The Way Forward [TWF] - Modern-Day Nation Game
Welcome to The Way Forward [TWF] - a Modern-Day Nation Game starting in 2015 (right at the present day, October 23rd, 2015) and extending far into the future. I'm ThunderHawk3, the GM of previous IAARs such as Shadow of the Andes, Edge of Europe, Power to the People, and my previous OT game All for the Empire.
We have an official IRC channel, #TWF_Main on Coldfront. Go to http://www.coldfront.net/tiramisu/ and type '/join #TWF_Main' to join.
If you want to read about TWF mechanics in depth, you can read the Dev Diaries here. I'm gonna keep this summary
In TWF, everyone plays a faction inside a nation rather than a nation; you submit orders on behalf of your faction. In addition to the usual stats like GDP and Population, TWF has a very important stat called Political Power (PP). PP is the currency you use to submit orders. Most orders cost > 0 PP. Running out of PP is bad and will spark bad events. These events will usually give someone PP, not necessarily you, and generally will mean nothing good.
If you submit just one order in a turn it will cost less PP and will have a better outcome. The more orders you submit, the more PP each will cost and each will likely have worse outcomes.
If you are the only player in your nation, you will always play the party of power. If the Party of Power changes (unless you're kicked from the nation due to epic failure), your party changes with it. In multiparty states, whoever runs the victorious party takes the wheel. Opposition parties have PP too and can submit orders.
Submit your orders to me by PM. The orders deadline is the midnight of Friday to Saturday, 12 PM PST. (7 AM GMT Saturday). Regular updates are every Saturday, plus irregular mini-updates a few times a week. Updates may be delayed to Sunday. Every RL week corresponds to a one year time step in-game (the first week is shorter than usual). Until the first update, on 10/31, all events that take place in real life are canon in game. After that, we're writing our own history and RL events have no bearing. The last RL event to be canon IG is the Turkish General Election, set for November 1st. Its results will be honored in game, as will the Polish General Election on October 25th.
Although there are crises and mini-updates, most orders will be resolved in major update on Saturday/Sunday. Orders that are likely to start a crisis must be submitted by Thursday to give other players a chance to react; otherwise they will be delayed to the next IG year (next RL week). As there are 70 of you, mentions of minor orders in the updates will be terse or nonexistent. You can submit orders for the next week after the update. Miss multiple consecutive updates and I may kick you, especially if you're playing a major power.
The main updates will be issued into two parts and then stats -> Part 1 (order resolutions and news), Part 2 (elections, economic news, and events), and Stats.
I frown on order editing, and I'm going to be clamping down hard on orders that are overlong (particularly war orders). See the dev diaries for more information. To incentivize everyone to not submit orders at the last minute, the first five people to submit orders will get a PP cost reduction. Orders can't be submitted until the main update has gone up for the week.
Oh, one last thing. There is a gag rule in effect with respect to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I am allowed to mention it in official updates and the interested players can mention new policies on the conflict in news-like articles. You should do this sparingly and use neutral and non-inflammatory language, and this is not license to start discussing the topic. Otherwise there can be no discussion or mention of it IC or OOC.
There is no gag rule for other sensitive conflicts, like Israel-Palestine and ISIS-related fighting, for example, but please exercise good judgment and moderation when discussing these. ((This means you KingHigh99! And you, Dutchbag!))
And with that, the game is now open. Go forth and play. Some mini-updates will be forthcoming. The first update will be the 2015 update and will be on the RL day 10/31 (may be delayed to the 1st). Note that since there are only two months left in 2015, you probably won't be able to get much done this year, and maybe you ought to take it slow initially.
