Nation RPs: How do they work?

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SamIO

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More and more, I'm noticing that I favor roleplays with a large scope and wide timespan, something which I hadn't really realized until the other day. Nation roleplays are surprisingly undocumented despite how popular they seem to be, and so I find myself at a loss as to how they flow. My assumption would be that posts are written from the natural human perspective of a single individual, but beyond that I really don't even know where to begin.

Any advice? :o
 
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A nation role-play. Hm...

Maybe from the perspective of a powerful individual, specifically the ruler of the nation, allowing you to manipulate all the workings of the nation at once in a relatively reasonable way.

On the other hand, if you mean universe role-playing, then you basically just write the background of this entire universe on a large scale. Lots of people, lots of lore, etc.
 
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I have personally been involved in many nation role plays. The basic idea is that you control a nation's political leadership, the king if it's a monarchy, the Heads of state and government and legislature of a democracy or republic, a dictator of a dictatorship, etc. You also can get involved with military leaders of your nation if the RP has militaristic aspects.

Many nation roleplays have it to where you write all of this from the Head of State and/or Head of Government's point of view. Typically this is the same person, except in constitutional monarchies.

Ilium is not a nation role play, as each player does not focus on the entire workings of a nation.
 
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From my experiences in nation roleplays, the difference between character roleplays and nation roleplays is that players not only control a single character in power, but potentially the entire nation (or faction or civilization, depending on the scale). How they do this is generally up to the player or the GM, but it is similar to how different players prefer first person or third person perspectives on standard character roleplays.

Often, players use the leading and important (or just interesting) figures of their nation as their "perspective" in a nation roleplay. Everything the leading figure knows, the players write (and in turn the reader knows). This usually gives character and personality to the nation's politics and insight to its goals, it explains "why" the nation is doing what it is doing.

Of course, there's many different ways to play as a nation. I've witnessed and players play nations from a larger, bird's eye view of the nation, forgoing the "why" and focusing on what exactly the nation is doing and how. Sometimes I've also seen experimental perspectives, such as reports and news articles detailing (with propaganda) why their nation is doing a particular thing, or a fictional journalist getting first-hand accounts on the personal opinions of important figures, such as leaders, generals, politicians, etc.

There's a myriad of ways to play nations and though some are more accepted than others, none are incorrect. The most important rule is that the players are controlling nations, not just characters. Other than that, I can only suggest that the GM indicate to the players their preferred way to play a nation.
 
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I have a large amount of experience with nation roleplays, I'd like to think, though all of the ones I participated in were on another site. I was a part of the "NRP Regulars," or, forum users who knew each other quite well and were almost always in one nation roleplay or another. We were addicted to them, to say the least, and through all the fun, hardships, lessons, failures, and successes, we managed to compile quite a bit of information on the ins and outs, do and don'ts of nation roleplays. Ultimately nation roleplays are arduous and difficult to maintain, moreso for the GM if they intend to regulate things heavily.

Nation roleplays, at least to me, involve creating a unique and personal nation of any size or content (at the discretion of the setting and rules), and fine-tuning its aspects in as many ways as possible. Culture, population, military, government, economy, etc. All of it being governed by you, the invisible hand that manipulates this nation. You can play as many different individuals as you want, so long as they belong to the nation you created. The leader(s), a soldier, even a farmer if you really want to play one.

By controlling these variety of individuals (as well a general "set" of people, for example a military at large or a group of politicians), you can dictate the course of the nation's actions; going to war, making peace, engaging in trade, sharing culture, etc. To me nation roleplays afford the greatest variety of player interactions you could possible imagine, all in one roleplay.

But of course, they don't come without issues. But that's for another discussion.
 
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