Where are we? When are we? Who are we?
Click above for the IC; Image Credit: Jakub Różalski, "Before the Storm"
The stars changed. That was the first warning we had that everything had gone wrong.
What is this? What am I looking at?
This is Terra Nova, a multiverse crossover Island-in-the-Sea-of-Time roleplay.
The premise is as follows: each player represents a faction or a nation from a setting. This setting can be real life, both the past and present, an established fictional canon, or something from your own imagination. By act of alien space bat, your factions or parts of your factions have all been placed together on a copy of planet Earth and now have to find a way to survive and prosper without all the neighbours your faction used to have, and with all the new neighbours it now has.
Are there any restrictions to this free-form setting?
The usual rules and accepted standards of conduct of the NationStates Portal-to-the-Multiverse will apply.
Terra Nova, the setting of this RP, is identical to Earth insofar as basic natural geographical features like oceans, coastlines, mountains, et cetera are concerned. In those cases where these features have been changed by human effort (e.g. the Delta Works), the person applying for that area will be free to choose as long as the area looks as it did at some point in the last 11,000 years of Earth history. In terms of the biosphere, the climate, natural resources, et cetera, nothing is required and the players may shape their respective regions as they wish.
If any faction is pulled from the existing canon of a fictional setting, those fictions will not exist in the lore of other factions. For example, if one player applies to be Hogwarts and another player applies to be real-life London, that real-life London will be a version of London in which the Harry Potter books were never written. This is to avoid the trope of early contact basically consisting of factions' disbelief that something out of fiction is now real life. This rule only applies to specific works of fiction with known authors and do not apply to genre tropes or old legends, so, for example, a player can have a nation infested with zombies without zombies being struck out of fiction everywhere.
The scope of the transportation is the surface of Terra Nova and its nearby environs. Factions cannot extend more than 10km underground, nor can it extend more than 500,000km from the centre of the planet. Note that this range includes the Moon, so you can have lunar factions if you wish. If the faction you wish to play does not exist within this scope or even comes from a universe where the Earth doesn't exist, then its assets - population, infrastructure, material wealth, et cetera - must be reshaped to fit within this scope. Those areas within the scope that is not claimed by a player faction are assumed to be as they were after the end of the last ice age. If factions possess means of spaceflight, it will break for mysterious reasons should the faction try to send spacecraft outside of this scope.
In the interest of avoiding distasteful mass death scenarios and to ensure that factions don't grow completely out of the scale of what can be reasonable played out on one planet, factions that include a large number of civilians must be at least somewhat self-sufficient and weapons of mass destruction, defined as any armament that can be used to kill large numbers of civilians quickly, will be weakened upon transportation to be more in line with conventional weapons.
So I can import the Imperium of Man and exterminatus everyone, right?
Because of the extreme disparity in power between player factions that a concept like this is inevitably going to generate, the resolution of conflicts between player factions will not consider which side would realistically be more powerful. Should players disagree on which side would emerge victorious in a conflict between player factions, arbitration will consider the factors noted below, listed in decreasing order of importance. This applies not just to military conflict, but to any struggle for influence.
1. Strengths and Weaknesses. Factions have certain strengths and weaknesses, some of which may be applicable in any given conflict. Factions that fight conflicts in which their strengths are applicable and their weaknesses are not will be advantaged. Factions that play to their strengths and take steps to work around their disadvantages will be advantaged. Factions that just seek to be strong in general by having more or better stuff without specific advantages or disadvantages will be strongly disadvantaged.
2. Alliances. Factions that are supported by many allied player factions will be advantaged over player factions that try to stand alone. In any conflict, advantage will be given to the side that has more players in it, regardless of how strong the factions represented by those players are. If a faction is involved in multiple conflicts, however, then their contribution will be split between those multiple conflicts and therefore count for less.
3. Established Canon. Players that have written at length about facts and details relevant to their faction's performance in any given struggle in their application or in their IC posts will be advantaged over players that only bring up relevant facts about their faction once the conflict has begun. Factions that have prepared for a conflict over many IC posts will be advantaged over factions that only start taking the necessary actions for a conflict once it has started.
4. Quality of Posts. Players who write good IC posts will be advantaged over players who write poor IC posts.
5. Revanchism. Players that have lost critical conflicts in the past and are in dire straights will be advantaged over players that have repeatedly won player faction conflicts.
To put it simply, if you're a large and technologically advanced faction and you think you can try to bully your smaller and weaker neighbours without putting much effort into it, the OP will intervene to make sure bad things happen to your faction.
Ooh, alliances! Let's make a collaborative post on Google Drive!
I'm aware that NationStates is often not the most convenient place to express one's creativity and that people may want to organise themselves via off-site communications. Doing so is fine, but it is an expectation that all text produced for this RP - both in-character material and out-of-character discussions - will be copied over and posted on NationStates in a timely manner if it was not originally published here, unless it involves secret discussions that you would rather have other players not know about.
Shouldn't we do things differently around here?
If you have suggestions for the RP itself, regarding its rules, its administration, or this original post itself, please don't hesitate to speak up. We are all here to have fun, not to suffer under arbitrary rules, so if you think this RP would be better if something about it changed, then we urge you to suggest it to the OP or one of the co-OPs.
Note that this original post is still provisional, so things may change drastically and abruptly based on player suggestions.
I've heard enough. Where do I apply?
As below. Remove all texts in parentheses.
Please don't take the open format of this application as an excuse to write very little. The application format was written to be relatively unrestrained with the expectation that you know best what information you need to include to give a complete picture of your faction and that you don't need me to give you a detailed questionnaire for you to produce a solid piece of writing. Feel free to add additional sections if you feel that you need to include information that doesn't fit into any of the six given sections.
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[b][i]Transportation Report[/i]
[size=150](name of your faction here)[/size][/b]
[b]1. Source[/b]
(the universe your faction comes from; if it's real life, just say real life; if it's an original setting, give a brief description)
[b]2. Scope[/b]
(what exactly has been transported; give a very brief description of your faction and, if not all of it was transported, then what parts of it were transported)
[b]3. Location[/b]
(where your faction has been transported to; if you're claiming territory, note the extent of your territory; if you're not claiming territory, just say where your faction appears)
[b]4. Organisation[/b]
(everything social about your faction; what kind of faction is it? what is its organisational structure? who leads it, and by what legitimacy? by what philosophy is it governed?)
[b]5. Assets[/b]
(everything physical about your faction; how many people were transported? what military assets did you bring to Terra Nova? do you have an industrial economy? magic? fantasy creatures?)
[b]6. Background[/b]
(the history of your faction and any information about the setting it comes from that helps contextualise your faction)
If you do not have time to write an application right at this moment, please use the reservation format below.
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[i]Scope Space Reservation[/i] - [b](name of your faction here)[/b]
[b]Reserved Space[/b] - (a description of the territories you are reserving here)
Accepted Players and Reservations
G-Tech: Terran Coalition
Mercatus: Corvus Prime
New Saharia: Saharian Republic
Northern Socialist Council Republics (OP): Commonwealth of Northern Socialist Council Republics
The Imperial Warglorian Empire (Co-OP): National Socialist State of America
Barapam - reserved 2020-12-26: Small region in inland United States
Hastiaka - reserved 2020-12-26: New Zealand
Union Princes - reserved 2020-12-22: French West Africa and environs