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Dispatch → Meta → Reference
by 
The Isles of Student Loan Debt.
.
1,236 reads.
How to Get Involved in DSA Role-Play
You want to learn how best to get into the role-play community of the DSA? That makes me excited since it is my job to get people to do that. This dispatch will tell you some things you should know as well as some tips that you can follow (or not. No one is making you follow these. They're just tips)
When I (
Student Loan Debt) first joined the DSA, I thought I had to be very formal and act serious in what I said. However, I soon learned that we're just a bunch of political science nerds who are playing a game. You don't have to be afraid of messing up or being ejected from our region or anything. Most of us are just casual players. Some of our nations are pretty much just memes if they were given political power. We are a pretty relaxed region, so enjoy the fun. If anything bad happens, we're pretty nice about it.
The DSA Role-Play community is a community, meaning more than one person is participating in role-play. This means that, sometimes, your role-play will not go how you want it to go and, sometimes, there will be backlash from other players. When you are doing role-play with other players, you should try and remember that you're not the only one in charge of what is happening. If people are reacting badly to your RP, whether in-character or not, that's just that. With that in mind, don't get frustrated by people not going along with your RP. When you do international RP, you're inviting other opinions and actions.
Also to note: Our RP is consent-based. If you're publishing RP of your own nation and characters, this doesn't matter. However, if you're interacting with other nations or characters that you do not control (aka another player controls them), then it has to be RP you both agree on. Like if you wanted to do a military invasion of another player's nation, both you and that player have to agree to that RP happening (but your nations don't need to ;) ). This helps reduce stress and tension between players that may not want to have RP forced onto them.
Now for the Tips.
When you joined the game, you created a country. However, a country is not a nation. A nation is an identity, a culture, a unity, a unique society. Don't just have a country, have your own place. What would I mean by this?
Have a flag that means something to your people.
What is your nation's history?
Are your people nomadic or do they settle?
How urban are your people versus rural?
Why is your national animal so special?
Create an economy; what is your money? How do people trade, if at all? Does industry dominate or is agriculture essential? How do your people address poverty?
Create a culture for your peoples; What languages are spoken? What religious beliefs are held? How prude or liberal are they with personal freedoms? How patriotic or global are your people? Are there any holidays?
These are only a few examples of ways to develop your nation's identity.
Like many Regions in the game of NationStates, our region has a map of the land we operate in. Now, I may be bias with this one since I'm in charge of our maps, but here my out on this!
Most of the DSA Role-Play community has a spot on our regional maps, largely because it greatly helps in developing role-play. You can have defined borders to your country. You can explore the climate of your land. You can sails the seas that line your coast. You can trade with neighboring countries. The possibilities are limitless.
You just have to do 1 thing before that. To be on our maps, you have to join our off-site forum and that's it. The forum helps us try and make sure people are not getting around our map rules and all that jazz.
Forum: 
http://thedsa.proboards.com/
Did that? Great! Now you can be on our maps! You Can Click Here To See The Maps and Learn How To Join The Map
This one is not required, but it is recommended. The most active Role-Players in the DSA are on our Discord server, where a lot of role-play, discussion about RP, and RP art is posted.
This is a question that many have when trying to join Role-Play here in the DSA. There are many ways you can approach this. It all starts with how you want to do it. You can role-play as a newspaper from a neutral point of view (unless the newspaper is deliberately biased), role-play as a person or group making a statement or doing an action, or role-play as your nation's government having official policy and words and stuff.
What can I role-play about? I have no ideas. Well, here are only a few ideas.
Put up a news article discussing an event in your nation
Send an official statement or request from your government to another
Talk about a controversial law that was passed in your country
Explain a new military program
Make some other interesting story that will get others engaged and allow for some interactivity between nations
Try writing from the point of view of a citizen, rather than always from the government
Do you want to join in on an RP event that is going on? That's as simple as starting one.
One word: REACT
Look at what's been going on, figure out what your country would do in this situation, and react to it. Let's say two countries are bickering over trade or something. You could take a side, you could interject with your own trade issues, you could send a muffin basket to both sides, laced with cyanide, whatever.
You can literally just jump in like you always existed. You can just make a post and you can easily integrate into our RP world and we won’t question it. Seems unrealistic, but that’s how a constantly growing and contracting RP community works.
And that is pretty much it. This is only to help you first get into Role-Play. There are so many routes you can take and so many stories to tell that I can't list them here. Hope you join the international community soon.
