Monte Ozarka
TNPer
Lesson 5: NS Forums and Roleplay "My nation could beat up your nation"
Today, we'll cover the official NS Jolt forums. We will also be covering the topic of in-character roleplay, which is conducted largely on the official forums.
Christ, everything's about forums...
Yep. Pretty much. In this text-based game, a lot of it has to revolve around forums out of necessity. :/ Anyways. Let's get through the basics first.
The NationStates forums are here, if you have yet to visit them. The forum layout is pretty easy to navigate, but I'll include a very basic forum tree here:
NATIONSTATES
Sound & Fury (mostly stuff having to do with playing the game in its current build)
Blah. So what?
So roleplay! I'll be focusing mainly on the roleplay that happens in II and in the "NationStates" subforums on the NS Jolt forums.
To be quite honest, roleplay seems more about knowing what you shouldn't do and avoiding those things rather than knowing what you can do and trying to build a story upon that. With this type of mindset, you can allow yourself to participate in a wider variety of roleplay experiences. First, the groundrules for any roleplay:
First of all, roleplay happens across various time eras. Make sure that you're roleplaying your nation in that era. Therefore, if you're RP'ing a modern-tech war and future-tech war at the same time, you'll have to keep in mind that your nation is operating at different time points. Typically, though, most nations stick to one time period that they roleplay in. Personally, I don't have the sci-fi geekery/creativity to do most future RP's. I do enjoy my modern, medieval, and fantasy RP's, though.
Secondly, especially if you plan on waging war against anyone, your economy becomes especially important. You can only field as large an army as your nation can support, and that is calculated most easily by your economy calculators. Sunset is a pretty decent calculator to use. Of course, none of this is particularly set in stone, but acts only as a general guide. Therefore, it gives us a basis upon which to say that no, a new nation of 7million people are not going to be able to afford to build and maintain a fleet of top-of-the-line space battleships.
Most importantly, you should read some RP's before you start roleplaying so that you can get a feel for things like various modes of speech, narrative style, narrative pace (if everyone else is going at a day-by-day basis, you can't charge off and talk about things a year from now), how to talk to others in-character, how to communicate effectively out-of-character, the importance of formatting and presentation, etc.
Rather than trying to explain how to roleplay effectively, I'm simply going to throw up some recent examples of decent roleplay that I've found on the NS Jolt forums:
As a last note, I'll also mention that many players create profiles for their nations. Some prefer to keep it in a thread somewhere on the forums that they can find. (You can see your threads when logged in) Others prefer to use offsite resources to aid them in this task. Oftentimes, people will use Freewebs, Google Pages, or their own personal webspace to create a webpage for their nation and/or storefront. Also, the NS Wiki is a great resource, as well. You can create pages about your nations as you wish. I haven't worked on my NS Wiki much, but here's a far more fleshed-out example. Also, in case you're interested in seeing it, here's my incomplete webpage for my nation, set up much like a national factbook.
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Oh man, that was probably all over the place. Um, if you have any questions, please ask.
And for today's question...I just want you to start thinking of a very basic plot or premise upon which you could theoretically build a viable RP that you might enjoy taking part in.
Today, we'll cover the official NS Jolt forums. We will also be covering the topic of in-character roleplay, which is conducted largely on the official forums.
Christ, everything's about forums...
Yep. Pretty much. In this text-based game, a lot of it has to revolve around forums out of necessity. :/ Anyways. Let's get through the basics first.
The NationStates forums are here, if you have yet to visit them. The forum layout is pretty easy to navigate, but I'll include a very basic forum tree here:
NATIONSTATES
Sound & Fury (mostly stuff having to do with playing the game in its current build)
- NationStates--All things RP that don't go into II (see below) pretty much go here. Mostly, this means sports RP's, character RP's, and fantasy RP's.
- International Incidents--Commonly referred to as "II", this forum is where a lot of international interaction occurs. In short, wars are waged, weapons are sold, and embassies are exchanged here. National factbooks are also frequently posted here.
- Gameplay--Everything to do with stuff you can do on your nation in-game. A fairly quiet (read: boring) forum most of the time, it is usually filled with recruitment spam and newbies wanting some help. The reason for its quietness is that its function has been largely usurped by off-site forums like our very own TNP forums. :3
- The United Nations--This forum is actually decently lively compared to Gameplay. Here is where you can argue about current UN proposals up at vote and about to come to vote. Also, people will bring their preliminary drafts of proposals and ask for suggestions and advice. Decent spelling and demonstration of competence in English grammatical norms are needed, unless you prefer to be laughed out of the forum.
- Technical--This is a place to ask questions about how the game works at a technical level. Not "am I allowed to do xxxx" but rather "can I physically do this through current game mechanics". Be sure to read the stickied threads at the top of the forums, though. The forum mods can get cranky about that.
- Moderation--Is someone being a jerk? Is someone breaking the rules? You can report them here. Questions about what is within and outside the rules are also asked here.
- Got Issues?--To be honest, I think that this forum is a bit out of place and should be up there in Sound & Fury. Anyways, it's a forum devoted to how issues work, the discussion of issues, and the creation of new ones.
- Archive--A place where mods dump the threads that they like, I guess. *shrug*
- General--It's a general discussion forum on the internet. It has over 3.6 million posts in it alone. It will be filled with wankage, trolls, and generally loud and misinformed (or undersupported) opinions. It's interesting, and you can often find genuinely intellectual discourse amidst trolls and semantics. Proceed with caution.
- NationStates 2--HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, good one.
- Jennifer Government (book, movie)--We have to remember that Max started up this game as a form of advertising for his book Jennifer Government. Discuss his books and find out what he's up to here.
Blah. So what?
So roleplay! I'll be focusing mainly on the roleplay that happens in II and in the "NationStates" subforums on the NS Jolt forums.
To be quite honest, roleplay seems more about knowing what you shouldn't do and avoiding those things rather than knowing what you can do and trying to build a story upon that. With this type of mindset, you can allow yourself to participate in a wider variety of roleplay experiences. First, the groundrules for any roleplay:
- Don't godmode. Don't magically know stuff that you shouldn't known in-character, even if it's been shared with you out-of-character. Don't have your nation do things outside of its means. The typical example is of the newly-minted 5million population nation launching "thuosands of nukez" at various nations. Stuff like that will get you rapidly hit with the "IGNORE Cannon" from players. (No, it doesn't do anything besides signifying that they're going to ignore your actions in the RP because they're so implausible.)
- Don't butt in randomly in a "closed" RP. It's a good idea to ask permission from the members to join an ongoing RP first. Unless it's marked "open", you should ask for permission.
- Don't mix up IC and OOC. If you're saying something out of character, you should make that clear with "OOC:" or something.
- Stuff shared in OOC convos are meant to help make the roleplay better--NOT for you to magically come up with a counter to everything thrown up at you because you knew about it beforehand.
- This is roleplay, so unless you're roleplaying a 12 year-old AIM kiddie, good spelling, good grammar, and common courtesy are most definitely encouraged.
First of all, roleplay happens across various time eras. Make sure that you're roleplaying your nation in that era. Therefore, if you're RP'ing a modern-tech war and future-tech war at the same time, you'll have to keep in mind that your nation is operating at different time points. Typically, though, most nations stick to one time period that they roleplay in. Personally, I don't have the sci-fi geekery/creativity to do most future RP's. I do enjoy my modern, medieval, and fantasy RP's, though.
Secondly, especially if you plan on waging war against anyone, your economy becomes especially important. You can only field as large an army as your nation can support, and that is calculated most easily by your economy calculators. Sunset is a pretty decent calculator to use. Of course, none of this is particularly set in stone, but acts only as a general guide. Therefore, it gives us a basis upon which to say that no, a new nation of 7million people are not going to be able to afford to build and maintain a fleet of top-of-the-line space battleships.
Most importantly, you should read some RP's before you start roleplaying so that you can get a feel for things like various modes of speech, narrative style, narrative pace (if everyone else is going at a day-by-day basis, you can't charge off and talk about things a year from now), how to talk to others in-character, how to communicate effectively out-of-character, the importance of formatting and presentation, etc.
Rather than trying to explain how to roleplay effectively, I'm simply going to throw up some recent examples of decent roleplay that I've found on the NS Jolt forums:
- Embassy exchange thread
- Sample military storefront (Yes, people devote a lot of effort into these things. Many people try to design fairly plausible weapons systems, and that requires a lot of knowledge (or guesstimation) in military engineering. Here's an example of a tank upgrade, although I have seen more impressive technical descriptions.)
- Here, you see a prelude to war. You notice how people are trying to work in information about their troop dispositions into the overall story? It may detract from the overall flow a bit, but it helps your fellow RP'ers figure out what's happening.
- A RP gone wrong. When n00bs roleplay...*sigh*
- World Cup RP
- A masquerade! i.e. a character RP
As a last note, I'll also mention that many players create profiles for their nations. Some prefer to keep it in a thread somewhere on the forums that they can find. (You can see your threads when logged in) Others prefer to use offsite resources to aid them in this task. Oftentimes, people will use Freewebs, Google Pages, or their own personal webspace to create a webpage for their nation and/or storefront. Also, the NS Wiki is a great resource, as well. You can create pages about your nations as you wish. I haven't worked on my NS Wiki much, but here's a far more fleshed-out example. Also, in case you're interested in seeing it, here's my incomplete webpage for my nation, set up much like a national factbook.
--------------------------
Oh man, that was probably all over the place. Um, if you have any questions, please ask.
And for today's question...I just want you to start thinking of a very basic plot or premise upon which you could theoretically build a viable RP that you might enjoy taking part in.
