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RP Guide for TIO Members

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Achkaerin:

Welcome to the RP Guide for The Independent Order, here you'll find resources and ideas in regards to the different ways you can RP within the region. Note please that while I have attempted to make this guide as comprehensive as possible it is not exhaustive, each section also makes reference to 'experts' by which we mean RPer's who may be able to answer further queries.

Quick explanation of RP within TIO

Roleplay is anything and everything your nation or representatives of your nation get up to within the Modern Tech (MT) roleplay of the region, so everything from diplomatic meetings to economic details to full on wars. Of course this is regulated in our case this is by our Roleplay Moderator/Magistrate who at time of writing is DaveIronside, generally speaking if he thinks there's a problem he'll raise it with you and help you work through it. What's most important to us all of course is having fun and this should be fun which is why we work the way we work on the moderating side of this to ensure that your RP experience is as fun as possible.

Reference Topics

Templates - for factbooks, character profiles etc
Dave Military Building PLC - Dave's help topic for building nations military's if you're worried.

Index

Achkaerin:
Getting Started

Useful contacts: Achkaerin, DaveIronside

So you've just arrived in the region and want to get started in the RP? Great we're thrilled to have you and if you're confident jump right in to one of the RP's that are ongoing. But if you're unsure on what to do there are plenty of ways you can ease your way in. As you're new to the region one of the first things you should be doing is applying to get on the RP map. This for a new player is an excellent first goal to set yourself because it's easily achieved as you only need six RP posts to get there for example the following would qualify as six RP posts:


* Claim your spot on the map - yes this does count as an RP post, as cartographer I recommend that this be the first RP thing any new member does because it's the easiest way of ensuring you get the spot you want. The map is updated every two weeks if it's going to be delayed I do usually make an announcement concerning that. You have completely free reign on where to claim as long as you do so within the rules of map claims.
* Start your factbook - This forum is where the information about various nations is kept, this template gives a very good layout and doesn't require too much effort to fill in. We do encourage originality in nations but understand that there may be various reasons why this does not happen. A good tip if you're struggling with the GDP per capita is to figure your population against a real life countries and make a fair estimate based on that. But we'll cover factbooks in a later entry. There's also a character guide sub forum where you can set up an encyclopedia of your characters, again this will covered in a later entry.
* Set up your news thread(s) - There will be more on this in another entry but in this forum each nation keeps their news threads which are essentially newspapers or news stations reporting on various events occurring within the RP. There's also a sub forum in there titled Press Offices where various declarations can be made.
You have there the basis of getting to six RP posts - a map claim and the basic set up posts. Once you're on the map you'll want to get into your first RP if you haven't already done so.

Your First RP

With the basics done you'll want to start easing your nation and characters into the RP world of Mundus, how do you that? Well you can jump into one already happening or create your own - for the purposes of this guide we'll cover this from the point of view of getting involved in one already ongoing and deal with creating an RP in a later entry.

Generally there are two types of RP:

Open RP - this is an RP open to anyone, these are great fun since they cover almost any circumstances it's possible to imagine - everything from being washed up on a desert island to murder mysteries most will have (Open RP) after the topic title which will further help you identify which ones are open.  Do bear in mind however that some open RP's may be advanced in terms of plot (which can be gauged by the number of replies) or may be intertwined with other threads or long running plots- for example a murder mystery may be tied in with a background plot for a coup. If you're unsure it's a good idea to contact the person who started the topic as they will probably be best placed to answer any questions in this regard. If you're new to RP and this idea interests you I suggest you find a relatively new open RP to jump in on, there are usually a few of these at any one time.

Closed RP - this is usually straight up diplomacy or other meetings between a limited number of parties so for example a diplomatic meeting between Achkaerin and East Moreland would be a closed RP. Usually it's fairly obvious either from topic title or the first post in the topic that it is a closed RP given that usually the first post in such an RP tends to be an invitation of some description. If you are new to RP then this type of RP is probably the easiest way for you to get used to Roleplaying, this can be done simply by contacting an active member and asking about this.

Achkaerin:
Your First RP

Useful Contacts Achkaerin, Libby, DaveIronside

So you're all set to RP but you're not sure what to do? Never fear help is at hand right here, in this entry we'll cover how to ease yourself into the RP and give you some useful tips on different types of RP and how to make things interesting because the more interesting something is the more chance people will pay attention and get involved.

How do I get started?

Two ways - the first is by creating a thread (which we cover later) the second which we'll cover now is by joining an already existing Open RP.

The first thing to note is that the majority of our RP takes place in the Diplomacy and Events Forum. Next consider which RP to join, generally if it's your first RP pick one that doesn't have that many replies to it or is relatively new as these give you the best chance for creativity. The second thing is what type of RP is it? The reason for this question is that how characters act is dependent on the circumstances occurring within the RP, so a character at a formal dinner is going to behave in a certain way whereas a character caught up in a life threatening situation is going to behave very differently. If you're jumping in to an RP you should first read the previous posts or contact the topic author to ask questions, this is something strongly advised if things look complex because most of the time they are not - what you'll actually find is that other players take elements from within the RP and advance character based story lines off them. For example during Little Death I used the murder that took place in Achkaerin as a means of fleshing out the characters within one of my nations noble families and ran a story line that tied that family to the victim.

Anyway after reading the content of an RP you'll come to writing your post so what should it be? Well again this depends on the RP context of the topic. For example something like the Utman Declaration of Independence gives an easy in as it allows for statements from national governments, something like a multinational meeting such as the Trans Ardia Partnership is a more character based setting from the start.

If starting an RP then you need to consider what kind of RP it is you want to start - Open or closed. If you're completely new to RP and just want to get started then I suggest a straight up closed RP based around an initial meeting with another nation, my guidance here would be look for your closest active neighbor, generally speaking on Cotf Aranye that could be Achkaerin, Royal Seleucid or potentially Kaitaine, on Alba Karinya East Moreland, Vafleon or Balticum would be good starts. For Ardia the Iwi, Ui Cenneslaig, Himeyama or Gowu and finally on Albion Lodja, Ecclesiastical State or if you don't mind waiting a little Arda Tuluva. Usually when pursuing this option you'd be looking to formalize a basic agreement of some sort with each other.

However if you've got a solid Open RP idea don't be afraid to go for it. Generally Open RP's take a little more planning but are more fun as things are far less predictable, take the 2017 East Moreland Festival of Sail, started out as a ship procession and celebration and finished up as an impromptu Royal Wedding. As you may have gathered an Open RP is all about the planning, this doesn't mean knowing exactly what is going to happen because a) no one's a mind reader and b) it's unlikely people will join an RP that's completely pre-planned. Instead know roughly what your "endgame" (outcome/conclusion) is and have a series of flashpoints (events) planned along the way, so for example assume it was a series of murders your endgame would be the arrest and interview/death of the killer with the flashpoints being breakthroughs in the case for example evidence being discovered or other murders, arrests of suspects etc. What you'll find is as you plan things out like this you get an idea of where you're going and how to get there but it's an adaptable framework that can suit a wide variety of in character developments.

My Golden Rules

1) Think things through. This is not to say that people don't or won't think things through but whenever I write a post whether it be an official statement from my nations government or a speech from a Royal at a meeting I always ask myself "What are the in character implications of this likely to be?" Now I do this for two reasons 1) it helps to avoid having to retcon the statement later or U-turn official position and 2) It avoids massive Out Of Character (OOC) arguments.

Let me give an example let's say that a nation is embroiled in a civil war you will have other nations taking various positions, some will support either side others will remain neutral and call for negotiations, if you were to write a statement of support for one side then the chances are that an implication would be that such a statement will draw criticism from other nations.

2) No character knows everything - No character is a mind reader, sounds common sense but it needs stating. Your character is not going to know everything about someone they've never met before. Granted if it's a prominent public figure they may know somethings but not all. You also are not going to know about things that have taken place in private where your nation has no presence, this would be considered close to metagaming. However bear in mind three things:

a) Things can be picked up - for example if your character behaves in certain ways around people then it will allow characters to form opinions this is comparable to body language and first impressions. Consider the character of Besarian Ivanov, the way he acted around Lady Jasmina in the aftermath of Queen Viktoriya being crowned Queen allowed for other characters to form opinions on his more devious character.

b) Events can be suggestive - It's true no one can know everything but people can make logical guesses by means of deduction. For example, the Borland Separatists (a terrorist group that has beef with East Moreland) are led by a man named Kyle Barren now if he were to be assassinated on the orders of King David of East Moreland no one would be absolutely certain because no one from a nation other than East Moreland would have been in the room when the order was given but the fact that the dead man is Kyle Barren is enough for people to make the jump.

c) The experience factor - this is just for new player reference but you may see references to the behavior of characters being regarded as expected, this is because there is a relationship between characters whether that be an acquaintance or friendship or something more. For example let's take the characters of Empress Emerita Beatrice of Rokkenjima and Crown Princess Serenity of Achkaerin, these two have sat around the same negotiating table at several summits so they know each other well enough for Serenity to be able to answer the question "Did Beatrice act in an unusual manner?" as your characters develop various relationships they will also get to this point.

3) You can say NO - It's something else that should be obvious but you can say no to ideas, we're a welcoming and friendly bunch in this region and usually have a few ideas of how to get people into interesting RP, it's important that people bear in mind that such ideas are only that - ideas, if I say to you "How do you feel about a kidnapping in your nation?" then I'm simply asking "Can I do a kidnapping in your nation?" if you say no that means I have to go off and ask someone else.

4) Do your homework - sounds dull but potentially one of the most useful points. Many of us use character profiles to keep information about our characters (see the Besarian link above) checking these can sometimes provide useful information that you can use as an icebreaker which in turn will help you settle into an RP.

5) Proof read - I don't necessarily mean this in terms of spelling and grammar but in terms of content, what I like to do is write something but not post it, then I do something else (usually listen to music) for a few minutes and then go back and re-read the post to see if there's anyway I can make it better. This is also where some handy constructive criticism from fellow RPer's can help.

Achkaerin:
Treaty Writing and Negotiation For Beginners

Useful contacts: Achkaerin, DaveIronside

If you're active in the RP the chances are that at some point you are going to end up involved in discussions around a treaty. There are of course many forms of treaty extending from the basic bi-lateral treaty to mulit-national treaties governing organisations and even some beyond that. The current major international treaties in force are:

The Uppsala Convention - The rules of war in short the Mundus version of the Geneva Convention. Important note in regards to this treaty is that any nation can be held accountable to it whether they've signed it or not, however only signatory nations have judges assigned to the Convention Court.

The Fair Seas Concordat - Usually abbreviated to FSC. This is a direct copy and paste of UNCLOS.

The Mundus Convention of Universal Rights - Usually abbreviated to MCUR. In simple terms this is an in character version of the real life European Convention on Human Rights with additions. This is a little different to the Uppsala Convention and the FSC in that it's not suspect to not sign up to this one because ICly there are and will probably be more nations that have issues with sections of this. It is advised that you view this as more of a declaration than a treaty.

The Outer Space Standards Convention - Otherwise known as OSSC. This is essentially an in character enforcement measure against people choosing to weaponize space, claim territory beyond Mundus etc.

Treaty For the Protection of Hygelac and Hrothgar - This is a treaty that ensures that the in character equivalents of the arctic and antarctic are explored for scientific not military purposes.

Generally speaking you will find that these treaties get referred to a fair bit - there are others but these are the main ones. I encourage everyone to be aware of them and what the general implications of them are both in terms of your nations responsibilities to uphold the treaty provisions but also what breaching those treaties means. In the case of breaching a treaty you will find a variety of things are likely to happen usually in broad terms the ramping up of international pressure on your nation. It is one way of pulling other nations into an RP.

However before you go doing things contrary to treaties allow me give some advice.

1) Be aware of the likely consequences - As implied above there are consequences to breaching treaties in the case of breaching the Uppsala Convention it is highly likely that the international community will take strong measures, if for example you drop napalm on people you will attract attention, you start massacring civilians you are going to get nations turning up ready to step in and stop you from doing that.

2) Check you aren't a prior signatory - It wouldn't be the first time that a nation has done something against a treaty only to have it pointed out that they have also signed the treaty, my favorite example would be Kaiser Adolf's anti LGBT laws which ran contrary to the MCUR provisions, a treaty they were signatory of. Just make sure that whatever you've got in mind is not going to run contrary to what your country has signed up to if anything. Also if you are going to withdraw from a treaty have a reason for doing so - it may well be that your out of character reason is to enable a future plot but in character you should have a reason.

3) Don't do all the running - If you are going to breach something like the Uppsala Convention within your own nations borders please don't have your nations media report it in such a way that a breach is obvious, find another way to get the word out that is less credible because if your national news says "our national forces today wiped out a village of 300 civilians." then I will guarantee you'll get boxed in very quickly because of what the reaction to that would likely be, instead have your national media report that as something like "our national forces today attacked and captured a village used by (insert terrorist group name here), in the course of the fighting we lost (insert casualty number) soldiers and 300 terrorists were killed."

So how do you go about writing a Treaty?

In general the principles behind writing a treaty are the same regardless of how many parties there are to the treaty, so ask yourself a very important question first - What is the purpose of the Treaty? For example is this about friendship between nations? Is it about trade? Is it a declaration on Climate Change? Answering this question is important because it will help you and the others involved shape it. Let's say you want a basic bi-lateral treaty between two nations to formalize relations, first draw up a basic treaty outline here's one I made earlier. Each of the sections provides a basic idea of what goes in each part, diplomacy covers ambassadors, travel, extradition and such, trade is self explanatory, defence again is somewhat self explanatory though also can include intelligence matters. Special agreements is something I incorporate because there are things that may be agreed that don't fall under other headings so for example nation A agrees to train X number of prospective astronauts from nation B. Finally miscellaneous this is basically final administration points such as how long the treaty remains in effect for.

Once you've got a good idea of what goes where have a go at writing in the detail and present it to the other nation involved and then we come to the negotiating phase.

Negotiation Theory

Let me begin by explaining how negotiation actually works - the building blocks.

1) Common facts - all negotiations will have a set of common facts these being things known to both parties so for example the respective reputations of their nations, the strengths and weakness's of each others nations as understood from public information.

2) Private facts - each party will have a set of facts known only to them, these will form the basis of their negotiating position - what their main priorities are and what they're prepared to compromise on.

3) Compromise - this is defined as "An outcome that neither side is happy with." think of it like this - you want to buy a house you are prepared to pay £100,000 for it the seller is prepared to sell it for £200,000 you agree on the price of £150,000. This is the essence of a compromise as you have paid more than you would have liked and the seller has sold for below what they wanted to get.

So how do I negotiate?

This varies depending on the situation, a good general rule is that the fewer the number of parties the easier the negotiation is going to be because there are less competing interests to balance, so in theory a bi-lateral treaty is the easiest while something like a multinational treaty or peace talks is going to be more difficult.

What I advise everyone to do before getting into a complex negotiation is work out your position in advance by answering the following questions:

1) What does my nation want out of this?
2) What is the priority order of what my nation wants?
3) What is my nation prepared to trade off?
4) What are my nations red lines?

As an aside if you ever end up in the position of having one of your characters chairing something like peace talks then I strongly advise doing as much research on the situation as possible, talk to those involved by PM to recap what is and is not known within the in character context.

Also bear in mind that in negotiations there tends to be a stronger position and a weaker position, a real life example of this would be the Brexit negotiations where the EU holds the stronger position and the UK the weaker position - these positions are usually determined by who has more at stake. Within RP please be aware of this.

Negotiation tactics

1) Ball parking - Consider the example of buying a house again the buyer wants to buy as cheaply as possible the seller wants to sell for as much as possible. If I am selling that house I would know the value of the house for example let's say it's £250,000 obviously I don't want to get less than that in the sale so I put the house on the market for £400,000 - why? Because I know whoever's buying the house is going to want to buy it for less than I'm offering to sell for but because I want the actual house value in the sale I start high to bring the buyer into my ball park in terms of value. From the buyer's point of view the theory is in the same but the reverse, where the seller comes in high to sell for as much as possible the buyer comes in low to buy as cheap as possible and therefore bring the seller down into their ballpark.

In RP terms this is more applicable to business deals than anything else but it can also apply to other aspects of negotiations such as a percentage of funding to be borne by a nation for a science project.

2) Trade off's - This is useful when you have multiple items to negotiate on and works well in partnership with your priority list. Basically you give ground on a lesser priority to demonstrate good faith in order to strengthen your hand for your more important priorities. Sort of losing the battle to win the war.

3) Keeping quiet - This only works at multinational summits such as the MCUR summit. Basically have your character sit there and keep quiet early on in negotiations as others speak, this will reveal indications as to their negotiating positions which you can then use to your advantage.

4) Bluffing - Useful for negotiations in trying circumstances especially when in the weaker position, if for example your nation is on the verge of economic collapse according to some media outlets and your nation has gone cap in hand to another nation and asked for help then it's likely that the other party will be looking to put all sorts of conditions in place in exchange for the bail out as it were, you may consider in such circumstances downplaying the extent of the crisis to try and lessen the pressure.

5) Blackmail - Be careful with this tactic as it may come back to haunt you, should only really be considered if surprises arise during negotiations that are external to the talks.

6) Strong-arming - Note this is at times similar to blackmail but is at times different best applied to circumstances where you've got the other party "Over a barrel." defined as "To have someone at a disadvantage or in an awkward position." the difference is that there's no need to be threatening if you know this.

7) The walk out - Not to be used recklessly but effective if the circumstances are right. If you're negotiating a delicate treaty and the international community's mood is that there must be a treaty then walking out may make the other side make further concessions. Of course the risk is that you don't get them coming back with another deal.

Achkaerin:
Historical Nations

Useful contact: Achkaerin

At this point before delving into RP planning and other such things I want to spend some time explaining what a Historical Nation is, these are the nations labelled with gold text on the map.

The current list of Historical Nations is as follows:

* United Republic of Safraen
* Kingdom of Abydos
* Allied States of Ardis
* Shogunate of Toshikawa
* Andinist Republic of Nueva Ardia
* Duchy of Aquitaine
* Republic of Marseilles
* United Soviet Rodina
* Holy Duchy of Vanora
* Zimalia
Each nation is to differing degree's established within the RP tapestry of the region some are successors to previously active RP nations that have left a lasting legacy on Mundus due to some historical event or other. Others are to accommodate the need for RP clarity on certain issues for example Vanora and Abydos between them account for issues relating to the in character equivalent of a Holy Land, while the Allied States of Ardia accounts for one of the most significant RP backstories and the Nuclear Canon.

What does a Historical Nation Do?

Generally they just sit there and do nothing. They will from time to time trigger RP events initially these will be introduction events for those that need them (at time of writing I am brainstorming these). Followed by at later dates other events designed to generate interesting story lines. It is worth noting that if a thread is such that the presence of a Historical Nation is present it will happen - an international celebration in Kaitaine for example would attract Rodina due to the historical link between the two.

Can I interact with a Historical Nation?

Yes you can but I do ask for advance consultation regarding any such interaction and to be clear simple showing up for a friendly diplomatic chat is not likely to happen, these are nations meant for much larger events however such things are not ruled out if they contribute to part of a larger story line. Generally speaking though these nations serve as backdrops for RP.

Can I invade a Historical Nation?

Yes but as the saying goes "On your head be it." each of these nations does have their own military so yes you can fight a war against them but as above these should form part of a larger story line and not be for the heck of it. Also consider that each of these nations will have allies and or friends that are not likely to sit on the sidelines.

What else do Historical Nations have?

Their own characters and a compilation news thread.

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