The State of the Nation

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Peel's WIP

A good SD nation needs to be:

  • Fun for you to play.
  • Fun for the other players to play with.
  • Fun for the GM to run a game containing.

You might want to do something else with it too, like stretch yourself as a writer, but if it isn't those three things it's not a good nation for a game. If a nation seems like the coolest shit ever to you but nobody else wants to touch you, it's not a good nation for a game. To be fun to play, play with and run, a nation needs to provoke interest and inspire interaction, not just from your perspective but from the other players too.

Guidelines

  • The nation needs potential to actually do stuff. This is the most important one and a surprisingly common error even among experienced players. Doing stuff produces posts, and posts are what make an SD.
  • The nation should have a strong idea. The nation should be a unique entity in itself, not just be defined in relation to other things, like 'Imperial Germany, in Space, with Mecha'. A sack of vague themes might be a good starting point for a nation but if you're describing it entirely in terms of tropes and references, your nation isn't standing by itself as a concept.
  • The nation should gel with the setting. The nation must work as a part of the broader SD universe. If it's a sober space game, resist the urge to base your military on super robot tropes. Keep your technology (or magic) style similar to that of the background fluff and other players. If major events and ideological currents led up to the status quo at gamestart, describe how they influenced and still influence your nation today. Unless the game starts with your nation being sucked in from a separate universe to the game world, it's been sharing it with others for centuries or millennia and is not an island unto itself but a product of the world it lives in.
  • Resist the urge to snowflake. Strongly related to the above. In most game settings there will be a few things noted as rare exceptions. Inevitably, they become common exceptions once PCs grab for all the cool stuff when nationbuilding. In extreme cases, they go on to outnumber the 'normal' cases and cease to be exceptions at all. Or maybe whatever it is that makes your nation cool and unique really is unique, but doesn't fit the setting. Or maybe it does fit the setting, it's just totally superfluous and not terribly interesting to anyone else. Everyone wants their nation to be the Special One, but what really makes a nation compelling to the other players is richness of society, history, and connection with the world. Not your unique magical style or snazzy trenchcoat and katana.
  • Don't dicksize. Nobody cares how amazing your technology is, how elite your military is, or how many archmagi you have. They care about interesting flavour, how what you're doing relates to them, and how it can produce exciting stories that make both parties look cool. Too much waving stats around produces irritation, resentment and destructive arms races more than genuine development.

Development Tips

There's some things that usually help develop a nation.

  • Not everyone in a nation agrees. If they do, it's probably boring. What are the major divisions? Are they open or veiled? Lopsided or equal? How are they arranged geographically or demographically? How are they resolved, through politics, shadow games or mass violence?
  • What failings does your nation have? What is it bad at? If the answer is 'nothing really', something that is actually a good thing, or something that mainly serves to make your nation look more badass or heroic, take a step back and rework it.
  • If the nation is advanced enough to have mass media, what sort of things does it broadcast? What's in the pop culture of your nation?

Mal's Section of Cynicism and Negativity

Narrative Right to Victory

It's hard to put one's finger on what Narrative Right to Victory is exactly since it changes from story to story and each person sees it differently. You could argue that individuals see it as whatever will let their nation win in a fight, or conversely that a player is bound by their view of the NRV and compel themselves to work with it, tailoring into a being a state that both satisfies them aesthetically and will win. In a way the former view compares to the latter much like optimism to pessimism. You will find some in every game, more newbies will arrive with the former attitude, fully expecting the SD to eventually progress into conflict and the conflict ending in their favour while the latter view will be taken by veterans many of games or those who want to pretend they are veterans of many games. One will see that old mantra spelled out three or four posts in; 'I don't think this SD quite catches my interest, but good luck': 'I'd like to play something fun, but it's out of place here so I'd lose.' The irony of course is that NRV cannot ever be put to the ultimate test of War. Not ever. It is the death knell of any SD but more on that irony later.

Put simply, Narrative Right to Victory is who should win in a given conflict because that is how stories go. Upon thought, we must find this conclusion is unsurprising because Story Debates are, ultimately, stories. As one might expect however, it is very open to interpretation as there are many many kinds and tones and levels of light and dark between stories. On the other hand, it is also remarkably closed for a number of big reasons. One is that the portion of the English internet engaging in Story Debates and similar endeavours is highly culturally unified. Another is that the English internet remains dominated by the United States of America, which as far as stories go is also highly unified. Finally, storytelling as a whole is surprisingly unified because despite all the variety that is there, the vast majority of stories ever told only go a few ways and the ultimate story from which nation SDs are derived - history itself - has gone only one.

Players in the Game

Paths to Victory

  • The Pasta Chef - This type of nations emphasizes its non-aggression. The Pasta Chef is, in essence a blob of moral superiority based on innocence attached to a fictional country. They are nice guys who would never actually attack anyone nor would commit evil acts but always have a strong streak of national pride and strong opinions against those who do evil. They assume that because they will not be the aggressor in case of attack that they will have, quite literally, the moral high ground and therefore have the Narrative Right to Victory. This particular path goes well with a lot of the other defensive paths and indeed many Pasta Chefs reinforce their position with alliances and terrain.
A Pasta Chef nation doubles its Moral Terrain Bonus in all large scale military encounters.
  • The German - The German, as well as its rarer varient, the Prussian, is an ethnically based path to victory based on being of Germanic influence. The NRV basis of such a nation is that Germans are genetically good at fighting and tend to win battles and wars unless the odds are unfairly stacked against them. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of players who opt to play the German (and it is the German because the number of German slots must generally be limited for balance purposes) have little or no idea as to exactly how the German army of various ages achieved its successes nor what their respective limitations and shortcomings were. The watchwords of Germanic warfare are speed and aggression.