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Vias Belli - Military RP Guide for 21FCR
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The RP Committee of 21st Century Rome,
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DEFINING “role-play” as “the fictional events which are presented on the regional message board to achieve political, cultural, economic or military ends,”
ACKNOWLEDGING the importance of role-play in the development of a region’s history and culture,
REALIZING that the art of role-play has the potential to lead to unfavorable and unrealistic scenarios,
RECOGNIZING the need for a region-wide set of common standards and regulations on the art of role-playing,
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Hereby establishes this guide as the official standard for sanctioned role-play within 21FCR.
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A Note About This Guide
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Firstly, this guide should not be thought of as a set of hard and fast rules. It is intended to outline the 21st Century Roman attitude towards military role-play, but it is more important to follow the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. Haggling over technicalities to gain an advantage is un-Roman. Therefore, each guideline’s justification is included in this guide, along with an overview of the ultimate goals of 21st Century Roman role-play.
Other role-play guides may describe the art of role-play as “cooperative story-telling”. This description is not entirely perfect since the 21st Century Roman understanding of role-play identifies it as a means to an end, not an end in of itself. Nonetheless, cooperation and friendship between nations is essential for successful role-play, as we are all Romans at the end of the day. And the primary purpose of role-play is to contribute to regional history, which is a kind of story.
This view leads to several conclusions:
1. Role-play should have a certain gravitas (“weight”, “seriousness” or “dignity”) because it is a basis for the region’s history.
2. Gravitas is achieved by maintaining pietas (legitimacy, respect for rules/customs) during the course of role-play.
3. In order for role-play to possess gravitas, it cannot be a “standalone” event, nor should it be arbitrary or lack meaning. Rather, it must meaningfully build upon the events of the past.
4. Pietas requires a set of commonly-held standards regarding warfare, which are followed in a logical and realistic manner.
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This guide may be periodically updated or supplemented with additional guides, which will be linked for convenience.
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When creating a well-designed military, a nation's government should begin by answering the following question: what are our nation’s ultimate goals? The answers to this question can be of a political, ideological, religious, economic, or geostrategic nature. They are heavily influenced by the nation's perceptions of the problems facing it, and also by the resources available to that nation.
Once a nation has determined its long-term goals for the foreseeable future, the military should be shaped to meet those goals. This begins with military doctrine, which covers everything from preferred equipment/units to operational tactics. There is an excellent guide to developing linked in the Useful Resources section.
The rule of thumb when forming a military is that everything should be as realistic as possible. This means that generally speaking, nations must choose between quantity and quality. Large conscript armies tend to have lower-quality equipment and lower morale on average in comparison to smaller, highly-motivated volunteer forces. Furthermore, a nation's actual mobilized strength is far, far lower than their NS population. Active military personnel are always a very small percentage of a nation's population, except in very desperate situations.
To get a rough estimate of a nation's mobilized strength, 5 million is subtracted from each nation's current population and the remainder is multiplied by 0.01. This is then added to 5 million to get a more realistic population number.
From this reduced population, those who are unfit for military service such as the young, elderly, disabled, exempt, or criminals are removed from the pool of recruits, which cuts down the number of recruits by a little over 50%.
Finally, the number of actual combat troops is 20% of whatever manpower pool the nation has calculated. This is best done through a program like Google Sheets, but the RP Tribune can help a nation figure out how many soldiers are available to a nation.
Another vital principle in the development of militaries is that a nation's military will not be good at everything. For example, an island nation may have an excellent navy, a decent army, and a weak air force. It is advised for nations to focus on one of the three major branches. Alternatively, resources may be evenly divided between the branches, but this means that they will be of a lower quality than a nation that chooses to specialize in a single branch.
Once a nation has developed an idea of what its military looks like, the information needs to be written down in a factbook (Google Docs works well for people who have little experience with formatting). The final step is to have the RP Tribune review the military for realism and balance. During this process, the Tribune either approves the military or provides sufficient feedback so that the military can be made more acceptable. Militaries that are not approved by the RP Tribune can still exist, but they cannot be legitimately used in regional role-play. This is intended to keep 21st Century Roman nations free to invent the details of their military structures while regulating the strength of those militaries and preventing anyone from having an undue advantage. The review and approval process is intended to improve militaries, not weaken them.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For regional role-play, military technology is kept at a contemporary level. If a new technology is not widely used in real-life militaries, it shouldn't be present in a nation's military. The policy of limiting military tech to a contemporary level is not an arbitrary decision, but is intended to de-emphasize the invention of superweapons, and instead push nations to work on strategy and diplomacy to achieve their goals.
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In the real world, wars do not begin overnight. Therefore, nations in 21st Century Rome must follow a certain process to engage in military conflict.
It should be noted that nations that have not reached the sufficient level of XP to claim land are discouraged from starting wars.
Prior to the war being declared, a certain level of tension must develop between the warring parties. This is achieved by one role-play post of buildup which is posted twenty-four (24) hours prior to the declaration of war. Buildup is defined as "a roleplay post alluding to the likelihood of war between two nations".
A valid reason for war (casus belli) will be necessary for a nation to pursue a legitimate war on another nation. A casus belli is an act or event that provokes or is used to justify war. The following reasons for war are considered invalid: anything which is stated to be OOC (out-of-character), anything that occurred on a non-NS website or platform, or plain boredom.
Once a nation has developed a proper casus belli, published one post of buildup, and waited the appropriate amount of time after posting the buildup, that nation is free to declare war.
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Waging War
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Now that the war has begun, the armies of the warring nations need to be mobilized. After the actual troops have been assembled, they need to be loaded into ships (the most effective and frequently-used form of transportation for large scale conflicts) along with all the supplies they will need to engage in combat. This includes food, ammo, medical supplies, vehicles (both armored and support vehicles), fuel, spare parts, etc.
It takes time to move large numbers of men and the supplies they need into ships. In 21st Century Rome, it takes at least twelve (12) hours after the start of the conflict for the powers to fully mobilize their armies. The start of mobilization should be announced in a role-play post on the regional message board.
Troop movement has traditionally been regulated by this rule: moving land units from one regional map province to another takes twenty-four (24) real-life hours. This is intended to slow the pace of the conflict and prevent it from being rushed. Travel by sea is faster but still takes a day to move from one marine province to another.
Once two opposing forces are located in the same province, they can start actually fighting. Since there is no official war mechanic on NationStates, the actions taken by soldiers and units are described in role-play posts on the RMB. Because of this style, the results are not always clear-cut, especially for large-scale battles. Counterintuitively, it is advised that the warring nations cooperate to determine which side would win in the battle. This will lead to cleaner results that are widely accepted. Keep in mind that these discussions should either take place in telegrams or offsite chats.
It is vital to always keep in mind that resources required to fund an ongoing war effort are immense and will inflict a high cost on your nation. Supplying your soldiers and maintaining your equipment will require massive quantities of metals, plastics, rubber, glass, composite materials, fuels, lubricating oils, textiles, medicines, energy, and food. Even a wealthy nation might find it difficult to provide healthcare and education to its citizens during a massive war, much less have the funds to continue building a super project simultaneously.
Resource costs are compounded by the damage that may be inflicted on infrastructure during the conflict. Roads, bridges, railroads, factories, farms, and mines are likely to be damaged or destroyed by enemy airstrikes and shelling. There is also the enormous human cost caused by war; many of your able-bodied citizens are likely to be out on the front lines. Many will return home dead or permanently handicapped, resulting in labor shortages long after the fighting ends.
If these rules are followed, wars can stretch on for actual weeks. As a consequence, going to war should never be taken lightly and should always have a good casus belli from the start.
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The following are some useful resources for improving military role-play:
How To Create a Military Doctrine For Your NationAllanea’s Handy Guide To Military Incompetence and ErrorsThe Art of NS WarBasic Primer to Naval Warfare, Ground Warfare Guide, and The Complete & Concise Guide to Aerial WarfareGuide: Building your militaryGuide to Overlooked Aspects of Warfare.
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There is a certain etiquette to writing role-play posts. To mark your post as a part of role-playing, a title in bold should be included at the start, summarizing the main point or event of the post.
The first guideline for writing role-play posts is to make sure they are at least three sentences long, ideally longer. This is to avoid extremely short and undescriptive posts called "one-liners".
The problem with one-liner posts is that they carry no substance- others have little to nothing to build on from a one-liner, and one-liners look sloppy in comparison to descriptive, well-written posts. Putting in the effort to make your RP posts presentable and substantive adds gravitas to the role-play
During a role-play conflict, it is expected that all participants take turns posting to avoid what's commonly referred to as "machine-gun posting" where a player posts rapidly without waiting for a reply from the other participant. This usually leads to unhindered invasions or offensive without resistance because the other player cannot respond in time.
Godmodding is a universally loathed behavior on NationStates, and this is no less true in our region. 21st Century Rome has traditionally viewed it as a disease. It is when a nation acts unrealistically to gain an unfair advantage. This can manifest as refusing to take appropriate losses, having absurdly powerful military forces, or completely occupying a nation within a single post. Godmodding undermines the realism and legitimacy of role-playing, which is why it is strictly forbidden.
Spell-checkers like 
Grammarly are very useful to make sure your role-play posts are good quality. If English is not your primary language, online translators like Google Translate or Yandex can be helpful.
Grammarly are very useful to make sure your role-play posts are good quality. If English is not your primary language, online translators like Google Translate or Yandex can be helpful..
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Written by Wolfcloak rebels
with assistance from The Germanic Democracy of Belned
