Overview Factbook Template and Guide

To view the raw code of this dispatch, click the "Raw" link at the bottom of the page or click here to open a new dispatch with the raw code.

A Quick Guide on the Sidebar and certain other indicators of this template; and general disclaimers and notices
This is coming ahead of the remainder of the content (and should be removed when you work on the template formally) to help you, the reader, in understanding the details and indicators I've included to the sidebars and other areas of the dispatch.

First, and most obvious, all areas where you see text in ALL CAPS is an area where you should replace it with your own text as applicable. For instance, replacing NATION NAME with your nation's name. In the cases where this text appears as IMAGE LINK, replace the text with the direct image link to the image in question. In almost every case, this must end with the image filetype (eg. .png, .jpg, .svg, .gif). Unlike the forum, so far as I know, there are no hosting restrictions for the main NS site for your image, so any is valid (out of personal preference though, I use Imgur). For interim use, you may remove the text in the image command box, which will be rendered as a small blank image, like so

For instances where I include (if applicable), you may either provide the applicable data or remove the item it refers to. For the population, area, GDP, and time zone tables, remove the accompanying data insert from the other cell.

For the Government table, when referring to "As their Title", this means using "President" or "Monarch" or whatever other official title is attached to their role in the government.

Short Code refers to your nation's ISO 3166 Code, the two (or in some cases, three) character code for the quick reference of your nation. This code is also used as the basis of your nation's internet top-level domain code (eg. .uk, .ru,. .eu) and your nation's ISO-4217 currency code (eg. USD, GBP, EUR).

For "Formation/Independence From", a quick guide on when to use which can be summarized by what your Event 1 is. If it is an event of the declaration or recognition of your nation's independence, use "Independence from" your former nation. This applies both for colonial and revolutionary cases. If your Event 1 is not related to the independence of your nation, even if it is split from another nation, use "Formation."

For Date Format, while I used the code for dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy, remember that it is possible to use yyyy/dd/mm or other Year-leading formats. The format also assumes the use of the Gregorian calendar as BC/AD or BCE/CE, other calendars are applicable if they are referenced.

For National Language, I specifically linked the Wikipedia page for National languages as a guide for how to use it, but for the sake of this dispatch, I will provide a more succinct explanation. A National Language is a language that is spoken by a significant enough portion of your population that it is associated as being a part of the national identity, but is not otherwise given full official status. National Languages may be identified by the central government or have other official status in sub-national entities (such as Hawai'ian being co-official with English in Hawai'i) but this specifically identifies languages with a wider reach across your nation. It is not necessary to include your Official or Recognized languages in this section as they are assumed to already be a part of that list.

If you are viewing this on a mobile device, please be advised that this dispatch may not render certain objects correctly, such as the sidebar boxes for the left and right sidebars in the Geography section and below. I recommend viewing this either on your desktop device or view through desktop mode by going into your mobile browser's page settings and selecting the option "Request Desktop Site."

This Dispatch is written and intended to be consumed by an English-speaking audience, I apologize to this website's vast non-English speaking community for any aspects of this dispatch that may not translate properly or is perceived as taking an English-speaking bias. The code at the core of this dispatch is applicable to use in all languages but may require extra work in translating.

There are a few ways you could style the overview, as a whole. This template will provide general tips as to what kind of information to include as well as written templates for you to follow along with. Following the main sidebar, this dispatch's format is generally freeform, so experiment when you can and infuse the Overview Factbook with your own voice.

All credits to this Dispatch's origin and subsequent replications, including attributions to other sources, OUGHT to be maintained as they are in the bottom of this template. It is unfair to have the works of Ponderosa, Soleanna, and myself, who have all put in a lot of time in constructing the various elements that goes into this overall template, go uncredited, let alone all of the other attributions from content used that isn't our own. Please have the courtesy to maintain the credits of this template as they appear.

Finally, I leave this specifically for Ponderosa and Soleanna, who may see this in their notices. I have the utmost respect to both of your original works as inspiration for my current overview dispatches. I do feel somewhat apprehensive to publish this as my own since a lot of the core code was inspired by you two. I am open to discuss the nature of your attributions in this dispatch and in the subsequent uses if anyone uses this template.

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The Opening Paragraphs are, essentially, drawn from the same set seen in your nation page. This is the elevator pitch of your nation to an incoming reader where they should come out understanding these things: 1. What your nation is, 2. Where your nation is both in its political and physical geography, 3. Other general statistical information simplified from your sidebar, 4. General History, 5. General Politics, 6. General Economy, and 7. Its relationship to its region (in an in-character sense) and the wider world.

There will be instances where I provide two styles at the same time, separated by a |. Either is valid to use, just pick one that you feel fits best and apply it to the following passage. Repeat this process until your Opening Paragraphs are done.

1. SHORTHAND NAME, officially the Full Official Name (Official Alternate Language(s): Full Translated Official Name) | The Full Official Name (Official Alternate Language(s): Full Translated Official Name), commonly known as SHORTHAND NAME. You may also include “(ACRONYM)” or other relevant ways your nation is called to either of these openings.

2. , is a country in (either The Western Isles or another named roleplay region may be used). It shares land borders with NEIGHBORING NATIONS and maritime borders with NEIGHBORING NATIONS (if your nation has no immediate neighbors, I encourage substituting them with “It shares the same geographic region as NEARBY NATIONS”).

3. NATION covers an area of TOTAL AREA with a population of CURRENT POPULATION (I advise shortening this to a few digits, but to a point where it’s still understandable). Add other stats or information not found later in the Opening Paragraphs as you wish.

4. In General, this section of history should cover the original settlement of your land, followed by the initial development of societies and civilizations. If your nation was colonized, also include the period of colonization. (in the event your nation has no population prior to its colonization, the colonization becomes the original settlement). From there, indicate when your nation was first organized into a state from Formation Event 1 of the sidebar. Follow this with a description of the remaining formation events and end at around the last 10-20 years.

5. (For first-timers, please refer to my Nationbuilding Tutorial to help you describe your nation’s general politics.) NATION is a STATE TYPE REGIME TYPE AUTHORITY TYPE (Type of Monarchy or Type of Republic) (such as Federal Democratic Republic, or Unitary Meritocratic Republic, or Absolute Monarchy, whichever best fits your nation.) defined by (this is where you go into extra details based on the three types mentioned earlier).

6. The NATION's economy is defined by ECONOMIC REGIME and is considered (undeveloped/developing/recently developed/developed/highly developed, derive these from your HDI), its economy is (if you wish and if it’s reasonable, use the economic rank stat, otherwise, generalize its size in relative terms).

7. This is where you define your nation’s relationship with the world it inhabits, list the relevant international organizations it is a member of here as well. You may also define its “Power Standing”, that is Regional, Middle, Great, or Superpower if you desire.

(Major Credit goes to Ponderosa for this section. This is considered the most “default” way to have a Table of Contents but if you want to add more entries, simply create an anchor in the main text with and in the table of contents, re-enter the following code in the appropriate place in the list. You can find the Dispatch ID Number in your address bar. Bear in mind that the Anchor Code will only work on Published Dispatches, so if you are working on this as your first dispatch, please find a moment to publish this as a work in progress and then fill the appropriate code.

While we’re on that topic, I also advise using the true URL as listed in the code, while copying the link to the Factbook would still work, I coded this from a personal preference. If you are copying the factbook link, please replace the entire URL with it.)

Etymology
Main Article: Terminology of NATION (if no dispatch on this exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)
This is where you describe where the name of your nation comes from and where you also describe the demonyms you listed in your main sidebar.

NATION NAME comes from SOURCE and General History of the Name. The typical way to refer to a citizen of NATION is as DEMONYM, ADDITIONAL DEMONYMS are also commonplace.

History
Main Article: History of NATION (if no dispatch on this exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)

This is a longer form of the history brief you provided in the Opening Paragraphs, as will be the theme of the successive sections. My advice for writing national history is to start from around 5-10 years ago from the present day and work backwards while answering the question “How did my nation get here?” If you are writing this factbook for a real-life nation or a nation that derives from real-world history, then it is reasonable to fill the gaps further backwards from whatever point of divergence you are using with original history (this is the only place where plagiarizing from wikipedia is barely tolerable. I, however, do not condone plagiarizing of any sort and do not encourage it here.). When referring to other nations that you share a region with, use the code

[nation=noflag][/nation]

to keep the text in line with the remainder. If you are referring to a non-player nation, then bold the nation’s name.

If you are referring to other points in history with written dispatches, link them as well by enveloping the name of the event in the [url][/url] code.

Geography
Main Article: Geography of NATION (if no dispatch on this exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)

(This is included from my source code, you may use it wherever else you want to include an image on the left side of the screen. You can also use

[sidebar][img]IMAGE LINK[/img][/sidebar]

for the same effect as the main sidebar.)

This section is dedicated to expanding on the physical geography mentioned in your Opening Paragraphs, including elevation and climate is a typical part of this section alongside noting major geographic features like mountains, rivers, coasts, and so on.

Government
Main Article: Government of NATION (if no dispatch on this exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)

Fourth Verse same as the Third, use this section to expand on the details you began with from your Opening Paragraphs. If you are writing this alongside consulting my Tutorial, I encourage using this space to write out your completed questionnaire from Tutorial 1. This is also the first place where we use the nested item, Foreign Relations and Military.

Foreign Relations and Military
Main Article: Foreign Relations of NATION
Main Article: Military of NATION (if no dispatch on these exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)

Two article links are recommended for this since we are dealing with two concepts at the same time. This is where you expand on the nature of your nation’s relationship with the rest of the world from the end of your Opening Paragraphs. Like the remainder, please consult the Military Realism Thread and associated Guides for assistance in writing this section.

Economy
Main Article: Economy of NATION (if no dispatch on this exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)

This is the second place where Ponderosa’s template has to be given major credit. This sidebar adds further context to the economic indicators you have in the main sidebar with the addition of the size of your labor force and your significant industries. Your Labor Force is the portion of the population that is old enough to work but not yet retire, generally between the ages of 16-65 but it depends on how you wish to roleplay. In general, your labor force should be over half of your population and relatively close to 70%. Unemployment is taken from the overall population that can work but, for reasons aside retirement, aren’t. This population usually extends the areas defined by your current labor force plus or minus about 2-3 years.

In general, well developed economies not experiencing a recession or depression will experience around 1-3% unemployment, the less stable your nation’s economic conditions are, the higher the unemployment percentage becomes.

Aside from the sidebar, and like the Foreign Relations and Military section, this also includes a subsection to describe the energy use of your nation and the sources of that energy. For the overall economy, expand on the details you started with from the Opening Paragraphs and what you included from the sidebar.

Demographics
Main Article: Demographics of NATION (if no dispatch on this exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)
In addition to the existing subsections, you can also add subsections for Religion, Population Density and Urbanization, Health and Education. In general, this section should be used to introduce and explain the various statistics that involve your nation’s people on a day-to-day basis.

Population
This subsection is where you expand on the population statistics provided in your sidebar and Opening Paragraphs. You can also use this space to add further details on your nation’s ethnic makeup from the main sidebar.

Language
This subsection is where you expand on your Languages from your main sidebar, you can also use this to expand on the nature of which languages are official and why, alongside details on national, regional, or other recognized or prominent languages.

Largest Metropolitan Areas
This section includes a table of your largest cities and/or metropolitan areas in your nation. As a start, list the top ten and expand from there as you develop your nation further.

Rank

City Name

Region

Population

Culture
Main Article: Culture of NATION (if no dispatch on this exists, you are free to either omit this or remove the URL code and include TBD if you want to work on it later.)
This section may come out as the most complex, hardest to write, or possibly confusing section of your overview (speaking for myself, it is the least developed section I have after the economy). In general, this section is dedicated to the norms, practices, beliefs, customs, and general societal contributions citizens of your nation make beyond their economic contributions. This includes Arts and Literature, Philosophy, Cinema, Food, Sports, Music, Architecture, and so on.

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Credits
Original Dispatch Template by Ponderosa
Original Sidebar Template by Soleanna
Dispatch Template provided by Dormill and Stiura
ADD ALL OTHER NECESSARY CREDITS FROM ONSITE OR OFFSITE SOURCES NOT ALREADY MENTIONED HERE

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Other Resources
This final section (which is only used for this dispatch) is provided for you, the reader, to reference and learn from when it comes to the process of working on your own overview dispatch. You may remove this once you copy the code over. Other resources will be included over time.
Roleplay 101 by Damanucus
The Complete List of NS BBCodes by Testlandia
A Guide on Land, Aerial, and Naval Warfare by Questers
Krieg's Guide to Losing Wars by Solm
Tutorial Factbook Part 1: The Foundations of State and Government by Dormill and Stiura
A Guide to Building a Totalitarian State by Vivolkha
The Flag Request Thread
The Seal Request Thread
International Incidents Forum Resources Guide
Shorthand List of Factbook Macros by Noahs Second Country