Like a train that has run out of steam, there isn’t much left in the tank for me in NS gameplay. Slowly but surely, I have lost interest in this part of the game, which also means being the OWL director. I have never been the kind of NS player interested in the administrative aspect of the game. I was always more focused on the ideas than on administration. You can look back to the June 2021 MoFA election and compare my campaign with Qaz’s to see that.
This is effectively my retirement from NSGP. I have no interest in becoming an elected or appointed official or maintaining active appointments in any form in the South Pacific other than in my current capacity as a member of the CRS. Make no mistake, however, I’m still a defender and will always be one, so I will stick around in the Assembly to make sure that our region will always be defender.
From this point forward, though, my attention on NS will mostly center around GA resolutions and the one thing that kept me interested in this game for most of my time on NS: roleplay. I definitely would like to continue telling the story of my RP nation and will stick around to do that.
However, just as Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the military–industrial complex, I want to talk about the current era of NS in which we find ourselves. In the era of frontiers and strongholds, we are in uncharted and precarious waters. Politics may be changing, but the players aren’t. You have the defenders. You have the raiders. That hasn’t changed, and it doesn’t look like it will. But the era of F/S can be a blessing in disguise for defenders if we play our cards right.
By that same token, however, we shouldn’t ever try to be a region that we aren’t. We aren’t capital-I independent anymore, and I hope it stays that way. But never again should we ever trust another so-called Independent region to do right by us. We know clear as day how that turned out. They’ll juice us out for political capital, but when the shoe is on the other foot, they’re the victim. They’ll whine. They’ll cry. But they’ll never be in the wrong.
These aren’t people we should trust, let alone have a treaty with. It’s one thing to do business with them, but that’s it. Business. They are not friends, they are not trustworthy, and they are not allies. They are business partners. Nothing more. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in NSGP, but I don’t consider this one of them.
But anyway, this is Em saying goodbye and good riddance to NSGP and hello again to RP. I look forward to spending more of my time roleplaying as I have done for more than a decade. 