Non-Legislative proposal by Baker Park

I beg leave of the chair for permission to lay a proposal on the table


The Soccer Associations Charter Resolution:
A resolution in the interest of regional harmony and cooperation, submitted for consideration and approval upon the subject:

To grant a charter to the organization to be known hereafter as the Regional Union of (The) North Pacific Associations for Soccer (RUNPAS).

Short title: The Soccer Associations Charter Resolution

Clause I: The proposed organization shall be open to all member Football or Soccer playing governing bodies of The North Pacific who are in good standing within the region;

Clause II: a nation which joins the organization and subsequently withdraws from The North Pacific may choose to remain as an associate member, pursuant to the guidelines for associate membership laid out in Clause III;

Clause III: a nation which is not a member of The North Pacific may be accepted for membership in the organization if any of the following apply:
a) that nation is a member of a region which currently has a bilateral treaty with The North Pacific;
b) that nation is a member of a region which currently has an embassy to The North Pacific;
c) that nation is a member of a region who is not currently in a state of conflict with The North Pacific;
d) that nation does not at the time of membership have policies that are contrary to the Constitution, Bill of Rights or the Legal Code of The North Pacific;
e) or, that nation agrees in principle to respect all guarantees and provisions of the legal foundations of The North Pacific described in paragraph (d) of this clause;

Clause IV: no member nation of The North Pacific shall be compelled to have their governing body join the organization; any member nation who is a participant in a regional organization outside of The North Pacific shall be free to continue in said organization, but may become an associate member of this organization pursuant to the guidelines in Clause III;

Clause V: the organization shall conduct regional championship tournaments open to all national teams of full and associate members of the organization at intervals to be determined by agreement of the membership;

Clause VI: the organization shall not seek support from the Regional Assembly or the Delegate's Administration with respect to the governing of the body, except to seek advice as needed to determine whether a member nation(s) should be excluded or expelled from the organization for violating any of the guidelines set out in Clause III;

Clause VII: the Assembly may revoke this Charter at any time if the organization has undertaken any action inconsistent with the stated aims of the organization, or violation(s) of the instruments described in Clause III, paragraph (d);

Clause VIII: to all of this above, we pray to receive the affirmation of this resolution by the Assembly of The North Pacific, of which the sponsor, The Commonwealth of Baker Park, is a citizen.

Respectfully submitted,

Rebecca L Schoenlein, MA
Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Baker Park

Thomas G Cassidy, MA
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs

Hannah B Delaney, MA
Secretary of State for the Commonwealth

David Carlson
Executive Director & General Secretary, Football Association of the Commonwealth
 
Sil Dorsett:
This appears to be more role-play oriented than a matter for the Regional Assembly. You might find our Role Play subforum to be of interest, especially The Northern Crystal Stadium, where you can run RP sports tournaments. Come check it out!
with all due respect to the esteemed member, I'd like to draw attention to a few points which contradict his assertions:

A) It is not clear to us what function a standing rule with respect to non-legisaltive proposals is limited to:

Non-Legislative Proposal Procedure
Any citizen may introduce a proposal to exercise a power of the Assembly besides enacting, amending, or repealing laws, or ratifying or revoking the ratification of treaties by creating a thread in the Regional Assembly forum or Private Halls subforum.

B) It is not clear to us how a constitutional crisis which is currently unresolved, to wit: The Motion to Declare an Emergency for the purpose of "Christmas Cheer" and the subsequent controversy over a review by the Court of The North Pacific has any more standing than our proposal; in fact, we respectfully point out that the Motion was specious and without merit on its face and would have objected to it on those grounds had we been members of this region at that time.

C) We have familiarized ourselves with the forum recommended and note that only 2 active topics have had any activity within the current calendar year.

D) We submit that the entire function of The North Pacific (and by extension the entire concept of NS) is for role-play purposes. To dismiss out of hand an issue as being an irrelevant matter for this Assembly is to dismiss the entire purpose of the Assembly irrelevant.

E) We are prepared to withdraw the proposed resolution on the grounds of technical or substantive grounds. We are novices in the realm of this Regional Assembly, and only have our own legislative processes to guide us.

We yield the floor and reserve the right to reconsider the resolution.
 
Most roleplaying proposals would breach the Bill of Rights. This one does not. However, you'd still need support from the Assembly.
As the Assembly is widely seen as a gameplay body, it probably won't support this.
 
I thought this was going to be an easy one...


A. If it is not clear what powers Regional Assembly has, ensure that you have familiarized yourself with the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Legal Code. (You can find these by clicking on the Laws button at the top of the forum header.)

That being said, after looking over them again myself, I'm not even sure what power of the regional assembly you're invoking. This proposal is not...
  • an act to enact, amend, or repeal a law,
  • a motion to declare an emergency,
  • a declaration of war,
  • an override of the Vice Delegate's rejection of an applicant,
  • an override of a Delegate's veto,
  • a confirmation of a government official which requires confirmation,
  • a motion to remove a Security Council member,
  • a motion to remove a government official,
  • a motion to recognize a treaty,
  • a motion to allow the Serving Delegate to assign Border Control powers beyond the three member limit,
  • a mandate to the NPAF,
  • an override of an NPAF deployment,
  • a motion to edit the line of succession.
Unless I missed something, which is very likely so help me out, I don't see where this proposal fits.

B. A motion to declare an emergency is a power granted by the Legal Code (9.1: Emergency Powers). It also would have impacted multiple nations gameside by forcing them to change their pretitle.

C. Sports RP isn't all that active. You can help fix that, in the proper area.

D. The lines of where roleplay and gameplay are divided are very blurry. Not everything about TNP and NS is roleplay. The NPA, for example, is not really roleplay from the perspective of storywriting, but I guess if you consider raiding and defending part of military roleplay then I suppose it is. But, keep in mind that there's an actual impact gameside. The World Assembly is most definitely roleplay, but keep in mind there's an impact gameside as proposals change your nation's statistics. The Regional Assembly here is not so much. The government and what it does is more of a community maintenance feature that dictates how we do things, in my opinion anyways.

The proposal you're offering does nothing from a legal sense, as far as I can tell. What it does do is establish something that you can freely do so anyways on the Role Play forum without needing the RA to grant its blessing. So, there's really no need to have the RA involved on this one. Just get posting on the RP board! If you can run it and scorinate it, I'm sure you'll get people involved.
 
It may do you well to learn the difference between gameplay and roleplay. I'm going to post a quote from SillyString, which explains it better than I could.

For a summary in my own words: Roleplay is where you play as your nation or as the leader of your nation, engaging in international diplomacy with others who also roleplay as their nations. The in-game mechanics of issues answering can be seen as a version of this, where you step into the role of your nation's leader to decide issues before your nation.

Gameplay, however, is a very different matter, and difficult to explain. For gameplay, you are less your nation and more your own self, playing "the game" of NationStates, where you participate more as yourself in various functions of regional government, like this Regional Assembly, or as Speaker, or as Delegate. Interregional diplomacy between regional governments falls under this sphere, as does the in-game mechanics of raiding / defending regions (military gameplay).

SillyString:
As a word of advice on navigating things during your future in NS, the interplay between IC and OOC is... not as you have surmised. There is RP-IC and RP-OOC and GP-IC and GP-OOC, and the common ways we refer to them are not always intuitive. The RP area you noticed is for RP-IC and RP-OOC, while the OOC area is only for GP-OOC. Everywhere else on this forum, and on the vast majority of forums for non RP-regions, is for GP-IC. GP-IC is often referred to as OOC for various historical socio-political reasons. To provide a brief summary:
  • RP-IC is for actually speaking as an invented character, be it a figure in your NS nation or a DnD wizard or whatnot. It is the storytelling of roleplay.
  • RP-OOC is for the out-of-game discussion of roleplay issues, including "they cheated!" and "hey let's plan where this story goes next; what if my character tries to assassinate yours?" and "this is my character sheet with background and stats".
  • GP-OOC is when individual RL people chat about their actual lives - their jobs, what they study in school, what books/movies/music they enjoy, what they think of significant RL events, what they did last weekend.
  • GP-IC is somewhat difficult for a lot of people to define, because it is an unexamined mixture of GP-OOC (who you are as a person) and RP-IC (the stories you create with other people). But, broadly speaking, it is what happens when someone's posts are their-true-selves-as-a-fictional-role. For example, I am not an attorney general (or any kind of attorney) in real life. I do not have any formal legal training and I often have no deeper legal justification for something than "but it just seems wrong!!". The idea behind TNP's AG was entirely invented by NS players, and the fiction only continues to exist because we keep believing it does. If everyone woke up tomorrow and began pretending the AG did not exist, it would not. And yet, when I post as AG (or as any role in TNP), I do so according to my own thoughts and beliefs and ideals - what I, the player, think is right, not what a hypothetical character in my exceedingly wacky nation might think.

I believe that is everything. If there is any point which is unclear, feel free to ask for an elaboration.

I hope that Sil Dorsett's short description, my explanation, and SillyString's explanation are enough to point out the difference. Please feel free to ask if you have any questions, and reach out to any RolePlay Moderator regarding your ideas for sports roleplaying.
 
We ask leave to withdraw the resolution from table. We have serious reservations about the semantic technicalities addressed, to wit:

The lines of where roleplay and gameplay are divided are very blurry. Not everything about TNP and NS is roleplay.

as well as the inference that we have not done our due diligence ahead of time
and the opposition to an idea that we are asking for the approval of the Assembly that actually aims towards improving retention of members of TNP.

Respectfully submitted.
 
Sil Dorsett:
Unless I missed something, which is very likely so help me out, I don't see where this proposal fits.
I have generally been of the view that, in addition to express powers, the Assembly has a power to pass non-effective (in the sense of being without legal effect) resolutions to state its view on a given subject matter or to make a recommendation to another organ (for instance, the Assembly might recommend that the Delegate conduct foreign affairs in a particular manner). I am not sure this would be an appropriate use of such a power and, in any event, I do not think there is a compelling argument for the recognition of a regional roleplay sport body or that this body in particular is one which ought be recognised.
 
Zyvetskistaahn:
Sil Dorsett:
Unless I missed something, which is very likely so help me out, I don't see where this proposal fits.
I have generally been of the view that, in addition to express powers, the Assembly has a power to pass non-effective (in the sense of being without legal effect) resolutions to state its view on a given subject matter or to make a recommendation to another organ (for instance, the Assembly might recommend that the Delegate conduct foreign affairs in a particular manner). I am not sure this would be an appropriate use of such a power and, in any event, I do not think there is a compelling argument for the recognition of a regional roleplay sport body or that this body in particular is one which ought be recognised.
We have almost lost interest--nor frankly 5 minutes of sleep--on this issue, but this particular argument is ripe for a discussion of the principles raised....

Legislative bodies have, from the beginning of time, been free to consider business introduced that have no legal basis to their discussion for consideration. There are volumes of non-binding resolutions, proclamations and bills dealing with private citizen business to validate this point

The personal opinion of the duly elected justice of the Court in agreement with this principle of Non-Legislative, Non-Gameplay issues being within the legitimate scope of the Regional Assembly's purview, validates our assertion that the resolution we previously submitted was well within the bounds of propriety.

We respect the conclusion of the justice that the resolution proposed might not have have had the requisite standing for consideration, but we reinforce our argument that there was no Technical or Substantive irregularity; in fact, based on the arguments previously presented, we should have simply asked for a Declaration of an Actual Emergency--without the need to specify the danger to the nations of the Region--to have our resolution voted upon without debate.

Selah
 
I seem to recall TNPRP having a football (soccer to the people on the wrong side of The Atlantic) league held in the Northern Crystal Stadium.

Why don't you take it to the RP Moderators and see if the various RP World Factions would pass it? It's more likely to get their approval than here, as it doesn't match the anticipated focus that the Regional Assembly focuses on.
 
Back
Top