Using multiple nations productively [GUIDE]

[Astholm]

This is just a basic guide on what's what regarding multiing, so here's the gist of it.

From the rules:
Puppet Multi-ing: Using an alternate nation (a puppet) to evade or break rules, and 'protect' your primary nation from repercussions, is not permitted. Egregious rulebreaking will also affect the puppetmaster. In Roleplay, when someone uses their other nations in wars to give themselves an advantage. Not against the game rules, but very likely to tick people off.

So, let's see how you can use them productively. First of all, I use them for the following reasons:
1. Economy & Business.

It would be good to use them for this purpose, providing you don't interact too much with your primary nation (I use multiple nations in the same thread, but for various companies and the like). If you must use them in the same thread, be careful, don't use them to spam your company, or to artificially boost a thread.
Using them as supporting characters is the best way to do this. It is not supporting your nation or astroturfing, as far as I know.

2. Participating in different wars
You can use one country for one war, another for a different, but never use them in the same war! (As far as I know, this is bad form, and cheating too. I myself haven't done it, but would not do this in a war RP anyway!)

3. Factbooks
Some nations you can use purely for writing geographical factbooks, even if they are otherwise "inactive".


One final bit of advice... use your main account for General, and the multiple/alternate ones for the reasons suggested above.

---

BBCode trick
If you wish to compare your nation to a real-life one, or just state it's an NS-world equivalent of it, use this code:

Code: Select all

Astholm[sup](United Kingdom)[/sup]
[nation]Astholm[/nation][sup](United Kingdom)[/sup]


which produces:
Astholm^{(United Kingdom)}
Astholm^{(United Kingdom)}

You can also use this if you want to denote it's a territory of your main nation, for instance, or an enclave/exclave. This is a little-used trick, but worth it on here.

This is an unofficial guide, just trying to be helpful!

Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why was this guide created?
It was done to try and make things simpler, and because the moderators have not yet, as far as I know, written an official guide on it, the only rule being about this is that you can use puppets, but not how you use them.
2. What is a "functional" puppet?
This is similar to a functional or minor character in literature; it's used simply to make a storefront more active. However, if you need to use some in a roleplay other than Global Economics & Trade, ask the thread starter about this. Factbooks - best place for experimenting with functional puppets since you can write about the nation too.

Other questions will come soon... ask on this thread and I'll answer.
Always register all of them with the same email address if you forget your password, this is also for accountability reasons too. This is UNLESS you have an account shared with another player, which apparently, is not forbidden by the rules.
(Colour is purple/dark blue to distinguish from official moderator code).

Finally, never use them for any forbidden uses, like spamming, vote-rigging or annoying other players, or you may become a DoS - deleteonsight - nation, which we don't want to happen, do we?

[Astholm]

OK, so adding more to this primer:
With regard to 1. use multiple nations in trading threads, even use them to create links between nations, but never trade with your own alternate nation (euphemism for sockpuppet!) only trade with your alternate nations to provide a realistic lifelike context to the action.

This has almost worked for me in the Van Luxemburg-created threads, and the creator of those threads is excellent - he is an absolute legend around here, and the guy to talk to for how to create a storefront, but that's best left to another thread.

I use multinations in trading threads, not to try and make my nation/region look more powerful than it really is - don't go there with that - but as functional characters to provide lifelike action, and that's the best way to go in trading threads in Global Economics and Trade forums.

Even if the nations' characters share the same opinions as your primary nation, don't worry, just RP as lifelike as you can.

I have several RP automobile companies on here, and sometimes multiple ones from one nation.

Any questions - post here!

(Edited to make point clearer).

[Sedgistan]

Any questions - post here!

I know this has been pinned, which means that a moderator thinks its important, but don't you think it'd be better suited in an RP forum, rather than the Gameplay forum, since your posts refer almost exclusively to the use of multiple nations when RPing?

[Astholm]

However, this does affect gameplay too, if people have questions...

[Dyr Nasad]

Perhaps you can include puppets that are made to be active in other regions or something about WA switchers? (first two Gameplay uses of puppets I thought of)

[Stash Kroh]

Also some use a puppet in the WA instead of their main nation to avoid the stat changes from passing resolutions, or other reasons....

[Rigbyland]

You may want to include multing in Sporting Event RPs. I don't participate in them often, and rarely even visit that sub-forum, but I know I would be angry if someone flooded the roster with their puppets, and I doubt I'm the only one...

[Zwangzug]

Different Sports Roleplaying competitions have different policies. In the World Cup, for instance, users can enter one puppet besides their main nation; they need to explicitly identify puppets at signup. Usually, people will enter at most two nations to any given competition (though there aren't always hard-and-fast rules, that's usually how it works out).

[Almajoya]

Tbh, I've never heard of you, so I'm not sure how much authority you have on the subject. Also, I feel that you've simply glossed over puppeteering, which is an art in itself.

[Snowy Egrets]

Tbh, I've never heard of you, so I'm not sure how much authority you have on the subject. Also, I feel that you've simply glossed over puppeteering, which is an art in itself.

I agree with this incredibly smart and talented poster.

[Almajoya]

Tbh, I've never heard of you, so I'm not sure how much authority you have on the subject. Also, I feel that you've simply glossed over puppeteering, which is an art in itself.

I agree with this incredibly smart and talented poster.

See? Even the egret thinks I'm right.

[The Valepian Lands]

Could you have 2 puppet that you own go to war with each other? With people helping shaping the outcome?

[Crabulon]

Could you have 2 puppet that you own go to war with each other? With people helping shaping the outcome?

Don't think so, think thats referred to as "puppetwank"

[The Fedral Union]

Could you have 2 puppet that you own go to war with each other? With people helping shaping the outcome?

Don't think so, think thats referred to as "puppetwank"

Actually its not puppet wank, it would be wank if you were using said puppets to boost either their population or military might. How ever having them fight one another is not wank in and of itself , I have seen plenty of people rp as two factions in a war, they could easily be two puppets fighting one another. As long as they are not on the same side its fine.

[The Valepian Lands]

Could you have 2 puppet that you own go to war with each other? With people helping shaping the outcome?

Don't think so, think thats referred to as "puppetwank"

Actually its not puppet wank, it would be wank if you were using said puppets to boost either their population or military might. How ever having them fight one another is not wank in and of itself , I have seen plenty of people rp as two factions in a war, they could easily be two puppets fighting one another. As long as they are not on the same side its fine.

Glad that could be cleared up.

Thanks.

[Jenrak]

Almajoya is right; your topics focus largely on puppeteering in an RPing sense, but I've almost never seen an RP post from you. Perhaps its just bad coincidence, but I can't measure the legitimacy of someone's take on a subject as large, semi-controversial and complex as puppeteering, and even then the essay you provided isn't really even an essay; there's no unifying thesis, just 'puppeteering'. It's more of a guide than an essay.

But, a few particular notes that I believe you should understand; first of all, Economics and Business in terms of puppeteering can be used in the manner of a separate entity in terms of a corporation and a nation, given that the amount of revenue produced by a corporation is only partially taxed by a country, meaning it never actually gives that big of a benefit for one corporation to assist a nation. It's also normal for many nation-centric corporations to function independently; the restraining factor is the understanding of liberal economics and corporate economics - the invisible will outright desist nations from having corporations that help the country too much. Though this point, I will admit, is slightly moot with the fact that almost nobody practices this anymore, since its too troublesome to do such a thing, but its very helpful for immediate distinction. Blackhelm Confederacy's Griffencrest Corporation is one such example, with the only exception in his case that he uses one account, more than often likely for simplicity. And yet people still mistake Griffencrest for being Blackhelm.

Wars that carry puppets are certainly acceptable within given bounds. When in a war, especially if the nation in question is on the losing side, it is realistic to have the nation split into factions that will vie for power within the ensuing chaos. Alot of older RPers that do not hang around anymore I remember do this alot for the sake of identification and realism. Splitting up the nation into factions make the legitimacy of the conflict much more apparent, especially when a player is restarting their nations back in the day. Now people just retcon like mad.

Now, I'm not saying that this guide isn't helpful, it just needs a bit more research. I suggest polishing up on the writing and work a bit more on building up the concepts and rules you've already considered, and then see how it works from there.

[Allemande]

Could you have 2 puppet that you own go to war with each other? With people helping shaping the outcome?

Don't think so, think thats referred to as "puppetwank"

Actually its not puppet wank, it would be wank if you were using said puppets to boost either their population or military might. How ever having them fight one another is not wank in and of itself , I have seen plenty of people rp as two factions in a war, they could easily be two puppets fighting one another. As long as they are not on the same side its fine.

This.

Sometimes you want a war to start in a particular way, and then bring your main (or even another puppet) in when the story is "set". There is no sleight of hand here, no attempt to take advantage of anybody, just the intention to lay the groundwork for a good story. There's nothing wrong with it at all. As a matter of fact, I know of a couple of current story lines that are being moved along by precisely this mechanism.

Another use of puppets that I've seen - one that falls outside this scenario - is for two nations that are in massive alliances to fight a war against each other for fun or practice without triggering a larger conflict (sort of a proxy war).

As for never using puppets on the same side, I disagree. Allemande has an economic and political interest in some of its puppets, some of which were even created as a consequence of Allemande's past wars (for example, the Island of Hyskos emerged as a result of the Great Homophobe War). Since Allemande helped these countries win their independence, it is absurd to think that we would simply leave them in the lurch if invaded; it is equally absurd to expect that their own forces would not fight to defend their homeland while Allemanders died for their sake.

My solution to this is what I call "Allemande's Law of Safe Puppeteering":

Allemande's Law of Safe Puppeteering - If multiple puppets belonging to the same player fight side by side in the same war, the sum total of all resources committed and all power employed by the puppets collectively may not exceed the resources and power available to any one of them individually.

Thus, in the case of Allemande - a nation of 6.126 billion (as of today) - defending the Island of Hyskos - a nation of 240 million (as of today) - were I to find myself in a situation where both needed to fight on the same side (such as in an effort to repel yet another Tezdrian invasion), I would play Hyskos as a nation of 240 million (their necks are on the line, so all of their forces would be used) and Allemande as a nation of 5.886 billion (240 million less than its actual total) so that my effective power did not exceed that of Allemande alone.

This self-imposed rule prevents the biggest abuse of puppeteering - mainly, attempts by people to get around the fact that another nation is bigger than they are by trying to match their strength with an army of puppets. You can bring all your puppets along to a general war, but you can't combine their effective strengths when you do.

[Third Spanish States]

I have one puppet I actively RP with for each tech level, except for pre 1800s Past Tech. It helps reducing the confusion compared to just using the same NS for going IN SPACE! for WW1 tech stuff, Modern Tech, etc.

Other than that, I don't see what's the point of using puppets besides wanking. "Shadow boxing" isn't fun either, and you don't need to create puppet NSes for every colony or puppet state you have, you can RP them through the NS that really controls them In-character.

[The Naacal]

Main reason I have multiple nations is for tech reasons. Naacal for MT (bordering on PMT), and Eternal Night for FT.

[Yekrut]

This thread is a good example of what can happen when you don’t create factional puppets.

Fortunately, the person who created Peresug was willing to follow the OP’s vision of where the thread was supposed to go. But I’ve seen it play out differently, so the safer thing to do in this sort of situation is to create a puppet for each faction.

To say: “All you need is one puppet per milieu,” assumes too much about how people RP. Suppose you wanted the ability to RP in MT as either a terrorist organisation or a legitimate nation (and I'm not talking here about your legitimate nation having a terrorist “front”; I'm talking about two separate RP personae). It would obviously be a bad idea to try and do both with the same account (try explaining that it wasn’t your legitimate nation that just cooked off that stolen nuke, I dare you), so here’s a case of two puppets allowing you more flexibility in play than just one.

Think of it like World of Warcraft: You can have 10 characters on a server. Each one is a different character, and when you log in, you can choose the one you want to play. There’s nothing wrong with doing that here, so long as you don’t try to say that your 10 Level 8 characters all somehow add up to a single Level 80...

[Astholm]

I use multiple nation puppets in the Van Luxemburg-created threads, purely to provide a lifelike context to the action, if nothing else. They don't all agree with one another.

[Astholm]

Almajoya is right; your topics focus largely on puppeteering in an RPing sense, but I've almost never seen an RP post from you. Perhaps its just bad coincidence, but I can't measure the legitimacy of someone's take on a subject as large, semi-controversial and complex as puppeteering, and even then the essay you provided isn't really even an essay; there's no unifying thesis, just 'puppeteering'. It's more of a guide than an essay.

But, a few particular notes that I believe you should understand; first of all, Economics and Business in terms of puppeteering can be used in the manner of a separate entity in terms of a corporation and a nation, given that the amount of revenue produced by a corporation is only partially taxed by a country, meaning it never actually gives that big of a benefit for one corporation to assist a nation. It's also normal for many nation-centric corporations to function independently; the restraining factor is the understanding of liberal economics and corporate economics - the invisible will outright desist nations from having corporations that help the country too much. Though this point, I will admit, is slightly moot with the fact that almost nobody practices this anymore, since its too troublesome to do such a thing, but its very helpful for immediate distinction. Blackhelm Confederacy's Griffencrest Corporation is one such example, with the only exception in his case that he uses one account, more than often likely for simplicity. And yet people still mistake Griffencrest for being Blackhelm.

Wars that carry puppets are certainly acceptable within given bounds. When in a war, especially if the nation in question is on the losing side, it is realistic to have the nation split into factions that will vie for power within the ensuing chaos. Alot of older RPers that do not hang around anymore I remember do this alot for the sake of identification and realism. Splitting up the nation into factions make the legitimacy of the conflict much more apparent, especially when a player is restarting their nations back in the day. Now people just retcon like mad.

Now, I'm not saying that this guide isn't helpful, it just needs a bit more research. I suggest polishing up on the writing and work a bit more on building up the concepts and rules you've already considered, and then see how it works from there.

I actually have done a few RP posts, with puppets, but they're generally confined to the Global Economics & Trade forum, in terms of RP. Thank you for the advice, it was a rough guide anyway, so anything I missed out should be added.

I can see your point on this being a guide, so I will change the thread title to suit this.

[Ulixar]

I have two other nations used for different styles. This one is my dictatorship, another is very free, another is in the middle.

[The Forsaken Earth]

Are we allowed to use different nations to see how a certain way of building your nation works Kaiarra is my main (and considerably better than this one), I use this one as an alt to see how a psychotic, corrupt dictator-ship with too many laws turns out.

[Astholm]

I tend to use mine to roleplay different styles of national motoring and cross-border culture.