Hello everyone, this'll be quite a long post.
About three years ago, I got really into government. I enjoyed searching around on Wikipedia about certain government types that are rare in today's world, as well as government types that would be very out of place in a modern setting. Reading up on these things made me interested in how nations would be affected by each of these varying governments. How would the market fluctuate in a modern day nation if that nation were to have a government based on timocracy, the rule by the honorable? If a country were to have a geniocracy, the rule by the intelligent, just how well would they be off? After I learned all of these different things about governments, economy, and the like, I started to search for games based on the premise of running your own nation, which was when I found NationStates.
Over the next couple of years, I would create and manage around 15 nations, most of which were managed on the main site. However, whilst I was browsing the regions of the game, I came across one that stood out from all of the rest: Nova Historiae. The whole premise of the region was that you could make all of your own history on Earth (with certain obvious limitations). The region isn't massive, nor is it small. It was just large enough for me to seamlessly join in and still be able to make an impact on the world. Once I joined the offsite forum (which is made in Simple Machines, like this one), I quickly discovered that there was only around half of the people from the NationStates region joined up. Most if not all of the people who frequently posted there were pretty much the only people who were there from the beginning. All of them were extremely dedicated to their nations and the politics of the world, and I was too. I quickly began developing my nation in order to get to their level; to get to their stature. I roleplayed there for around 5 months, becoming a well-respected and important part of the community. Hell, half of the flags for the nations on the forum were made by me. I was developing a tutorial for a mapping website that would've become the way the region's map was regulated. I was even asked by the site coordinator to create a new banner for the forum. But around a year and a half ago, I stopped posting on the site. I stopped using the discord server. I didn't ever finish that tutorial or the forum banner. I stopped using NationStates. All of my nations were sent to the graveyard. Other than a few select occasions of reminiscence I never even went back on the NationStates website.
It was like that for a year and a half. I put all of my experiences into the back burner of my mind and didn't even think about it. Until this August. I finally saved up enough money to buy a good quality laptop. Mind you, I haven't had a computer for two and a half years, I was playing NationStates on school laptops and my phone. Two weeks after I got my laptop, I started to think about all of those experiences I had on Nova Historiae over that one year span. All of the friends that I had made, all of the good times that I had had with them. I realized that I was dumb to throw all of that into the trash and forget it ever happened. I realized that I wanted that in my life again. But I couldn't go back to them. I failed to mention that I attempted to come back to the forum not once, but twice, and each time, all but gave up on myself. I knew that I had to find a new home.
That brings us to present day. I was searching for three hours trying to find a new place that I could do what I enjoy doing. Three hours of slogging through regions and offsite forums to find the one that I could get the most out of. That's when I found the Independent Order. As soon as I loaded up the forum, I knew that it had to be the one that I started over with. It's got a community that is, albeit, much larger than that of Nova Historiae's, but seems just as dedicated to the game, it's got it's very own world and it's own map, and it's even made from the same software that Nova Historiae's forum was made in so I already know all of the features. I think that this place is a great fit for me to start back up again.
And with all that being said, it's good to be back.
