Roleplay Problems discussion thread

mcmasterdonia

mcmasterdonia

Just like a queef in the wind, so is life
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TNP Nation
McMasterdonia
Hi

I have noticed a few issues with some of the RP's that I think we should discuss. We have a lot of new RPers and a lot of enthusiasm, but I think we should clarify some issues.

A lot of our RP's are open to everyone - so it causes problems when certain players take them off on random tangents without consulting the OP. I think we should remember that the OP is the one who has control of the thread, and that they need to be consulted before you blow up their Embassy, punch their first lady in the face.. or make it all about you and your nation.

Here is an FAQ that should be read: http://forum.thenorthpacific.org/topic/6992426/1/#new

It isn't perfect, and perhaps we should work on another?

Another thing we should discuss is the difference between unreasonable and reasonable stats.

Unreasonable: My nation has 1 billion soldier
Reasonable: 1 million soldiers might be reasonable for a huge nation, whereas 100,000-200,000 is probably reasonable for a smaller nation. These are obviously just my opinion.

Reasonable: The military started to prepare for it's deployment to X nation, with preparations being complete in 48 hours, the military was ready to deploy.
Unreasonable: We declared war on X, our 10 million officers deployed straight away and started burning the capital.
 
I do agree, there have been some issues with people taking threads off on a tangent. I think a role play workshop might be helpful. We could try a beginner's RP where some mentors guide the others on the best way to use situations and how to make a successful RP. We could take some past successful RPs and compile them for others to view.
 
Cronaal:
I blame Syrixia for this thread.
Click to expand...
Now now, no need to point fingers.

That being said, this is an issue, special thanks to McMasterdonia for bringing this up. I'm going to talk to Malavid about putting up a RP realism Q&A. Realism is not meant to "ruin the fun", it's meant to create a level playing environment for everyone to have fun, and so that the focus is on the story.
 
What? Just because we have a thirty million man army doesn't mean we need to get blamed for everything. We in Syrixia value our army, it is the highest paying job and the most sought after job. Don't go judging our customs!
 
Though I agree with Scandigrad. One billion is 1 THOUSAND million. Unreasonable. Beyond, even.
 
I agree with Malvad, that there have been some issues with people taking threads off on a tangent. I think setting up a Role-Playing Guide would be beneficial to new and eager roleplayers
 
Syrixia:
What? Just because we have a thirty million man army doesn't mean we need to get blamed for everything. We in Syrixia value our army, it is the highest paying job and the most sought after job. Don't go judging our customs!
Click to expand...
Here's why it's unreasonable:

There's a reason 30 million men is not a reasonable size, and it all has to do with economy. Look around the world. The largest military is the PRC with just over 2 million active duty personnel. That's a country with a 1 billion population. What's really worth looking at is the fact that no nation's military exceeds 5% of the nation's population. Nations in good economic standing don't even exceed 2%. Why? Because a military is expensive, and produces absolutely no revenue. It's expensive. There are mouths to feed. A healthy nation cannot support more than 2% of their population in the military. The United States has less than 1%, with about 1.5 million people on active duty (that's about .5% of the nation's population).

So there's economic concerns, but there are also logistic concerns.

Contrary to popular belief, just under 10% of the military is actually combat arms (the people who go pew pew). Those people have to be supported by logistics units. So while the United States may have about 1,500,000 active military personnel, about 150,000 are actual combat arms, with even less seeing combat. Those guys need intelligence on who to strike, someone's gotta store and bring the ordinance, and you sure as hell need water and food. I can assure you from experience that a hungry platoon is not going to be effective at doing anything, let alone shooting the bad guys.

There's a laundry list of other reasons, but I'll cover that later and in a more appropriate forum.
 
Scandigrad:
Syrixia:
What? Just because we have a thirty million man army doesn't mean we need to get blamed for everything. We in Syrixia value our army, it is the highest paying job and the most sought after job. Don't go judging our customs!
Click to expand...
Here's why it's unreasonable:

There's a reason 30 million men is not a reasonable size, and it all has to do with economy. Look around the world. The largest military is the PRC with just over 2 million active duty personnel. That's a country with a 1 billion population. What's really worth looking at is the fact that no nation's military exceeds 5% of the nation's population. Nations in good economic standing don't even exceed 2%. Why? Because a military is expensive, and produces absolutely no revenue. It's expensive. There are mouths to feed. A healthy nation cannot support more than 2% of their population in the military. The United States has less than 1%, with about 1.5 million people on active duty (that's about .5% of the nation's population).

So there's economic concerns, but there are also logistic concerns.

Contrary to popular belief, just under 10% of the military is actually combat arms (the people who go pew pew). Those people have to be supported by logistics units. So while the United States may have about 1,500,000 active military personnel, about 150,000 are actual combat arms, with even less seeing combat. Those guys need intelligence on who to strike, someone's gotta store and bring the ordinance, and you sure as hell need water and food. I can assure you from experience that a hungry platoon is not going to be effective at doing anything, let alone shooting the bad guys.

There's a laundry list of other reasons, but I'll cover that later and in a more appropriate forum.
Click to expand...
I'd estimate a population of roughly 50 billion to support an army of Syrixia's size.
 
2 million is still massive..... Considering there are countries that are far larger.

My other concern is that RP threads are being hijacked by people to make the thread about them or their character. We need to respect the role of the OP and that many people will be supporting characters and not everything will be about them.
 
About the military point: Of course, you could have a country with compulsory military service (RL Singapore, Israel, South Korea), but only some of those in the reserve would be on the front-lines if war comes.

I think we need rules and guidelines for RPing definitely. I think one thing I didn't do well as Culture Minister during my term was my efforts (or lack thereof) to encourage RPing. If I did focus more on that, rules would have been quite far up the agenda. Clearly standards to prevent godmodding or thread-hijacking, and to encourage realistic RPing, should be enforced.
 
My men have new lazer weapons that go PEW PEW PEW and blows up your house instantly. Good game North Pacific. I'll the the key to the region now.
 
A reservist army takes a long time to deploy. So an army of two million reservists would be in the field weeks after an army of thirty thousand full time professionals.

And, as happened when the German student army came up against the British Old Contemptibles in WW1, the huge reservist army tends to get cut to shreds.
 
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