So uh…another late night post cause I can’t sleep.
Bro it is so weird googling information for a nations campaign.
Like I go from researching a list of war crimes, to Canada wildlife and geography, to trying ti figure out if I could turn heroin into either a powder or a gas (for war of course) and now I’m thinking how to weaponize a moose.
When I was looking at the war crimes most of them were just kinda sad and didn’t really wanna do those in a game…but child soldiers? I can see that…
In one of the past nation’s campaigns I played in, I committed war profiteering, enslaved all of humanity (only because one of the other players wanted to genocide all the humans and I wanted to keep them alive cause not evil but it just ended up being awful anyways. Like yeah…sure, great idea to let the chocolate empire run by soul eating rock monsters from space lead the remainder of humanity), and then I BUILT A RIVER THROUGH A CONTINENT (for trade of course….and also I really needed a city that wasn’t in the mountains)
It’s just. Damn nations games are just not occurring at all?! Like, if you enjoy the chaos of DnD games nations games are just that but amplified. You have the power to put the world in an economic depression. I honestly find it so funny that there were several times I became a world empire and just would not fall…or even have a civil war or something. Because the best trick to having a stable nation is to avoid war when you can, sell chocolate, and keep your civilians content with life. Sure initial expansion is slow…but once you’ve acquired money…oh you just fucking won. Wanna research horrible machines to torment your enemies? Throw money at it…wanna start building a strong relation with another nation? Wait until the current leadership is having money issues and give them money to turn them into a puppet state. No good nation that doesn’t like you at all? Simply procrastinate getting into a conflict, wait until there’s civil unrest in their nation and then fund things strategically until said nation is no longer an issue.
I love slowly acquiring money while watching the other players go to war with npc nation…I like sitting back, pretending to not be a threat, give them gifts of chocolate….until like like a snapping turtle using its tounge as a lure then I ambush them with a sudden influx of strategic cash and propaganda or just stop selling them stuff because more likely than not I’ve become THE source of goods within that geographic region (thus putting the leadership in a position where they must either ease relations with me, settle for a worse deal elsewhere, or endure the wrath of their people)….exept that one time where I tried this on a player nation who actually knew what he was doing, was already self sufficient, and just wanted me dead….that was the campaign I spent the whole time running around the globe trying to settle down to do capitalism only to pissoff thr locals and have to flee before I could get any decent industry running…it was really sad (that was also the one time I didn’t start in the tropics and didn’t immediately start selling chocolate…so uh…chocolate is the key to a successful nation aparently…ok also coffee but the chocolate thing is funnier to me)
And then there was this one time in the last campaign where my leader (a 60ft big soul eating rock monster) was going to one of the player nations for negotiations and a ceremony I think and almost got fucking assasinated. I’m really glad they didn’t cause then they wouldn’t have have befriended the propheted ‘evil necromancer that’s going to end the world and kill your adopted son that reincarnates and you have to go find and your not even sure it’s the right guy’ and unlocked their past memories of being a part of a technology advanced space empire and thus having knowledge of better technologies (we were in the Bronze Age). I made hot air balloons…and called them U-Boats…as in like…Up-Boats…cause they’re up in the sky….i mean…Aether did kind of go insane and started hearing voices but this didn’t lead to anything bad. This isn’t a set up the campaign ended before anything bad could happen cause of that.
But uh…yeah nations campaigns are a play option that exists…i definitely recommend giving it a try cause they are just built different from more player focused campaigns (depending on style you can still do a lot of role play though). As far as systems you can really use anything as long as there’s a basic character creation system and (depending on what system your using) you may or may not have to create stuff for running a nation. So like…military, economy, civilian happiness, etc. it’s more management but that’s where the chaos comes from. One moment you’ll be like ‘wow! It’s so great that my military is so big!’ And then the costs of keeping up the troops and (depending on your nations overall culture or how effective your propaganda was) then it’ll be ‘well shit now I’m broke and the farmers want me dead’. But like, it’s the sort of thing that just gets more and more insane as time goes on, and I know that’s just a think with long standing ttrpgs in general but it’s really amplified in nations campaigns.
Honestly giving me the same vibe as first playing spore and encountering the various quality creations. Ally with the freddy fathers, enemies with some dinosaurs. Normal day.