AnteriaBoard

The Anterian roleplay is a modern tech world completely unrelated to Earth. That means that the roleplay takes place in the current year; 2021, and any real-life countries, as well as the Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, etc simply don't exist. But how does it work?

First things first

- The No. 1 rule in roleplay and worldbuilding is consent. So before you go and declare war on other countries, you need to understand that in order to include other countries into your roleplay, worldbuilding and lore, you have to get their permission to do so! That's why Anterian roleplay isn't just only acting and reacting, but often creating and discussing scenarios and events together with other members. Of course, foreign policy that includes other nations like for example travel bans, condemnations, or embargoes, which don't necessarily have to directly harm or generally affect the nation, are an exception.

- Since this is a realtime RP in 2021, please stay realistic, especially when worldbuilding and roleplaying military. If you don’t know what is realistic and what’s not, just ask the Director of Roleplay (DoRP), a Councilor, or someone with enough knowledge to advise you.

- In order for roleplay-posts to be canon, they have to be posted on the Regional Message Board (RMB), even if you already posted it in #today-in-anteria on the regional Discord!

How does one start roleplaying?

That is fairly simple. Whenever a new nation joins the roleplay, everyone acts like they have always existed. That way people are free to create their lore as they wish. If you don't know what to post or want to contact other roleplayers on a simpler way than having to write telegrams, there are several channels on our regional Discord server dedicated to roleplay and worldbuilding, which is why I highly recommend joining it!

On the other side, whenever a nation leaves the roleplay, may it be due to inactivity and CTEing (Nations "cease to exist" after 28/60 days of inactivity on NationStates, depending on if they are on Vacation Mode or not), leaving Anteria, or the player changing their nation in the roleplay, everyone acts as if the nation never existed in the first place.

If you want to add some spice to your worldbuilding, you can also create a wikipedia-like article about your nation on a website called IIWiki. Don’t know how it works or how to start? Just ask Registrars or people with knowledge for help and take a look in #wiki-requests on Discord. We already have lots of articles, including one about Anteria itself! When looking at the iiwiki-page, you might notice that Anteria is treated as a planet in the "Tendor System", which means that planets like Mars don't exist and that our system looks different. Anteria is the name of the planet, similar to how our planet is called "Earth" or "Terra". Same goes with our irl countries. As England doesn't exist in our roleplay, the universal language is often referred to as "Common".

Now we get to the most complicated part of Anterian roleplay: War.
Anteria works so well because we have the rules stated here. And that also applies to roleplaying warfare. To prevent newer players from jumping into the RP and directly trying to start wars or similar, we have several rules in order to restrict warfare. One of those being that you as a new player are not allowed to start conflicts like wars (including insurgencies and civil wars) for the first 28 days of your stay in Anteria. That way, we can ensure that people get to know our RP and rules well enough instead of heading right into low-quality and/or badly prepared warfare roleplay.
Additional to that, in order to start wars, there should be some kind of buildup and casus belli (so a valid reason for war), instead of just declaring it out of the blue.

Those are just some examples, so please make sure to read the
Rules of War!

When talking about war history, we do have worldbuilt our own equivalent to the two irl World Wars; The Great War. In order to participate, I recommend contacting Zhousheng (Discord Fjana#6634).

The Map

Of course, roleplaying and worldbuilding without having an idea of where nations are is almost impossible. That is why we maintain a map of Anteria. In order to get a spot on the map, you have to claim the area you want your nation to be. You can do that by either downloading it or taking a screenshot (The latest map is linked on Anteria's World Factbook Entry, as well as in the #map-submissions channel on Discord), marking your claim (make sure it is reasonably sized and consider other maps like climate, tropical storms, etc.), and sending the claim to the Director of Cartography, Foxomexra, either by sending a telegram or posting the claim in #map-submissions on Discord.

When you have claimed a spot, your nation will be added in the next map update, which is every Wednesday and Saturday

White spots on the map are unclaimed land. It is complicated on how much one can interact with it, as there neither a void, nor complete anarchy with no governing structure, but rather some kind of governments noone can roleplay with, since there is no player to roleplay with. That also makes expansion of territory into unclaimed land for roleplay purposes a complicated topic, but not an impossible one. If you have something like that in mind for a roleplay idea, just talk with the Director of Cartography or Roleplay.

Need more information? Just read the Map Guide

The essentials of your worldbuillding

What you definitely need are the population and GDP of your country. Those are one of the most defining factors of how your country is gonna look like. Since NationStates-stats are highly unrealistic, you will have to come up with your own. For that I recommend the following:

1. Ask the cartographer Foxomexra about the size of your claim.
2. Settle on a population density, taking climate and other stuff into account.
3. Calculate your Population (Pop. Density × Size)
4. Settle on a GDP per capita (if you plan on being as wealthy as European nations, anything in a range of 10,000-45,000 ACU range is recommended, 50,000 ACU and above is quite wealthy, and countries even wealthier than that are usually smaller in population, like Switzerland, Qatar, Norway, etc.)
5. Calculate your GDP (GDP per capita × Population)

Please be reasonable with your nation's population density and most importantly GDP per capita. Trying to be a world-dominating economic power like the irl USA will not work!
For population density and GDP per capita, I suggest taking real-life countries as a reference. If you are wondering what “ACU” (or sign ₳) is, it’s an abbreviation for “Anterian Currency Unit”. Though it’s not a currency but only a unit of measurement for international trade. 1 ACU is 1 USD. Similar concept extends to the so called “Anterian Wealth Unit” (AWU, ￦), which is equal to one International (Geary–Khamis) Dollar and is used as a unit of measurement for the Purchasing power parity.

Helpful Guides

Here are some very useful specific guides regarding different aspects of roleplay by Zhousheng!

Any other questions? Send a telegram to the DoRP Neuewland, or write a message to Olympian Inquisitor#5559 on Discord! Have fun and enjoy your stay!