New West Conifer

NBB Wrapped
"Whilst everyone is in eager anticipation your Spotify Wrapped statistics, we thought we would produce a similar style summary", says concerned citizen NUCL

Without much ado, I'll introduce this topic by saying that NUCL has produced something truly special for this edition of TSR. I'll copy here what he's written as a foreword, but please do click through afterward to view NBB Wrapped!

It's that time of year where we reflect on everything that's happened over the past year, it's also the time where Spotify judges our tragic music obsessions from the past year. Whilst everyone is in eager anticipation your Spotify Wrapped statistics, we thought we would produce a similar style summary of all the major statistics from The Region That Has No Big Banks. This year the region has reached new heights, and this could arguably be the biggest year in the regions history, from a commend of our regional founder, nine TSR editions published, five edition of a new regional podcast, five treaties signed and 15 games nights held... there has been plenty happening within our region. I won't spoil all the statistics but that gives you a flavour of the magnitude of this year in NBB.

Click here to view NBB Wrapped!

Contributed by New United Common-lands for The Social Reformer
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During November, we finished Spooky Week with a bang, hosting the Big Banker Night and the Common People Night and concluding our Murder Mystery. The Big Banker Night highlighted specifically paid games, featuring Lethal Company and Garry’s Mod, but it still saw a relatively good turnout. The Common People Night featured only free games, and as such saw higher turnout, though generally these events did not attract as many people as we typically expect them to. The Murder Mystery did gather quite a bit of interest, as our region’s detectives attempted to solve the question of who killed Yodle; in the end, The Washington Federation received a sentence of life in prison… and the real culprit, Ardeyn, went free!

On the 15th, we held a Joint Games Night with The Leftist Assembly, a region with which we have recently reopened relations after a lengthy stretch without formal ties. This event was massively successful, seeing the participation of nearly twenty people at its peak, including Comria, New Samon, and Marxist Land of Peoples from TLA, among many others from NBB and our friends. Our official cultural events slowed after that, though, as the administration shifted to preparing for the upcoming Winter Olympics and the 12 Days of No Big Banks, so expect December to be packed with fun events!

Written by America the Greater for The Social Reformer
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On the back of a successful cultural venture in the form of this year’s Regional Summer Olympics, it was only natural that a winter version would come around sooner rather than later. Thus, we present the Winter Regional Olympics, alternatively the Regional Winter Olympics! Since this summer, the Regional Olympics have been a way for us to involve our embassy partners in our cultural events (that aren’t our game nights). These Olympics have been run since 2022, with the inaugural editions being run for NBB members only and the 2023 editions being run for members of the InterLeft.

Compared to the Summer Olympics’ 20 events run, these games will have half the events, at 10. In an additional change, this winter edition will feature a home-field advantage for the hosts for the first time! For reference, the results of Olympic events are determined entirely by random number generation, with the advantage serving to give the host nation’s teams a slight… you know. With that in mind, a whopping 20 bids were submitted by both NBB residents and embassy partners, with 37 nations putting forward their votes toward these bids!

It’s through this article that we reveal that the city of Eleuthens, Southsea, will be hosting these 2024 Winter Regional Olympic Games with a grand total of 5 votes!

Expect more from us as we near the start of the Olympics on December 21st (save the date), especially when we open up our Olympic participation poll this next week! If you have an embassy with our region, we’ll be sure to contact you about it! See you then!

Written by The Washington Federation for The Social Reformer
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Thanks to the tireless efforts of Gine Caruttiva who added borders, resources, and biomes to the roleplay map created by Syrasia, and is currently filling in the map based on everybody's claims, our region’s roleplay is very close to being restarted. Claibornia is beginning the process of confirming each nation’s lore, and our RP Admin team is working hard to ensure that claims do not conflict. We are very excited to finally reopen our roleplay! Before we officially start, I’d like to remind everyone that our roleplay is specifically not based on the real world - you cannot claim real-world borders, as the map has been created from scratch, and you cannot roleplay as a real-world nation, even if that nation does not currently exist. We’re excited to bring you a fully fresh start to our roleplay, free of the complications and arguments that arise from real-world situations... and instead boasting all-new complications and arguments!

Written by America the Greater for The Social Reformer
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On November 5th I made an announcement that the Ministry of Domestic Affairs was going to do the Census, which the Ministry does every term. It is a chance for us to see what people think of the current Administration. It is also a chance for the people to suggest stuff and give feedback to the Government.

I wrote a report on it which you can read right here: page=dispatch/id=2579065

I will talk about some of the results here though, we got 30 responses to this census which is great! 40% of respondents say that we need to improve our RMB, in my opinion our RMB is great, we have a very active RMB.

We also got a lot of suggestions for games at our games nights, which I will (or if I already did) share with the Culture Committee.

Thanks for doing the Census! I enjoyed running it and hoped that you enjoyed it too.

Written by Western Arba Fir for The Social Reformer
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Full disclosure – I’m currently writing this article right at the end of my break from university on November 30th. If you check the date of publication, you’ll notice that yes, that’s the day before this edition is released.

Why am I telling you this? Well, handling a paper like this is a real passion of mine. I genuinely love TSR, and writing articles and editing the paper is something I hope to do for a long time to come. However, I’ve been trying to do this alone for too long, and it’s catching up with me. As a result, I want to send out an official call for contributors of any kind to The Social Reformer!

Writing for this paper is a breeze, especially if you pick a topic that interests you. We’ve had people cover issues of massive importance, like the troubles facing the LGBTQ+ community, but we’ve covered far more granular issues as well. If there’s something, either in the real world or right here on NationStates, that interests you, please reach out. I’d love to include articles written by our readers. It’s so important to highlight the thoughts and dedication of our region’s citizens.

If you don’t feel like writing, but maybe you’re an artist, or you like making puzzles, that’s perfect too! TSR isn’t just about articles, I just happen to love to write and have a little too much free time. Genuinely, if there’s anything at all that you even sort of think would make a good addition to our newspaper, please do reach out to me. This paper is about our region and our community, and we can only improve by featuring the hard work of that community.

Written by America the Greater for The Social Reformer
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Foreign Affairs Updates and Embassy Highlights
Updates from our friends during a busy month for GP

The North Pacific	Following a period of tumult, Picairn has appointed Comfed as Minister of Foreign Affairs for The North Pacific. As reported by America the Greater, NBB Diplomat to The North Pacific.
Lazarus	Lazarus recently fended off a coup attempt and adopted a new ideology, Eudaism. As reported by America the Greater, NBB Diplomat to Lazarus.
Europe	On the 26th of November, the European Parliament motioned to elect a new Third Commissioner, with Laver Island emerging victorious. As reported by The Washington Federation, NBB Diplomat to Europe.

Written by America the Greater and The Washington Federation for The Social Reformer
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In late October, Faralried and I were approached by UPC, President of Europeia, asking if we’d be interested in signing a treaty with their region. Europeia was a fairly recent inclusion to our consulates, but they’d already supported us greatly in our efforts to commend Yodle, and many members of our region have been a consistent presence at EBC broadcasts, so our regions had already grown quite close. As a result, coincidentally, we'd actually already been planning to approach Europeia about a treaty, so UPC’s message came as a very welcome surprise.

The process of drafting and accepting the treaty was very straightforward. The treaty provides for the construction of onsite embassies, mutual defense and information sharing, and cultural, technological, and World Assembly collaboration. Our regional podcast took a great deal of inspiration from the EBC’s own podcast, and Europeia has been nothing but kind and helpful to us, so we’re quite pleased to open up this new chapter of relations with them! Here’s to the future, and to creatively-named treaties!

Written by America the Greater for The Social Reformer
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Late on November 26th (or the 27th, depending on your time zone), the NationStates community discovered that two new regions, The Outback and the Plains of Perdition, had been founded. Stunningly, these regions were designated ‘Sinkers’ like The Rejected Realms, and already, ejected nations were arriving at these new regions. For the first time in many years, NationStates had new GCRs.

Controversy arose almost immediately. Officials from The Rejected Realms were quite understandably upset, as their ‘spawn rate’ had effectively been drastically cut, and they were no longer guaranteed the massive rate of new nations that they’d experienced for years prior. Debate raged about the presence of these new regions, their impact on the game, and generally the reason for creating them in the first place. TRR officials seemed upset that, following their requests for a ‘mute button’ for nations (seeing as they couldn’t eject or ban troublemakers), they were instead met with two new competing Sinkers. They could eject nations, but those ejections weren’t necessarily permanent, and they were losing a great deal of their largest source of population growth at the same time.

Watching the rapidly developing situation, though, one thing was clear – a scramble for power was imminent. GCRs have been famously (or infamously) stable for years now, with coups becoming essentially unheard of given new developments in regional security. Two entirely new GCRs, though, meant two regions with no long-standing security networks or endorsement programs. Rumors bubbled about which Sinkers would become targets to which group of regions, and coalitions began to assemble, with diplomatic channels becoming a flurry of activity late that night. At a time when many of our regional officials were on vacation, this caused a great deal of chaos as we scrambled to formulate our response to the situation.

Before we had a chance to decide our favored course of action, the dust had already settled on the first wave of activity. The Outback came under the control of a coalition of members of The North Pacific, The West Pacific, and Lone Wolves United, who rapidly set up a sovereign regional government. Similarly, forces of The League and Concord, along with Europeia, took control of the Plains of Perdition, creating a Primarchate under Rhaza, also known as Quebecshire. In this unstable time, it is uncertain whether these administrations will remain in power long enough to cement their reigns. However, it is reassuring to see each of these regions attempting to establish an independent, sovereign government, and not simply function as an extension of some other, larger region. The Region That Has No Big Banks has officially recognized the new governments of these GCRs and wishes them luck during the possibly tumultuous times ahead.

Written by America the Greater for The Social Reformer
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In the most shocking news of this week, Hulldom, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for The North Pacific and the Governor of our great friends over in Blue Ridge has resigned both positions and seemingly intends to leave NS after another IC scandal.

Hulldom who unfortunately had a poor ending to his own delegacy of The North Pacific due to a very public IC scandal appears to be retiring from NS due to another. Speaking in a statement in the Blue Ridge server early in the morning of November 30th Hulldom acknowledged the scandal involved sharing private TNP intel with an unnamed TNP ally without further specifics of the incident in question. Hulldom went on to detail his abdication from governorship and transfer of power to Adkissa and then ended with announcing his intent to let Hulldom CTE after season 4 card inscription.

Obviously this comes as a shock to us here at No Big Banks, and we wish Adkissa and Blue Ridge all the best in these chaotic times. As treaty partners our ears are always open to help and assist in any way we can. Long live Adkissa’s reign!

Written by Faralried for The Social Reformer
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Adkissa

DISCLAIMER: This interview was conducted before Hulldom's abdication, and as such may not fully reflect the developments of the last week. On a personal note, though, I think these responses are both remarkably well formulated and also a great indication of how Adkissa plans to continue with their newfound responsibilities.

Gine Caruttiva

Issue Number XXI

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Issue Number XXI

WRITERS ON THIS ISSUE: America the Greater (Chief Editor), New United Common-lands, The Washington Federation, Western Arba Fir, AND Faralried
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE: Gine Caruttiva, Adkissa
SPECIAL THANKS TO Syrasia FOR FORMATTING AND Socialistic Britain FOR ARTWORK