War and Storytelling: A Guide to Roleplaying War

[The Macabees]

Is Full Metal Jacket a good film to observe?

Great movie.

[Bashriyya]

Is Full Metal Jacket a good film to observe?

Great movie.

Excellent, then I was right.

[Nova-Columbia]

I took a look at them. They look good.

Do you RP with a set population that's different from your NS stats?

I use the listed population and compare it to the Global Firepower Index of a country of similar size.

[The Macabees]

So, you have a population of 14 million.

You have about 3 million military personnel (including national guard).

That's 21% of your population that's in the military.

Obviously, with each passing day that % becomes smaller, because your game population is growing, but it's something worth bringing up because some may call you out on it.

[Nova-Columbia]

So, you have a population of 14 million.

You have about 3 million military personnel (including national guard).

That's 21% of your population that's in the military.

Obviously, with each passing day that % becomes smaller, because your game population is growing, but it's something worth bringing up because some may call you out on it.

There is mandatory conscription into the National Guard from the ages 18-20 for everyone, as well as a professional military. The number is based off of the number of military aged people in Serbia, I believe.

[The Macabees]

How many years?

Military age people might be 18-40 years old, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're all conscripted -- just that at one point in their life they were.

So say 3 million people in your country are military age. Most of those would have already served, so they shouldn't be included in that number.

If you want to simplify it as much as possible, figure out how many people in Serbia are between the ages of 18 and 20 -- that might be a better figure for how large your national guard is.

[Greater Slavic Union]

Hi, first of all: wonderful, magnificent guide! Definitely worth a Purple Heart (Band of Brothers anyone ?)

Secondly, I don't wish to make take too much of your time, so if you can't do it now there's no problem, but I would like to ask you a review about a couple of posts I made on a thread... Can I?

[The Macabees]

Yea, link 'em to me. I can't promise I can give you feedback for sure. A lot of stuff comes up. But I can most definitely try to read them and give feedback.

[Greater Slavic Union]

Yea, link 'em to me. I can't promise I can give you feedback for sure. A lot of stuff comes up. But I can most definitely try to read them and give feedback.

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=414369&p=32229034&sid=6e0d71cb54b5e75b48c9c85980f921fe#p32147652

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=414369&p=32229034&sid=6e0d71cb54b5e75b48c9c85980f921fe#p32229034


(Gloss over the women service thing: it's a thing we are currently debating in the RP's Discord)

[Nova-Columbia]

How many years?

Military age people might be 18-40 years old, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're all conscripted -- just that at one point in their life they were.

So say 3 million people in your country are military age. Most of those would have already served, so they shouldn't be included in that number.

If you want to simplify it as much as possible, figure out how many people in Serbia are between the ages of 18 and 20 -- that might be a better figure for how large your national guard is.

Okay, thanks, fixed it. Any other suggestions?

[The Macabees]

Now it's time to use that military in a story!

Do you have any RP ideas you've been mulling over?

[The Macabees]

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=414369&p=32229034&sid=6e0d71cb54b5e75b48c9c85980f921fe#p32147652

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=414369&p=32229034&sid=6e0d71cb54b5e75b48c9c85980f921fe#p32229034

Both posts are very good, to be honest, so good job. Some ways I think they would be even better.

Take the first paragraph of that first post:

Finally, they had arrived in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, which was one of the various sub-entities that made up Jugoslavija. It had been a long march, the one the Thirty-fifth Mechanized Division of the Western Slavic Army had undertaken since they had left the city where they were based, a small town not too far from Břeść. They had marched through the marshes and woods of the southern part of Belarus, through the river-rich countrysides of southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, through the mountains and woods of Slovakia, to finally arrive in Hungary. Once in Hungary, they had yet to pass the Danube and march towards Slovenia, which they did. They arrived at the Mura river and passed it. They then arrived at the Drava river and passed it. Later, they arrived at the Sava river, just a few kilometers away from Ljubljana, and passed it. They had done it: they now were in Ljubljana, waiting for their assignment to the front lines.

It gets somewhat repetitive ("...and they passed it"), although I do see a purpose to that repetition. Why not color it a little with some descriptive information of the setting? It seems like a perfect opportunity for subtle world building.

For example, "They had marched through the humid, insect-infected marshes and cold, dark woods of southern Belarus."

It might lengthen that paragraph (and you could split the paragraph), but I think it would make it even more interesting to read. It would make the world and their passage exciting, especially if you use adjectives that imply difficulty for your troops -- it would make that journey an achievement, it would give it meaning. Does this make sense?

In the second post, flashbacks would have been cool. As he's reminded where he is and how he got there, maybe he'd have flashes of memory of that firefight and it would let the reader really live in. I think that would help inject even more life and action in that post.

You're a good writer, so there's so much potential with your posts. I think that over time you'll naturally start to add certain details that you didn't add before.

[Greater Slavic Union]

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=414369&p=32229034&sid=6e0d71cb54b5e75b48c9c85980f921fe#p32147652

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=414369&p=32229034&sid=6e0d71cb54b5e75b48c9c85980f921fe#p32229034

Both posts are very good, to be honest, so good job. Some ways I think they would be even better.

Take the first paragraph of that first post:

Finally, they had arrived in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, which was one of the various sub-entities that made up Jugoslavija. It had been a long march, the one the Thirty-fifth Mechanized Division of the Western Slavic Army had undertaken since they had left the city where they were based, a small town not too far from Břeść. They had marched through the marshes and woods of the southern part of Belarus, through the river-rich countrysides of southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, through the mountains and woods of Slovakia, to finally arrive in Hungary. Once in Hungary, they had yet to pass the Danube and march towards Slovenia, which they did. They arrived at the Mura river and passed it. They then arrived at the Drava river and passed it. Later, they arrived at the Sava river, just a few kilometers away from Ljubljana, and passed it. They had done it: they now were in Ljubljana, waiting for their assignment to the front lines.

It gets somewhat repetitive ("...and they passed it"), although I do see a purpose to that repetition. Why not color it a little with some descriptive information of the setting? It seems like a perfect opportunity for subtle world building.

For example, "They had marched through the humid, insect-infected marshes and cold, dark woods of southern Belarus."

It might lengthen that paragraph (and you could split the paragraph), but I think it would make it even more interesting to read. It would make the world and their passage exciting, especially if you use adjectives that imply difficulty for your troops -- it would make that journey an achievement, it would give it meaning. Does this make sense?

In the second post, flashbacks would have been cool. As he's reminded where he is and how he got there, maybe he'd have flashes of memory of that firefight and it would let the reader really live in. I think that would help inject even more life and action in that post.

You're a good writer, so there's so much potential with your posts. I think that over time you'll naturally start to add certain details that you didn't add before.

Thanks a lot for the feedback (I honestly didn't expect this).

And yes: I agree with the part about details and I really try to insert them as much as I can, but not being a mother-tongue speaker limits my options in writing (yet I promise you I will work on it).

Again, thanks a lot for having decided to take a look at them and give feedbacks

[The Macabees]

Hey, for not being a native speaker your writing is superb.

[Cerillium]

English is difficult to learn. You write very well, Greater Slavic Union.

Also, this is a bump to let people know they can ask questions here.

[Allanea]

Just a small tidbit from my experience.

A lot of roleplay guides stress the cooperation and cooperation is very important.

But I think there's something to be said for competitiveness, or rather striving to achieve your country's in-character goals. Competitiveness shouldn't a something that destroys your RP, but fuel for you to put more work in your posts. Maybe this is what Maccabee's post already says, but I think it needs to be stressed somewhat more.

A lot of the time I have seen entirely 'cooperative' RPs die because people already know how it's going to end, or because people spend too much time planning and preparing for the RP that they just don't care anymore.

[The Macabees]

There's a distinction that's hard to catch unless you're a veteran.

You define, rightly, competitive as 'striving to achieve your country's in-character goals.'

When I, and others, push for cooperation, we're looking at it from an OOC angle. There's a way to be competitive in your sense and cooperative in mine, and in fact this is the ideal. But I don't think we need to tell people to be competitive; the most common problem war RPs face is competitiveness that leaves the bounds of the IC, thus the focus on cooperation on my part.

You're right, though.

[New Aeyariss]

Just a small tidbit from my experience.

A lot of roleplay guides stress the cooperation and cooperation is very important.

But I think there's something to be said for competitiveness, or rather striving to achieve your country's in-character goals. Competitiveness shouldn't a something that destroys your RP, but fuel for you to put more work in your posts. Maybe this is what Maccabee's post already says, but I think it needs to be stressed somewhat more.

A lot of the time I have seen entirely 'cooperative' RPs die because people already know how it's going to end, or because people spend too much time planning and preparing for the RP that they just don't care anymore.

Why cooperation and competitiveness have to be opposed to each other? I think that there is a place for both. True cooperativeness isn't constantly ignoring military realism, ignoring your country's IC goals, etc. etc. True cooperativeness is the art of finding the common path with the other side.

[Lutvikkia]

I have a tentative storyline, but keep falling over the - details - how do I regulate : tension / details ??

[The Macabees]

I have a tentative storyline, but keep falling over the - details - how do I regulate : tension / details ??

This is just one way to do it, I suppose.

But it's a method that has been popular in marketing for a long time, even before it was a buzzword.

And it's a characteristic shared by many of the popular history books, military or otherwise. And that trait is storytelling.

Storytelling comes in different forms and different styles. Outside of whether you tell the story through a character, through third-person narration, or as a historian, a story is a collection of details that speak to a premise and to the various subplots. Following Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Storytelling (which I highly recommend to all writers), the details in a story are related to the premise, the tension, and the characters. They make the tension viable, give it a reason for existing. For example, a novel's premise might be 'selfishness leads to loneliness, and loneliness leads to reflection and redemption', so it necessitates a selfish character whose details all make the trait of selfishness viable. Scrooge is this character, for example. Every detail about him is selfish, almost like hyperbole -- and that's on purpose, because for a narrative to be compelling it must be believable, it's a technique of rhetoric to focus on the qualities that drive the narrative/story.

Tie the details to the story. Let the story drive the details and I don't think you'll find details an obstacle to creating a good story.

[Lutvikkia]

Many, many thanks once again good fellow!