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by The Backwards Spelled Weirdo of Nrevyw. . 151 reads.

The West Pacifican Vol. 17

Westbucks Café

The West Pacific's capital of Westland is home to many shops, but many West Pacificans and even foreign tourists choose to spend their time at the Westbucks Café. The café is home to many inventions and home to many stories, which are generally stored by archivers at the Westbucks Archives. Recently, the owner of the Archives has announced that the Westbucks Archives would soon close.

Westbucks is most known for its croissants. We think that the croissants served here are the best. In fact, we even gave the West Pacifican Hidden Restaurant award based solely on their croissant. The second most well-known dish at the café is the Marsupial Sandwich, which had an almost metallic taste to it, so we would not recommend the Marsupial sandwich nor the Marsupial soup.

One unique thing about Westbucks is that there is no worker or staff. No rules. Not even an owner. It's a public spot, and anybody is welcome there. Anyone can walk in and decide they want a coffee, and brew themselves a one, no questions asked! The community that gathers there is almost all locals, and each one has their own unique stories. Everyone is welcoming and didn't mind us when we visited- although we did get a few looks from them at first.

Role-playing like Westbucks is almost a lost a central piece to The West Pacific, and Westbucks is a prime example of a good place that people gather to role-play and interact in more of a human manner than just text-based communication. People actually can move and touch. While it's no virtual reality, people can at least interpret actions and respond to them as they would in real life.

Westbucks, however, has seen better days, and has visitation of the great café has declined in recent weeks. This isn't for lack of people willing to go there, but no one has seen to be willing to start the conversation. If you want to visit, all you have to do is walk in, and plenty of people will be right there, willing to roleplay with you. It's not D&D, but Westbucks provides a great place to meet new people and interact. Sip some coffee. Even just venting is welcome at Westbucks. So, the next time you get the opportunity, just pop in and say hello.

By Braydenton

NS Sports

The world of NS has something for everyone. The game has become so much more than it was originally designed to be; you can limit your participation at answering issues, but NationStates players also partake in gameplay, raiding, defending, debating in the WA, build their own regions, or just hang out with their friends on the RMB or their regional discord.

Yet despite this wide diversity of activities within the game, one can make the argument that it all stems from the basic premise of roleplay—every player began the game to roleplay running their own country, and then moved on from there. Roleplaying continues in factbooks and the forums, evidenced by the fact that the roleplay forums are those with the most posts.

This article is meant to serve as an introduction to a form of roleplay that is perhaps less well known than others, specifically, NS sports. NS sports have their own forum onsite, but activity also happens regionally or on offsite channels. Sport roleplaying offers a chance for RP that has a different flavor from other kinds. Often it involves lower stakes situations than something you might see in "International Incidents," with the biggest conflict only being a sporting event. It is usually more tightly focused than other RPs, revolving around a single game, and gives sports fans a chance to enjoy their favorite pastime in fiction. Furthermore, sports roleplay has a built-in defense against godmodding, thanks to its use of scorinators. NS sports allows participants to do more than just tell a story—they can create and run entire leagues, producing original content as diverse as uniform design, player biographies, sports history, organizational branding and logos—even to the point of inventing their own sport!

As mentioned, scorinators are a big part of sports roleplay that distinguish it from the other kinds of RP you may have tried out. Most other RPs allow participants to decide the outcome just by telling a story. Sports RP is different. Typically, one nation is responsible for hosting a tournament or event, and they will make use of a computer program called a “scorinator” to determine how the competitors fare. Thus the results or scores of an event are determined before the participants roleplay it. The scorinator uses random number generation, combined with bonuses for rankings or previous RP, to produce the scores. Afterward, players can see a result and tell the story of how it happened. This allows sports RP to maintain a higher level of realism, prevent godmodding, ensure fairness, reward good roleplay, and give competitors the satisfaction of progressing through the rankings and watching their teams perform better. There’s still plenty of room for fun—you can roleplay your nation however you like, as long as you wind up with the results given by the scorinator. This means that there have been games between different species or won by miracles. The NS sports forum has a longstanding world cup of quidditch. Scorinators don’t mean that RP becomes dry or boring.
What sort of events might you see if you drop by the NS sports forum? There’s so many to choose from. The world cup, the Olympics, professional and college football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse, field and ice hockey, F1 and stock car racing… pretty much any sport you can imagine. The NS world cup is one of the most popular events. It has had 82 iterations and is about as old as NS is. In the forums, you’ll also see domestic sports threads. These are a bit like the newswires that you might see in the Factbooks and National Information forum, only these are concerned with sports. A given thread might serve as a nation’s news outlet for every sporting event that takes place in that nation, or merely to recap the happenings in one of their domestic sports leagues. You’ll also see nations scheduling friendly matches with each other, or posting ads for design services willing to design kits and uniforms for other countries’ teams. In short, it’s a bustling place.

You may ask, “What about here in TWP? Do we have any sports RP?” Historically, TWP has not been a large roleplay community. However, TWP residents do take part in NS sports in the NS forums, if not on the TWP forums. Others take part by dispatch or on discord. Currently, Bran Astor hosts the WPBR (West Pacific Bull Riding) tournament on the discord with results posted via dispatch by West Pacific Bull Riders. In fact, if you want to jump into the tournament, which is three weeks into what might be an 18 week run, you can just message Bran, and he’ll give you a spot an NPC has been holding down!

Also in the works is WPCAA Division 1 football. This will provide an outlet for all of TWP’s football fans to create their own team to root for and compete against their region mates! Further details will be made public as development continues.

Hopefully reading a little about NS sports has piqued your interest. Trying it out is easy! Join the rodeo, or head over to the NS forums to see what’s going on! Or grab your friends and head over to TWP’s RP forums and hold your own event! What you make of it is up to you.
[Information taken from the Guide to Sports Roleplaying, at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=611]

By Recuecn

Editor's Note:
Do you have something that you’d like to share? Contact me at Aether#1119 on Discord with the details.

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