BangoSkank

Just warning you all before I stage a coup and turn this into "ZaibatsuGuild"

Good place to join then. There's basically metaphorically literally always at least one or two superhero RPs going down here.

If you want I'll link you to one current and two former ones.

Just don't join and call dibs on Wolverine or Captain America, they're my homies.

What shows/movies are you watching?

Watched The Boys and then Terminal List over the last couple weeks.

Very different shows. Both great.

Particularly Terminal List. Like goddam. Alright then.

The Draw of Nation Roleplay.

There needs to be a level of cooperation in order for competition to be interesting, at least to me.

Poor two second analogy, but I have to be willing to admit you hit me in the head. I didn't block it. I didnt tense me neck muscles at just the right time to absorb the force. I didn't open my mouth and bite your fist at the last second. I'm not actually a master of the Iron Jaw technique and therefore you didn't actually just break your own fist in my face.

You got me. It hurt. I'm probably bleeding. My bell is a little rung. I'm gonna have to adapt. I wasn't ready for that. Fucking ouch man. Damn.

The Draw of Nation Roleplay.

Yeah you definitely benefit a lot from writing/playing with folks who don't just want to be the strongest on the board.

If I were to GM one again, I haven't GMed a Nation or Faction RP in a long time I would probably include a Strengths and Weaknesses tab in each descriptor

Like Military/Politics/Economy/Science!

Have folks explain either to the group or at least to the GM what they can see going wrong or what would cripple them, and come to an understanding with them that if they get too powerful issues will start popping up.

Done that a few times.

Political betrayal, appearance of Tunnelers (Fallout series monster), looming threat of a huge GM controlled army that was poking around at one border.

Can be fun to create a bit of a back and forth between the GMs and the players too.

Example

Faction not Nation but...

Sunshine State. A Fallout RP.
IIRC threats were Original Mean Greedy Fuck Brotherhood of Steel coming from Georgia to claim all tech. Supermutants in the middle. Bayou Lizard things in the South. A farming conglomerate trying to monopolize the market in the middle.

All the groups except the Brotherhood were player controlled, and I used BoS to create a sort of driving threat moving North to South and then occasionally along the coastline.

Just like in Character Based RPs the fun comes from seeing good writers develop their ideas and characters and this develop their writing. Sometimes Nation RPs last a looooooong ass time too. There was one here that lasted I want to say a year or two and still gets started over or little sequels every so often. War, war never changes.

SCI-Fi Prison Themed roleplay

You should check out the design documents for Van Buren, the cancelled original l Fallout 3 game. Starts out in a prison. Kinda sorta revolves around that prison and it's prisoners and ex-prisoners. Some of the characters and ideas from it made it into Fallout: New Vegas

The Draw of Nation Roleplay.

>Or, rather, what is the draw? I have some guesses already, from it being a more detailed and freeform way to flesh out your nation/polity, to exploring certain ideas but in relation to others. My question at that point though is one, why not just play an empire building game? And two, why not just worldbuild a whole nation from said game or from scratch? You can worry about the exact setting later after all, or not at all if it's largely inconsequential or not the main focus, or already taken care of in the case of a grand strategy game.

So there are basically three common, or at least in my experience common, sort of genres of RP. Character, Faction and Nation.

Character Based.
Most common here and most common in most places. You write as one single character. Sometimes you write as two or three, rarely more than that. You make a Character Sheet for that one character, or one each for several characters. 1x1 usually falls into that, though it doesn't have to.
This is Doctor Murrow, the depressed doctor trying to make it through a disaster and keep as many of his fellow men alive as possible.

Faction Based.
You write as a relatively small faction. Usually without a real formal limitation but usually ranging from like 10-100. You make a Faction Sheet explaining what this group believes, why they're together, what they're after and what they're going to do to get what they're after.
This is the Followers of the Apocalypse. A bunch of survivors in the aftermath of The Big One. They're trying to take control of as many military installations as possible to prevent their weapons from being used against any survivors...but probably gradually giving in to the appeal of power themselves.

Nation RP
You write as a big fuck of a Nation. Depending on the timeline and setting hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands. Even millions if you're doing SciFi or like Peak Civilization Fantasy. Your writing is establishing your politics. Military, leadership, hopefully alternate leadership like another political party.
This is the Western Commonwealth of the United States. The states of the Pacific Northwest coming together with Texas and Arizona, moving into Nevada and Utah and looking East to expand further. Utilizing simpler weaponry and masses of transport vehicles from seized military bases to quickly push their boundaries outward.

I don't like Nation RPs.

They're fun, in theory, because you can use it to tell stories in your own small world and then have occasional interactions with other folks worlds. If I'm that Southwestern States and you're Midwestern States we will eventually meet somewhere in the bordering areas.

You're likely writing as several characters. A President or Prime Minister or small Parliament. An opposing political party in your own nation. General common citizen characters. Maybe a military hero with aspirations of becoming president himself one day.

So most of the time you are either expanding, shoring up after encountering something while expanding, investing into some technology, or maybe fighting your own political battles.

They can be awesome. I just find that often the writers end up loving their main characters or entire nations too much and it becomes a convention of Mary Sues.

Conventions are a common trope in these RPs too. Annual, usually, meetings where delegations from each nation get together to meet each other and brag about what they've done. Could be really cool, could be a not particularly subtle dick measuring contest. You know, politics.

Am I New?

Welcome back stranger.

No shortage of RPs here. Some serious, some less so. Always good to have another writer. I think most of us have gone through periods where we stop writing for a bit. It's hard not to run into writers block or just life events at some point. Good to have you back.

Anyone got cute formatting to share?

You're very welcome.

For my money that one is the perfect mix between detail and brevity.

You can change it up pretty quick to work for a Faction or Nation or add/remove characteristics. It's got a pretty clear place for an Image to get slotted in. Plus lots of folks do or have used it so you can see what folks have done with it at different times.

I've used it for like three or four of my favorite characters and probably will continue to for some time.

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

<Snipped quote by BangoSkank>

>I fail to see how writing a being without stereotypes is a bad thing. Note that I say being rather than human, as with humans or adjacent cultures to our own it's harder to do. Or prevent interpretation of such.

@Zyx

Depends on what you include in stereotypes, and getting into trouble about it doesn't necessarily mean it is actually a bad thing. They can be accurate or inaccurate or somewhere in that spectrum. They can also be positive or negative and have a lot of implications or very few. They can also be dealt with respectfully or disrespectfully. Delicate issues.

A lot of it comes down to perception. The whole general "token" concept. If you're writing a woman who is in every way a male character except that you note in your intro post that she's a woman and you use female pronouns. That's one end of the issue. The other end is a character who is little more than a pile of preconceptions.

If you write a Native American woman character during the days of the Wild West when one generation back her people roamed a huge chunk of Nebraska and moved with the seasons, but now her and her family have been moved to a reservation and they and their children are being taught new ways, new languages, and a new religion. If you write her in a way that is indistinguishable from a white male settler or a British railroad magnate, it's not gonna make some folks happy. It's not a very considerate way to write a character.

(I used Native Americans as the example because I had some Native American characters in my Deadlands RP and was trying to figure out how to handle them right)

There are fewer stereotypes with aliens and folks are less likely to care. More likely to just be bored with your writing if you go for 1950s greys without some humor or conspiracy or something to stand out.

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

Like someone using known preconceived notions, or stereotypes, about their group to their advantage.

A ditzy blonde bimbo, who is actually intelligent and diligent taking advantage of people assuming she's a brainless sexpot to move behind the scenes and get stuff done. A big Irish Ox type using a smaller smarter looking underling as a diversion. Have the suited and bespectacled slim and slick guy look like the shot caller while the big dumb bartender is the guy actually calling the shots.

Writing as different races, particularly in worlds that are similar to ours, is wrought with pitfalls. People are particularly prone to offense these days, so do you write a character to subvert expectations? Could cause problems. Do you write someone entirely divorced from stereotypes? That could cause an entirely different set of problems.

In my opinion if you're writing as a different sex/race/culture/whatever and particularly if it's an existing one you should ask yourself what you're bringing to it or if you're just using it to spice up some fairly mediocre writing. If you are adding an identity to a character to make it more interesting and not much more, don't. If you want to write a character of a certain background develop a character of that background. Read a little about that background. Try to figure out a unique character.

There are some pretty basic guidelines to at least show a good faith effort. Don't be the guy who writes that Miles Morales is Thor comic book. For fucks sake don't be that guy.