Fwurg

[Stuiter]

This Force power is inspirated by Sherlock Holmes. I was thinking of making this a Jedi Force power, but I think it is also usefull for other Force users.


Force investigation
Power: This Force powers increases your observation skill and in this way you are able to investigate a location more quickly and analyze what has happened there.

Rank 1: You can investigate/search faster and only need a few minutes instead of a hours.

Rank 2: With the guidance of the force you are able to analyze the evidence on location.

Rank 3: Your senses are heightend by the Force. In a blink of an eye you can see/smell/hear/feel all the evidence and analyze and deduce what has happen on the location or is going to happen in the next few minutes.

[Stuiter]

I now that at the write-a-thon we have discussed a lot and a lot needs to be adjusted.
But I would like some feedback on this.

[Brend]

After 3 months, I have finally gotten to this topic in my effort to clean up my own list of followed OOC topics. So, here goes:

Power: The power fits well with the theme.

Rank 1: This seems to me to be a repeat of the Power. It might be at a much improved time factor, but this isn't clear from the context.

Rank 2: There is no statement on what Rank 2 actually does. As this is Rank of a Force power, the fact that the Force is used seems a given.

Rank 3: The first part of this power sounds very Jedi-like, but actually predicting the future is a whole different cup of tea. It can be done, and I think that it is an interesting design space for Force powers. I also think that it should be with a Force Power explicitly focussing on divination.

Overall opinion: I understand the theme you want to match (which, I'm guessing, is that of the movie Holmes' time slowdown followed by a mental deconstruction of the scene), and most aspects of that theme fit well with Jedi. However, a force power should have more clearly defined effects, otherwise it is very difficult for players to predict, and for Storytellers to determine what should happen.

An additional difficult in designing investigation-themed powers is the fact that it shouldn't be a 'Force Level versus Clue difficulty to progress story' thing. The players themselves should have opportunity to reason about what happened, or how things might play out, a power like this could take that away as soon as a Jedi with this power joins the band. So, for investigation-themed powers, clear delineation of the effects and their limitations is very important.

The next step in designing this power would be for you to narrow down what aspects of the Holmes theme you want the most, and then finding out (together with other players) how to represent that in a Force Power.

[Stuiter]

I wanted to make a noN combat related Force power which was mentally research/investigation oriented.
As a research lab power seems lame and not really fitting I went along with the crime scene analysis.
Thinking of the great investigation qualities that Sherlock Holms posses seems natural for a Jedi.

Finding physical proof is one part. Normally finding evidence takes ages and speeding thing up is one aspect.
Furthermore the Force should also be giving some cool extra effects and this goes then more to a divination kind of aspect.
So I think of seeing what happened and in cases of traps being able to epically disarm them.

So for ranking rank 1 I was thinking like being able to do a complete crime-scene investigation on your own in a few minutes and rank 3 would be like knowing exactly what happened there even after extreme situation like that everything was blown up. Rank 2 should be somewhere in between, but have no good example.

[Elmer]

maybe rank 2 can be something in the order of: by concentrating, the jedi can hear/feel the last presence of dead people. This allows him to get an idea of how the person has died.

Okay, now i've written it down, it no longer sounds as good as what I first thought :(.

[Brend]

Elmer, I like the idea, and we already agree that it sounds a bit weird. The excution might be better if we go for less 'I see dead people' and more 'Let me have a look at the corpse.' It is an established fact that the recently deceased have some form of force presence still.

We should still be wary of making a 'here is the Clue' power -- that's what the player's reasoning is for. Though I can see a use for a power that allows the Jedi to notice things that are normally only visible with technological aid.

@Stuiter: Are you still intersted in this direction of force powers?

[Stuiter]

We already have a Force vision and I want to have something different.

So something like extra ordinary senses, but it should not be to "CLUE HERE", so the game is fun for player and storyteller.