Nations RP Guidelines

[Flourish]

This is a modified version of WrongEnd's original Nations thread. This thread will be updated as we run more Nations rounds and learn what works and what doesn't! Feel free to post your suggestions and experiences. 

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Pack your bags and suspend your disbelief as we travel to a potentially alternate universe of hilarious bureaucracy and apparently very competent captains. Help your department establish its own sovereignty and autonomy! 

This is not an excuse to go on a murderous rampage, and regular RP rules still apply. 

Goals

• The goal of the UN and the peacekeepers is to maintain peace and order.
  
• The goal of the nations is to grow their members and amass additional territory.
  

UN

• The UN is organized and led by the Captain, henceforth called the UN leader.
  
• The UN leader is responsible for holding the initial summit to decide the legitimate nations, and can also hold summits for anything whenever.
  
• To declare an official war, nations must go through the UN. The UN can set restrictions for this war before officially announcing it (i.e. science cannot use bombs), and if there is a battle between two nations before war is officially declared, peacekeepers can get involved and stop the aggressors. Peacekeepers can also get involved if the restrictions are broken.
  

Peacekeepers

• The peacekeepers are organized and led by the Head of Security, henceforth called the UN security chief.
  
• Peacekeepers are responsible for enforcing the conditions of treaties, wars, and surrenders.
  
• Peacekeepers should treat all nations fairly and equally unless they have violated the terms or conditions of any official agreements (e.g. treaties, wars, surrenders) or the guidelines listed here.
  

Nations

• There are five nations by default; medical, research, civilian, and engineering (including QM), and silicons.
  
• Silicons, like all other players, must follow the Nations RP guidelines (and the RP rules).
  
• Each nation must have their head representative attend the initial UN summit. The head representative is chosen in advance and is considered the de facto leader of that nation.
  
• Rogue and splinter nations are not allowed.
  
• Nations can elect new head representatives and admit and expel members through popular vote. The head representative vote must take place at a UN summit in order to become official. 
  
• If you are neither part of the UN nor a peacekeeper, you must be part of a nation. If you would like to switch nations, you must attend a UN summit and receive permission to do so. If you have been expelled, you must attend a UN summit and find a new nation to join. If you cannot find a new nation to join, you will be brigged.
  
• Nations can harm other nations without an official war declaration, but this is considered sabotage. If you are caught red-handed, the peacekeepers can get involved.
  
• Treaties can happen at any time. They must be signed by both nation's representatives and presented to the UN. It is up to the peacekeepers to enforce these.
  
• WMDs are considered war crimes, and will get you arrested as a war criminal by the peacekeepers. WMDs are designated as: TTVs, canbombs, nukes, gas canister releases (e.g. sleeping gas, plasma), artifact bombs, and dangerous chemical smoke or foam. Pipebombs, single tank bombs, and dangerous chemicals in non-smoke or foam form are okay for the time being. 
  
• In a war, nations can present a conditional or unconditional surrender to the enemy nation. If the enemy nation accepts and surrenders, the conditions are put into place and enforced by the UN. Unconditional surrenders allow you to demand whatever you want out of the enemy nation.
  

Merchants

• Traveling traders will intermittently visit the station. 
  
• Rather than just accepting credits, traders will operate on a barter system. Each trader has a different personality and different things they’re interested in.
  
• Buy anything you want. Seriously. Guns, medkits, botany equipment, bees, borg upgrades, strategic wasp drops, you name it.
  

[zjdtmkhzt]

This sounds hilarious and I can't wait to see it.

The WMD clause should maybe include things like nuclear warheads (though this would be difficult without a syndie scanner on most maps) and possibly some kinds of artifact bombs?

Also, maybe instead of "toxin bombs", specify TTVs and canbombs, seeing as single tank bombs are usually smaller, I think they could be ok, maybe?
And engineering can also make TTVs, so calling them "toxin bombs" may be misleading.

[Flourish]

The WMD clause should maybe include things like nuclear warheads (though this would be difficult without a syndie scanner on most maps) and possibly some kinds of artifact bombs?

Also, maybe instead of "toxin bombs", specify TTVs and canbombs, seeing as single tank bombs are usually smaller, I think they could be ok, maybe?
And engineering can also make TTVs, so calling them "toxin bombs" may be misleading.

Good points, thanks! Edited in.

[Yellow]

MUN kids are jumping for joy rn

[Drewmajor11]

Will this be more common now or just a one-off? I can't play cause I gotta work and I'd like to participate in an event like this.

[Stonepillar]

I really, really think the Shadow Cabal should be an actual thing. Like traitors in the UN council or something. They try to turn the balance of power in one way or the other. It was really fun being the shadow cabal/secret police sort of thing.

Otherwise, super fun!

[Katzen]

We need to put all the stores on the station or directly connected otherwise very few players will visit.

Pricing is difficult as some departments like cargo will have huge stacks of cash.

[SkeletonDoot]

Loved it, the traders were very fun, so I think the traders are a definite stay.

[Wrench-1]

Very fun event round, and I really enjoyed it, and the traders were definitely a very fun and unique part of the event, so keep them, but I suppose it should be clearer that you can also sell stuff to the traders for cash. I'm unsure if anyone besides me tried to sell anything. Balancing money is a bit of an issue due to Cargo and Mining, meaning Engineering will ALWAYS be the richest nation no matter what, but making it clearer to other departments that you can sell stuff to the traders should give everyone the advantage to be self-sufficient.

[Flourish]

Two pretty significant issues that were brought up during the round were (1) the ambiguity around silicons and how people treat them (2) the ambiguity around rogue/splinter nations and in-fighting.

For the former, I'm open to any suggestions for how to make silicon players' experiences better. Do you think it'd be good if they were essentially free agents and could work with any nation (and so don't necessarily have to listen to the UN), or would we prefer something more like a silicon nation?

For the latter, personally, I like starting out with clearly defined nations, because I think being forced to work with your coworkers gets us a lot of cool RP and cooperation. With lone wolf type stuff, or rogue nations, I think it's a lot easier to kinda lose track of everyone else and devolve into chaos. But I'm not sure how exactly to draw these boundaries or enforce this. Thoughts?

Will this be more common now or just a one-off? I can't play cause I gotta work and I'd like to participate in an event like this.

Definitely going to happen more than once. Not sure exactly when though! Personally I run events whenever I feel like it, so there won't be any set schedule (though I will try to schedule them in advance through the Discord Events feature).

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Oh and another thing - there were no sign-ups for any roles for this event, but do you think it'd be good to have them for certain positions? Mainly just thinking about Captain, since they're the UN leader, and it can be quite stressful. Especially because not everyone playing will be aware of the event, and it's possible they could roll it.

[Cal]

Two pretty significant issues that were brought up during the round were (1) the ambiguity around silicons and how people treat them (2) the ambiguity around rogue/splinter nations and in-fighting.

Yeah. Maybe a rule for no splinter nations because that was unnecessarily complicated.  Rogue nations are dumb and almost clique-y in my opinion.

Borgs were treated pretty garbagey, I never want to be referred to as property again. I am totally fine being a UN representative, but people completely ignored me as such and associated me with medical. On top of that, I was still at the mercy OF Medical.

Oh and another thing - there were no sign-ups for any roles for this event, but do you think it'd be good to have them for certain positions? Mainly just thinking about Captain, since they're the UN leader, and it can be quite stressful. Especially because not everyone playing will be aware of the event, and it's possible they could roll it.

Yes. Please. I want people that WANT to roleplay and start this well. I don't want memelords calling things ___pilled, or at least to come up with names a tad more creative than ___gonia.


I suggest popping up the rules for all players before holding events, with people being told to pay attention to the "Play a believable character" rule and "Let qualified people do things" first as we had a lot of people barging into areas to build stuff and roboticists totally ignoring me (Except one, who went out of their way to do everything while the other two berated or ignored us.)

EDIT: I do want to point out it was still a great event, and y'all did the absolute best you could while the rules aren't exactly hashed out yet to perfect this being an rp regular event

[Bartimeus]

I was not there for the event, so all i have to go off of is the things said in this thread.
I am deeply intrigued by this concept, and the idea of nations having to send representatives to determine what goes and what needs to change is something that truly fits RP. However with four nations, the peacekeepers, the un and the merchants, i think there might be enough camps to choose from, which means adding the rogue nations on top of it all might be a bit overcomplicated.
I like the idea of silicons being "UN assets", and therefore free to help anyone as they see fit. If a nation treats a cyborg badly and they decide to help another nation, that's on them.
Merchants is a wonderful idea, but considering its a group of nations there is opportunities for some other possible newcomers! Diplomats from another system, embassies, tourists, maybe a giant threat from outside that needs the attention of several nations at once which would push them to work together to outcome the challenges?

On the topic of a whitelist for command jobs: I think its for the best, as it would get the people who truly want to lead and RP out the democratic process to come forward. Giving a short 24 hour or so warning with a discord event and a chance at a random pick from the list of appliants sounds the most reasonable.

One more thing that makes a nation's power is usually goods and money. Each station can produce its own goods, but as Wrench pointed out engineering is made to make money and will always come out on top. I see two possible solution; Either introduce a new special currency that would only be for this event and would be distributed in a more "fair" way. Or promote inter-national trading of goods to induce a cash flow between people. We could have people from other nations paying to recieve medical treatment or to drink at the bar. Or the representatives of other nations would have to pay engineering a tax for power, for instance.

[Waffleloffle]

I think establishing some more concrete prompts or directives for each nation at the beginning of a round could help drive RP, or at least make the first hour or so feel less empty. I'm not sure if this is something a lot of people experienced but I ended up rolling Scientist and I was pretty lost on what to do beyond Make Weapons as per the RD's commands. introducing some driving forces with more detail than a vague "it's us vs them" could really help people avoid low-RP violence and directionless chaos, which could really improve the overall flow of a round!

[Telareti]

It was a really fun event, the different nations made it really interesting and having the UN and peacekeepers watching over all nations making sure no one breaks any UN rules is great!, my favourite part is the diplomacy, going round selling weapons and medical chems to two nations at war, trying to make fair deals or even scam the other nations and deceive them and lastly the alliances and wars between different nations, well you have the UN keeping their eyes on everyone was really fun. The different Traders and their shops also really added so much to the event it made it feel a lot more alive and also was great RP!

in terms of the things that could use improvements I think the only main things is how the borgs were treated and some confusion around splinter factions, I think for the confusion part maybe some added context to that can be in the nation section to help understand and know how to respond encase it happens and in terms of how borgs are treated maybe a added rule to make sure people don't pick on and treat them badly.

other than that for sign up roles I think the only one who would really need that is the captain, since they will be needed for a lot of things in this mode and have to handle a lot and so having someone who knows what's going on doing captain can help things run smoother and also increase the RP I feel

[Ikea]

Feel like the departments could go with better theming, like make engineering Xiang Giesel, civillian could be discount dans, etc.