SDNW5 Preliminary Discussion Thread

[Simon_Jester]

You sure you don't want to make a major nation of it? I have the image of a glorious and vast interstellar empire, hexagonoid hive clusters reaching into the stratosphere...

Well. Your call.

[Vanas]

I'm not sure I'll have the time for a major nation, to be honest. Unless Omega wants to poke me continually about it.

[OmegaChief]

I'd be more then happy to keep poking you.

Then we can have Space Nicolas Cage be your mortal enemy.

[Vanas]

Oh, fine, then. Make it major. An Entire Great and Bountiful Empire of Goddamn Bees.

[Simon_Jester]

OK, updated die roll list. Did I forgot anyone?


Akhlut:
Hegemony of the Gray Kritarchy
5

Darkevilme:
Chamarran Empire
10

Esquire:
Hellenic Confederacy
9

FaxModem1
Empire of Tweed
6 Micronation- it was all just a misunderstanding.

Feralgnoll
Braxian Collective
6

Force Lord:
Centrality
7

KhorneFlakes
Screworlders
6

OmegaChief:
Capellan Authority
4

Panzersharkcat:
Bastian Star Empire
10

Scottish Ninja
Volscian Confederacy
12

Shinn Langley Soryu
Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya?
10

Simon_Jester:
Technocracy of Umeria
7

Vanas:
An Entire Great and Bountiful Empire of Goddamn Bees
6

White Haven:
League of Thought
8

[Panzersharkcat]

Sorry about that, then. Got a whee bit overexcited.

@Esquire: Sure. And goat cheese is like marijuana to Bastians. That would be, I assume, only one of many products sent to the Bastian Empire. I assume some of things going your way would be Gauss carbines, among a whole lot of weapons, and lots of medical tech. The Neithian's hat is biotech and appropriately have pretty advanced medical technology.

[Tanasinn]

You can put me down as the Federal Union of Independent Worlds. This state will be mostly drawn from the Humanist Union from SDNW4, albiet with some changing of drapes and hopefully more activity. Tl;dr for new people: stodgy uptight space-Leninists.

[Demiurgas]

OK, updated die roll list. Did I forgot anyone?


Akhlut:
Hegemony of the Gray Kritarchy
5

Darkevilme:
Chamarran Empire
10

Esquire:
Hellenic Confederacy
9

FaxModem1
Empire of Tweed
6 Micronation- it was all just a misunderstanding.

Feralgnoll
Braxian Collective
6

Force Lord:
Centrality
7

KhorneFlakes
Screworlders
6

OmegaChief:
Capellan Authority
4

Panzersharkcat:
Bastian Star Empire
10

Scottish Ninja
Volscian Confederacy
12

Shinn Langley Soryu
Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya?
10

Simon_Jester:
Technocracy of Umeria
7

Vanas:
An Entire Great and Bountiful Empire of Goddamn Bees
6

White Haven:
League of Thought
8

The Eagle Worlds
The Eagle Worlds is a collection of planets and planetoids colonizable outside of their habitable planets which boasts inhabitants with powerful Psychokinetic and sometimes magical powers. They possess zombie soldiers, in addition to their psychokinetic power soldiers. The country is known as the Eagle Worlds because they have a democratic Republic as their means of government. President Ness has been succesfuly declared President in every election. The Science Establishment has very competent ministers such as Jeff, and the Apple Kid, the military is ran by Poo, and Paula runs the Psychokinetic establishment.

The Eagle Worlds are :
Onett
Twoson
Threed
FourZone
Summers
Winters
Scaraba
Tenda
Dalaam

Religion:
The Eagle Worlds is Catholic, various Protestant denominations, as well as Buddhist and Coptic Christian. It's a vast spiritual culture. Although religion is important to the people inside the culture, freedom of religion is a very important value to Eagle Land. This allows for athiests and deists, as well as Agnostics and all sorts of beliefs to flourish.

Economy
Eagle Land is capitalist. Let me put it this way. "There's minimal but still existant regulation on the free market." The government doesn't own many businesses

Government:
The Judicial, the Legislative and Executive Branches are modeled exactly after the United States'es in the 1970's.

Culture: Other
Scaraba, other than some of it's Corporate employees, lives traditional lives similar to Bedouins or modern Egyptians.
Onett acts as the Washington DC area. It also acts as the military headquarters.
Twoson possesses the head quarters of the Psychokinetic School, and trains Psychokinetic soldiers for the army.
Threed is the native Zombie homeland. (Through Manifest Destiny, Eagle Land once killed most of the Zombies off of their lands, and regulated them to Reservations.)
FourZone (A giant city planet)
Summers (The Resort planet)
Winters (The scientific capital and research center)
Tenda (Tenda breed naturally in large numbers and therefore make good "willing" laborers and soldiers. They can be trained to overcome their natural shyness)
Dalaam (Training ground of Twoson's Psychokinetics, also the homeland of the Buddhist traditions in Eagle Worlds. Dalaamites are traditionally proficiant in melee both armed and unarmed. The prevalence of mountains make Dalaam a hugely resource rich planet)

Races:
Tenda : Small, green lizard like people.
Human
Zombie : Intelligent zombies. Long regarded as one of the Eagle World's most discriminated against minorities.
Monkeyfolk
Mr. Saturns (Walking, hairless heads with two legs and a berry like antenna)

[Demiurgas]

OK, updated die roll list. Did I forgot anyone?


Akhlut:
Hegemony of the Gray Kritarchy
5

Darkevilme:
Chamarran Empire
10

Esquire:
Hellenic Confederacy
9

FaxModem1
Empire of Tweed
6 Micronation- it was all just a misunderstanding.

Feralgnoll
Braxian Collective
6

Force Lord:
Centrality
7

KhorneFlakes
Screworlders
6

OmegaChief:
Capellan Authority
4

Panzersharkcat:
Bastian Star Empire
10

Scottish Ninja
Volscian Confederacy
12

Shinn Langley Soryu
Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya?
10

Simon_Jester:
Technocracy of Umeria
7

Vanas:
An Entire Great and Bountiful Empire of Goddamn Bees
6

White Haven:
League of Thought
8

The Eagle Worlds
The Eagle Worlds is a collection of planets and planetoids colonizable outside of their habitable planets which boasts inhabitants with powerful Psychokinetic and sometimes magical powers. They possess zombie soldiers, in addition to their psychokinetic power soldiers. The country is known as the Eagle Worlds because they have a democratic Republic as their means of government. President Ness has been succesfuly declared President in every election. The Science Establishment has very competent ministers such as Jeff, and the Apple Kid, the military is ran by Poo, and Paula runs the Psychokinetic establishment.

The Eagle Worlds are :
Onett
Twoson
Threed
FourZone
Summers
Winters
Scaraba
Dalaam

Religion:
The Eagle Worlds is Catholic, various Protestant denominations, as well as Buddhist and Coptic Christian. It's a vast spiritual culture. Although religion is important to the people inside the culture, freedom of religion is a very important value to Eagle Land. This allows for athiests and deists, as well as Agnostics and all sorts of beliefs to flourish.

Economy
Eagle Land is capitalist.

Government:
The Judicial, the Legislative and Executive Branches are modeled exactly after the United States'es.

Races:
Human
Monkeyfolk
Mr. Saturns (Walking, hairless heads with two legs and a berry like antenna)

[Imperial528]

Hello everyone. I've been interested in joining SDNW for a while, although SDNW4 seemed to have a rather high entry barrier, mostly due to it already being in progress.

Now that a 5th one is being started, I have to say that I would like to join. Although I would have to ask a few questions first:
1. What is the general expected activity level? I would expect it's higher than I am used to and more consistent than I am used to because you guys have more players. (One RP I play atm has a general activity level of a few posts per month, just to give some perspective)
2. Should I post a description/concept of my faction in this thread? And is there any sort of review process?
3. This is more of a statement that builds on the last question: As you can probably tell, I'm not really familiar with the way things are done around here, so it is very possible that I'll need help understanding some of the rules (written and unwritten), and the general mechanics.

[Simon_Jester]

Demiurgas... I will be honest, I don't think you've put much thought into that nation description. It sounds suspiciously like the sort of thing I'd have put together when I was about twelve years old: "SPACE AMERICA! With monkeys! And I'll just copy-and-paste the US government and CAPITALISM into it!"

Why the US legislative system, with all its weird quirks and broken features? Why not a parliamentary system? Why not, for that matter, an outright corporate oligarchy, which some would argue the US already is de facto if not in theory? And when you say that Eagleland is "capitalist," what kind of capitalism? There are a truly huge number of different takes on what it means to be a 'capitalist.' Andrew Carnegie, Bernie Madoff, the house of Rothschild, Bill Gates, J.P. Morgan, Alfred Krupp were all capitalists, but there were huge differences among those men about what they did, how they acted, and how they related to the larger society.

Do you think you can come up with something a bit more... developed? I would hesitate to write you into the game if that's all you've got.

Hello everyone. I've been interested in joining SDNW for a while, although SDNW4 seemed to have a rather high entry barrier, mostly due to it already being in progress.

Now that a 5th one is being started, I have to say that I would like to join. Although I would have to ask a few questions first:
1. What is the general expected activity level? I would expect it's higher than I am used to and more consistent than I am used to because you guys have more players. (One RP I play atm has a general activity level of a few posts per month, just to give some perspective)

Posting once a week will definitely establish you as "participating," and I don't think anyone would have a right to criticize you on that basis. Once every two weeks is a little sparse, but we had decent people in SDNW4 that I'm glad were in the game who only posted about that often on average. Once a month is probably a bit too rare unless your posts are exceptionally hilarious and/or otherwise interesting.

The OOC threads were more active, and it sure looks like that trend will continue, but participating in OOC is not mandatory and depends more on how you feel than anything else.

2. Should I post a description/concept of my faction in this thread? And is there any sort of review process?

You may, or you may wait until later when I put up a more formal nation description thread. There is a review process, but it's sort of informal- it's not so much "appease this one person" unless you have a specific rule-bending thing you want to do. It's more "check to make sure it makes sense and you're willing to go through with it." The burden of being a grownup is on you, not on the mod(s), as it were.

3. This is more of a statement that builds on the last question: As you can probably tell, I'm not really familiar with the way things are done around here, so it is very possible that I'll need help understanding some of the rules (written and unwritten), and the general mechanics.

Well, so far all that's up is the nation creation rules. I'll give you a roll for NCPs when you give me a name. Make sure you read the long form of the rules sections up so far, and you should be all right. Please try to remember to ask questions *before* making assumptions about what the answers will be.

[Demiurgas]

Why the US legislative system, with all its weird quirks and broken features? Why not a parliamentary system? Why not, for that matter, an outright corporate oligarchy, which some would argue the US already is de facto if not in theory? And when you say that Eagleland is "capitalist," what kind of capitalism? There are a truly huge number of different takes on what it means to be a 'capitalist.' Andrew Carnegie, Bernie Madoff, the house of Rothschild, Bill Gates, J.P. Morgan, Alfred Krupp were all capitalists, but there were huge differences among those men about what they did, how they acted, and how they related to the larger society.

Do you think you can come up with something a bit more... developed? I would hesitate to write you into the game if that's all you've got.

Because Eagle Land is a parody of America from the Mother video game series.
Let me put it this way. "There's minimal but still existant regulation on the free market." The government doesn't own many businesses. Eagle Land is literally Japan's comic view of America in Earthbound. (Mother 2)
Hence, names like Onett, Twoson, and Threed. But I will still make improvements if you want me too.

[Simon_Jester]

OK. Let me think. I may have been unduly influenced by the way you presented the game.

If there's genuine parody going on, then that's at least something potentially interesting. So my next question is, if you're going to hew that closely to a video game setting in a parodic space-America... why?

The unpleasant possibility is that the answer is "because I thought it would be funny to have Eagleland from Earthbound." The problem there is that "Eagleland from Earthbound" isn't an idea for a story or an interesting set of characters- that comes from how the nation and its people interact with other parts of their surroundings. The only story I know is in Earthbound is the game Earthbound itself, but if that's what you want, if your goal is to write a video game fanfic, you should probably take it somewhere else.

In general, just copying a video game country into a nation-RPG like this doesn't work very well, unless you can provide the imagination and plotting to work out how the video game country would behave in a different environment. A very different environment, since this is interstellar in scale and Earthbound is all, well, on Earth.

It's like, if my idea was to write "Hyrule in SPACE!" because I wanted to write a Link fanfic, I'd run into huge problems. For one, there's nothing about the Zelda games that actually works well when moved into outer space; it's a sword-swinging fantasy setting. For another, where am I going to get my 'adventures of Link' or whatever? I can't very well expect someone else to provide me with Zelda dungeons for my own character to overcome, but if I do all the writing and creation myself, I'm not engaged in the game with others.

And what about everything else that's going on? Am I just going to have my country sit quietly in a corner while I write my fanfic? Or am I going to have it moving out, interacting with others, trading and negotiating and fighting and sending people off to do interesting things in interesting places?

A country that exists only, or mainly, as an excuse to retell stories about known characters from a video game is not a good thing. There needs to be plenty of room for you to create your own stuff, and actually have it be good or interesting. And... I'm not seeing many signs of that from what you've said so far, and from looking at your posts on other threads.

So, I'm not just looking for a more detailed writeup of the same idea. I'm asking a more in-depth question: Are there kinds of story you're aiming to tell, some direction you want things to go? What will Eagleland do, that will draw people's interest and/or amuse them? Why will we all be better off for your being in the game?

[Akhlut]

How do hou plan to differentiate it from, say, a possible reappearance of Murca, fuck yeah? Eagleland has some possibilities, as long as you can separate it from Earthbound sufficiently. For instance, do the zombies have a civil rights movement associrted with them? Does the government have problems with businesses that flout the law due to a lack of regulation? Etc.

[Demiurgas]

How do hou plan to differentiate it from, say, a possible reappearance of Murca, fuck yeah? Eagleland has some possibilities, as long as you can separate it from Earthbound sufficiently. For instance, do the zombies have a civil rights movement associrted with them? Does the government have problems with businesses that flout the law due to a lack of regulation? Etc.

Okay, just a second.

So, I'm not just looking for a more detailed writeup of the same idea. I'm asking a more in-depth question: Are there kinds of story you're aiming to tell, some direction you want things to go? What will Eagleland do, that will draw people's interest and/or amuse them? Why will we all be better off for your being in the game?

It's like, I'm thinking of having Eagle Land be a glorified benevolent Umbrella Corporation/Reforming Democracy with a FDR like President/Nes, and competent figures in the upper echelons of the government moving the country towards an ever changing society. This will effect it's neighbors. For example, what happens when Zombie neighbors move in to other countries as refugees. They are man eating monsters, as well as good neighbors to have, so as long as synthetic human flesh is available, they are just like eccentric foreigners who like to eat strange delicacies. If they don't have that weird supplement ready, they will eat you out of a house and home, literally. Tendas will be like an exploited minority except with a different problem. They are content to be an underclass. Of course, I"m planning for Paula's Psychokinetic school to be a sufficiently but not satisfyingly improved Psi-Core, with most of the evilness removed. FourZone will be incredibly important to the overall changing society, since it's basically Coruscent. Other Space Nations will want FourZone (A type of New York) to be healthy so they can profit from it's trade.

As for story Elements, Eagle Land will be an oddity among humans because it has all these religions and Earth customs. . . AND HAVE NO RELATION TO EARTH AT ALL. Or so it seems. Sort of. And, since they have a primate species that is almost as intelligent as humans, they have a potential "Planet of Apes" thing going on. Also, there are some Corporations that are pretty powerful, seeing as they employ so many Zombies. There might be Zombie Unions, even!

[Simon_Jester]

It's like, I'm thinking of having Eagle Land be a glorified benevolent Umbrella Corporation/Reforming Democracy with a FDR like President/Nes, and competent figures in the upper echelons of the government moving the country towards an ever changing society. This will effect it's neighbors. For example, what happens when Zombie neighbors move in to other countries as refugees. They are man eating monsters, as well as good neighbors to have, so as long as synthetic human flesh is available, they are just like eccentric foreigners who like to eat strange delicacies. If they don't have that weird supplement ready, they will eat you out of a house and home, literally.

I fail to see how this makes them good neighbors.

As for story Elements, Eagle Land will be an oddity among humans because it has all these religions and Earth customs. . . AND HAVE NO RELATION TO EARTH AT ALL. Or so it seems. Sort of.

That's actually fairly common- we've already got one such "seemingly Earthlike" society with Esquire's people. SDNW4 explicitly had two human homeworlds with a lot of cultural parallels, one being Earth and the other being the planet SDNW2 happened on.

I'm more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt than I was four hours ago, I just want you to really sit down and think, hard, about whether all this is going to be as interesting to other people as it is to you. Remember, the great majority of us will have never played this game- for myself, I haven't even heard of it before. That means that you can't rely on the inherent 'coolness' of the game or its characters to be interesting to us; you have to make them interesting, living, breathing characters yourself. Because if you don't engage other people, then the game is going to be a waste of time for you.

This is why I usually counsel people to make up their own stuff rather than copy-pasting stuff from a video game: it can actually be harder to make someone else's character into something three-dimensional than it is to do the same for your own.

Another thing to factor in- SDNW4 polities tend to be pretty large; significantly more than eight entire star systems would be normal, although you might have a nation that only has eight to ten major, inhabited, heavily settled worlds. So while you may only actually name a relative handful of places within your civilization, you need to be able to think comfortably about the idea that there are other places- that it's all spread out over many light years of space, too.

[Demiurgas]

It's like, I'm thinking of having Eagle Land be a glorified benevolent Umbrella Corporation/Reforming Democracy with a FDR like President/Nes, and competent figures in the upper echelons of the government moving the country towards an ever changing society. This will effect it's neighbors. For example, what happens when Zombie neighbors move in to other countries as refugees. They are man eating monsters, as well as good neighbors to have, so as long as synthetic human flesh is available, they are just like eccentric foreigners who like to eat strange delicacies. If they don't have that weird supplement ready, they will eat you out of a house and home, literally.

I fail to see how this makes them good neighbors.

As for story Elements, Eagle Land will be an oddity among humans because it has all these religions and Earth customs. . . AND HAVE NO RELATION TO EARTH AT ALL. Or so it seems. Sort of.

That's actually fairly common- we've already got one such "seemingly Earthlike" society with Esquire's people. SDNW4 explicitly had two human homeworlds with a lot of cultural parallels, one being Earth and the other being the planet SDNW2 happened on.

I'm more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt than I was four hours ago, I just want you to really sit down and think, hard, about whether all this is going to be as interesting to other people as it is to you. Remember, the great majority of us will have never played this game- for myself, I haven't even heard of it before. That means that you can't rely on the inherent 'coolness' of the game or its characters to be interesting to us; you have to make them interesting, living, breathing characters yourself. Because if you don't engage other people, then the game is going to be a waste of time for you.

This is why I usually counsel people to make up their own stuff rather than copy-pasting stuff from a video game: it can actually be harder to make someone else's character into something three-dimensional than it is to do the same for your own.

Another thing to factor in- SDNW4 polities tend to be pretty large; significantly more than eight entire star systems would be normal, although you might have a nation that only has eight to ten major, inhabited, heavily settled worlds. So while you may only actually name a relative handful of places within your civilization, you need to be able to think comfortably about the idea that there are other places- that it's all spread out over many light years of space, too.

I'm glad you're giving me more leeway. Okay, I can do this and make it interesting to the others.

[Simon_Jester]

Demiurgas, one more thing.

You DO know you can say things in this thread without quoting huge blocks of other people's text, right? When you quote twenty or thirty lines of my post, just to say one line with two sentence that boil down to "okay, thanks, I'll do that," you... it's not a good thing when you do that. I know what I wrote, it's the post literally right above yours, so repeating the whole thing as a giant quote block just so you can say one line at the bottom looks silly.

[Demiurgas]

Ah sorry, it's hard for me to find the Reply button instead of the Quote button.

[Simon_Jester]

Am I missing any would-be micronation players?

---

Akhlut:
Hegemony of the Gray Kritarchy
5

Darkevilme:
Chamarran Empire
10

Esquire:
Hellenic Confederacy
9

FaxModem1
Empire of Tweed
Micronation

Feralgnoll
Braxian Collective
6

Force Lord:
Centrality
7

Imperial528
???
8

KhorneFlakes
Screworlders
6

Lonestar
Grand Dominion?
7

OmegaChief:
Capellan Authority
4

Panzersharkcat:
Bastian Star Empire
10

Romulan Republic
??? (Possibly a republic of Romulans?)
Micronation

Scottish Ninja
Volscian Confederacy
12

Shinn Langley Soryu
Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya?
10

Shep
Shepistan
9

Simon_Jester:
Technocracy of Umeria
7

Tanasinn
Federal Union of Enslaved Subjugated Stuckenated Independent Worlds
7

TimothyC
Somethingorother of Bird Plane Krypton
Micronation

Vanas:
An Entire Great and Bountiful Empire of Goddamn Bees
6

White Haven:
League of Thought
8

NPC:
Bragulan Star Empire
9

[Esquire]

Sorry about that, then. Got a whee bit overexcited.

@Esquire: Sure. And goat cheese is like marijuana to Bastians. That would be, I assume, only one of many products sent to the Bastian Empire. I assume some of things going your way would be Gauss carbines, among a whole lot of weapons, and lots of medical tech. The Neithian's hat is biotech and appropriately have pretty advanced medical technology.

Sounds good to me. Not believing in science has the unfortunate effect of leaving Hellenic medicines very hit-or-miss. Sometimes literally; it's remarkable the number of diseases the natural philosophers say you can simply smack out of the body.

[Darkevilme]

Sounds good to me. Not believing in science has the unfortunate effect of leaving Hellenic medicines very hit-or-miss. Sometimes literally; it's remarkable the number of diseases the natural philosophers say you can simply smack out of the body.

They don't believe in science...yet they have power armour and giant mecha spartans. I'm intrigued.

[Esquire]

As everyone really sensible knows, the galaxy is composed of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Power armor is the natural result of mixing steel's Earthy durability with some Fire to give it spark and a bit of Water for flexibility in the joints.

Now, since everything has its opposite, there is of course an Anti-Fire and the rest. When a bit of Anti-Fire comes into contact with a bit of Fire, their natures (being utterly incompatible) fight for dominance, because Anti-Fire cannot abide the existence of Fire any more than Fire can abide Anti-Fire. The power of the forces involved can be funneled into any number of things. Hellenic reactors run on pure elemental temper tantrums.

[Starglider]

Wish I had time to bring the cyborg alien space bats back (from STGOD 2008), but alas too busy for the foreseeable future, look forward to reading with amusement though.

[Simon_Jester]

As everyone really sensible knows, the galaxy is composed of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Power armor is the natural result of mixing steel's Earthy durability with some Fire to give it spark and a bit of Water for flexibility in the joints.

Now, since everything has its opposite, there is of course an Anti-Fire and the rest. When a bit of Anti-Fire comes into contact with a bit of Fire, their natures (being utterly incompatible) fight for dominance, because Anti-Fire cannot abide the existence of Fire any more than Fire can abide Anti-Fire. The power of the forces involved can be funneled into any number of things. Hellenic reactors run on pure elemental temper tantrums.

"Feeble pseudocivilized nibble-pibblies! You do not know the MEANING of temper tantrums!"

[sound of chartmapograph in use]