Nation vs. Character Roleplaying

[Ghant]

Nation vs. Character Roleplaying
The Characteristics and Distinctions Thereof​

Greetings all and welcome to this guide regarding the distinctions between nation and character roleplaying! I’d like to thank The North Pacific region for providing me with an opportunity to speak on this subject, as well as my fellow Greater Dienstad community members for agreeing to partner with TNP for this event. I hope that many of you will find the contents of this guide insightful and interesting.

I think the best place to begin is to explain what roleplaying is within the context of Nationstates. Roleplaying is essentially taking on the role of a fictional entity that exists in a fictional universe, and interacting with other fictional entities within that fictional universe for presumably recreational purposes. Since Nationstates is a site about fictional nations, the general idea of Nationstates roleplaying is to create a fictional nation, and interact with other fictional nations. The form that this interaction takes is where the distinction between nation and character roleplaying lies.

Nation Roleplaying

Nation roleplaying consists of creative works meant to portray any actions undertaken by a country at large. What policy does a nation have on a certain international issue? What actions are they taking to address said issue? Those questions are germane to nation roleplaying. A nation’s history, form of government and culture all have an impact on these questions (a process called worldbuilding, which is the process through which the fictional world that one’s fictional nation exists in is constructed).

Nation roleplaying takes on many forms and is conducted via several platforms. The most common form in my experience is news threads, where writers produce articles presenting the latest happenings in either their nations or the nations that they interact with, and how their governments react to those events. For instance, let’s say that Nation A is experiencing a popular uprising, and Nation B, which shares a border with Nation A, reacts to these events with alarm and concern. Conversely, Nation B’s government could support the uprisings.

Writers can take such an international incident and go more in-depth, writing policy papers, government communiqués and other documents that reflect the nation in question’s actions undertaken. World Assembly Commendations and Condemnations are often a reflection of these national policies, and at its base, the World Assembly is a form of nation roleplaying.

Besides writing on the International Incidents and Nationstates subforums, writers also utilize IIwiki in order to produce Wikipedia-esque articles that describe various qualities of their nations, as well as factbooks for quickly and easily accessible facts about their nations. Many of these tools are for the benefit of other writers interested in learning more about other nations and how their own nations might interact with them (will they support that nation, or be opposed to them, based on that nation’s policies and form of government).

The fundamental limitation to nation roleplaying (and hence why it’s called that) is that there is no point-of-view provided to the writing, so it takes on a sort of “general sense” of what the nation’s actions are. Presenting the ideas and opinions of characters would constitute character roleplaying, so nation roleplaying tends to take on a very neutral tone in the form of its presentation (though its not uncommon for a nation to exhibit the personal tastes and preferences of the writer behind the nation…more on that in a bit).

A common mistake that writers who are roleplaying nations make is “meta-gaming,” which in my opinion is the cardinal sin of roleplaying, akin to “betting on baseball.” Meta-gaming is where a writer blurs the lines between the fictional world in which their nation exists and the real world in which the writer exists, to the point that suspension of disbelief is broken, and other writers feel as though the meta-gamer is “imposing themselves” upon the in-game world. An example of this (from my own personal experience…I wish I was joking) is where a writer claims that his country hates communism because he himself hates communism. This is considered poor form, and against RP etiquette.

What a writer should do instead is, if they would like to have a nation that hates communism, explain why their nation hates communism within the confines of the in-game universe. Perhaps that nation has a historical reason for not liking communism, in the form of violent revolutions or wars that influence contemporary opinions. That’s an important and very basic key to nation roleplaying…strictly keeping the nation’s core aspects contained with the world in which it exists.

Character Roleplaying

The same is largely true of character roleplaying, though its applications are inherently different. Character roleplaying consists of assuming the roles of characters presumably from a nation that you’ve created, and interacting with other characters, inanimate objects of things that a person can interact with. Within the scope of roleplaying on Nationstates, this usually involves “actions” being undertaken by characters, instead of by the nation at-large.

The variation that exists for character roleplaying is expansive, to say the least. A writer can present a multitude of characters ranging from government leaders, soldiers, people on the street, legislators, noblemen, etc. These characters can be portrayed as interacting with other characters also presented by the writer, or with characters presented by other writers in as many ways as people interact in our real world. Your creativity is the limit.

As per most narrative forms concerning characters, character roleplaying is presented by First Person and Third Person Points of View (POV). First person consists of writing as though you are the character intrinsically (I am doing this, this is me, this is my chair), while third person non-personal pronouns (he did this, she is doing this, they are doing that). Third person POV is by far the most common form of character RP on NS in my experience (though often, writers present the thoughts of characters in italics, such as Why does he always do this to me?).

Character RP and nation RP can achieve the same goal of presenting a nation’s policies and the actions that they take, but from the POV of characters. Take a nation’s head of state for instance. Let’s say a nation decides to invade another nation. In an instance of nation roleplaying, the reader would know just that…Nation A is declaring war on Nation B. Character roleplaying can delve deeper into that. The President of Nation A makes the decision to declare war on Nation B.

Why did the President of Nation A make that decision? What factors did he consider? Did anything happen in his past that influenced that? What were his thoughts, fears, ambitions? Those are the sorts of questions that can be answered with character roleplaying. For some writers, those sorts of questions and their implications are the most fun aspects of roleplaying not just on NS, but in general (the human experience).

Character roleplaying has its restrictions. Unlike nation roleplaying, which can take place in so many forms, is far more limited in terms of where it can be written. Roleplaying threads in International Incidents, Nationstates and Portal to the Multiverse (P2M) are basically the only places on-site where this can be done. While they can be social threads, or more serious “action” threads, that restriction exists due to the very nature of the RP form.

Fortunately, there is a greater deal of interaction with other writers to be had with character roleplaying. For instance, if I am roleplaying as Character A, and another writer is roleplaying as Character B, then we can write interactions, either as back and forth posts in a thread or by collaborating in a google document, which is great for back and forth dialogue between characters. Once the writers are done with that interaction, one can post it on the Nationstates forums (I recommend giving “writing credits to the non-posting collaborator, in the form of “this post was co-written with Suchandsuch”).

The same issue with metagaming exists with character roleplaying, if the writer makes the characters too much like themselves, or superimposes their characteristics, idiosyncrasies and preferences upon the characters that they’re writing. I believe it is harder to roleplay characters than nations for this very reason, that there’s a certain burden on the writer to present characters that the reader can separate from the writer.

This goes into fiction writing and character narratives, but basically the idea is to create a character that’s unique and authentic to the world in which they live. Where are they from? Are they rich or poor? Are they powerful, or just an average Joe? What are their fears and aspirations? What motivates them? The answers to these questions shape the character’s personality and worldview and will ultimately have an impact on how they assess situations that are presented to them.

The level of immersion that character roleplays can have on Nationstates is, as one can imagine, very deep. Complex storylines involving the moving and shaking of nations driven by the characters that hold power in those nations is one of my favorite aspects of roleplaying on Nationstates, and that’s what’s been keeping me engaged all these years.

Final Takeaways

It’s okay if you want to focus on either nation or character roleplaying, or dabble in both. The key however is to surround yourself with people that support your work, one way or the other. Identify communities that exemplify the type of work that you want to do, and can help you improve in the areas that interest you. What’s great about Nationstates is that there’s something for everybody. I’ve seen some phenomenal nation and character roleplayers over the years, and both have their rewards.

I hope you found this lecture on nation vs. character roleplaying helpful. Please feel free to ask any questions, make comments or voice concerns in this thread. Thank you for reading!