Difference between revisions of "Currency"

Revision as of 15:56, 27 November 2005

This article is about currency as it applies to Nation States gameplay and roleplay. For a discussion of money in the real world, see the real Wikipedia. For an incomplete list of specifc NS currencies, see the Sub-Category Currencies in the Category Gameplay.

Each country in NationStates has a customisable field in which players may name a national currency. Although it has no real effect on the progress of the game, it can be fun way to show one's individuality and add an aspect to roleplay.

Gameplay

There are only two real technical limitations and one consideration in gameplay regarding the name of national currencies: length, character type and singularity. Players may use upto 22 characters, whether upper, lower or mixed case. They may be letters, numbers or spaces, but probably NOT (as erroneously reported by me) any keyboard, ASCII or Latin-1 characters they so desire. Currencies are formatted to display in the singular, for instance in the country profile and in daily issues.

Currencies, like other customised fields, have many additional policy limitations, namely they may not include obscene, illegal, threatening, malicious or defamatory words.

Mods have already ruled that humans may not serve as national animals, so this likely applies to currencies as well. It is generally recommended to not find out the hard way by wasting the valuable time of these selfless volunteers who make our NationStates experience more enjoyable.

Players can use their currencies to show their links to real world places, indicate their political ideology, demonstrate their artistic creativity, or any one of a thousand things. Sober Thought has conducted a very small but suggestive quantitative and qualitative survey of currency names on NationStates.

Roleplay

Currencies can be used to enhance the richness of roleplay and somewhat increase the the realism of the NationStates simulation. Although most obviously used in trade, it has many other uses for other international transactions, e.g., paying ransoms, war indemnities, merit prizes and winners of sports competitions.

Even if a nation is an international pariah, not a member of the United Nations, lives in a one-country region with password control and refuses all telegrams, currency can still be part of roleplay. When you consider how few people read the NSWiki, any article such a hermit might write would still bring enjoyment to that person even if nobody else ever reads it.

NSEconomy, among others, dynamically calculates an exchange rate for every NationState country using a formula that more or less reflects how political decisions of daily issues impact on the economy. These calculators typically provide a range of other economic data upon which one may build a slightly more realistic RP scenario.