Map of Tiandi as of December 2022
"Comanche horse archers rumble down the endless steppes of Central Yeongju, as Navajo city dwellers cower in fear. Korean machine guns mow down charging roves of French knights. A humbled pharaoh presents a bountiful feast to visiting Manchu emissaries, hoping to secure a more lenient trade deal."
— Tiandi Recruitment Ad
Imagine a world like our own, with one key difference: East Asian cultures were the dominant colonizers in place of Europeans. What would be the dominant global languages? What would people wear? Would there be the same amount of conflict? Would ice cream exist?
Tiandi is a worldbuilding and roleplay region on NationStates based around these concepts. Founded in 2015 by user Arumdaum, Tiandi was created with the goal of exploring how culture and society would develop within the context of East Asian dominance. Initially a roleplay-focused region, the project is currently based primarily on Discord and is focused more heavily on worldbuilding.
The region's NationStates page can be found here
, with links to the project's Discord and wiki within.
In-Character Tropes
- Alternate History:
- Events don't take place on Earth, but on an earthlike constructed world—with its own map! Nations can be large and small, and sometimes very small. Ideas, religions, and inventions spread differently in Tiandi than they do in real life, as certain cultures that have influenced one another in our world may have never come into contact in Tiandi. The players often engage with such matters of handwaved speculative fiction. They are not hesitant to ask the inconvenient and difficult questions, such as whether animal and plant species would have evolved exactly the same on a geologically different planet, whether humans would ever have existed, and whether those humans would have developed similar cultures and languages to those which exist in real life.
- Real-life cultures technically exist in Tiandi, but are generally attributed to a counterpart culture. For the most part, culture does not equal costume, and instead examples of globally-adopted modern clothing do exist. Nations and persons thereof can also be shout-outs to real-life figures or players themselves.
- East Asian cultures and societies are dominant in Tiandi. In contrast to real life, not only are stereotypes flipped here, but persecutions too, as non-East Asian cultures may have to face being targeted by East Asians. Some East Asian societies were massive, colonial and vestigial empires at some point in the past. In the modern age, many of these societies are like villains with good publicity. They cripple developing nations via foreign aid, by arranging big contracts for their big corporations, and/or by getting the better end of a trade deal. Then they reap the benefits of the brain drain and capital flight they have caused.
- Author Appeal: Many players create nations that contain things they like (
or are knowledgeable about) in real-life, such as certain government systems. People will also often incorporate religions or customs that were fairly obscure in real life and make them have a greater presence. This might mean more room for representation, and in particular for feminist fantasies. And as always, players grow bored of being good, and they find ways to create a playground for evil by roleplaying unrealistically dystopian nations purely for the sake of evil. - Hopeless War: A global-scale war erupts in mid-19th century Tiandi, meant to encapsulate how war was hell in real-life World War I and II. A war involving almost everyone is a war with complicated gambits. And when the war ends, Nothing Is the Same Anymore. Much like in real-life, non-governmental organizations—like the Congress of Nations—emerge in the aftermath.
Out-of-Character Tropes
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Accidental Innuendo: Happens frequently in chat. - Archive Panic: Tiandi has been developed more or less consistently since 2015 over forum posts, Discord, IRC, and a wiki. Combing through everything to find details about a nation or concept can take a while.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Mostly averted. Some people thoroughly butcher the languages their nations use, but they care little. Others conduct research into the language or resort to costructed languages of their own.
- Butt-Monkey: Many players tease each other and make playful jokes at each others' expense. When nations are involved, the jocular solution is to nuke 'em.
- Crosses the Line Twice: A common source of humor in chat.
- Memetic Mutation:
- "14-Year Old Japanese Empress": A reference to tendencies in early Tiandian OOC history where nation concepts featured ethnically Japanese counterpart cultures and very young heads of state; in essence a blend of A Child Shall Lead Them, Lady Land and Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe.
- "Meiji X," where X is a real-life country: A reference to players (especially newcomers) who tend to want to roleplay a nation that was either never colonized, or that experienced a period of rapid technological advancement similar to the real-life Meiji Restoration. But we can't allow for Semantic Superpowers.
- Tiandi Will Ruin Your Life: Many players comment on how much extremely specific knowledge they've learned from researching concepts for the Tiandi project.
