User blog:Flamefang/Welcome Blog

Hey guys, and welcome to Nation Roleplay Wiki!

I'm really glad to have all of your interest, and to see so many people coming forward with ideas for their nations and the way things on this wiki can run. Since we have so many people, and the project is such an undertaking, I think it'd be best for me to lay out a few things before we proceed any further, so that you can all get ahead with creating your nations and preparing for the game's start.

First, just to remind everyone of what we're doing here, I'm going to copy and paste a section from the main page:


 * "Nation Roleplaying essentially involves the user taking on the role of a nation's governing body, often a king, but sometimes a democratically elected senate, or any other form of regime imaginable. The user creates their own nation within some guidelines established by the wiki itself, and goes to work involving themselves in an interactive world established by other users like them. With the ability to raise armies, conduct research, and manage your own resources, significant power rests in your hands; but at a cost. With great power comes great responsibility, and Nation Roleplaying is inherently, if not constantly, competitive, meaning that the power you wield can be chipped away or lost all together. Every action has consequences, from the money you spend on research, to the treaty you negotiate with your neighbor, and each decision could lead you to riches or ruin. This said, the experience we're building here is designed to appeal to everyone, with different roles to play for each user, whether you'd rather take risks or none at all."

With this in mind, I'd ask that you read the next few sections carefully:

Our Status
A lot has probably changed since you last looked at this page, or this project as a whole. Given the situation I find myself in, with very few users stepping up to assist in the construction and management of this wiki, I've decided to scale things down significantly. Thus, for the start of the game, we'll find ourselves confined to a single region with a only two races being available, and while roleplay will otherwise remain open and free, I will be providing an over-arching plot or series of events that should lead our nations to expand into other regions. For those of you who want to play a race other than those available, or found yourselves set on settling a different region of Thalassa, don't be discouraged because options remain. Although you will need to start out with a Human or Elven nation on the same continent as everyone else, once other regions become available you will be able to choose to abandon your old nation to NPC control so that you can create a new nation on the new continent with more options. While you'll lose most of the progress you made, you can still play as other races once the opportunity arises.

If you want to know more about the backstory behind everything, please follow this link, and if you have any about how roleplaying will be affected by these changes, feel free to drop by my talk page or approach me in chat.

Additionally, I've decided to permit the grouping of users; that is to say, allowing there to be multiple users controlling different characters within a nation. This is partially to encourage struggles within nations themselves, and to make things easier for some users to handle. No more than 3 users can form a group, and each must have one or more specifically assigned major characters (of 5).

Activity
As far as things go, Nation Roleplaying doesn't require too much activity. In fact, it really requires the most from both the administrators and players in the first few weeks running up to the game's launch, getting everything set up and prepared. From that point forward it would easily be possible to be active once every weekend and keep your nation running fairly smoothly. Why? Because you can schedule actions to take place on certain days of the week, which will correspond with a single season in the 7 season long Thalassan calendar. Thus:
 * 1) Monday: Early Spring
 * 2) Tuesday: Late Spring
 * 3) Wednesday: Early Summer
 * 4) Thursday: Late Summer
 * 5) Friday: Early Autumn
 * 6) Saturday: Late Autumn
 * 7) Sunday: Winter

Winter receives only one day because military actions are impossible on that day, and I assume the majority of people will be dealing with homework on a Sunday evening. Thus you could schedule an invasion to take place on Wednesday and check up on its progress some time on the weekend. However, financial information, that is to say budgets, will always be due beginning Saturday and ending Sunday night. If you cannot complete these on time for some reason, they can be done later, but at the cost of some funds. Your budget is a simple form showing how much money you received that year and how you intend to spend it the next year.

HOWEVER

While 80% of the work for most users will be before the game even starts, while they're establishing their nations, for the admins that level of work persists through most of the game. For every action you take, an admin needs to respond to it, so to say that this job could be difficult would be an understatement. Yet, at the moment, we have NO admins. Literally none besides myself, and if you're expecting Bach to pick up the slack, she's already got plenty of work to do on CHB and her other wikis. Thus, we're going to need more admins. They should be creative, enthusiastic, and dilligent; beyond that I can ask nothing other than that they step forward as soon as possible, because if we don't get them, the game literally cannot start.

If you would like to serve as an Admin, please leave a message on my talk page.

Things You Can Do
When it comes down to it, there're actually a lot of things you can do to develop your nation, and contribute to our wiki at the same time. Most of these are very simple, and consist of what I call "cumulative tasks" which is to say that if everyone contributes a little to the task, it'll be done quickly and simply without anyone having to dedicate too much time and effort. I'll describe them below

The Territory Naming Project
As you can see, our map is very large, and once it's completed will probably consist of over 500 separate territories. The map to the right is a full map of the world as we know it, with the regions colored accordingly. The map to the left concerns the southern regions specifically (colored yellow on the other map), and displays the many territories within it. These are the building blocks of your empire, the places that you conquer and make into territories and provinces, and the things that need naming specifically. Given that we're likely going to have around 500 of the things, we're going to need as many names, and so I'm turning to you guys for names. They must sound medieval/ancient and should follow general themes, like how regions within France sound noticeably French, or towns within Japan sound notably Japanese.

The Territory Description Project
Obviously it'd be impossible to give every single territory its own totally unique description while retaining a level of detail that allows roleplay there, so, we're going to attempt a middle path by having a (hopefully) long and diverse list of territory description templates. A basic template would look something like this:

''The ____ territory covers a contrasted landscape of soaring peaks and small mountain streams, next to the rolling hills and quiet forests of the highlands. It is here that the mountains meet the plains.''

Then, once nation details are worked out, these can be applied en masse to specific territories and embellished to possibly look something more like the following:

''The Solkanos territory covers a contrasted landscape of soaring peaks and small mountain streams, next to the rolling hills and quiet forests of the highlands. It is here that the Shiverpeaks meet the Copper Plains, and across them stand the crumbling fortresses of old Tekenas, designed to defend against the mountain tribes who long raided their prosperous neighbors. Now the fortifications mock their creators, those men having long left, and the tribesmen now style themselves lords and kings from the very walls they once assailed. This territory is independent and belongs to no nation.''

While some of the details may be similar, there should be enough variation between the template and the embellishment to make each territory have an easy to create but unique description. The more you guys can produce, the better.

I'll update this list as I go on.