Post by The Union of Tinis on Jan 26, 2011 1:53:07 GMT -5
This is required reading for all new nations and hopefully the older folks will read this too.
So you want to join the Furry Federation?
The simplest way to sign up, follow the instructions, and get approval. But if you want to make sure you have a unique nation that is both fun to play, interesting, and makes any sense what so ever (given that you are entering an ongoing world) there's a few guidelines you should follow. What more, there are also some rules that you need to make sure you are abiding by both in nation creation and in role playing. So first! The happy stuff!
Guidelines to creating an effective nation:
1. Don't feel you have to rely on the NationStates stats, descriptions, or rankings to determine the character of your nation. You are highly encouraged to run your NationStates nation (for those of you that have them) as your in character nation would be run. But given such things as NationStates not having a good way to simulate alternative governments, economics, or cultures, and the problem with NationStates nations constantly growing an rates that are totally unrealistic (not to mention forever being stuck at 100% tax rates), it is wise to break away from the mold of NationStates when coming up with your write up.
2. Be original! This is both a guideline and in some cases a rule. Don't rip off entire nations from books, video games, movies, or TV shows unless you are the owner of those intellectual properties. And unless someone surprises me by proving they are Rick Berman, that means no Starfleet. If you are writing a book or what ever and want to use ideas from that, that's quite acceptable. They have to be your own. This is also not meant to discourage being inspired by works of fiction. Taking elements from sources but making them your own is acceptable. But these inspirations should not be totally obvious that they're just a rip from another source as that's just kind of lame. What more, we tend to be pretty geeky around here and thus get bored of such things easier but also when an element is meant to be a challenge, already have a heads up on how to tackle it.
3. Start simple, but don't feel constrained by that initial idea. As a writer, the most difficult thing is to get the words flowing. It is often ideal to start with a basic idea and just let it grow. So lets say you want to run a dictatorship that has a fascination with building tunnels. Why does it build tunnels? Are they fall out shelters or are they needed to get around the country? Who is the dictator? How did they rise to power? Do they have internal enemies? External enemies? Is the dictatorship reliant on the underground tunnels for some reason? If they were to be taken or destroyed, would that bring down the regime? See what just happened there? Two odd ideas brought up all sorts of questions. Now you can try answering them and see what sort of interesting quirks you can come up with for your nation.
4. Avoid one upping people. Why? Because being the ultimate strongest and bestest at everything is dull. Winning at everything forever can be fun for a little bit, but pretty soon you're bored. And what more every one else is pissed as they can't touch you. There are two connected points here:
A. Avoid tech creep. Its just another type of one-up-manship. If suddenly you slightly better computers for no good reason, that's not role playing.
B. If you do have a nifty toy or idea, make it fragile. Then its not one upping everyone as its has a very obvious flaw. So what if you have a death beam gun? If you fire it once and it melts in the process its not much of a threat if they can avoid getting hit first with it. What more, the person who owns it is now faced with a choice of if they will use it and if so, on who, as that one shot has got to count.
5. The power of the write up is important. Because it defines what your nation is. So take care when creating it. And please look at the write ups for other nations to see what they did. What works and what doesn't. I'll extrapolate more on the why of this is important in the next section.
6. History is important! So work with your neighbors to create a history! No nation is totally isolated in the modern world, so it is 100% impossible for a nation to be totally isolationist unless they are actively hostile to all neighbors. If your nation is a hostile to its neighbors, then it might be isolationist now, but inevitably, sometime in the past, there must of been a reason for them to be hostile to everyone around them. That could be they invaded or brought something into your nation that you didn't like. What ever the cause, it means that there is some historic connection there. So figure out what it is! As for non-isolationist types, figure out who you are near and figure out shared historical events. It enriches the fabric of the federation and helps world build. And it can give you more ideas on how to develop your nation!
-----
So now onto the not so fun stuff. To help curb abuses and to make the life of your moderator (me) much less annoying, a few new ground rules kind of need to be put in place.
I.
No more future tech nations in the main continuity. At all. Mid 21st century tech levels plus tech advantages are the maximum.
-Anea and Aluez have done fairly well at keeping the crazyness reigned in, but even then, the mere existence of future tech nations has thrown off the geopolitical balance enough as is and adding more will make the world generally unfun as you start having two classes of nations. Those with wonder tech and those who don't. And so like the one up guideline description above, this leads to a number of folks not having fun any more.
II.
If you want a future tech nation, you can only come into an alternative setting. Such as: StarFurs (mostly solar system based, some FTL but its expensive), Universal Furs (high technology, space opera), or something of your own creation (feel free to recruit for it!).
III.
No more Mordors/Númenors. It is both unfun and geologically silly for every single nation on the main land to be surrounded by mountains. So any map proposal from now on that includes such will be edited so these mysterious rings of mountains go away. Also, no island is ever isolated and untouchable, especially not a large one, so it is not an ideal path towards getting around the isolationism paradox. What more, no more islands will be added after the next map update. If you want an island and are a new nation, claim it.
IV.
There is no empty space on the map. All empty space after the next map update will be reserved for new nations. The white space/empty terrain is not empty, we just haven't met the people who live there yet out of character. In character they've been there the whole time. This means that future geographic expansions will come at the expense of other nations in character only.
V.
Nations that quit playing will be ret-conned out unless arrangements are made to include them in the continuing world. Fix your history accordingly.
VI.
If you claim a tech advantage in character that is not included in your write up and does not make sense given your general technology level, you do not have it and people are encouraged to ignore such claims or events that rely on it. Aka, no wankery here else you get ignored.
VII.
Know your science and be ready to explain why it is plausible. This goes in with VI above. It is conceivable that this next century in the real world could surprise us with a number of things, but a lot of the general things we know about the march of technology are pretty well understood. It is conceivable, given sufficient resources and lab space, to learn the techniques necessary to manipulate the human genome and produce stronger, smarter, or more wacky looking people. It is much less sensical for genetic tinkering to allow one to teleport. That just doesn't make any sense. And as such, would require a very very different explanation if you are called out on it.
VIII.
Special species are ok, just don't over do it. As with tech creep, going too over board with it becomes kind of lame. What more, do have a reasonable biological explanation handy. Perfect people don't exist.
-An example of my own: Pargalonian dragons look neat on paper, but do have scientific plausibility and unique flaws. Light bone structure (similar to birds) and using their wings as heat radiators allows them the ability to gain flight via self generating thermals. Sort of like creating hot air balloons under their wings in real time. The down side is that if they are not fast enough in a fight they are prone to broken bones and require a good deal of food to generate the heat necessary for flight. They also have other draw backs such as during their teen years needing to eat excessive amounts of iron based food (aka, meat! or possibly rocks) to grow their horns properly and if they don't eat those amounts they can become chronically weak for the rest of their lives. And though they are long lived, the problem of keeping up consumption increases as they age due to never really halting their growth. So eventually the oldest just can't eat enough to survive and die of starvation. So in the end, they might be my favorite created critters, but they do have some serious in character draw backs that can come up at moments when they'd rather not have to deal with them.
IX.
No firing of nuclear weapons or weapons that could yield similar death tolls from now on without prior moderator approval.
X.
No world threats without prior moderator approval. The moderator reserves the right to ask the community for approval instead. Aka, if you want time traveling romans to show up from the future to take over the world, that's kind of a threat to everyone everywhere, so it is very much a situation where everyone has to be involved. As not everyone would be interested in such a thing, especially if the previous world threat has not been resolved, such events might not be a good idea to happening in parallel. This will both encourage people to find resolutions to the current world threats if there are any and will discourage random ideas that don't really make much sense.
----
I hope these things will both help us become better RP-ers as well as help sort out. If you have questions or comments, please make them here. If its obvious that something in the new rules is totally out of line, I will make changes, but you gotta make your point here.
So you want to join the Furry Federation?
The simplest way to sign up, follow the instructions, and get approval. But if you want to make sure you have a unique nation that is both fun to play, interesting, and makes any sense what so ever (given that you are entering an ongoing world) there's a few guidelines you should follow. What more, there are also some rules that you need to make sure you are abiding by both in nation creation and in role playing. So first! The happy stuff!
Guidelines to creating an effective nation:
1. Don't feel you have to rely on the NationStates stats, descriptions, or rankings to determine the character of your nation. You are highly encouraged to run your NationStates nation (for those of you that have them) as your in character nation would be run. But given such things as NationStates not having a good way to simulate alternative governments, economics, or cultures, and the problem with NationStates nations constantly growing an rates that are totally unrealistic (not to mention forever being stuck at 100% tax rates), it is wise to break away from the mold of NationStates when coming up with your write up.
2. Be original! This is both a guideline and in some cases a rule. Don't rip off entire nations from books, video games, movies, or TV shows unless you are the owner of those intellectual properties. And unless someone surprises me by proving they are Rick Berman, that means no Starfleet. If you are writing a book or what ever and want to use ideas from that, that's quite acceptable. They have to be your own. This is also not meant to discourage being inspired by works of fiction. Taking elements from sources but making them your own is acceptable. But these inspirations should not be totally obvious that they're just a rip from another source as that's just kind of lame. What more, we tend to be pretty geeky around here and thus get bored of such things easier but also when an element is meant to be a challenge, already have a heads up on how to tackle it.
3. Start simple, but don't feel constrained by that initial idea. As a writer, the most difficult thing is to get the words flowing. It is often ideal to start with a basic idea and just let it grow. So lets say you want to run a dictatorship that has a fascination with building tunnels. Why does it build tunnels? Are they fall out shelters or are they needed to get around the country? Who is the dictator? How did they rise to power? Do they have internal enemies? External enemies? Is the dictatorship reliant on the underground tunnels for some reason? If they were to be taken or destroyed, would that bring down the regime? See what just happened there? Two odd ideas brought up all sorts of questions. Now you can try answering them and see what sort of interesting quirks you can come up with for your nation.
4. Avoid one upping people. Why? Because being the ultimate strongest and bestest at everything is dull. Winning at everything forever can be fun for a little bit, but pretty soon you're bored. And what more every one else is pissed as they can't touch you. There are two connected points here:
A. Avoid tech creep. Its just another type of one-up-manship. If suddenly you slightly better computers for no good reason, that's not role playing.
B. If you do have a nifty toy or idea, make it fragile. Then its not one upping everyone as its has a very obvious flaw. So what if you have a death beam gun? If you fire it once and it melts in the process its not much of a threat if they can avoid getting hit first with it. What more, the person who owns it is now faced with a choice of if they will use it and if so, on who, as that one shot has got to count.
5. The power of the write up is important. Because it defines what your nation is. So take care when creating it. And please look at the write ups for other nations to see what they did. What works and what doesn't. I'll extrapolate more on the why of this is important in the next section.
6. History is important! So work with your neighbors to create a history! No nation is totally isolated in the modern world, so it is 100% impossible for a nation to be totally isolationist unless they are actively hostile to all neighbors. If your nation is a hostile to its neighbors, then it might be isolationist now, but inevitably, sometime in the past, there must of been a reason for them to be hostile to everyone around them. That could be they invaded or brought something into your nation that you didn't like. What ever the cause, it means that there is some historic connection there. So figure out what it is! As for non-isolationist types, figure out who you are near and figure out shared historical events. It enriches the fabric of the federation and helps world build. And it can give you more ideas on how to develop your nation!
-----
So now onto the not so fun stuff. To help curb abuses and to make the life of your moderator (me) much less annoying, a few new ground rules kind of need to be put in place.
I.
No more future tech nations in the main continuity. At all. Mid 21st century tech levels plus tech advantages are the maximum.
-Anea and Aluez have done fairly well at keeping the crazyness reigned in, but even then, the mere existence of future tech nations has thrown off the geopolitical balance enough as is and adding more will make the world generally unfun as you start having two classes of nations. Those with wonder tech and those who don't. And so like the one up guideline description above, this leads to a number of folks not having fun any more.
II.
If you want a future tech nation, you can only come into an alternative setting. Such as: StarFurs (mostly solar system based, some FTL but its expensive), Universal Furs (high technology, space opera), or something of your own creation (feel free to recruit for it!).
III.
No more Mordors/Númenors. It is both unfun and geologically silly for every single nation on the main land to be surrounded by mountains. So any map proposal from now on that includes such will be edited so these mysterious rings of mountains go away. Also, no island is ever isolated and untouchable, especially not a large one, so it is not an ideal path towards getting around the isolationism paradox. What more, no more islands will be added after the next map update. If you want an island and are a new nation, claim it.
IV.
There is no empty space on the map. All empty space after the next map update will be reserved for new nations. The white space/empty terrain is not empty, we just haven't met the people who live there yet out of character. In character they've been there the whole time. This means that future geographic expansions will come at the expense of other nations in character only.
V.
Nations that quit playing will be ret-conned out unless arrangements are made to include them in the continuing world. Fix your history accordingly.
VI.
If you claim a tech advantage in character that is not included in your write up and does not make sense given your general technology level, you do not have it and people are encouraged to ignore such claims or events that rely on it. Aka, no wankery here else you get ignored.
VII.
Know your science and be ready to explain why it is plausible. This goes in with VI above. It is conceivable that this next century in the real world could surprise us with a number of things, but a lot of the general things we know about the march of technology are pretty well understood. It is conceivable, given sufficient resources and lab space, to learn the techniques necessary to manipulate the human genome and produce stronger, smarter, or more wacky looking people. It is much less sensical for genetic tinkering to allow one to teleport. That just doesn't make any sense. And as such, would require a very very different explanation if you are called out on it.
VIII.
Special species are ok, just don't over do it. As with tech creep, going too over board with it becomes kind of lame. What more, do have a reasonable biological explanation handy. Perfect people don't exist.
-An example of my own: Pargalonian dragons look neat on paper, but do have scientific plausibility and unique flaws. Light bone structure (similar to birds) and using their wings as heat radiators allows them the ability to gain flight via self generating thermals. Sort of like creating hot air balloons under their wings in real time. The down side is that if they are not fast enough in a fight they are prone to broken bones and require a good deal of food to generate the heat necessary for flight. They also have other draw backs such as during their teen years needing to eat excessive amounts of iron based food (aka, meat! or possibly rocks) to grow their horns properly and if they don't eat those amounts they can become chronically weak for the rest of their lives. And though they are long lived, the problem of keeping up consumption increases as they age due to never really halting their growth. So eventually the oldest just can't eat enough to survive and die of starvation. So in the end, they might be my favorite created critters, but they do have some serious in character draw backs that can come up at moments when they'd rather not have to deal with them.
IX.
No firing of nuclear weapons or weapons that could yield similar death tolls from now on without prior moderator approval.
X.
No world threats without prior moderator approval. The moderator reserves the right to ask the community for approval instead. Aka, if you want time traveling romans to show up from the future to take over the world, that's kind of a threat to everyone everywhere, so it is very much a situation where everyone has to be involved. As not everyone would be interested in such a thing, especially if the previous world threat has not been resolved, such events might not be a good idea to happening in parallel. This will both encourage people to find resolutions to the current world threats if there are any and will discourage random ideas that don't really make much sense.
----
I hope these things will both help us become better RP-ers as well as help sort out. If you have questions or comments, please make them here. If its obvious that something in the new rules is totally out of line, I will make changes, but you gotta make your point here.