Dinh AaronMk

Fallout: Factions

Letter Bee said
So, anyway, how are Nation Roleplays usually played in RPGuild?

There are two ways.

My least preferred being the statistical approach. If I do anything it's not in this fashion. At the most extreme players need spread-sheets and a forty-page manual detailing the numbers and equations required to formulate their nation's capabilities and production outputs and resource inputs. Usually in these instances the RP is extremely top-heavy with the GM being the grand arbiter of the RP since he calls the end of necessary turns and makes decisions based on the current stats and what requested orders he's been given. As a whole these RPs play out like a slower-paced case of Age of Empires, Civilization, or Victoria. I've never found any narrative worth in them and I don't like to drown myself in numbers during my evening and weekend hours. I'm not a math person.

The other function is more narrative-driven. One recognizes they're another writer in a collaborative world and we either directly or indirectly collaborate on the story. In situations like this I like to drop basic lore across a large diverse area and let players sandbox it out to build up their world. In the case of Fallout we'd be working on preexisting lore notions as well as strictly fanon pulled from somewhere in the Fallout story. There's no strictly bound notion of nations functioning on numbers in a spread sheet and the RP progresses at a more organic pace than everyone getting in their orders and the RP progressing a set block of time (day, week, month, year). Conflict and its resolution is handled in a more story-oriented sense.

I feel the narrative-driven format is better over the statistic-driven format since it allows for ultimately more freedom and diversification of potential stories with all-level emphasis than simply concentrating on the faction leaders. Since tracking important statistical facts is not important you can explore the leadership and the people at a more personal level than simply using them as a way to explore the numbers with a thinly-veiled post narrative.

And given story-driven focuses on things on such a more personal level I feel that this allows a greater flexibility. You're not just your nation, but all the characters inside the nation. It's a focus on all the people inside of it making the whole as opposed to the whole making all the people (and these people being treated as census data). In this environment I've often felt this allows me to freely mash my favorite "Diversity of choice" button until I get to a very liberal state; within reason. In these conditions I don't see there being any reason to not allow someone to join as just a single character in the nation-driven world and down the line he could maybe break into more complicated "national" matters with his own evolving state, or he could stay that way.

Given how Fallout generally works with you being the deciding hero or villain I think this could work well into things. In the instance two nation-players meet and don't seem to want to give ground on anything we could assume gridlock between the two with no significant gains made by either until this RP's Courier or Vault Dweller or Chosen One walks into the conflict and picks a side and tips the tenuously balanced scales just that much to facilitate victory of one over the other.

Control VS Freedom

ASTA said
A discussion about government control vs freedom turns into a historical debate between two users.

We're one major war off from basically coming around full circle.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I usually turn on Steam when I turn on the computer. Because chances are someone sent me a half dozen messages over the night.

Fallout: Factions

I work a lot and am in RPs where I regularly post long things for. So I know slow activity.

Fallout: Factions

Or you could always message him and hope he's the type that actually looks at his PM box. If that doesn't work I may end up taking control, since I have something in mind that I'd like to see play out.

Control VS Freedom

Mortalbean said
Please check page 10-12 of document. The Germans were not scared of the current Russia. They were certain that she was unprepared, it was her future state that they were "pessimistic" about. German officials thought that if Germany and Russia were to fight a war then it would be better to fight it now than later and they should take advantage of the present situation. In addition on page 4 there is an estimation of the percentage of world power of each of the countries. Note how Russia is always within one percentage point of Germany.

Your report at the same time points out in several points there and later than Russia was considerably crippled. Even with gaining economic strength a large sum of its army was devoted to internal control over projecting its influence (which rounds back to the past major military failures and their own image of being inadequate). As well, Russia is noted by the Germans and any other observer there's a haunting "specter of Revolution" which likely could have launched with or without the war, after all this is significant class-divide within Russia which would no doubt spur larger class-conflict as is the proponent of Socialist revolution the likes of Trotsky and Lenin.

Furthermore through the 19th centuries and early 20th centuries the Russian nation was time in and out rocked by coup, uprisings, and [failed] revolution making the country even more unsafe for itself. It probably would have caught fire in another wave of revolution.

Russia may have had greatly expanding wealth but it didn't go to the working class. Sooner or later that'd call for large-scale disenfranchisement.

Fallout: Factions

I suspect OP may have abandoned this thread.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I am also unsure how to approach Byrd's US-China thing and in lue of not knowing how I should pick up I will await his move as I contemplate posting and this art trade.

Control VS Freedom

Russia didn't even have a native industry to begin with. A a significant portion was foreign owned and out of the central government's reach and could - at any point - be pulled back and weakened Russian industrialism.

And I again turn to their military record: with the exception of having to fight basically third-world powers and the Turks (which were more a rotten corpse of a great thing than the Russians were) they had an abysmal record and I can't believe your claims Europe would be afraid of Russia when their navy sat at the bottom of the sea thanks to Japan (which had just left feudalism fifty years prior) and they were humiliated by France, Great Britain, AND the Ottomans over Crimea.

German Industrialism had also exploded over this period as well, which was their inspiration for expansion of the Germany Navy.

Control VS Freedom

Mortalbean said
You mean the assassination of Frans Ferdinand and the Black Hand and all that? That stuff is simply the match that set off the powder keg. There is more to the start of WW1 than just an Austrian getting shot. Right now there is a pretty damn good series of videos being produced called The Great War on YT about WW1 that are following WW1 week by week exactly 100 years later. They are produced by some television channel in Europe and are pretty "fair and balanced". They are a great introduction to the topic of WW1 and include a series specifically focused on pre-WW1 politics.

Yea sure, but it was simply Russia declaring war on Russia because they were "afraid" of their industry. They went to war because they had to.

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia over the Arch-duke, which prompted Russia to declare war on Austria-Hungary yo protect their Balkan lapdog, prompting Germany to get more involved and to demand Russia cease their general mobilization. Russia refused and Germany had to act on their commitments to its allies and declared war on Russia.

At the same time they demanded France not get involved, in response France mobilized her reserves which threatened Germany.

What arms race there was didn't initially involve Russia, given they were in any case an industrial cluster-fuck incapable of doing much of anything (even more so their army where even though it was large it was about as effective as erectile dysfunction). The arms race that existed was predominately between the Germans and the British with the goal of the Germans being to equip the Kaiserreichmarine to counter the British Royal Navy. France followed later because fuck it. Russian naval capability was destroyed if not greatly humiliated by Japan prior to the build-up so they didn't have anything to build off of and got themselves ruled out for the Anglo-German dick measuring contest.

And there's a reason Stalin in Russia is hailed as the hero to turn Russia into a nation of factories from ploughs. They were all rural up until he came in, with some minor industrial capability.

But as a whole Russian foreign adventurism had been one failure after the next. Their self-proclamation as being the Defenders of Christendom resulted in their defeat in the Crimean War and the Russian-Japanese war had sunk their navy. Their only successes only came against the more bloated and late-game incompetent Qing dynasty when they fired a few cannons into the air and got Manchuria. They weren't the most terrifying force to fight, esspecially when all they had to fight and win against where the remnants of the old Mongol Khanate.