Kipps

strengths: good at gun fights weakness: bad with writing words

Report people who say shit like that. It's not up to them to decide who they do and don't have to roleplay with.

For one, a serious roleplaying community doesn't need an 'IC emoji' to 'bash' other players. We can use our words. If someone is roleplaying an LS native, it's perfectly fine to ask where a common area is OOC because their character would already have that knowledge. Asking about buying silencers in an Ammunition is also completely incidental and takes nothing away from roleplay. You'd Google this information in real life without ever speaking to anybody. Serious roleplay isn't about dogged adherence to the server rules. I'm totally against extremely petty and litigious enforcement in a way that does nothing to enhance roleplay.

People being underdressed for cold weather must be about the most infinitesimally small of roleplay issues this server has.

One of the worst mistakes people make is thinking that writing in roleplay involves a set of rules that are completely separate to writing generally. And then they end up starting from scratch and inventing weird habits and attitudes about what is and isn't okay. You should make the point you want to make in as few words as possible. Defaulting to concise writing is good. If you need the extra words to say something meaningful about your character, use them. If you don't have anything to say, don't say anything. Recently, I've seen a lot more writing that just tells people what a character is thinking. "Martin scratches his nose. He's frustrated about what's happened." - this is quite bad. It's boring, obvious and doesn't tell any other player how their character might know that Martin's upset. Also, I've seen emotes like "Martin kills Barry on behalf of the gang for being a snitch" - please stop writing emotes like you're writing a Wikipedia plot summary. Again, it's boring and doesn't immerse people in what's going on. Here's some other shit I wrote about this: "roleplayers should see themselves more like reporters than novelists – reporters tend to write clearly, concisely and efficiently to keep up with the news cycle. Roleplayers have similar time pressures that are best answered with this approach to writing."

going into blaine county roleplay hubs feels like entering a fallout wasteland settlement where a guy with a cowboy hat gives you a quest to raid a local bandit encampment.

Whenever anything of any note occurs, the staff instinct is to lock every thread where there's any chance of it being talked about. And then all the talking happens on Discord anyway. It's a terrible attitude that I don't see replicated anywhere else. Telling people what's going on and letting them talk about it, instead of treating them like contemptible nuisances who can't be trusted to say what they think, is what any reasonable management should support. You should care to know what the community thinks even if you disagree with them.

The issue with LSRP is that, for a long time at least, the people deciding who did and did not become official didn't know what good roleplay looked like, and sometimes it seemed like the most fantastically bad factions were being made official out of spite. There shouldn't be an issue if factions who have quality roleplayers are given more recognition - it'll encourage less good factions to be more like them. The main problem will still be people who are bad roleplayers/don't really care about bad roleplay running factions though.

what is this relentless drivel about this being strictly an IC issue? it's an IC issue as much as there only being five-hundred people in the city is an IC issue, or trailers in ugly backwaters costing £250k is an IC issue. i don't know if the OP's suggestion works, but developers need to think about how to give drug distribution networks a profitability on a level at least somewhat similar to what they generate in real life. this server does more to encourage people to go fishing than it does to encourage people to sell drugs - it's insane and totally at odds with the types of roleplay a GTA server should be incentivising. what we really don't need is for total morons who don't even roleplay in this area and haven't given the issue five seconds thought to tell everybody that it's an IC issue when it's obviously not. bore off with this unhelpful shit.

if you didn't learn to roleplay on habbo hotel you're just not an elite rper

the cell doors in Twin Towers are always stuck shut so that the few people who want to roleplay in jail - which should be fundamental to any gang member character - have to basically bug there way out to do it. and also we can't make phone calls from the jail either (using smuggled phones or the payphones). it's really basic stuff that's a serious impediment to criminal roleplay.

Hunger/thirst indicators are terrible and gamify roleplay. When people want to actively roleplay eating a meal, they'll do that and they'll probably put some effort into it - but if you tell them to eat when they don't want to, they'll rush through the experience in a way that benefits nobody.

wealthy people who own shitty homes in neighbourhoods they don't live in are called Landlords

You're not going to improve roleplay standards by putting people in jail for longer or shorter sentences. The extent to which you're going to encourage more realistic behaviour is also minimal, not least because most criminals in the active commission of a crime aren't expecting to get caught - especially in a setting with so few bystanders, surveillance, forensic evidence, and police. 2009 LSRP had hefty fines, 24 hour sentences and SWAT patrols - but every other evening, some shitty street gang, meant to be portraying crips but more often inadvertently portraying a Joseph Kony-style guerrilla army, would massacre three blocks with a 12-man kill squad. The way you get people to improve their roleplay is to change the culture; you put faction leaders in place who know how to roleplay properly and actually give a shit about their reputations as roleplayers more than they give a shit about the IC statuses of their factions. And then you make sure the staff team has a shared motivation to push up roleplaying standards and come down hard on unrealistic behaviour.

Just be like 'woah, hold on a second' then scroll a gun and shoot them.

From what I've seen, most people who use .. mean to use an ellipsis - and the number of people who use .. when they meant to just use a period is a small minority. The small minority are already making an unintentional typo in the current system - and they'll be doing the same in the new system - so it won't make a difference to them. But it will help the majority of players who make this mistake because they don't know what the punctuation mark is supposed to look like and think that .. is standard in writing.

I have no issue telling people what they're doing is wrong - this thread is literally that. And you've read this thread where I've done that and then replied to ask why I've not done it. It's bizarre. If I wanted automatic full stops and capitalization, I would've suggested that. But I didn't and I don't. This suggestion is to correct a very simple and persistent issue which has endured despite me telling people about it over and over for ages. We have had more than ten years of GTA roleplay and this has always been an issue, no matter who's told what. Correct it and I can then focus on giving people advice about the actually substantive stuff - and not just small punctuation mistakes. I don't care if you're mad about people for joking about ERP. It's kind of inherently funny to a lot of people. And if we stop joking about ERP, next you'll want us to stop joking about anything. Slippery slope. (As an aside, it's awesome that possibly the most humourless post on these forums, which includes a po-faced paragraph about people being mean about ERP, is accusing everybody else of not being funny enough.) I'm not trying to get into your weird ERP versus non ERP culture war, I'm just trying to help people out with a system that will teach them to avoid a single enduringly bad punctuation error - that's it.

Suggestion template Short description: Filter .. into ... Detailed description: When the Brave Administrators galloped through Los Santos and cut down the -.. savages, it was a proud day for the server. But today a new scourge has risen to take its place: the reprehensible '..'. This part full stop, part ellipsis abomination is all over the place. In the interests of clarity, intelligibility, and sick roleplay, the script should filter .. into a full ellipsis (...). This would be equivalent to the way the ugly caterpillar -.. is turned into the extremely sexy and fuckable – em dash butterfly. Some people will reply, 'Kipps this doesn't matter, I.. hate, grammar. and. Type. lIKE this. Also why are you talking about having sex with butterflies you idiot-..' This is a simple suggestion to implement and shouldn't take away much development time from other updates. It'll also help out newer players who might otherwise fall into bad writing habits. Commands to add: NONE Items to add: NONE How would your suggestion improve the server? It will improve writing clarity and help new players not fall into bad habits. Additional information: NONE

i support this 100%

How to do Good Roleplay -.. I made a post in the General Discussion forum. Unlike most of my posts there, which are deleted without warning for being too dumb, this one remained up. It contained advice about what good roleplayers do, so I’ve expanded on it here in the Guides forum. Some people will now be saying, “Kipps, you are a dogshit roleplayer. Why are you writing a guide about anything apart from getting forum banned for being a stupid asshole?” This is a fair comment, but I’ve tragically been roleplaying for more than ten years and I’ve encountered a lot of people who are really good roleplayers in that time. I also enjoy writing and learning about what good writing looks like. Finally, I’m of the view that if you’re going to spend years pretending to be a virtual biker or nightclub owner or gang shot caller in Grand Theft Auto, you may as well try and do it well. With that said, here are some numbered points about how to be good at roleplay: 1) Write convincing character dialogue. I hate trite and cliched dialogue. I like people who can write mobster characters who don't immediately remind you of someone from The Sopranos. Try to avoid sounding like a pastiche. You can write an intimidating mobster who doesn’t say shit like, “you’re gonna be sleepin’ with duh fishes, kid, cos I run this town. Madone.” I like high ranking criminals who actually feel intimidating in the way they speak - because you don't run a continuing criminal enterprise without being able to affect a very intimidating threat of violence in your speaking. (Some jail and prison roleplayers are really good at roleplaying inmates who are genuinely scary presences in a scene.) Pete Postlethwaite's character Fergus in The Town is a fun example of an extremely menacing character who knows exactly what to say to intimidate somebody. Chris Browning’s shot caller character in Felon and Jeffrey Donovan’s in Shot Caller are good examples too. Instead of just dispensing trite scary criminal dialogue, these characters tailor their threats to the person they’re speaking to. You get the sense they are used to what they do. I like people who can write good accents, lingo and local vernacular in their dialogue. This just involves a lot of research and a real attention to the words your character is using. Ask different people who’re already roleplaying what you’re interested in for input. Ask if certain slang is in use. Find interviews to see how people from specific areas speak so that you can get the sound right. YouTube has endless videos on people from specific areas talking casually. 2) Avoid purple prose. No one cares. Really. If your character is swigging from a beer bottle, then just say that - don't dedicate three paragraphs to the process. Good roleplayers say what they need to and they do it succinctly. They use as many words as necessary. They avoid tired or clumsy metaphors. They can turn a phrase when it's needed, but they also show enough restraint to keep a scene moving. If you’re going to include multiple actions in the same emote, ensure it reads well. For instance: “Rodney Roleplay digs around in his property box for a few moments. He retrieves a shabby textbook on human anatomy which he dusts off and then presents to Matthew.” This is fine. You could split this over three separate emotes but sometimes writing in this way avoids spam and makes following a scene easier. Some people have a real aversion to including more than one sentence in an emote and will instead just write really long sentences with lots of commas. These appear bloated and tend not to read well. (OBVIOUSLY: If there’s a chance another character would react to one of your emotes, give them that chance – don’t write an emote describing your character punching somebody five times when it’s more than likely they’d in some way react after the first punch.) Not every emote needs to be beautifully phrased. I would argue that, a lot of the time, roleplayers should see themselves more like reporters than novelists – reporters tend to write clearly, concisely and efficiently to keep up with the news cycle. Roleplayers have similar time pressures which are best answered by this approach to writing. 3) Have an actual character. Real people have motivations and histories that shape their motivations. Real people are conflicted and complex and messy. They're prone to mistakes. They have regrets, some fleetingly but some that linger. All of this complexity needs to be brought into your characters. And then the good roleplayer will allow it to seep into the roleplay over time - rather than unloading a character’s entire backstory with all their motivations in a single expository scene. Real characters aren't always sad, happy or guarded - even if they might tend more towards some feelings than others. Supporting characters in movies serve a very specific function, so they often don't have the depth you'd need to bring them into a roleplay setting. Better inspirations can be found in TV series like The Wire - where you spend hundreds of hours with characters and get a much clearer sense of what they're like in all manner of circumstances. Your character should have their own motivations and thoughts that don't necessarily neatly fit with their faction's. (So try not to make characters who just exist to serve a faction's interests - employees normally have interests that don't fully align with their employers.) 4) Know your characters. Good roleplayers don't need scripts. They have a sense of how their characters will react to certain situations and can improvise with them. This is hard and it really just requires practice to ensure you are responding as your character and not just as yourself. Get to know your character, familiarise yourself with their backstory and keep note of what events they’ve been privy to that might affect their outlooks in different scenarios. 5) Know how to use grammar and spell. Seriously. I am so glad we got rid of '-..'. Use punctuation properly. Try and spell properly (I invoke Muphry's law at this point). Use words you know the definition of to avoid confusing people. It’s very obvious when people are using obscure words for the sake of it. It's pretentious and it's not good writing. Get people to check your faction threads, not just for issues with spelling, punctuation and grammar but for issues with syntax too. If you're writing a faction thread in the style of a news article, make sure you understand the way information in these articles is usually ordered and arranged. 6) Appreciate that characters change over time. Think about how a character might change based on what they experience – and appreciate that these changes will often be subtle and gradual. Having a character who adjusts based on their engagements with others is very satisfying for those other players. The longer you play a character, the more grounded they will become in the world. They’ll experience all sorts of events that will shape them in different, often conflicting ways. Some players obviously can’t wait to reach a certain point in their character’s "story", and they will fast-forward development to get there. There is an excellent screenshot from another server of a character meeting a new roommate and then within five minutes disclosing apropos of nothing that they are a Japanese assassin who needs help killing people. This is plainly an instance of two players wanting to speed past the boring introductory bullshit – but if the roleplay is that dull, just start from a point where both characters already know each other and avoid a ludicrously contrived """"development"""" scene. Don’t roleplay a teenager if they’re going to become an adult within three weeks, because the necessary development of years of teenhood can’t be stuffed into that time frame. No one enjoys very awkwardly rushed """"development roleplay"""" for development roleplay’s sake. Some of the best development is subtle and not just Look Now I’m Not a Teenager Anymore roleplay. 7) Try and learn proactively. No one will ever be perfect. Good roleplayers ask questions about what it is they're roleplaying and about roleplay generally. They reflect and they self-criticise. They seek out feedback and respond to it. They don't just plod along unthinkingly. Most of the other points in this guide require you to reflect on what it is you’re doing in specific detail. We aren’t roleplaying in a setting with a finite amount of lore; there will always be more information on jail systems, gang activity, law enforcement, West Coast cultures, etc, etc. Reading this stuff is not just helpful for ensuring that your portrayals are realistic and modern, it’s also helpful for providing ideas for keeping things fresh. The amount of time somebody’s spent roleplaying says very little about their roleplaying ability if they haven’t been proactively working to improve in that time. Conclusion These are seven of many more points about what good roleplay can look like. It’s more effort to treat roleplay this way but it’s more rewarding too. You can call people nerds for wanting to do all this shit instead of just driving a sports car and E-sexing their brains out, but I think everyone should at least consider trying to follow these points to see how it goes. As noted, this isn’t an exhaustive list and I welcome other people’s points, comments, discussion, criticism, etc.

In answer to question 3), I would say no. It's immersion breaking to see somebody your character's just killed walking around unharmed days later. But it's also the nature of the game. Just because it's silly doesn't justify killing them over and over again - treating them like a zombie and killing them repeatedly would be even more immersion-breakingly stupid than just suspending your disbelief and pretending they're somebody else who isn't a rival. If you're unhappy with somebody roleplaying 'consequences' adequately, you need to address this OOC by, for instance, agreeing to terms of victory and defeat. You can't just keep murdering the same person in violation of server rules until they respond in a way you consider appropriate OOC. If you could murder people for bad roleplay, I would run out of ammo within about 12 seconds of logging into the server. So, basically, if the Rules of Engagement don't say differently, I think that a PK here should be treated a PK like in any other circumstances. Otherwise you'd just have endless killing sprees, which would be totally stupid. I'm also going to say that the answer to question 4) is no too. I think factions should have the opportunity to roleplay the consequences of a loss, and that this in itself can be fun roleplay, and that these consequences don't necessarily need to involve shutting down. In real life, there are normally terms a losing group can start abiding by in order to prevent further bloodshed/complete annihilation. It's not supposed to be like a CSGO match where killing the other team is the end in itself.

I wanna see it stay IC. But I'd also like more interconnectedness between street gangs and prison gangs (including prison gangs with a presence on the street and in jail). It seems like a lot of the Sureno gangs are doing this with the Mexican Mafia and it's creating a level of complexity and realism that makes involvement much more interesting in the longer term.

I think they should be regulated because they're horribly roleplayed rather than because they're profitable in game. Cab driving and bartending aren't meant to be profitable lines of work - that's part of what maintains the allure of criminal alternatives. (The other part is profitable criminal roleplay which, beyond gun trading, seems rather lacking.)

This is like asking what a good writer is in that you'll never be able to provide a complete answer, however good roleplayers generally: 1) Write convincing dialogue for their characters. I hate trite and cliched dialogue. I like people who can write mobster characters who don't instantly remind you of someone from The Sopranos. Similarly, I like high ranking criminals who actually feel intimidating in the way they speak - because you don't run a continuing criminal enterprise without being able to affect a very real threat of violence in your speaking. (Some prison roleplayers are really good at roleplaying inmates who are genuinely scary presences in a scene.) I like people who can write good accents, lingo and local vernacular in their dialogue. 2) Avoid purple prose. No one cares. Really. If your character is swigging from a beer bottle then just say that - don't dedicate three paragraphs to the process. Good roleplayers say what they need to and they do it succinctly. They use as many words as necessary. They avoid tired or clumsy metaphors. They can turn a phrase when it's needed, but they also show enough restraint to keep a scene moving. 3) Have an actual character. Real people have motivations and histories that shape their motivations. Real people are conflicted and complex and messy. They're prone to mistakes. They have regrets, some fleetingly but some that linger. All of this complexity needs to be brought into your characters. And then the good roleplayer will allow it to seep into the roleplay over time - rather than unloading a bunch of backstory with all their motivations in a single expository scene. Real characters aren't always sad, happy or guarded - even if they might tend more towards some feelings than others. Supporting characters in movies serve a very specific function, so they often don't have the depth you'd need to bring them into a roleplay setting. Better inspirations can be found in TV series like The Wire - where you spend hundreds of hours with characters and get a much clearer sense of what they're like in all manner of circumstances. 4) Know their characters. Good roleplayers don't need scripts. They have a sense of how their characters will react to certain situations and can often improvise with them. This is hard and requires practice to ensure you are responding as your character and not just as yourself. 5) Know how to use grammar and spell words. Seriously. I am so glad we got rid of '-..'. Use punctuation properly. Try and spell properly. Use words you know the definition of to avoid confusing people. 6) Appreciate that characters change over time. I have never supported, for instance, roleplaying a 14-year-old and ageing them to be 18 over a couple of months. I don't believe the necessary development of four years of teenhood can be stuffed into a few weeks. I'd rather have a character with a rich backstory written prior to the start of roleplay. You can then think about how they might change based on what they experience - and these changes will often be subtle and gradual. Having a character who adjusts based on their engagement with others is very satisfying for those other players. 7) Try and learn proactively. No one will ever be perfect. Good roleplayers ask questions about what it is they're roleplaying and about roleplay generally. They reflect and they self-criticise. They seek out feedback and respond to it. They don't just plod along unthinkingly. Those are seven of many points about what good roleplayers do. Other stuff: I don't think it matters if a roleplayer can play a cop convincingly if they have no interest in doing that. What matters is how good they are at playing what they do currently. Joe Pesci basically only ever plays mobsters but who cares? He's awesome at it. Denzel Washington tends to play characters who sound alike, but he does it with so much depth. People should know as much as they need to to enhance their character portrayals. I don't know how to fly a plane - but that's not relevant to any of my characters and so it doesn't matter.

finally the biggest crime syndicate of them all has arrived on GTAWorld