Design:XP

XP system

The XP system had several goals

Progression

There should be progression, because this is a game about discovery and progress. Not all skills should be available to start.
A starting PC should be less powerful than a long-term PC, but the power gap should not expand too far.
- PCs get XP purely for existing.
- This also solves the lack of progression for irregular players.
There should be no difference between a PC that was started N weeks ago but never played and a PC that was started this week.
- Therefore the starting XP is raised each week at the same rate that PCs gain XP for existing.

Restrict Minmaxing

Players should be incentivised to buy more than just a single skill at the start. Overspecialisation should be a weakness, not a strength, but you should be able to do it if you want that weakness.
The default PC should be somewhat generalist, as it means more skills are in play at once and there's a bigger space for PCs to create or solve problems.
This was why XP spend at character generation was restricted. If you could save starting XP, you could work around the starting limits by buying up to a L3 skill, saving 2XP and buying a L4 skill in your next DT, getting it faster than normal.
With 15 XP in week 1, you could buy up to 3 L3 skills, provided that one was your Faction skill.
As we only have 5 levels of each skill, this was principally a problem we wanted to avoid in the early game.

Incentivise faction specialisation

Faction members should be encouraged to play to the brief. Therefore there's a 1XP discount on each level of the Faction Skill for your Faction, to encourage being fairly good at it.

Encourage buying Plot Skills

Other games suffer a bit from "Human Warrior Syndrome". A new player makes a human warrior type with hitty skills because that is simple and fun to play. They then run out of game because they have no means to interact with plot besides hitting it.

This is why no faction has a combat skill as a Faction Skill, and all L1 skills have some sort of plot-fixing or wierd-stuff-detecting use. Since you get L1 Faction Skill for 0XP, everyone has something noncombat.