in this sense means a virtue move by the player that did not help them out. There is also the possibility that a player cannot shift a virtue, in which case the mission is effectively ignorable due to the requirements of training points on promotion.

For the rest of this analysis we am mostly interested in the shortest possible route to get from Initiate all the way to Master. So we are going to assume that the players of these characters make no "mistakes", and know how to plan ahead. (For this analysis it is relevant to note that all Philosophies are the same from a mathematical point of view: they all have exactly the same requirements on their major and minor virtues. So, for determining the shortest possible route to promotion, we'll just relabel all virtues to A, B, C, D, etc., and declare a Philosophy X that has A and B as major, and C as minor virtue.)



Note that Padawan get two virtue shifts at character creation, so a padawan's creation will put them in the situation of Mission 2 on this table!

From this analysis we learn the following:

• Once promoted to Knight, there are only 4 missions necessary to get to the situation where your virtues make you eligible for promotion again. (Note that there are several other requirements next to the virtues)
• To become a Jedi Knight, 11 of your 15 virtue dots are prescribed by your philosophy (leaving 4 free); To become a Jedi Master, 20 of your 25 virtue dots are prescribed by your philosophy (leaving 5 free)
• Should you declare for a different philosophy as a Knight (this is not prohibited by the rules, but guaranteed to be brought up by the Council during their evaluation of the promotion proposal), this will greatly impact the amount of missions you need to complete before matching the required virtue distribution.

The fact that it is quicker to align your virtues for promotion to Jedi master is to be expected: your starting situation is dictated by the requirements of promotion to Knight. (Again, note that padawan start out with 2 moved virtues, making them a little quicker.)



Our analysis of the current promotion rules has shown that:

• There is an inconsistency between promotion to padawan and starting as padawan. Promotion to padawan requires 1 virtue points to shift, whereas starting as padawan allows 2 virtue shifts.
• There are significantly more missions between Initiate → Knight than there are between Knight → Master.
• There is, arguably, little room for expressing additional virtues besides those prescribed by the promotion requirements.

Virtue requirements are not the only requirement on promotion. There is also a Training Point requirement. The training point requirement can (roughly) be paraphrased as "collect 50 training points"; given that you gain +5 per mission, you will need between 10 and 7 (due to apprenticeship bonusses) missions to gather enough training points.

Missions are not guaranteed to allow a virtue point move. Therefore, requiring 7 virtue shifts to get from Initiate to promotion to Knight leaves little in the way of actual development and changing one's mind.



Given this analysis, and the conclusions we can draw from it, I have changed the rules as follows:

• Padawan start out with only a single virtue shift.
• Knight promotion requires your major virtues at 5 and 4 (leaving 6 free)
• Master promotion requires major virtues at 8 and 6, and your minor virtue at 4 (leaving 7 free)

The padawan change removed the inconsistency of becoming padawan via the Initiate route versus starting out as a padawan. Incidentally this also moves the virtue shift that was originally free of charge to requiring a mission.

The Knight promotion change frees up 2 virtue points to be used freely. It will take 4 virtue moves to go from the padawan state to be eligible for promotion again.

Analog to the knight changes, the Master promotion change frees up 2 virtue points. It will now take 4 virtue moves to go from the just-promoted-to-knight state to be eligible for promotion again, given that you keep adhering to your declared philosophy.

I will discuss access to Force Powers in a separate post.

Note that these requirements are only there for the promotions. During your whole career as Knight you may freely shift virtues around without fear of being demoted. (The only exception being that you should not put more than 1/3 of your virtues in dark virties, that will get you booted out of the Order.)

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That's an intersting approach to the senses. I'd have to compare it to OldFWURG to get a sense of balance, but I can already say that I see little problems here. There might be a little light tweaking to align it with other powers' virtue requirements (those are kinda unclear for all powers at the moment, so no worries there...)

I have been working—on and off—on the analysis of the Jedi rules. Both the Virtue point shifting rules, the advancement rules, and how they interact with Force Powers. In doing so, I discovered a few flaws in the current rules, one of them was neatly exposed by Pixie in an earlier post, and one is related to how we design force powers. A write-up is forthcoming!

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Force Vision (Neutral, Any Virtue 2) — passive, The Jedi's vision is not hindered by conditions with bad visibility, such as bad lighting, mist or rain.

See Force Signature (Neutral, Any Virtue 3) — active, The Jedi can see living beings in the area by their force signature, even in total darkness or behind cover. The Jedi must concentrate to use this ability.

Unobstructed Image (Neutral, Any Virtue 3) — active, The Jedi is capable of seeing an image of what is on the other side of a door, wall or other obstacle.

Force Hear (Neutral, Any Virtue 2) — active, When focused, the Jedi can hear sounds that are normally too faint for them to hear.

Eavesdropper (needs another name) (Neutral, Any Virtue 3) — active, The Jedi is capable of following conversions that are held in an adjacent room, even if the sound could normally not penetrate the space the Jedi is in.

Force Spy (Knight, Neutral, Any Virtue ???) — active, The Jedi can see and/or hear through the eyes and/or ears of another, depending on the prerequisite power(s) the Jedi has. The Jedi must sense the target at the moment this power is activated. The Jedi sees/hears everything the target sees/hears, including things normally invisible/inaudible to the Jedi, if the target can perceive this. While using the senses of another, the Jedi cannot use their own.

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Brend wrote:
I was planning on reviewing the virtue requirements on advancement in relation to the Force powers, and vice versa Force power virtue prerequisites need reviewing after advancement changes. I'll do this through writing out a few natural progressions of hypothetical Jedi characters' virtue configurations throughout their "career". If people are interested I can do a write-up of this process so they can follow along.

I'm interested in a write-up of that process. If it is not too much extra work, that is.

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I had something to add.





Life Energy Manipulation (Neutral: Any virtue 3) - Passive, the jedi is aware of all living things around them in a small radius. Hiding has no effect to block this awareness, though beings with more life energy may obscure beings with less. Examples: A jedi/sith obscures most animals and plants; A large tree obscures the birds, insects and small rodents/lizards that live in it; the jedi's own life energy obscures any and all microscopic life.

Force Heal (Neutral: Any virtue 4) - active, the jedi can rapidly heal wounds and other injuries on themselves. This requires concentration and thus cannot be done during combat. Depending on the severity of the injuries the jedi may be tired after healing and unable to fight because of it.

Force Stealth (Neutral: Any virtue 4) - active, the jedi can mask their life energy, making them undetectable for sensors and scanners. This also hides the jedi from the Life Energy Manipulation passive power unless the one using the LEM is of higher rank then the one using Force Stealth. (i.e.: Padawan with LEM can detect Initiate using FS, Knight can detect Padawan and Master can detect Knight same goes for sith equivalent.)

Force Choke (Dark: Ferocity 3) - active, the jedi can brutally choke the life out of weaker opponents. Innate Force Powers give complete resistance to this power regardless of user strength or rank.

Force Healer (Knight, Light: Benevolence 5) - active, the jedi can rapidly heal wounds and other injuries on others. This requires concentration and thus cannot be done during combat. Depending on the severity of the injuries both the jedi and the subject may be tired after healing and unable to fight because of it. Fatal injuries can only be slowed down, not fully healed, and only as long as the subject is still alive.

Force Drain (Knight, Dark: Ruthlessness 4) - active, the jedi can drain the life energy from other lifeforms. This can restore or augment strength and stamina to the jedi. (Possibly transfer force points from target to jedi?) Targets with Innate Force Powers can resist being drained as long as they are equal or higher in rank then the user. Target can choose to allow themselves to be drained partially.

Force Transfer (Master, ???) - active, the jedi can transfer life energy from one lifeform to another. This can heal the target or restore strength. The jedi acts as a conduit. Targets with Innate Force Powers can resist being drained as long as they are equal or higher in rank then the user. Target can choose to allow themselves to be drained partially. (Possible cost 1 dark and 1 light force point?)

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I think that's a legitime worry. And I share it.

As said earlier, a lot of the numbers in the proposed rules are not set in stone yet. Designing a game system like this requires a bit of "to and fro" with the different parts of the system. You design some parts, then use those to inform your design of other parts. However, in designing the other parts, you discover that the earlier parts of your design need to change to fit better.

I think this is one of those cases: Jedi virtue requirements were based on rough estimates. Now that we have a better view on how they will be used, we revisit the requirements to better fit with the idea of allowing customizability through selecting force powers.

I was planning on reviewing the virtue requirements on advancement in relation to the Force powers, and vice versa Force power virtue prerequisites need reviewing after advancement changes. I'll do this through writing out a few natural progressions of hypothetical Jedi characters' virtue configurations throughout their "career". If people are interested I can do a write-up of this process so they can follow along.


For those interested, there's some more background in here:

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Toss out the junk - If you specialize as a domestic policy, you can apply this upgrade to replace dual purpose hardware in your industrial zones. If the industrial zone only has one basic production core improvements then labour is boosted.

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I noticed I have one worry over the current design:
The distribution of virtue points is directly related to which force powers a Jedi can access and at the same time it dictates which philosophy/philosophies the Jedi can adhere to. Indirectly the distribution is related the the personality of the Jedi, as it is a reflection of the actions of the Jedi.

In itself I like this idea, but what now if the virtue points required for the philosophy a player intends for his character, correspond poorly with the Force Powers that the Player thinks fits the Jedi? Or even with the personality the Player thought up for their Jedi?

As advancement rules are stated now, 11 out of 15 available Virtue points need to be spent on 2 major Virtues that correspond to the current philosophies. That leaves at most 4 points to spend on other virtues to unlock and use powers in other fields or to illustrate that none of the current philosophies fit this Jedi very well.

Formulating a philosophy that might better fit the Jedi is only possible after advancement to Master rank, so my worry over this is that the desire for advancement might compromise the intended coolness or personality of the character. Or vice versa (which I will probably do to the character I plan to import).

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