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[TWF] The Way Forward - Dev Diaries

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ThunderHawk3

ThunderHawk3

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Aug 4, 2011
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The Way Forward [TWF] Dev Diaries​


Hi all! Some of you already know me; many of you don't. I'm ThunderHawk3 - a four-year veteran GM of Vic2 IAARs. I also previously ran All For the Empire (AftE) here on the OT forum.

Today I'm announcing an exciting new game called The Way Forward [TWF]. The Way Forward is a nation game set in the present day - ie: 2015 - with each player playing as major faction (usually a political party but sometimes other movements or organizations). Players will take the place of current political leaders confront ongoing and upcoming challenges of the modern world, and the game will extend decades into the future - unless, of course, ya'all manage to end the world as we know it in a single short, sharp shock.

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1. Pictured - you guys​

TWF's main gameplay mechanic is simple - orders cost a political resource called PP (political power - to be discussed in the first dev diary). You submit orders to me and I resolve them. When the game starts, I intend to publish updates once a week, and each update will advance a year into the future.

The thing that makes TWF radically different from the other nation games we're used to in the forum is more than just its speculative nature or its use of the player-faction system rather than the player-nation system. TWF has been in "stealth mode" development for about six months, during which time I've constructed a colossal game engine - that is, a code base - to support the game, keep track of, and process all the nation stats which should (hopefully) allow me to accommodate many more players than ever before, and make gameplay much more complex and nuanced. I many ways I am, in essence, writing a video game just for the forum. I want TWF to be the largest and most ambitious nation game the forum has ever run.

This is a thread for TWF's Dev Diaries, neat info about the engine and the progress of game development as I piece everything together. I'll introduce a key concept each dev diary, starting with orders and Political Power. I'll post probably two dev diaries a week at irregular intervals, so keep a look out for that.

The game isn't ready to start yet. The Way Forward will not start until my current IAAR, Power to the People, ends. I estimate a TWF start date of early October.

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2. Since TWF has no actual gameplay screenshots to show, I'll be using a lot of pictures like this for these dev diaries​

TWF isn't open for general signups yet, though if you're absolutely rearing to go, you can come track me down on IRC and request a reservation of a particular nation/faction. Many people already have. Though I haven't banned it outright, I strongly discourage you from playing your home country in TWF.

The Way Forward has an official IRC chat on Coldfront, #TWF_Main. Go to http://www.coldfront.net/tiramisu/ and type '/join #TWF_Main' to join.

 
 
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TWF Dev Diary #1: Orders and Political Power​

I notice that a lot of the forum games we've got here in OT have very rigid orders systems - you can submit so many general orders and so many political orders and so many military orders, etc. There are a lot of good reasons for this. I guess other than limiting what nations can do, it's to minimize wear and tear on the GMs; orders require more effort so they're limited.

Not in The Way Forward. I think/hope that my attempts to automate the game will let me process tons of orders a turn without trouble. In TWF, you can submit as many orders as you like... so long as you can pay for them.

Orders in The Way Forward cost a resource called "Political Power," (PP) which is many ways the central resource in TWF. Political Power represents your ability to get things done within your political system. A government with a large parliamentary majority, for example, will have a lot of PP, while a minority government or one with a small majority won't have so much. A dictatorship will have a lot of PP, and won't generally have to worry about the lack thereof. There is no delineation between military and administrative, or diplomatic and partisan orders in TWF. They are all orders for my purposes, and they all cost PP. This goes even for orders where it doesn't really seem like it should cost any political capital - ie: if it's a military order and your faction controls the Commander-in-Chief. It will be very rare indeed for orders to not cost any PP.

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1. Political power (or something)
​
On the other hand, the PP system means orders don't usually "fail" in TWF unless you run out of political power. I roll to see how effective the order is - lower rolls will make it more expensive in PP and money and/or less effective, but as long as you have the PP to pay for an order, it will be unusual for it to simply not work in some infuriating and improbable way.

Different governments gain PP in different ways. Dictatorships generate it over time (they have a base PP generation rate) while democracies often gain PP with elections and based on legislative majorities and such. Some orders may actually raise PP as well, although these aren't usually orders that are merely popular - they generally alter the political system in some way. The TWF engine also throws out events that change PP levels on occasion. It's much easier to gain PP as a dictatorship than a democracy - but democracies have some other strong points that we'll talk about in the next dev diary.

Opposition factions can have PP as well, though they usually don't have nearly as much as the ruling party, and commonly may have none at all.

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2. For example, this man's party would presently have no political power
​
Submitting a lot of orders at once costs disproportionately more PP as your government divides its resources. If you submit just one order in a turn (year) in TWF, both your odds of success are greatly increased and the political power cost is greatly decreased as compared to two orders. The more orders you submit, the more each individual order costs, and the larger the dice penalty for each. IE: Submitting ten orders all at once is likely to cause them to all fail.

Running out of PP has serious consequences if you're the party of power. While opposition factions can lose all their PP without meaningful consequence, having 0 PP as the ruling party will trigger a 0 PP Event, which will nearly always be bad for you - though if you're very crafty, you may be able to turn them to your advantage. How severely negative a 0 PP event is depends on the political climate.

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3. This man has a lot of political power
​
Below is a chart of PP, an excerpt from one of the game's rules files that I wrote. As I note later, this is only an example. Your mileage may vary radically, especially with PP.

PP Chart:
00 - Naming a post office after a national hero, certain crisis orders
01 - Mundane and obvious policies necessary for the continuity of governance
02 - Securing a small funding increase for a pet project, cracking down on unlawful activity
05 - Large funding increase for a relatively popular program
10 - Pushing through an unpopular moderate tax increase or law, axing a popular program
25 - Completely overhauling the budget, building or dismantling important public institutions, nationalizing a large industrial sector in a capitalist state
50 - Controversial but reasonable constitutional change in many states
100 - Something completely outlandish, ridiculous, or stupid, like forcing everyone to walk on their hands all the time, completely tearing down and rebuilding the regime

Note that your mileage can REALLY vary with PP. PP costs of orders swing wildly with necessary majorities and popularity of the policies (or popularity with the establishment). What's obvious in one country is anathema in another. A lot of PP costs also depend on luck. You might end up only spending a few PP on constitutional changes or 50 on renaming that post office (Why did you think Hitler counted as a national hero, again?)

Also note that some orders can directly increase your PP rather than decrease it. These do tend to have other effects, though.
Click to expand...

The next dev diary will cover the other core game stats - stability and legitimacy - and maybe global stats like the global terror alert, nuclear proliferation, and global warming.

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4. Pictured, next Dev Diary​
 
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The only Korea​
 
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"We want to remain what we are"
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The Christian Social People's Party
​
 
So I guess everyone is posting their countries/parties...


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Liberté, égalité, fraternité!​
 
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RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Rossiyskaya Federatsiya
Росси́йская Федера́ция
​
 
Can I be ISIS?

'Cause I was playing as the Orcs in a Middle Earth game recently, then the game ended earlier than thought and, well, ISIS guys are pretty much the same as Orcs, just real and not cool.
Also, I like evil!
 
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The Glorious Leader overlooking the Strategic Reserves of [CENSORED BY WILL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA]​
 
viola said:
Can I be ISIS?

'Cause I was playing as the Orcs in a Middle Earth game recently, then the game ended earlier than thought and, well, ISIS guys are pretty much the same as Orcs, just real and not cool.
Also, I like evil!
Click to expand...

Someone has already tried to reserve ISIS but you can sign up as the first alternate if you like. If you can, find me on IRC and we'll talk about it.
 
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