MND Handbook - A guide to Rheinland's federal Intelligence agency.

[Geoffacake]

The MND/BDM handbook

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While you might be familiar with the strong headed patriotism of a Military branch, and the law abiding rulebook of a federal police group. A federal intelligence agency is a large grey area, while they enforce the law, they don't always abide by them. Classifying their actions in the name of state interests; If not that of their own.

If you’re considering playing with the faction, or wish to hopefully learn how Rheinland intelligence agencies operate. This guide will hopefully help you.

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In-game Interaction:
Most probably, you will face a situation in the future to where you will need to interact something else rather than “Engaging enemy targets.” You’ll probably need to get to grips on how an agent should act to friends, acquaintances and foes.

Character speech:
Probably going to be your most common form of interaction with other players, but don’t let the small word count fool you. What you speak might have impacts on what might happen to you and others on the server.

Starting off with basics, Here is a few good examples of how you should write some text with a player action:

MND|Hans.Von.Doe: *He sighs, shaking his head.* Mein gott, you’re so violent, but maybe that’s why you Bundschuh have been a thorn in our side for a long time. Auf Wiedersehen you pest!

MND|Hans.Von.Doe: Achtung Achtung! We have unknown contacts on deep space scanners, wing standby for orders!

Let’s break this down, apart from the appropriate standard of English.

• It’s always advisable to keep the German language usage in reserve for shocked quotes, swears, curses and maybe an ending word.
  
• Any sort of character action should also be done between Asterisks and kept to a small amount of text. They’re more like a seasoning to the emotional expression your character has, but should never intentionally say what attitude they’re showing.
  

Now we’ll take some bad examples of ingame text and player actions:

MND|Hans.Von.Doe: *He grips his hands, his mind taking him back to the war.* Augh, zhe worst thing you can do, Is try to harm zhe glory of the Rhein!

MND|Hans.Von.Doe: “Oh, I dare you to fight me, it’s not like you will win.” <Provoking>

Now let’s break down whats not good here:

• Avoid swapping words like “The” for “Zhe” because it doesn’t work too well at all, applying too strong of a stereotype to which it becomes unimmersive, it just makes things hard to read.
  
• Another issue is that the player action, writing about your characters emotions and thoughts isn't good at all, there isn’t even a way for other players to tell that your character is having a flashback or successfully holding back their emotions. All they see is your pilot in another ship some distance away, at most they’ll see hand movements. But not what your character is thinking or feeling. Leave that to the nomads.
  
• The second speech example uses an unneeded additive to the text, using speech marks to show them talking. Obviously they’re talking so there is no need for them and should be left down to the skills of your writing
  
• Another thing that really shouldn’t be there is the text that explicitly says how they’re talking, its not needed at all, trust us on this. How their attitude is showing should be done though the skill of your writing and choice of words. Don't try to be sarcastic if the words don't make it sound obvious even to you.
  
• And last of all, tone down on the patriotism.
  

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Forum roleplay:
If you’re starting to invest into this, you’re obviously taking a much more detailed route. Apart from the occasional question that might come along your way on the comm-channels or the post on someone’s bounty board, you might wish or need to write something that might contain a fair bit of detail.

Cannon fodder or Character Depth
It’s absolutely your choice if you wish to start going into deep development of your character, there isn’t always a need too if you don’t have that much of a focus. But undoubtedly you’ll be interacting with other players so you should at least have a basic formation of your character and know how you want to play it.

Your character, its role, and its training.
The creativity that you present is the key component to a good character, but ensure that you understand its limitations. You’re a trained agent, not a super soldier or discarded-experiment, you grew up with living parents (hopefully) and had at least some background. Don’t forget that the MND isn’t just made of soldiers and police, the State of Rheinland has more than those occupations. You could be a scientist, engineer or even an accountant from a corporate background. Most field agents have around 1-2 years of training over their previous occupation which teaches fighter combat, ground operations and possibly covert operations depending on your chosen role.
What we highly encourage, even as an indie, is to make a character backlog on the stories and biographies thread, either being some kind of Diary or 1st/3rd person story. Developing a character is paramount to at least establish some continuity within how your character acts, even writing about the most mundane things gives a nice touch into the personality traits of your character. But don’t go overboard, you don’t storm a room and take down 8 armed agents with your bare hands on your first day.


Heres an example of what is a good level of writing to start off with:

Mock character background

Name: Hans Von Doe
Age: 36
Sex: Male
Marital status: Single
Nationality: Rheinland
Previous occupation: Reserve Rheinland Army (10 years), Daumann Ship design department (5 years)
Hobbies: Skiing, Snowboarding, Camping, Ship design, RC-Aircraft, computer programming.

Biography:
While living a mundane life through school and college, the one thing that Hans took pride on was his hobby of the Military Cadet training corps and reservist army training, while adept in his engineering work in the design department for ship construction in Daumann, he felt his creativity was limited to doing what he was told according to what was commanded by the corporate managers. Not yet interested in pursuing a relationship or a family to call his own, he found himself in a comfortable yet dull loop within Daumann’s shipyards for 5 years. He met a realization of opportunity when he met an engineering officer of the Marinenachrichtendienst, a conversation of what they both did and what Hans couldn’t do under the employment of Daumann… From what became a handshake and a conversation became regular visits from the officer to discuss the creativity that Hans had on engine designs and hull plating fabrication methods.

It wasn’t less than a month later that Hans decided to obtain a role within the Marinenachrichtendienst thanks to a good word from the officer, he was accepted into the basic agency training program. While at first difficult, he managed to pass with good marks, while not adept on ground combat tasks, the evaluators found he was quite capable of handling space craft thanks to his ability to regularly maintain them for flight testing. But his real spark was within the engineering department, finding more than just engines and ship panels to work on… Taking a key interest in his developing skill of software engineering, one that was described by superiors as “Something that is wished to be developed for offensive means.”

Not only is it important that a biography is written to at least get some ground on what your character is, you need to consider what you want in the future. If you’re looking for a heavy story investment into your character, maybe plan out something for them to do? Maybe they’re working on a science or engineering project, maybe they’re in a long game to hunt down criminals or maybe even work with them or are they looking deep into the political corruption of the state?
While achieving steps towards your goal, its be good to even play some drawbacks, the road isn’t smooth when working as an agent.so maybe it’s good to also write about their tendencies to hesitate within a quick call of judgement, turning to alcohol to quell their trauma or even an injury that puts them out of the game for a while. It brings a sense of realism to the table.

Heres a few key things to keep in mind while writing:

• If you're going to write about a background, avoid "revengance" type stories, involving things like "My parents were killed by XXX." They're quick to get dismissed and they don't drive a characters motivation forever.
  
• Keep the detailed parts between Higher-education studies to the present. People don't want hear about you being potty trained at 1 years old.
  
• Again, you're a human with maybe a few quirks. Not a super soldier or discarded-experiment, the MND or other scientific institutions won't let one run free.
  
• Notice how hobbies are hobbies, not side jobs. You don't kill people to pass the time, because you're on a fast track to Vierlande, not the MND training camps.
  

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Doing something in the grey?
The best thing to do if you’re planning on something that is questionably legal within Rheinland is to keep it to yourself.
Corruption plays a big deal in developing a self-gain or group interest within a Rheinland agency. Not everyone is a goody-two-shoes and you should at least try to indulge in it once in a while. Communicating with known state enemies, supplying groups hostile to a neutral house, or maybe doing pirating within the Sigmas? Although its known to keep secrets from anyone who isn’t from the Rheinland law-enforcement factions; The last thing you want to do is tell the military, police or government unless they seriously have your trust. (Which will probably involve some ooRP discussions) Because the possibility of your potentially illegal actions will backfire on you is very high. Secrets are secrets, and they will save your hide.

Covering Meta-gaming and Power gaming.
Yes, an intelligence agency might have access to things such as nomad research, underground activities and maybe their own secret base or two. But the last thing we want to have is people powergaming/metagaming knowledge.
Finding out a secret base location because you flew near it or some indie told you about it or lead you there? If you start openly blaring out how you found it, what you know of it and start documenting it heavily without any sort of agreeable, things are not going to end well.
Don’t barge into secret meetings that are way off in a far empty grid that you got the date and time by looking at a forum post you were not invited or involved in. You’ll probably start a ruckus and make a lot of people angry because if you do. If you feel like you shouldn’t know about it, trust your instincts.

Knowing what to say, and not to say.
Being an agent has its perks, you’re main role is to gather needed intelligence and conduct operations that won’t normally be taken by regular military and police forces. Although while you might be facing unfriendly and hostile enemies, you need to be very careful on what you say. The more you talk, the higher the risk you’ll find that you’re leaking intel to the opposing force.
Obviously stonewalling someone would be bad for player interaction, but what you’re going to need to try and do is coax them into leaking useful intelligence without loosening your own lips too much. Keep your intentions hidden and your secrets dark, don’t mention “Nomad experiments” or “Project Spectre” or even mention the name “Schatten Research facility”. Heres some examples words you can swap over if you’re in public space.

Original Word		Replaced word
“Schatten Research Facility”	=	“Regional HQ”
“Outcast Allies”	=	“Omicron Contacts”
“Lane Hackers”	=	“Liberty Contacts”
“Infected/Das Wilde”	=	“Compromised Personnel”

Corporations: Friends or Neutral?
This is where things get complicated, on a formal stand-point. They are Rheinland civilians that we are upholding to protect. One of the lines of duties that we follow. They’re the ones that supply us with the materials and hardware we need, But we also investigate them for accounts of white collar crime (Financial / Monetary motivated crime) and generally when dealing with them through the purchase of equipment and materials you’ll find more zeros stamped on the end of the price tag because of the extortionate behaviour that involves the Military Industrial Complex. (Take some time to look this up if you don’t understand what this is)
While the Corporations try to show the illusion of respect it has for the armed forces of Rheinland, the corruption that flows within the government and its lobbyists is well known to the common person.

Piracy, alternate funding and making some cash on the side.
The MND/BDM survive off public funding from tax dollars, while this provides a large amount of money that covers all operations needed to sustain its regular duties and some extra, sometimes projects that go unlisted and actions that are kept off the governments records need at least some way to purchase the resources they need.
While the MND doesn’t invest that heavily within piracy, it does invest in supplying criminal groups beneficial to the agency’s intentions with weapons and munitions for a cash return, raking in several millions with munitions taken from weapon manufacturing lines on “The-Ring” that might lack serial numbers and trace chips that link them back to the purchaser.
Remember above when we talked about the corruption of the corrupt government almost controlled and influenced by corporate lobbyists? This is something that is also exploited by the MND, why exploit the poor when the rich are rich? Unlike liberty, they fear the mass angered? Rheinland has all of its unlawful entities running off a revolutionist origins against the corporate stigma. Make sure that the senator hands that bribe money over or votes yes to the increase in funding. Because if information went out on how bad their corruption was, the population won’t be afraid to fire-bomb his apartment.

Telling lies, fibs and making up stories:
While its not normally acceptable to lie, sometimes its necessary. The difficult thing is creating a lie that at least sounds reasonable amongst all the other context you're delivering. Don't try to thrive off it though, because the massive repercussions you might face as a community member might suddenly imply you're untrustworthy and people might start to avoid any business with you. Try to keep it to when you're in a life and death situation, or to when you're trying to avoid leaking valuable information.
Not much can be said, just be careful on what you say and at least keep the continuity of your story to make sense with what is common knowledge if you plan to.


How to treat other Militaries and Intelligence agencies:
While governments might agree that them and another state might be at peace, intelligence agencies are always at war. They might not be fighting each other with guns, but they’re always trying to uncover each other secrets and help their states gain the upper hand in power while manipulating strings in others.
This can be through spies, technology and influencing the criminal groups within other houses, intelligence agencies are always moving forward and are never idle within their actions as thinking that they are “at peace” means that you open weaknesses to the state, free for others to manipulate.

Owned stations and bases:
While this section isn’t as important, it’s good to understand the purpose of the most important and currently established MND bases and how they should be treated by various ranks.

Schatten Research Facility:
The most guarded and well-kept secret within Rheinland, this is where experiments and tests of all sorts take place. It has a shipyard capable of building prototypes without the need of corporate assistance. While this station does host an array of defences and is bristling with ships flying the MND tag, don’t be fooled by its populated and core system presence. Its knowledge isn’t openly available to the lower ranks and generally field agents aren’t told about this place unless they’re brought there for engineering projects or have xenobiology specialization.

New Berlin:
This is where most of the public offices and training facilities are held, New Berlin is the capital of Rheinland so it is obvious this is where the strongest presence of agency personnel are located. Its cold climate and month long nights create the perfect environment to train agents for ground operations. While covert operations don’t exactly take place here, there are bases and depots that house equipment and troops. The MND generally take up tasks such as busting smuggling rings planetside, ensuring the protection of high class personnel and ensuring the peace within important areas.

Munster Research Facility:
This is in the process of being scuttled, Munster research facility was hit by a LSF attack and had one of its core modules destroyed. While most of the Nomad Research has been moved to Schatten. It doesn’t serve a much of a purpose anymore apart from being an confiscation archive and storage depot.

Author notes: I'll be adding to this guide every now and then, but I'll avoid OFL jargon for now. This is a basic guide book on "How to play" rather than a history lesson. Feedback will greatly be appreciated, this is my first time writing any sort of tutorial/guide.