NationStates

Imagine a game where about the only premise you get is that every player controls a nation. If they want, they can interact with others on a forum on the internet, about those nations.

Sounds strange? It's Better Than It Sounds.

This is the premise of the browsergame NationStates. Despite (or because of) the very limited premise, NationStates can be played two ways: Mechanically (Decide how your nation evolves through daily ethical issues that you alone can solve), or Creatively (Role Play your nation on web forums, acting out wars, diplomatic crises, or World Cups).

As you might guess, which part of Nationstates is the real game means something different for everyone. The Roleplaying aspect is commonly seen as a combination of 19th century Imperial politics, 20th century military strategy and cutting-edge 21st century military technology, along with some older bits.

Based off the story Jennifer Government by Max Barry. But not really. Here. have a link.

See also Cyber Nations, a nation sim game with more focus on gameplay.

Nationstates (the actual nation-building simulator) contains examples of:
"[Nation]'s national animal is the [animal], and its currency is the [currency]."
 * Anarchy Is Chaos: Played straight. An anarchist nation is described as "in a state of perpetual fear, as a complete breakdown of social order has led to the rise of order through biker gangs." Averted by many roleplayers though.
 * Author Appeal: The name of the nation, the type of government and its leadership (Monarch/President-for-Life/Sporting Superstar/Chief General/Jedi/Sith) is all named after the creator. It's their nation, after all.
 * Author Avatar: Pretty much the premise of the whole thing. Not all players though. Many people use it to play as different characters than themselves.
 * Badass Army: Everybody wants one. This is even more true than it is of the General Ripper.
 * Big Brother Is Watching: Comes up as an issue in gameplay frequently. Subverted by certain highly libertarian nations, some of whom don't even bother to conduct a census.
 * Bread and Circuses: Some nations do just this.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Certain evil nations are run by these.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: The Averageness of a nation is measured on the Average Standardized Normality scale
 * Divided States of America: In some histories.
 * Drill Sergeant Nasty: One of the issues is soldiers complaining about sergeants forcing them to crawl through muddy minefields and climb grease-coated walls. You can side with the grunts or the sergeants, or eliminate training altogether and send out troops who don't know how to shoot, or start raising children from birth to fight.
 * Evil Versus Evil. Quite common.
 * Follow the Leader: New nations will sometimes have a striking similarity to movies that have come out recently (and some old nations take from popular culture as well, without much alteration in many cases).
 * Gambit Pileup: See the NS entry on the TXP page. Roleplays tend to turn into this once they've been alive for long enough. Regional political structures often do it right from the start. There are numerous players trading favors and outmatching each other to get World Assembly resolutions passed or killed. Most regional alliances are set up as growing space for these. The more branches of the Broken Base one is familiar with, the more it appears that the entire game is one big Gambit Pileup that's been building up for eight years.
 * Government Agency of Fiction: More likely than you'd think.
 * Government Procedural: Sometimes.
 * Hello, Insert Name Here:
 * You can pick your national animal and currency, which appears in the description like this (and may also appear in some of the daily issues you are given):


 * For example, every time an issue involves animals they insert the name of the national animal, even if it wouldn't work with the given situation.
 * The nation's capital city, leader, and national religion (if you want them) can be unlocked when your population reaches a high enough level (250 million, 750 million, and 1 billion respectively; it takes about 6 months to get to 1 billion).
 * Also, full nation names follow the format of The [Nation classification (e.g. Federation)] of [Nation], and you can make your own custom classification when you reach 500 million. Some have made weird or amusing names using this, such as The Water Bottles are Full of H2SO4.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: One of the issues gives you the option to legalize cannibalism in your nation.
 * It Makes Sense in Context: Probably three-quarters of the forum-related stuff on this page, especially nation-specific examples, fall under this.
 * Take a Third Option: Even when you feel an issue could only have two logical solutions, there's often another option that may or may not make sense. Example: allow public nudity, ban public nudity, or ENFORCE public nudity. Others are just a nonstandard extreme/ideal that would be really hard to bring about in real life. Not to mention you can just dismiss the issue altogether if it appears to be Failure Is the Only Option.
 * Non-Entity General: Originally played straight, now merely optional with the addition of nameable leaders.
 * People's Republic of Tyranny.
 * Privately-Owned Society: With the graphs, you can see your nation's economic division between private and public companies.
 * Ripped from the Headlines: Quite a few of the issues; one referring to a particular Supreme Court case was written in less than a week. A lot of the time, when a real life tragedy occurs a whole bunch of copycat RPs emerge with similar things happening to their nations.
 * Running Gag: Until late 2010, "Repeal "Condemn NAZI EUROPE" " and "Victory for gatesville!" were extremely common, and slightly annoying.
 * Speaking of the WA, we might as well mention Christian Democrats' various and futile attempts to ban abortion via WA, and promptly getting laughed out by everyone else.
 * Shout-Out: The "What's in a Name?" issue directly references The Prisoner, with a suggestion that the nation's children be given numbers instead of names.
 * "A Grave Problem" references Soylent Green, by having an option to put corpses in fast-food burgers.
 * "The Sky Is Falling": "A particularly bad spate of bombings, hijackings and snake attacks aboard airline flights has crippled the air travel industry in (your country name here)."
 * The "Nobody Expects The (your country name here) Inquisition!" issue regarding the possibility of a national religious inquisition.
 * The "Please read: A personal appeal from NationStates founder Max Barry" banner promoting Machine Man is a pretty obvious reference to the "Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jim Wales" banners on The Other Wiki.
 * The unit of measuring how Atheist a nation is is the "Dawkins".
 * "Voter Apathy Rising But No One Cares": People are too apathetic to vote, and one of the options is to energize people by putting "POWERTHIRST [TM] to the national water supply!".
 * Silliness Switch: The Liberal and Conservative themes.
 * Skeleton Government: No one wants to make up and explain all government ministries and offices.
 * Super Soldier: Selecting the right answer for a certain issue will result in your soldiers becoming this. This is also common in Future Tech nations such as Bajireyn
 * Teens Are Monsters: If your nation is hard enough on youth crime or has big enough problems with it, that gets a special mention.
 * Videogame Cruelty & Caring Potential: You can either make your nation the aforementioned Utopia, or a "Psychotic Dictatorship" where you refer to your citizens as "Your Little Playthings" and the phrases "Political Freedoms" and "Civil Rights" do not exist in your vocabulary.
 * You Fail Economics Forever: A somewhat simplistic economic engine leads to oddities such as nations with the strongest possible economy ratings having 100% tax rates, no private sector, and no government funds spent on economic production. And that's before we get into the economic models some players propose their nations run on. Some nations even deliberately fail at economics to avert Mary Suetopia. Or become one.
 * Zerg Rush / Voted Off the Island: You can't go to war with other regions in the actual simulator. However, you can get a large group of nations on your side to join a region, have them vote your nation the one in charge, then kick out the original members. It's cruel, but not against the rules.

The region & forum-based roleplaying form of Nationstates contains examples of:

 * Aesop Amnesia: Astholm, although he's gradually learning his lesson and his storefront now is better than those, of, say 2010, or even 2011.
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: Both played straight and subverted by many people in future tech roleplay.
 * Alternative Calendar: Many nations run on alternate starting dates, or even alternate systems of timekeeping entirely.
 * Anyone Can Die: Varies from one nation to the next, but most of them have killed off their national leader at least once.
 * Sadly, this is becoming far to common in the form of either sad plots or bad Role playing.
 * April Fools:
 * In 2010 Max Berry addressed the complaints of "bias" in the system by rotating the site between "conservative" and "liberal" versions throughout the day.
 * In 2012 he supposedly gave all players 1 share in the "NationStates" company for every million citizens their nation had. He himself kept 250,000,000 shares. Within minutes, there was a new section to the forum where players sold their nations for shares, demanded embarrassing favors for shares, set up lotteries for shares, and one or two threads where people debated whether it was a joke or not.
 * Arbitrary Maximum Range: Fleet combat relies on this.
 * Author Appeal: Quite a few nations.
 * Banana Republic: Various nations fully embrace the cliche of a third world nation with the corruption, good weather and banana plantations you would expect. Or insist that their nations are second world nations with pretty much the same characteristics.
 * Berserk Button: Many characters have this.
 * Black and Gray Morality: Most older nations become like this eventually out of sheer pragmatism.
 * Bland-Name Product: Frequent.
 * Blue and Orange Morality: Too many nations to list.
 * Blue Blood: Personified by the nations of Imeriata and New Nicksyllvania
 * Blob Monster: Sometimes straight out horrors, or cute little pets that are attached to their master's hips. Trash Slimes, for instance.
 * Blood Sport: Specifically, one involving immigrants, if you choose the option in a certain issue.
 * Brits With Battleships: Ozymos, the definition of the British Empah IN SPACE.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: Strykla has his own race of bipedal Euorpean dragons and consistently maintains that dragons are better than anything else.
 * Captain Ersatz: The automobile manufacturers appear to be this, with VLT a hybrid of Volkswagen, Fiat, Chrysler and Chevrolet in one.
 * Beyazgunes appears to be based around FIAT and its products, although it does add Chinese-based cars every once in a while.
 * Celsan (which has been Put on a Bus for now, due to Creator Provincialism, Write What You Know was a General Motors-style Expy.
 * Casual Interstellar Travel: Ask the FT roleplayers. Space Does Not Work That Way be damned.
 * A lot of F Ters, such as The Intergalactic of Kreanoltha, have casual intergalactic travel at over 100,000 lightyears per hour.
 * Church Militant: While less common than fascist or communist regimes, some nations do intertwine their military with a religious background.
 * The nation of Tergnitz is known for having a Church as the fourth branch of government.
 * Con Lang: Some people actually designed the language for their nation instead of using an existing one or just implying a different one is used. See here for a list of NS languages.
 * The Ukkeld language, written by Astholm, is in development, a sort of mix of Old English, Old Norse and Turkic.
 * Cool Boat: Many people design their own ships which leads too...
 * Cool Ship: The FT RPers wouldn't be caught dead without them.
 * Cool Plane: Played straight by damn near everyone in modern tech roleplays, most of whose Air Forces include the F-22, F-35, YF-23 or Sukhoi PAK FA.
 * Some people go out of their ways to design new aircraft, in case real planes just aren't cool enough. Especially in Sci-Fi RPs.
 * Sometimes subverted by communist and eastern bloc nations, who may well still have Mi G-21s and the like in their air forces.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Played straight and averted, sometimes within the same nation. Sometimes it seems that this is all some nations are. There are even certain regions to cater to these nations.
 * Crapsack World: Perpetual war, nuclear and chemical exchanges, and genocide a go-go, baby!
 * Unless you play against Van Luxemburg or New Azura, both of whom seem to go for semi-realistic play.
 * Deadpan Snarker: The mods.
 * Some players are this two, in the telegram Gmodia and even Neomoskull, but that is rare.
 * Death From Above: Some nations like to soften up their enemies with MONTHS of strategic bombardment.
 * Take a lesson from FT nations, some like to Glass planets and others bombard it to nothingness.
 * Deus Ex Nukina: Subverted: even threatening to use a nuke sparks massive flame wars.
 * Did Not Do the Research: A common complaint by some people when confronted with Rule of Cool items in war roleplays.
 * At least justified in FT, Chrilevolika said it best one time.
 * Astholm was guilty of this a few times, but he got better as time progressed, at least with his storefront design.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: The amount of RP's which go from the sending of angry communiques to full-scale invasions would surprise you.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Ertzatz copies of nations both real and fictional abound.
 * Dystopia: When there's a Police State, it is probably this.
 * Easy Logistics: A global map doesn't exist. Ships leave port and arrive at their destination a post later. Generally more experienced RPers try to factor in logistics in their equations.
 * Semi justified in FT since there is FTL travel involved and it varies from a day to hours for some nations.
 * Egopolis: Half of the RPers reach for this.
 * Emotions vs. Stoicism
 * Enemy Mine: Happens a lot. International politics can get very convoluted, much like in real life.
 * Enforced Cold War: Lots in roleplay, mostly because there's no way to actually force someone to let you invade them. Regional wars sometimes escalate into this when enough regions get involved.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Certain evil nations tend to have qualms about things like slavery,or Rape, or cannibalism.
 * Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Saursia and Whairtia, for different reasons however.
 * False-Flag Operation: Not often, but people do it sometimes. Hard to pull off in a forum environment for obvious reasons, at least against the will of the target.
 * Possibly subverted in Ryouese Black Island's recent RP in which he changed his ship from a Freekish flag to his own. People worried less and laughed more.
 * Fantastic Racism: Allied Governments.
 * May be part of roleplays. Also referenced to in some of the issues.
 * Taken to an extreme on both sides with the rise of the Coalition of Ponyist States.
 * For the Evulz: The modus operandi of many poorly RPed evil nations.
 * Full-Circle Revolution: Nations can and have gone from being a Monarchy, to a Socialist People's Republic, to a Fascist Dictatorship and then back to a Monarchy all within the same thread.
 * Gene Hunt Interrogation Technique: The latest trend there, and for some reason expies of him appear recently.
 * General Ripper: Everyone wants one.
 * Gondor Calls for Aid: Occasionally.
 * Good Republic, Evil Empire: Many dictatorships have no respect for human rights and dignity, most democracies do. At closer look they often might be Not So Different.
 * Gorgeous Period Dress: Some armies march into battle dressed resplendently. Overlaps somewhat with Bling of War and Highly-Conspicuous Uniform, especially in Anglosphere nations.
 * Gorn
 * Ironically it is a national animal of a nation, it is apparently a rock animal.
 * Government Conspiracy: Rarely.
 * Government Information Adverts: News articles from seemingly 'independent' sources are usually just veiled and sometimes overt government propaganda.
 * Grammar Nazi: Very common.
 * Gratuitous German: Rampant among the German-based nations. One nation's motto is "Please stand clear of the doors" in German.
 * Hand Wave: Every Future Tech nation out there seems to come from a different Earth. Some from a different planet altogether.
 * House Pseudonym: Astholm, depending on the owner's attitude at the time. But, in general it's a house pseudonym, with the password known to a select group of individuals.
 * I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Numerous examples.
 * Gholgoth and rape dungeons. That is all.
 * I Have Many Names: Astholm, although these are just functional ones, designed to provide a lifelike context to the action in some cases where he won't use his (their? it's a House Pseudonym) main nation.
 * I Know You Know I Know: Regional politics tend to turn into this alarmingly quickly, at least when war is involved.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Some nations really do invoke this trope.
 * Intellectual Animal: Bears Armed roleplays as this.
 * And the Kangaroo Republic.
 * Any FT nation not from (The many, many fractal) Earth(s) technically applies, go even further and even Humans count.
 * Informed Ability: Although almost everyone claims to have competent politicians and generals, many do not succeed in making this believable. Probably because they're not competent politicians and generals.
 * Informed Flaw: If there is supposed to be a notable flaw, then there is pretty damn good chance that it will not get in the way when things get serious.
 * Improbable Weapon User: The invasion/defense community. The game doesn't have an officially supported war system, and so a niche population of players hacked together a combat mechanic out of what amounts to bureaucratic white noise.
 * Better Than It Sounds - the resulting political simulation is probably more realistic than most games deliberately created as such.
 * Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: There's an issue that allows you to let your military/law enforcement agencies torture people. It's also done in roleplay quite often, with variable quality.
 * Katanas Are Just Better: Both subverted and played straight by many people.
 * Knife Nut: FIX BAYONETS! (Just about everyone)
 * Kudzu Plot: The histories of some nations would confuse even the writers of Lost. On one of the off-site forums, they have nations whose histories are as professionally written as in Real Life.
 * Some people actually have taken up huge originality, examples include Byzentania and Purpailia Draconica.
 * La Résistance: Usually limpwristed, but there.
 * Last Stand: Happens very VERY often.
 * Law of Conservation of Detail: Heavily played straight.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: If its not the number of players, then its within those nations who like to keep track of EVERYONE they've ever introduce, from Ambassadors to Parliamentarians.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: Generally called just "Missilespam".
 * Magic A Is Magic A: Mostly averted. There are many different magic-using nations out there, and each one has a different idea as to how magic should work.
 * One could argue that Magic A Is Magic A does apply, but only within these regions.
 * Martyrdom Culture: Too many examples to list. Just about everyone has their people more than willing to become a hero of the Empire/Republic/Confederation/Kingdom etc.
 * Mary Suetopia: Somewhat averted by the game itself, which attempts to indicate that all nation types have their drawbacks, but often played painfully, painfully straight in roleplay.
 * Mega Corp: Numerous examples.
 * MIB: Some of the better RP's involve sub-plots, usually involving a conspiracy of some sort.
 * However involving said conspiracy does not guarantee RP success.
 * Military Mashup Machine: You name it, it's been done. If it's been on a video game, it's been done at least twice.
 * Mnogo Nukes: All Russian nations.
 * More Dakka: Ubiquitous.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: EVERYBODY wants to be one of these. Few achieve it.
 * Well, not quite.
 * Nice Hat: The ubiquitous pith helmet.
 * And let's not forget Imeriata's tricornes.
 * Noob: You have no idea the level of hate players who have joined in the past 2 years get from those who have been playing for more than 3-4 years. Or from those who have been playing for more than 5-6 years. Or those who have been playing since the game started.
 * Not So Different: Ruthless genocide can be fun even if you are supposed to be The Federation.
 * No Swastikas: It's in the game rules.
 * Nuke'Em: Carpet-nuking is a valid tactic at times. Though usually subverted, as the mere threat of a nuclear weapon is enough to cause a massive flame war.
 * On the other hand, though, FT nations commonly deploy massive amounts of nukes and Antimatter weapon every battle.
 * I Love Nuclear Power: Nuclear powered everything! Regular access to orbit by means of Project Orion! Nuclear tank rounds! Even 81mm nuclear mortar rounds (with Shown Work (and exotic uranium isotopes)!
 * Officer and a Gentleman: When they aren't General Ripper.
 * One Federation Limit: Averted at the beginning by the limited choice of standard state types - Federation, Kingdom, Prinicpality etc. But once you can make up your own, the sky's the limit.
 * One World Order: What many players wish they could enforce.
 * Our Presidents Are Different: If they exist at all and there are not 20 of them in one year.
 * Paid Harem: It pops up from time to time, most commonly with a Sex Slave scenario.
 * Patchwork Map: People will slap together a map with disregard for their climates. Or for national borders, in the case of nations that lay claim to the same real estate on Earths' continents. Amusingly, this has led to dozens of different versions of Earth for people who insist on having their preferred chunk of land.
 * Perhaps each country resides in their own Alternate Universe?
 * Patriotic Fervor: Played ridiculously straight by most nations
 * Said nations can definitely be described as a flavour one variant of Eagle Land, where the US is replaced by nation x.
 * Peace Through Superior Firepower: Perpetually.
 * Police State: Check.
 * President Evil: It is more fun to Role Play a completely evil leader than a nice democratically elected president, thus many nations are ruled by mindbendingly evil dictators. Most nations fail at it, and just seem like a 12-year-old just finished playing Grand Theft Auto.
 * Considering the demographics of this game...
 * Well, F7 anyways. The average NSer is in the 18-30 demographic, I believe.
 * Private Military Contractors: A dime a dozen.
 * Though there are a few stand-outs, namely Voss Defence Inc.
 * Product Placement: The game was created to advertise Jennifer Government. There even exists an issue referring to the book, which among other things allow you to ban it in your nation.
 * Conveniently enough, if you bought any of Max Barry's books, you can use the "Remove Ad" button to get rid of the ad banners.
 * Psycho for Hire: Quite a few nations that are essentially big mercenary companies are like this.
 * Putting on the Reich: Why invent a new flavour of evil when you can just use a historical one?
 * Referenced most prominently by The Greater German Reich, the largest Nazi-based region in NS.
 * Petting Zoo People: Often a minority in several nations, occasionally a nation made up of these will appear but they usually get destroyed by an evil nation to show how evil they are or because they can. Also, see Fantastic Racism above.
 * Put on a Bus: Celsan Automotive LLC, created by Astholm..
 * It's due to:
 * Creator Provincialism, Write What You Know, Write Who You Know, Artist Disillusionment - all of which caused the storefront to fail, but then again, with help on the forums, Celsan's role may be Commuting on a Bus until things work out again.
 * In-game, Van Luxemburg sold off Celsan Automotive LLC for precisely this reason!
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: More common than you'd think.
 * Redshirt Army: Poor bastards who get steamrolled. Many communist nations have these.
 * Retcon: More likely than you'd think. This happens quite a bit when someone gets bored with a roleplay and wanders off without bothering to finish it, or when someone doesn't like the way a role play is going. Given that players are allowed to ignore anything they don't like by the site rules, this can be a source of frustration for some, as there are no permanent consequences unless a player is willing to allow them.
 * Astholm nearly retconned Celsan, but decided it wasn't worth interfering with what was canon.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Most of them aren't.
 * Roma: Traditionally the Butt Monkeys of the real world, Gypsies seem to have come into their own on NationStates... there are several Roma-ruled nations.
 * Rouge Angles of Satin: Sadly, happens quite a bit. Though there are some really good writers on this site's forums, there are some very bad ones too. Rarely will a bad writer on NS improve, and most good RPers were already good from the get-go.
 * Rule of Cool: Used so often it has acquired its own Catch Phrase: "But this is NS!"
 * Rule of Funny: Used especially in sports roleplaying excessively.
 * Satire, Parody, Pastiche
 * Screw the Rules, I Make Them
 * Sex Slave: A Berserk Button for many, given it's usually done in rather poor taste.
 * Shout-Out: There are many, many nations that copy things from various fictional works. The Celsan Vextra being a Shout-Out to the Opel Vectra, albeit with the "X" factor of its name.
 * Shown Their Work: A substantial number of players have put quite a lot of thought into their nations, and it shows. To a smaller extent, some people spend months and months designing tanks, ships, planes, and other items for their fictional militaries to use.
 * Astholm does this trope to an average level; his designs may be unoriginal, in styling terms, but at least he gets the car technology right, well, interiors and running gear, if not engines.
 * Space Does Not Work That Way. 99% of Faster Than Light drives rely on this.
 * At least some FT nations use the String Theory as a reason on how it can work.
 * Spin-Off: While a few have been created, the most popular version is a form of R Ping via the medium of text-messaging, aptly named SMS.
 * Spy Fiction
 * Start X to Stop X: A classic motive for regional coups. Sometimes it works. Other times....Not so much.
 * Strange Bedfellows: A recurring theme of any ingame alliance based on nation owners being friends out of game.
 * Strawman Political: Overlaps with Easy Evangelism. And, of course, you can find them in nearly every thread on the message board.
 * Straw Feminist: Several nations oppress their male population. Some don't even have a male population.
 * Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Less prevalent.
 * Stupid Sexy Flanders: With Spanish soccer player Fernando Torres in the Flanders role. Ask the sports roleplayers.
 * Sukhomlinov Effect: Subverted. Some of the better militaries are extremely fashionable.
 * Super Soldier: A popular trope that is rarely done well.
 * Tank Goodness: Many players design their own tanks, practical or not. Some also like using tanks from their favourite games and movies. If it's been on paper or screen, it's probably shown up here at some point.
 * Lyras stands far above everyone else in this department.
 * The Evils of Free Will: A common view of Dystopias.
 * The Federation
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Carpet nukespam. On the tactical level.
 * And taken to new heights by the FT roleplaying population. Care for a weapon that can drive a sun into supernova? Hows about a wormhole weapons ala Farscape? Of course you know there will be exaton level explosions and weapons capable of dishing out that same sort of damage.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: It is rare that any kind of political or economic turmoil, not matter how trivial it may seem, does not end up turning into some form of armed conflict.
 * The Spartan Way
 * The Virus: We are the Rethast. Your species is now obsolete.
 * The War Room
 * Those Wacky Nazis: All Nazi-based Nations and Regions. There are a lot, and most are incredibly stupid. Some have even been condemned by other nations. Most characters in character RPs have this, although not all are successful in playing it straight. Or well.
 * The Wiki Rule: The site has a dedicated Wiki for all member nations to expand on their nations called called NSWiki. Some nations break away and create a Wiki solely for their nation.
 * Utopia: Many non-evil nations are the vision of the player of a perfect government. Some of the evil nations are also their player's version of a perfect government, even if it horrifies other players. See Dystopia.
 * Unusual Euphemism: "Slani". Again, ask the sports roleplayers.
 * Vestigial Empire: Can happen to regions if they aren't careful.
 * Villain with Good Publicity: Even most brutal dictators can be absolutely loved by their people.
 * War Is Glorious: What everyone would like to believe. Thanks to state propaganda, many populations believe in this absolutely. Most bad RPers will often play this straight and make a nation full of chest-beating nationalists.
 * War Is Hell: Corps sized formations wiped out in under 10 minutes by artillery bombardment, mass use of nerve gas, napalm and landmines, aerial bombardment that lasts for weeks. God help you if you survive and get captured.
 * We Have Reserves: Who cares about casualties anyway. They're all just statistics. Many players pursue a zero sum course of action-- fight to the last man in the nation regardless of anything.
 * Wooden Ships and Iron Men: Some nations still have a naval mentality dating back to this period.
 * Writing Around Trademarks: As far as is known, the nation of Astholm is a possible version of this for European countries.
 * Yanks With Tanks: A lot of the "American" nations. Subverted by a few people whose nations are almost nothing like their American historical origins.
 * You Would Not Want to Live In Dex: Everything in the index. Yes, everything.
 * The important thing to note is that this is all your fault. You bastard!

The World Assembly & Security Council (United Nations Simulator, minus the veto) contains examples of:

 * Balance of Power: Varies between the WA Delegates in each region, depending on their influence and number of endorsements in their regions.
 * Present WA superpowers (Type A) include Just Guy and Alsted, whereas Type E consists of regional delegates with less than 10 endorsements.
 * Big International Clubs: Definitely one of these. Membership is voluntary, though.
 * Bland-Name Product: Started out as THE United Nations, before the real UN threatened to sue.
 * "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Invoked by proponents & detractors of Rule 4, which attempted to standardize the WA propositions. Has since died out.

Some NationStates RPs with their own pages are

 * Elfen High.
 * A World Beyond
 * American Paranormal Society
 * Battle of the Elders
 * Rex Eighty Four
 * A Hogwarts Tale
 * Strike Witches Twenty Twelve
 * Fall of Gods
 * Demon Castle Wars
 * Coalition of Ponyist States