Moderated Games mostly consist of role-playing nation games where you, in theory, get to control your own nation, while negotiating and warring with those of other players.

In the past, when Moderated Games had their own subforum, there was a greater variety to the types of games played. Notable variations included Mosaic Earth, Feudal Lands, NationStates (based on the NationStates site), A Little Trip games, Earth Imperialism, and Nation Games, which inspired a number of variants, including the Small Nations Game (SNG), the Continuous Nation Game (CNG), the Technological Nation Game (TNG), and the New Interactive Nation Game (NING). Nation Games, specifically CNGs, would go on to become the predominate type of game played under the Moderated Games umbrella.

While superficially similar to Nation Games, Moderated Games have a few key differences. A Moderated Game starts with voting between a few proposals. Proposals can range from a game set in a post-apocalyptic 1970s to a fresh take on the Victorian Era. After a game is selected, players make claims, which are either accepted, rejected, or modified by the GM. Unlike most Nation Games, these are custom nations, designed by the players themselves. After acceptance, the players create “Almanacs,” providing information about their nation that includes such details as population, internal issues, and military numbers. The game proper starts a few days later.

Another major difference between Nation Games and Moderated Games is that there are no set turns. Instead, a day in real time is generally held to equal a year or six months in-game. This means Moderated Games progress faster than Nation Games. Historically, they have also lasted longer than Nation Games, though there have been some exceptions. They also tend to put more emphasis on worldbuilding, with players encouraged to write short stories or small “fluff” pieces set in their nation.

For much of AH.com’s history, Moderated Games had their own subforum separate from Nation Games, Map Games, and more traditional RPGs. However, in October 2016 Ian combined all subforums in the former Sandbox into a new forum called Shared Worlds. From then on, Moderated Games would be distinguished from other games by a yellow-orange prefix tab.

• Agentdark
• BCO
• Fenwick

• gilbertk1993

• Agentdark
• Fenwick
• Augustus Montes
• TheShah
• Sir Scott
• Troyer IV
• RyuDrago
• Guderian’s Beard
• and many others (add them to the list, if you like)

Due to Moderated Game’s long history, a variety of games have been played.

From its mostly uncharted infancy on the Old Board, Mosaic Earth and its spin-offs were one of the earliest forms of Moderated Games. It survived the migration to the current incarnation of AH.com, with numerous incarnations of Mosaic Earth games arising over the course of 2004. By 2005, the games became more organized, and a superior bureaucracy gave birth to Mosaic Earth 7, which was, at the time, considered to be the pinnacle of that era’s Shared Worlds.

In its wake came the well-patterned games of late 2005 and early 2006. However, the quality of the games soon started to decline, partly due to the competition presented from Feudal Lands, A Little Trip, and their spin-offs. Mosaic World games, organized mainly by Ward, faired extremely poorly as competition mounted. The majority of the oldest ME-players abandoned the game in 2006.

Originally an ASB thread begun by Douglas, Feudal Lands was first organized into a game by Highlander, chunkeymonkey13q, Straha, and Chingo360. Soon after its origin it was dubbed a “claim fest”, and all attempts to reform its gameplay failed. The game’s rules changed only to state that players were only allowed to claim nations with populations of 25 million or less, and those nations had to be from between 1938 and 1942.

Feudal Lands games flourished between December 2005 and November 2006 before abruptly disappearing. While most of them remain on the board for perusal, Feudal Lands 3, due to being located in the Non-Political Chat forum, was removed by Ian during the Great Deletion.

The term “Nation Game” derives from 09camaro's New Interactive Nations Game (here), created in October 2007 in the ASB forum and soon moved into the Shared Worlds forum. It differed from Mosaic Earth in the nature of its setting. The beginning of the game was not when nations from various different timelines were suddenly thrown together, but when countries on an otherwise blank map began interacting with each other. This formula was further developed, making it explicitly post-apocalyptic, by Nations Game: After Impact and Nations Game: After the Plague.

NGs quickly gained a reputation for longevity. NING won the 2008 Turtledove Award for the Superlative Shared Worlds category, much to its creator's suprise.

Throughout late 2008 and early 2009 the NGs began to fall apart, with many games lasting less than a month. In February of 2009, a new type of game was attempted; the Small Nations Game (SNG). It was, in effect, an attempt to recreate the earlier Feudal Lands games under a different name. The game initially seemed popular, but by March it too had fallen apart.

This collapse instigated the rise of a new game type; the Fenwickian Nation Game (FNG), distinguished by the use of randomly-generated scores to represent national capabilities. FNGs were most popular in 2009, though a few new FNGs were created later on. The last FNG appeared in 2012, after which the style went extinct.

In August 2009, Overlord founded CNG: Rise of Empires, a “continuous nation game” putting a definitive end to the Mosaic Earth and NING tradition of a catastrophic or post-apocalyptic start to the game. Instead, the countries of the game would coexist for years and years before the game itself began, creating the idea of a shared history and developing a purely secondary word. The name and idea have stuck: most Moderated Games since then have taken place in worlds of unified history, and have borne the “CNG:” prefix, even when the scenarios don’t include centuries of shared history.

• “OOC” - Out of character, often officially confined to a separate thread.

• “IC” - In character.

• “SECRET” - A tag for posts to indicate most players need to pretend to forget what you're saying.

• ”Almanac” - A post, generally located in a separate thread from gameplay, that outlines all aspect of your nation, generally including history, geography, government style, population, economy, internal problems, and military numbers.

As the player base has fluctuated and changed over the years, these once common phrases have lost some of their currency. For historical purposes, they are preserved here.

• “My country is authoritarian” - I would like to be invaded at the first opportunity.

• “My country is democratic” - I am going to rule and make decisions as God-Emperor.

• “My country does not have nukes” - My country will develop nuclear weapons one week after the ISOT.

• “I claim China/India” - I claimed a country not only with 1 billion people, but also $1,000 trillion GDP created by my POD.

• “I'm gonna make a second claim” - My plan to take over the world with only one country was thwarted by similarly-minded players.

• “Fenpire/Fenpan” - 1. Simple terms to explain the oddity which is anything Fenwick touches. 2. After CNG: Eod of Darkness, in which Fenwick crated a Japanese superpower (Fenpan/Fenpire), the term is used to describe any nation outside of Europe which people feel is to powerful. Ex: “Your China is looking exactly like the Fenpire!”

• “Your claim/military is unreasonable/big” - Your claim/military is wrong, but I'm only saying this because I don't want you interfering with my plans for global conquest.

• “Your population figure is too high” - Your population is wrong, but I'm only saying this so that I can conquer you easily later.

• “The ISOT date is X” - Every nation can have the most advanced technology from that date, even though the nation is from the third world.

CNG: Broken Mirror The game began in 1820, in a world where there were a few geological changes, including the eastern US divided between a few islands, an African passage, and a Sri Lankan archipelago. Europe was relatively like OTL, though Paganism was quite widespread.

Towards the beginning of the game, a radical Turkish republic managed to puppetize Egypt, and beat the Serbians under King Milos. TheShahs nation, Arza, was a mess of feuding houses in Sri Lanka. Troyer IV took over that nation, posting many posts on “Game of Houses”.

Early on, England went Fuel Lordist, so France, Scotland-Holland, and Spain went to the Conference of Reichenbach Falls, where they decided to invade England. The English held them back, though Ireland was made independent. Ironically, it moved closer to the English, even becoming Fuel Lordist.

Brazil, meanwhile, was taken over by radical communist-like people, and continued its wars against Wales that began when an aristocrat republic ruled the place. Throughout the 1800s, Arza became somewhat Socialist, more of the world went Fuel Lordist, and, in the last quarter-century, Scotland-Holland and France were defeated by Fuel Lordist Germany, England, and Ireland. Scotland then became under the control of the Popular Party, increasing its birthrate, and doubling the population in 20 years, though it was eventually defeated after they tried to acquire chemical weapons. It then was subsumed into the Brythonic Federation, which was basically a united britain.

Arza continued expanding, spanning the entire Indian Ocean, even defeating Han China. France was also Papo-Fascist for a while in there. In the 1920s, Brazil, actually, the Federation of South America, collapsed, and the Maroon Republics- a former Scottish slave republic, the RSA- a Welsh Argentina, and Tir St. Iago- a Monarchist Welsh Chile.

In the 1940s, another war broke out, where Germany and Russia smashed France, Romenia, Saxony, and Scandinavia, Romenia being an ERE-successor Italy. The RSA, under the Integralist Party, took over Saxon Patagonia, but was forced to withdraw after the Federation and Mexico threatened to invade. The game ended in July - November 1954.

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