Haraki
08-01-2006, 21:26
My first ever guide. I'm hoping this is mostly stuff not covered by the others. If it is, please direct me to where it's covered and I'll try and adapt it to suit a different purpose in helping people out.
How To Get Started
A Guide by Haraki
This is designed to be a friendly guide for those people new to NationStates, or just to the forums themselves, to help you get on track.
Section 1: New to the forums?
The very first thing you should do is read the stickies. It’s as simple as that. There’s a number of threads stuck at the top of each forum. Read them. Especially the ones that tell you ‘READ BEFORE POSTING’. It’s a pretty big hint. Once you’ve read the stickies and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on and how to follow the rules, next up is to learn from the masters of roleplaying here on NS. One of the easiest ways to do this is to find a thread that’s currently going on and start reading it. Provided it was started by a good roleplayer in itself, that is, quite simply, the best way to learn. Find a thread with detailed posts and good characters, and read through it. You can see how it begins, how it develops, how other people step in, and so on.
If you don’t feel like finding a thread that’s currently going on, I’ve selected two from the beginning of the Archive to show you:
1) Coronation, Carnivale & Chicanery (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=358706) by Dread Lady Nathicana. This is an excellent example of a roleplay. It’s terrifyingly long, showing that good RPs can go on for a long time (One I was in once topped 150 pages), and has incredible depth in the posts. This is an excellent example of a character roleplay, or one where those involved roleplay independent people in a situation and the story evolves around those people.
2) Knootoss Leaves SATO (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=306325[/url) by Knootoss. This is an example of a national decision being played out through character roleplaying. The decision was made by roleplaying as a nation rather than people, but it was shown in a roleplaying way, through a press conference where people could ask questions and have them answered, rather than an Out of Character thread.
Once you’ve read through at least the beginning of a thread, you will see how good roleplays are started. One nation announces something happening to or in their nation, and other nations post their reactions and responses. So, for example, I might post that my leader had been kidnapped, and someone else might post that they will send secret agents to help look for my leader. Or they might announce they support the people who kidnapped them. That’s one of the beautiful things about the game of NationStates. Anything can, and will, happen.
Section 2: Developing your nation
The first thing you need to do before you even start roleplaying, but after you’ve seen examples, is to figure out what kind of nation you are. This has no relevance on what NationStates the website says about your nation. It can, but only if you want it to. Odds are you will be playing the same kind of government as your nation is if it is your first nation, because you will answer the issues the way you think they should be, and then just roleplay yourself. That’s okay. But the important thing is, you have to figure out a few things first.
1) What kind of government is your nation?
Some choices are: Communism, dictatorship, theocracy, democracy, or aristocracy.
This one is dreadfully important. If you don’t know whether or not your nation has elections, and someone starts asking you about it in a roleplay, you might get ahead of yourself and make a rushed decision that you will regret later. Knowing this in advance will make you much stronger in the beginning of your roleplay.
2) What is your view of world affairs?
Some choices are: Xenophobia, isolationism, jingoism, expansionism, or interventionism.
This one is also important. If you’ve decided to start roleplaying a terrorist attack, if someone offers to send supplies, your government would respond very differently if you were xenophobic (Hates all outsiders) as opposed to if you are jingoist (Likes to start wars for pretty much no reason).
3) Who is your leader and what are they like?
This doesn’t mean just a name and a title, like President Bob Smith of NewNation. It means what do they like to do, what do they think about, are they married, do they have kids, are they incorruptible or are they in the pocket of a larger corporation? Coming up with a name and a title is a start, but you need to know how they would act once your roleplay starts. And don’t forget, if you decide to get rid of them later, having your leader get killed is both a good way to start a roleplay and a good way to get a new leader.
4) What is your nation itself like?
What are your industries? Are you an island? A former colony? A brief history (Very brief, like ‘Was a colony, then broke away’ is enough)?
This one takes more work than the others, but is worth it in the long run. If you’re a banana republic with a struggling economy and internal strife due to political upheaval, your nation will be very different than if you are a corporate-run police state where all dissent is crushed by police teams.
That’s basically it. Once you’ve worked out a background for your nation, and therefore a setting for your roleplaying, you’re ready to get started in the wide world of NationStates, which brings us to …
Section 3: Beginning to roleplay.
The first thing you should do is find a roleplay (Maybe two) that is just starting up, and join it. This is where the background you made comes in handy. Because your nation is very different depending on how you made it, your nation will react differently to various situations. Find a roleplay and join it. Hopefully, along will come an older, more experienced nation, and help you out. Here are some tips for your beginning roleplaying:
Don’t use smilies. Nothing will write you off as a noob faster than using smilies. Yes, we all know the sniper smilie looks cool, but you don’t need to stick it on every one of your posts. Keep it to the General forum. No-one, and I mean no-one, wants to see a smilie thrown into an In Character post.
Be detailed. I used to be here back in 2003, and posts were a lot less detailed. It was fine and perfectly accepted to simply post one line of your character talking, because threads moved a lot faster. Nowadays threads move slower, and there’s more detail. Don’t respond to a roleplay with one line, unless you just want a throwaway line to let people know you exist. Instead, go into detail. How does your character feel? What are they thinking on the inside? Why is your nation doing what it’s doing? What, specifically, are you doing? Instead of saying “We will help,” say “David Reynolds paced back and forth. As President of the Republic of NewNation, he had a great burden placed on his shoulders. The nation of OtherNewNation had been hit by a hurricane, and everyone in NewNation expected the President would know what to do. He had decided to send great quantities of aid, but what? He could…” and on and on.
Develop multiple characters. This is a good way to look like you’re adding content to your posts, and also to add detail. If you have two characters, you can have a conversation. With three you could have a party. If there’s a hurricane across the sea, and you want to add a detailed post about it, have President David Reynolds get into a conversation with the Minister of Agriculture. If you happen to know that hurricanes screw up fishing for six months, have your Minister know that, and tell the President. Then you can roleplay even better because you know something that is cold, hard fact, and you can react accordingly. Because the Minister said that, maybe you can have President Reynolds grant OtherNewNation fishing rights in your territory for a year.
Join multiple types of roleplays. This is a good way to find your feet and discover what you like roleplaying most of all. Join character roleplays, join wars, join revolutions, join whatever. Don’t join everything because you’ll look like a spammer, but join a variety of types of roleplays. This way you can discover what you’re best at and what you enjoy most of all, and stick to that. For example, I discovered that I enjoy character roleplaying most of all, so that is what I focus on. Occasionally I’ll join something else, but I feel a certain sense of pride watching my characters develop. You might enjoy making statistics for tanks and blowing up other people’s armies. It’s all up to you.
Make friends. Once you’ve roleplayed with somebody, if you both had fun, odds are you’ve made a friend. In one of my first ever roleplays, back in May 2003, which went for 159 pages, I made at least a dozen friends on the site that I may never have met otherwise, and I developed who became my main characters to the point that I grew very attached to them. Your characters, or your nations, will make friends as well as you will, and then when President Reynolds gets in trouble, he can call on his friend, the Prime Minister of OtherNewNation, for help. This is also your way of bringing in a friend to help you out.
Once you’ve joined a few roleplays and gotten the hang of it, it’s time to take the plunge and start your own.
Section 4: Starting your own roleplay
This is a plunge many nations take right from the start, which leads them down a dark and foreboding path of not knowing what to do. Sure, you might have a great idea for a roleplay, but if you don’t know how to roleplay worth a damn, it won’t work out. That’s why I recommend joining a few before starting your own. It helps you refine your craft much more than you would by just jumping off the bat. This is a mistake I made. My first post ever was an announcement of a civil war, and I kind of spiralled downwards for a little while before I discovered character roleplaying. Had I joined roleplays first, before creating my own, my first one would have been much better and started me off on the right foot.
So, what are you supposed to do when you start your own roleplay? Really, anything. You’ve read the threads, you’ve roleplayed in them. You’ve seen how different people start their threads, and lead people into joining, effectively giving them a perfect set-up to step in. So now it’s your turn. Many people decide to start themselves off with a revolution, civil war, internal genocide, or a terrorist attack. I would say these are the four most likely ways to see new nations start out. And, to be fair, they usually work. Especially if you’ve made friends already in different roleplays. Because NewNation helped OtherNewNation out when they were hit by that hurricane, when NewNation gets involved in a civil war, OtherNewNation can step in to help out.
But those aren’t your only options when you want to start a roleplay. If you like character roleplaying, you could also have a crisis (Hostage taking, etc.), an election campaign, a diplomatic conference, or many other things. If you like roleplaying your nation with numbers, you could have a civil war or a rebellion. If you want to start off as an evil nation, you could have any manner of things happen: Leaked interrogation videos, internal genocide, crackdowns on youth-related crime, seizure of power by the leader … The list of what could happen goes on and on. So you see, you’re not confined by the staples. Expand your horizons.
When you actually start your thread, you should try and remember a couple things. First, your beginning post should be detailed. The kind of responses you’ll get from “My nation has been attacked by terrorists that killed twenty people. Please help,” are not the kind of response you really want. If you make it more detailed, describing the attack itself, what kind of attack it was, where it happened, what the public outcry was, who claimed responsibility for the attacks, etc. you’ll get more good replies. True, you’ll scare away people who are afraid of heavy reading, but quite honestly, that can sometimes be a good thing.
Second, you have to lead people into your thread. If you leave no openings, as in if you say “My isolationist nation hates outsiders. We were attacked by terrorists. If you help we will cut off your fingers,” you won’t get replies. If, instead, you say “My isolationist nation hates outsiders. We were attacked by terrorists. We are requesting foreign aid in rebuilding the damage, and apprehending those responsible. Our xenophobic government is willing to open up to any nation for the time being to aid our people,” you will get more replies, because you both added depth to your actions (Only because you already planned to make your nation xenophobic in Section 2) and left a huge opening for people to step in and help. This is a good thing. Open invitations to all nations get more replies than threats to those who reply.
Third, don’t be surprised if nobody responds for a little while. This is entirely normal nowadays. The forums move so quickly and most people are already involved in enough threads that they may just not read your thread. Don’t get discouraged. If you have to bring it back to the top of the forum, a simple post that says bump is enough for most people. Personally, I dislike that, so I like to throw in a bit of In Character discussion or events instead of posting an entirely out of character bump, but if you choose to do this too, be careful. I had what I hoped would be a regular roleplay turn into a story written entirely by me, just because nobody responded. But above all, if your thread is there for long enough, people will read it, and odds are somebody that reads it will reply.
Fourth and last, NationStates is a fickle place. Some days, you will get literally no views in a thread. Other days, you’ll get a hundred. Some of your threads will simply get no posts no matter how many times you knock them to the top of the forum. Don’t get discouraged. If this does happen, you can always just forget about that roleplay and start a new one. Or, alternately, you can send telegrams to your friends that you have from roleplaying earlier, and ask them to join your thread. This often works, as many times they simply won’t have seen it but will want to join it.
Also always remember that there are always older nations who are willing to help out. If you’re really having trouble with roleplaying, there are nations who have been around for a long time who are perfectly willing to help out. There were when I started and the game had only existed for 5 months, and there will be when you start out.
Section 5: Difficult concepts
There are some concepts in the game that it may be difficult to wrap your head around. The first is the difference between In Character (IC) and Out of Character (OOC). Although described fairly well by their titles, these are the difference between posts made by you as a player and posts made by you as a nation. In Character posts are those saying what your characters or your nation do, as in “President Reynolds paced back and forth in his office…” Out of Character posts are made by you and the other players, talking to each other without having your characters talking, as in “Hey OtherNewNation, did you ever see the Matrix?”
Next up is the difference between Open and Closed roleplaying. An Open roleplay is one where all nations are invited to join, and anyone can simply jump in and participate. Most roleplays, unless specified otherwise, are open. A closed roleplay is one where the participants have already been decided beforehand, and they are simply using the forums as a place to work out what their business is with each other. These are threads where it is perfectly acceptable to read them, but posting in them without an invitation or without being one of the nations to whom posting is allowed in them will get you yelled at. There are also semi-closed roleplays, where the participants have been decided but you can still join, usually by either posting in an OOC thread designated for that roleplay, posting and asking to join, or sending a telegram to the thread starter.
The third is the matter of the different earths. We’re all the way up to Earth 6 by now. The original Earth 2 thread was designed so nations that didn’t get a chance to claim areas of real-life land on Earth could claim it on Earth 2 instead. Then when Earth 2 was full, people started claiming Earth 3, and so on all the way to where we are now. Nowadays, each Earth has its own separate roleplaying community, and their threads are usually denoted by an [E2] or [E5] after the thread title. These threads are closed to all but the nations on that Earth. There are also other things like Earth 20, which is an alternate-history roleplay where people picked a nation and roleplayed that nation from the year 1900 on, leading it down far different paths from the ones taken in real life.
Next is the different time periods: There are three main time periods in which NationStates nations are set. These are Modern Tech (MT), Post-Modern Tech (PMT) and Future Tech (FT). Most nations are Modern Tech, and I suggest that is what you start out as to ease yourself into the game. Modern Tech is, quite simply, modern technology. Anything that exists today is valid. Post-Modern Tech, it is generally agreed, goes until the year 2010, and all inventions that are estimated to reach widespread use by that year are valid. Such things as coil guns, rail guns, and satellite-based orbital artillery strikes are commonplace. Future Tech is anything beyond that, including people who roleplay Star Wars or Star Trek technology. Most Future Tech nations have spaceships and colonies on other planets, including some who are based entirely on other planets. There are also a small group of nations that play Past Tech (PT), much of which also includes fantasy elements such as magic or monsters. Modern Tech is what the vast majority of all NationStates is, and what I recommend you start out at. If at a later time you want to expand into a different time period as well, you will have had plenty of time to read threads from that period to learn about what is accepted and what is not.
Section 6: How not to get ignored
Most people that join the game and start out are perfectly fine and grow up to be good, fine, quality roleplayers. However, there’s always that little minority: the noobs. These are the new nations, with five million people, that announce their 500 million man army will defeat the UN. These are the people that try to nuke every nation on earth. These are the people who get ignored. How can you stop yourself from being one of them? A few easy hints:
1) Don’t use smilies. This has been said before and will probably be said again. Don’t.
2) Spell words correctly, use proper grammar. If you don’t have a dictionary in your head, as most people don’t, then use a word processor to write up any long posts you’re going to make, and spellcheck them before you post them.
3) Don’t declare war on the world. I don’t care how powerful you think you are, you can’t win.
4) Learn your history. NationStates has been around for a long time, and for a long time stuff has been happening. Ignoring the past is not a good way to improve the future. This is not to say you need to read every thread ever, but better to spend some time to know what GDODAD was than to sound like a fool.
5) Follow the rules. This means read them first, then remember what they said and follow them. This is important. Getting banned/deleted and coming back to complain you didn’t know what you did was against the rules doesn’t work.
6) Moderators’ rulings are final. If a thread you’re in gets closed, don’t ignore it and start it over again. Respect the moderators’ actions, or you will most likely be deleted/banned.
7) Don’t ignore valid, in character actions. If someone declares war on your nation because you helped out OtherNewNation, or because of your state religion, or because President Reynolds insulted their leader, don’t claim to ignore it. It’s happened in real life, it can happen in NationStates.
8) On the other hand, don’t declare war on someone because he called your parents ugly in the General Forum. This is something that should be and will be ignored.
Hopefully you can get on track properly to get roleplaying as soon as possible. Just remember, detail is never a bad thing, know your nation, and let your characters do the talking. Have fun in NationStates.
How To Get Started
A Guide by Haraki
This is designed to be a friendly guide for those people new to NationStates, or just to the forums themselves, to help you get on track.
Section 1: New to the forums?
The very first thing you should do is read the stickies. It’s as simple as that. There’s a number of threads stuck at the top of each forum. Read them. Especially the ones that tell you ‘READ BEFORE POSTING’. It’s a pretty big hint. Once you’ve read the stickies and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on and how to follow the rules, next up is to learn from the masters of roleplaying here on NS. One of the easiest ways to do this is to find a thread that’s currently going on and start reading it. Provided it was started by a good roleplayer in itself, that is, quite simply, the best way to learn. Find a thread with detailed posts and good characters, and read through it. You can see how it begins, how it develops, how other people step in, and so on.
If you don’t feel like finding a thread that’s currently going on, I’ve selected two from the beginning of the Archive to show you:
1) Coronation, Carnivale & Chicanery (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=358706) by Dread Lady Nathicana. This is an excellent example of a roleplay. It’s terrifyingly long, showing that good RPs can go on for a long time (One I was in once topped 150 pages), and has incredible depth in the posts. This is an excellent example of a character roleplay, or one where those involved roleplay independent people in a situation and the story evolves around those people.
2) Knootoss Leaves SATO (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=306325[/url) by Knootoss. This is an example of a national decision being played out through character roleplaying. The decision was made by roleplaying as a nation rather than people, but it was shown in a roleplaying way, through a press conference where people could ask questions and have them answered, rather than an Out of Character thread.
Once you’ve read through at least the beginning of a thread, you will see how good roleplays are started. One nation announces something happening to or in their nation, and other nations post their reactions and responses. So, for example, I might post that my leader had been kidnapped, and someone else might post that they will send secret agents to help look for my leader. Or they might announce they support the people who kidnapped them. That’s one of the beautiful things about the game of NationStates. Anything can, and will, happen.
Section 2: Developing your nation
The first thing you need to do before you even start roleplaying, but after you’ve seen examples, is to figure out what kind of nation you are. This has no relevance on what NationStates the website says about your nation. It can, but only if you want it to. Odds are you will be playing the same kind of government as your nation is if it is your first nation, because you will answer the issues the way you think they should be, and then just roleplay yourself. That’s okay. But the important thing is, you have to figure out a few things first.
1) What kind of government is your nation?
Some choices are: Communism, dictatorship, theocracy, democracy, or aristocracy.
This one is dreadfully important. If you don’t know whether or not your nation has elections, and someone starts asking you about it in a roleplay, you might get ahead of yourself and make a rushed decision that you will regret later. Knowing this in advance will make you much stronger in the beginning of your roleplay.
2) What is your view of world affairs?
Some choices are: Xenophobia, isolationism, jingoism, expansionism, or interventionism.
This one is also important. If you’ve decided to start roleplaying a terrorist attack, if someone offers to send supplies, your government would respond very differently if you were xenophobic (Hates all outsiders) as opposed to if you are jingoist (Likes to start wars for pretty much no reason).
3) Who is your leader and what are they like?
This doesn’t mean just a name and a title, like President Bob Smith of NewNation. It means what do they like to do, what do they think about, are they married, do they have kids, are they incorruptible or are they in the pocket of a larger corporation? Coming up with a name and a title is a start, but you need to know how they would act once your roleplay starts. And don’t forget, if you decide to get rid of them later, having your leader get killed is both a good way to start a roleplay and a good way to get a new leader.
4) What is your nation itself like?
What are your industries? Are you an island? A former colony? A brief history (Very brief, like ‘Was a colony, then broke away’ is enough)?
This one takes more work than the others, but is worth it in the long run. If you’re a banana republic with a struggling economy and internal strife due to political upheaval, your nation will be very different than if you are a corporate-run police state where all dissent is crushed by police teams.
That’s basically it. Once you’ve worked out a background for your nation, and therefore a setting for your roleplaying, you’re ready to get started in the wide world of NationStates, which brings us to …
Section 3: Beginning to roleplay.
The first thing you should do is find a roleplay (Maybe two) that is just starting up, and join it. This is where the background you made comes in handy. Because your nation is very different depending on how you made it, your nation will react differently to various situations. Find a roleplay and join it. Hopefully, along will come an older, more experienced nation, and help you out. Here are some tips for your beginning roleplaying:
Don’t use smilies. Nothing will write you off as a noob faster than using smilies. Yes, we all know the sniper smilie looks cool, but you don’t need to stick it on every one of your posts. Keep it to the General forum. No-one, and I mean no-one, wants to see a smilie thrown into an In Character post.
Be detailed. I used to be here back in 2003, and posts were a lot less detailed. It was fine and perfectly accepted to simply post one line of your character talking, because threads moved a lot faster. Nowadays threads move slower, and there’s more detail. Don’t respond to a roleplay with one line, unless you just want a throwaway line to let people know you exist. Instead, go into detail. How does your character feel? What are they thinking on the inside? Why is your nation doing what it’s doing? What, specifically, are you doing? Instead of saying “We will help,” say “David Reynolds paced back and forth. As President of the Republic of NewNation, he had a great burden placed on his shoulders. The nation of OtherNewNation had been hit by a hurricane, and everyone in NewNation expected the President would know what to do. He had decided to send great quantities of aid, but what? He could…” and on and on.
Develop multiple characters. This is a good way to look like you’re adding content to your posts, and also to add detail. If you have two characters, you can have a conversation. With three you could have a party. If there’s a hurricane across the sea, and you want to add a detailed post about it, have President David Reynolds get into a conversation with the Minister of Agriculture. If you happen to know that hurricanes screw up fishing for six months, have your Minister know that, and tell the President. Then you can roleplay even better because you know something that is cold, hard fact, and you can react accordingly. Because the Minister said that, maybe you can have President Reynolds grant OtherNewNation fishing rights in your territory for a year.
Join multiple types of roleplays. This is a good way to find your feet and discover what you like roleplaying most of all. Join character roleplays, join wars, join revolutions, join whatever. Don’t join everything because you’ll look like a spammer, but join a variety of types of roleplays. This way you can discover what you’re best at and what you enjoy most of all, and stick to that. For example, I discovered that I enjoy character roleplaying most of all, so that is what I focus on. Occasionally I’ll join something else, but I feel a certain sense of pride watching my characters develop. You might enjoy making statistics for tanks and blowing up other people’s armies. It’s all up to you.
Make friends. Once you’ve roleplayed with somebody, if you both had fun, odds are you’ve made a friend. In one of my first ever roleplays, back in May 2003, which went for 159 pages, I made at least a dozen friends on the site that I may never have met otherwise, and I developed who became my main characters to the point that I grew very attached to them. Your characters, or your nations, will make friends as well as you will, and then when President Reynolds gets in trouble, he can call on his friend, the Prime Minister of OtherNewNation, for help. This is also your way of bringing in a friend to help you out.
Once you’ve joined a few roleplays and gotten the hang of it, it’s time to take the plunge and start your own.
Section 4: Starting your own roleplay
This is a plunge many nations take right from the start, which leads them down a dark and foreboding path of not knowing what to do. Sure, you might have a great idea for a roleplay, but if you don’t know how to roleplay worth a damn, it won’t work out. That’s why I recommend joining a few before starting your own. It helps you refine your craft much more than you would by just jumping off the bat. This is a mistake I made. My first post ever was an announcement of a civil war, and I kind of spiralled downwards for a little while before I discovered character roleplaying. Had I joined roleplays first, before creating my own, my first one would have been much better and started me off on the right foot.
So, what are you supposed to do when you start your own roleplay? Really, anything. You’ve read the threads, you’ve roleplayed in them. You’ve seen how different people start their threads, and lead people into joining, effectively giving them a perfect set-up to step in. So now it’s your turn. Many people decide to start themselves off with a revolution, civil war, internal genocide, or a terrorist attack. I would say these are the four most likely ways to see new nations start out. And, to be fair, they usually work. Especially if you’ve made friends already in different roleplays. Because NewNation helped OtherNewNation out when they were hit by that hurricane, when NewNation gets involved in a civil war, OtherNewNation can step in to help out.
But those aren’t your only options when you want to start a roleplay. If you like character roleplaying, you could also have a crisis (Hostage taking, etc.), an election campaign, a diplomatic conference, or many other things. If you like roleplaying your nation with numbers, you could have a civil war or a rebellion. If you want to start off as an evil nation, you could have any manner of things happen: Leaked interrogation videos, internal genocide, crackdowns on youth-related crime, seizure of power by the leader … The list of what could happen goes on and on. So you see, you’re not confined by the staples. Expand your horizons.
When you actually start your thread, you should try and remember a couple things. First, your beginning post should be detailed. The kind of responses you’ll get from “My nation has been attacked by terrorists that killed twenty people. Please help,” are not the kind of response you really want. If you make it more detailed, describing the attack itself, what kind of attack it was, where it happened, what the public outcry was, who claimed responsibility for the attacks, etc. you’ll get more good replies. True, you’ll scare away people who are afraid of heavy reading, but quite honestly, that can sometimes be a good thing.
Second, you have to lead people into your thread. If you leave no openings, as in if you say “My isolationist nation hates outsiders. We were attacked by terrorists. If you help we will cut off your fingers,” you won’t get replies. If, instead, you say “My isolationist nation hates outsiders. We were attacked by terrorists. We are requesting foreign aid in rebuilding the damage, and apprehending those responsible. Our xenophobic government is willing to open up to any nation for the time being to aid our people,” you will get more replies, because you both added depth to your actions (Only because you already planned to make your nation xenophobic in Section 2) and left a huge opening for people to step in and help. This is a good thing. Open invitations to all nations get more replies than threats to those who reply.
Third, don’t be surprised if nobody responds for a little while. This is entirely normal nowadays. The forums move so quickly and most people are already involved in enough threads that they may just not read your thread. Don’t get discouraged. If you have to bring it back to the top of the forum, a simple post that says bump is enough for most people. Personally, I dislike that, so I like to throw in a bit of In Character discussion or events instead of posting an entirely out of character bump, but if you choose to do this too, be careful. I had what I hoped would be a regular roleplay turn into a story written entirely by me, just because nobody responded. But above all, if your thread is there for long enough, people will read it, and odds are somebody that reads it will reply.
Fourth and last, NationStates is a fickle place. Some days, you will get literally no views in a thread. Other days, you’ll get a hundred. Some of your threads will simply get no posts no matter how many times you knock them to the top of the forum. Don’t get discouraged. If this does happen, you can always just forget about that roleplay and start a new one. Or, alternately, you can send telegrams to your friends that you have from roleplaying earlier, and ask them to join your thread. This often works, as many times they simply won’t have seen it but will want to join it.
Also always remember that there are always older nations who are willing to help out. If you’re really having trouble with roleplaying, there are nations who have been around for a long time who are perfectly willing to help out. There were when I started and the game had only existed for 5 months, and there will be when you start out.
Section 5: Difficult concepts
There are some concepts in the game that it may be difficult to wrap your head around. The first is the difference between In Character (IC) and Out of Character (OOC). Although described fairly well by their titles, these are the difference between posts made by you as a player and posts made by you as a nation. In Character posts are those saying what your characters or your nation do, as in “President Reynolds paced back and forth in his office…” Out of Character posts are made by you and the other players, talking to each other without having your characters talking, as in “Hey OtherNewNation, did you ever see the Matrix?”
Next up is the difference between Open and Closed roleplaying. An Open roleplay is one where all nations are invited to join, and anyone can simply jump in and participate. Most roleplays, unless specified otherwise, are open. A closed roleplay is one where the participants have already been decided beforehand, and they are simply using the forums as a place to work out what their business is with each other. These are threads where it is perfectly acceptable to read them, but posting in them without an invitation or without being one of the nations to whom posting is allowed in them will get you yelled at. There are also semi-closed roleplays, where the participants have been decided but you can still join, usually by either posting in an OOC thread designated for that roleplay, posting and asking to join, or sending a telegram to the thread starter.
The third is the matter of the different earths. We’re all the way up to Earth 6 by now. The original Earth 2 thread was designed so nations that didn’t get a chance to claim areas of real-life land on Earth could claim it on Earth 2 instead. Then when Earth 2 was full, people started claiming Earth 3, and so on all the way to where we are now. Nowadays, each Earth has its own separate roleplaying community, and their threads are usually denoted by an [E2] or [E5] after the thread title. These threads are closed to all but the nations on that Earth. There are also other things like Earth 20, which is an alternate-history roleplay where people picked a nation and roleplayed that nation from the year 1900 on, leading it down far different paths from the ones taken in real life.
Next is the different time periods: There are three main time periods in which NationStates nations are set. These are Modern Tech (MT), Post-Modern Tech (PMT) and Future Tech (FT). Most nations are Modern Tech, and I suggest that is what you start out as to ease yourself into the game. Modern Tech is, quite simply, modern technology. Anything that exists today is valid. Post-Modern Tech, it is generally agreed, goes until the year 2010, and all inventions that are estimated to reach widespread use by that year are valid. Such things as coil guns, rail guns, and satellite-based orbital artillery strikes are commonplace. Future Tech is anything beyond that, including people who roleplay Star Wars or Star Trek technology. Most Future Tech nations have spaceships and colonies on other planets, including some who are based entirely on other planets. There are also a small group of nations that play Past Tech (PT), much of which also includes fantasy elements such as magic or monsters. Modern Tech is what the vast majority of all NationStates is, and what I recommend you start out at. If at a later time you want to expand into a different time period as well, you will have had plenty of time to read threads from that period to learn about what is accepted and what is not.
Section 6: How not to get ignored
Most people that join the game and start out are perfectly fine and grow up to be good, fine, quality roleplayers. However, there’s always that little minority: the noobs. These are the new nations, with five million people, that announce their 500 million man army will defeat the UN. These are the people that try to nuke every nation on earth. These are the people who get ignored. How can you stop yourself from being one of them? A few easy hints:
1) Don’t use smilies. This has been said before and will probably be said again. Don’t.
2) Spell words correctly, use proper grammar. If you don’t have a dictionary in your head, as most people don’t, then use a word processor to write up any long posts you’re going to make, and spellcheck them before you post them.
3) Don’t declare war on the world. I don’t care how powerful you think you are, you can’t win.
4) Learn your history. NationStates has been around for a long time, and for a long time stuff has been happening. Ignoring the past is not a good way to improve the future. This is not to say you need to read every thread ever, but better to spend some time to know what GDODAD was than to sound like a fool.
5) Follow the rules. This means read them first, then remember what they said and follow them. This is important. Getting banned/deleted and coming back to complain you didn’t know what you did was against the rules doesn’t work.
6) Moderators’ rulings are final. If a thread you’re in gets closed, don’t ignore it and start it over again. Respect the moderators’ actions, or you will most likely be deleted/banned.
7) Don’t ignore valid, in character actions. If someone declares war on your nation because you helped out OtherNewNation, or because of your state religion, or because President Reynolds insulted their leader, don’t claim to ignore it. It’s happened in real life, it can happen in NationStates.
8) On the other hand, don’t declare war on someone because he called your parents ugly in the General Forum. This is something that should be and will be ignored.
Hopefully you can get on track properly to get roleplaying as soon as possible. Just remember, detail is never a bad thing, know your nation, and let your characters do the talking. Have fun in NationStates.