NationStates Jolt Archive


Midlonia’s Newbie Crash course for Role playing…

Midlonia
12-04-2004, 15:21
Hello to all the “New guys & girls” playing out there, this post will take you a few minutes to read, so bear with me 

First I recommend you read this here…
http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=79117

Very good thread to give you the basics of what this forum is all about.

Character states

First off there are a few states of your character that you will have to remember

OOC: means “Out of character” I.E you *points* yes you at the back there picking your nose I see you! This is just you, the guy/girl typing and you can just chat or decide what will happen in the RP next, or asking for information on an enemy troop concentration, maps etc.

IC: mean “In Character” I.E this is your characters, troop movements, announcements. Etc

Secret IC to (insert nation name): means that this is information you can view in order to read the complete story, but you cannot use it during the main Role Play.


Types of army

A bit of a touchy subject, it will cost you money to go to war, Midlonia has almost always been in a perpetual state of war, when its troops are not deployed overseas, they are busy being trained for the next theatre of combat, you can have three kinds of army…
Small and professional
Large, but poorly trained
Fair size & well trained

Small and professional:
This is a good choice for new players who have a good economy (powerhouse upwards) Stick to around 500,000 (when available! If this is your first day then you will only have 100,000 men max.) as a permanent standing army, then go up to 1 million or so at times of invasion.

Large but poorly trained
Best left to very very big nations (1 billion +) this is when the sheer number of men that can be fielded can be used to swamp enemy positions as opposed to the actual quality of them.


Fair sized & well trained
This is typically the best option for nations such as me with a decent economy and the ability to raise nearly 6 million men in times of desperate need.

N.B. you can only have a 5% of your population in your military at times of war


Declaring war

Yes the bit you’ve all been waiting for!

When you declare war you have to have an actual reason (even if it is just “imperialist expansion”)

So for example….

Midlonia declares war on NationX

Midlonia released a statement today claiming to destroy the terrorist harbouring nation of Nation X, the Emperor claimed that he would use the might of the Midlonian military to crush the terrorist supporter “Nation X”

N.B to mods you could put a better “declaring war” if you like

After that you start to write the story, my Rp’s nearly always start with a naval attack.. like this…

Admiral Ramsey stared at the oak desk in his “ready room” , he was absent mindedly playing with the lemon in his tea, when his aide entered

“Sir we are off the coast of Nation X”

“Very well you know what to do by now”

“yes sir”

The port in the ship groaned open, a few seconds later Cruise missiles soared into the sky heading for Nation X

This is a fairly good way to open a war, then of course you have to be prepared for the counter-attack from whoever your fighting….



Ok so that is the attacking stuff done for the moment, we will take this short moment out to post a link and ask you to read it properly… please 
http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=97767

This is the absolutely fantastic thread by Automagfreak that gives you an idea behind what you shouldn’t post in “II”.

“The GODS”
These are the moderators of these hallowed forums, you do not annoy them, although they are moderators, they are players like you and I, and you can challenge them if you wish, though at the present size of most nations here, you wouldn’t make a dent.
They have the power to decide your population & also your existence… “Spam” the forums to much and you will be deleted, and some nations who had large populations will have to start again. Of course it usually take a lot to annoy a mod enough to delete you, and sometimes it’s just best not to socialise with them (no offence to the gods of course) if you look around the various boards you will probably see various “temples” to various moderators because of their godly powers, they are treated and to be treated with the utmost respect… especially from the newer nations…



The Idiots

Unfortunately there are people who come onto this game and don’t like it, there was one nation that posted a fairly good post, (Godmodded of course, more on “god modding” later) about how his entire populous was used to make nuclear & hydrogen bombs, before then he spent the next 6-7 of his posts slagging off the gamers with posts full of swearing and telling us how “pointless” this game is…
Best to just ignore them and wait for the gods to block them by IP.


God-Modding

Ah the infamous god-modders like the idiot I described to you above…
They are when the derogatory term “n00bs” is called this is when people who are one day old have a ridiculous number of troops and tanks etc…
A thread discussing this is shown here…(you don’t have to read it of course, if sure most of you are noobulus intelligensis (and I am making sure you will be by the time you have finished reading this)
http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=138072&highlight=

Just make sure you don’t have 100,000 nuclear weapons from Day 1 and you’ll be ok, plane launched nuclear bombs are accepted at around 20 million mark, icbm’s are not allowed until 100 million even then you have to have a good economy to afford it.


Taking losses

Because this is free form rping, you decided what losses your forces take when they are attacked; however the losses have to be on the same level of the attack. So you can’t have 3 people dying from a nuclear attack dropped on your capital, more like 300,000 immediately dead 400,000 wounded.
Same as if an armoured attack occurs against a bunch of infantry with no Anti Tank capability they are not going to live very long, so you can write off their existence immediately, people who do not accept “decent” losses are deemed god-modders and subsequently ignored, or asked to change them, in some RP’s a third nation is elected “referee” and if the losses are deemed unacceptable the referee decides on the losses a referee can not be biased but decided on what the losses should be on a certain type of attack, typically it’s best to have a ref in on your first RP, telegram me if you want me to sit in.. I’ll help wherever possible…

Well I have pretty much spent all the information I can give you without a major brain overload (mine of course), all I can say is, don’t be bitchy to people when you lose, and the go around denying what happened, like some nations do, (they usually lose a lot of respect from other players). Most important thing is HAVE FUN!

Also there is a board that will propbably cover this a bit better than this aswell
http://rpu.board.dk3.com/2/index.php
12-04-2004, 15:25
Very good and thorough. This is probally a thread that I will be refered to back again in the future probally by Iuthia but no more cloging your thread. Its good.
Midlonia
12-04-2004, 15:30
Very good and thorough. This is probally a thread that I will be refered to back again in the future probally by Iuthia but no more cloging your thread. Its good.

yes the idea of this was to make one combined sticky (hopefully) instead of having to trawl through dozens of boards
Jeruselem
12-04-2004, 15:41
Great thread.
Sigma Octavus
12-04-2004, 15:44
There are nations that have large and well trained armies. I'm one of them. Need to be a bit larger than 1 billion for it.
Midlonia
12-04-2004, 15:55
There are nations that have large and well trained armies. I'm one of them. Need to be a bit larger than 1 billion for it.

yes but this thread is really aimed for nations up to 1 billion pop wise, this is about mrk3, the original did have the "large & well trained" in it, but as these are more in a minority i left it out
Sarzonia
12-04-2004, 15:57
Note: All comments contained herein are OOC.

Nice job. Some of it seems to be common sense to me, but it's good to have something to point to for reference.
Midlonia
12-04-2004, 16:00
Note: All comments contained herein are OOC.

Nice job. Some of it seems to be common sense to me, but it's good to have something to point to for reference.

Yes but i have seen at least 30ish threads where somone has asked "how do we declare war" and how big is my army"

so i made this "common sense" thread for people to refer to :)
Midlonia
12-04-2004, 16:19
anyone know how to mod -alert something?
it's my ambition on this forum to have this stickied <(^_^)>
Hogsweat
12-04-2004, 16:24
Hmmm nice job!

You TG the mods with the URL of the topic, I think...
Falastur
12-04-2004, 16:36
anyone know how to mod -alert something?
it's my ambition on this forum to have this stickied <(^_^)>

You type

MOD ALERT

as far as I remember. Or TG a Mod/create a thread if you are desperate....Depends what it is your alerting
The Blackguard
12-04-2004, 17:10
I would like to tag on a few notes about warring in NS.

TIP:
If you must go to war with someone, please do it with a plausible reason.

If you launch an assault on someone for with no apparent purpose, you could find yourself ignored. Of course, imperialism is an acceptable motive, though you are likely to find a large number of nations breathing down on you.

TIP:
Another thing that may be of interest to new players is that they will begin their life with a soft, squishy nation. While it's fun to believe you will immediately have command over a titanic army and enough ballistic missiles to reduce the earth to ashes, not many people will agree with you. So be aware of this the next time you feel the urge to deploy your 99999999 genetically engineered super soldiers.

Watch your population. Watch your economy.

TIP:
Never, ever, declare the losses of another nation without their permission to do so.



Mid, perhaps you could issue a brief word on ignoring. I’m sure it would be a big help to the newer players.


/Hijack
12-04-2004, 17:17
anyone know how to mod -alert something?
it's my ambition on this forum to have this stickied <(^_^)> I thought so. Thats why I put in the first reply, to get my name immotalised on the first page of a sticky :D . And its a good thread of course.
Gilabad
12-04-2004, 18:02
I think this thread sucks. In reply of this crapy thread, the nation of Gilabad has launched 2 tomahawk missiles at
midlonia's capital city.

Warlord Shawhabas
Gilabad
12-04-2004, 18:02
I think this thread sucks. In reply of this crapy thread, the nation of Gilabad has launched 2 tomahawk missiles at
midlonia's capital city.

Warlord Shawhabas
Momanguise
12-04-2004, 18:08
Due this act of Wanton aggression, Momanguise invades Gilabad with an army of 15 million genetically engineered hamsters.
A Few Rich People
12-04-2004, 18:10
:evil: You forgot to mention declaring war then disappearing to let your "protectorets" do all the work for ya! :evil:
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 08:38
how pathetic Gilabad, your time will come once i have fought of this ivasion

AFRP: :P
Moozimoo
13-04-2004, 08:44
are there any tutorial RPs going on at the moment?
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 08:50
Addition 1 to the newbie crash course
Ignoring & Flaming

Now just above were three posts that reminded be about some points I had missed…

I think this thread sucks. In reply of this crapy thread, the nation of Gilabad has launched 2 tomahawk missiles at
midlonia's capital city.

Warlord Shawhabas

Ok this thread is entirely OCC, you cannot go to war or attack someone because of OOC comments, this means that the ignore cannons are unsheathed and fired into their faces.

This is usually a good war to get rid of people who are invading you with 100000000000000000000000000 warhammer 40k space marines or 1.4 billion nukes

Every nation has an ignore cannon as standard, mostly because it doesn’t exist *G*

Typically though if you get a n00bulus mornicus they will then put some form of retort back like
“You suck”
do not get into a flame war as it ruins any form of decent story and you lose a lot of self-respect & respect from other NS players, eventually you will just get ignored a lot and then the game becomes pointless.
Iuthia
13-04-2004, 08:51
http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2317520#2317520

I beleive that this guide covers pretty much everything said here and has been stickied in the Nationstates Forum... basically it's a huge network of links to all the advise you could ever need.

However, over it's nice to see a subject like this get attention once in a while. So well done as it clear took a long time.
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 08:51
are there any tutorial RPs going on at the moment?

i could probably make one, but i am trying to get this thread stickies so no-one will have to run tutorial RP's any more
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 08:56
http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2317520#2317520

I beleive that this guide covers pretty much everything said here and has been stickied in the Nationstates Forum... basically it's a huge network of links to all the advise you could ever need.

However, over it's nice to see a subject like this get attention once in a while. So well done as it clear took a long time.

well i intend to have this as more a crash course in getting the newbie's up to decent RPing standards by only haveing to read one sticky (hopefully but even now i begin to doubt it thanks Iuthia and your meddling ways :P ) because regardless of the number of stickies you still get threads saying "How can we invade other ppl's countries?"
"how do u declare war?" etc. so the idea behind this guide was to give them the ideas on how to declare war, and how to work the RPing
yes it did take some time
Hogsweat
13-04-2004, 09:16
I'd give Moozimoo a tutorial RP, if Midlonia does too... just a war that can be ignored later.
Iuthia
13-04-2004, 09:23
Well... eerr... the point is that the link up there covers a stupid amount of threads.

However I suppose we need something for international incidents despite the fact that most people seem to unfortunatly ignore stickies...

Anyways, it's not like I'm maliciously ruining your chances of a sticky by pointing out that Nanakaland has already made threads with so much information in them that I'm still impressed with it... :P

It's a good thread, I'll give you that. But I think you'll need to format it some more for it to catch the Mods eyes... which reminds me, seeing as I'm currently being flamed by some nations at every oportunity it would be fun to note that the latest and most memorable insult will be archived for future use in OOC tags...

Suppose the mods would never do it to Iuthia as he is blatenly a puppet of a mod.

Yay!
Hogsweat
13-04-2004, 09:27
Thought you went away Iuthia...
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 09:31
Thought you went away Iuthia...

now now, you should know by now no-one can get rid of Iuthia :P

and... OH MY GOD IUTHIA NOT WRITING IN HIS STUPIDLY SMALL TEXT< COULD HE HAV CHANGED HIS WAYS?
Iuthia
13-04-2004, 09:34
Thought you went away Iuthia...

For the weekend, I did say on IRC that it would only be the weekend. I'm still completely messed over...

And Mildonia - No, I will always be an ass because it's in my nature... you can quote me on that. Anyways, I usually don't bother with size 10 font in OOC threads, though I could do some if you like.
Hogsweat
13-04-2004, 09:41
Oh right the weekend... missed the chocolate then.
13-04-2004, 09:53
I'd also suggest checking out the Role Play University started by Wolfish and Stephistan. Really good information regarding character development, god-modding, logistics, etc.

http://rpu.board.dk3.com/2/index.php

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/shang-ti.jpg

“The Unnamable Is Part Of All”

OOC Information on Shang-Ti may be found HERE. (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=137829)

Click HERE for Diplomatic Exchange Information. (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=131970&highlight=)
13-04-2004, 09:58
Thought you went away Iuthia...

now now, you should know by now no-one can get rid of Iuthia :P

and... OH MY GOD IUTHIA NOT WRITING IN HIS STUPIDLY SMALL TEXT< COULD HE HAV CHANGED HIS WAYS?Unfortunatly it seems he will never stop picking holes in other peoples work.
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 10:06
Thought you went away Iuthia...

now now, you should know by now no-one can get rid of Iuthia :P

and... OH MY GOD IUTHIA NOT WRITING IN HIS STUPIDLY SMALL TEXT< COULD HE HAV CHANGED HIS WAYS?Unfortunatly it seems he will never stop picking holes in other peoples work.

another example of Flaming folks!
Abatoir
13-04-2004, 13:48
Hm. Then, of course, there are those of us who have rather large nations, but insanely small armies that are trained to insane levels.

Also, as a nation grows in size, it often increases the tech its tropps have access to, reducing the needed number of troops.

Heh, then again, some of us are so freaking difficult to get to, we don't worry about invasion.
Der Angst
13-04-2004, 14:01
Err...

Midlonia, did it ever occur to you that there are RPs that are not war RPs?

That do not even have anything to do with military equipment, a new tech development or stuff like that?

So, really... If you absolutely, definitely need to stickywhore (Things like this thread, in the case there is a definition problem), cover a bit more...

Oh, and before I forget it, perhaps you may be interesting in looking at the BAZILLION other ego inflating threads (aka stickies)... Covering this...

And other things...

Lots... of... them...

Or in other words: Rather than inflating your ego by doing this kind of threads, you may be interested in... actually... RPing...

Yes, this happens, occasionally, when the page isn´t too clogged with stickies no one reads or needs.
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 14:09
I have been Rping since day 1 of my existence, and i just got very sick of the constant "How do we invade other pplz?" threads, so i took an hour out of my time and tried to make a decent thread, because as far as I have seen there hasn't been a thread, or sitky in this forum adressing how to RP... ok?

Also this is the first and last thread i ever intend or want to be stickied ok?
Midlonia
13-04-2004, 19:59
Better
up
my
posts