Why do people identify civilians as "rats" immediately?

[Tsarna]

Uhm, agree with the people, who say, that people do not have to know every damn italian/jew/armenian/albanian/serbo/russian/etc. mob and the different asian/south american/etc. gangs. Of course - if you move to South side of the city, ya have to rp fear and know, that something might happen. But when I am in some nightclub or in Vinewood, then IDGAF about your gang affiliations and what you flex here. I play as someone who comes from Europe, and quite honestly - until I have not introduced IC-ly to fifty different semi-gangs or mobs IG, then Idgaf about them. Simple as that - especially, when I move in those parts of the city, where your precious turf aint on.

[DeFuria]

I wanna use this thread to talk about two cases of study, which could be used for examples of both good and bad portrayal of civillian characters.

Let's call the first example of Bob. Bob is a guy that's partying at a club, minding his own business, after a long day of work. Despite having a lot of script money, Bob still drives a jallopy of a car, since his character's occupation doesn't allow him to afford anything more expensive. Bob doesn't own a gun, despite living in a rough neighborhood, because a) his character doesn't see a need for it, and b) Bob's player understands that civillian will only use that gun for self defense only. Also, Bob happens to know the owner of the club both on an IC and OOC basis. Now, Bob here is approached by a person, trying to sell him cocaine. Pretty common occurence inside a nightclub, right? Since Bob isn't interested, he just denies the offer, warns the owner IC'ly and moves on. Doesn't cause a fuss about it, doesn't try to play hero, nothing. After all, Bob's gotta work the next day, from nine to five, and having his ass beat the previous night won't certainly help him trough the next hard day of work. This, in my opinion, is a good example of civillian roleplay.

Now, onto our second example, and let's call him Discount Bruce Wayne. Discount Bruce Wayne is partying at the exact same club, at the same time. Bruce is also filled with script money, which he "inherited" from his dead father that was a very rich person in FuckWhoKnowsVille. Bruce drives a supercar, despite not having any income to maintain it, he only dresses in expensive suits, despite the ocasion not being the most suitable sometimes, and most importantly, Bruce owns a legal firearm, despite living in a mansion at a crime free area, and never leaving it unless he's going to other rich, expensive, violent crime free areas. Bruce also knows the club's owner, on both basis. Now, Bruce also gets approached by an individual trying to sell him cocaine. Again, pretty common occurence inside a nightclub, right? Instead of just turning it down and telling the owner, Bruce decides to take matters into his own hands. He takes the dealer outside and proceeds to berrate him, saying that he's done with all the people selling drugs in his city, saying all kinds of insults and slurs. Of course, the dealer threatens him with an ass beating of a lifetime. Instead of accepting that he's way out of his depth and take the proverbial L, Bruce, an upstanding citizen so far, with a clean record, decides to pull his legal firearm and shoot the dealer. Bruce, the role model citizen, has just commited murder, and in the process, got himself reported for poor escalation. This is what I deem a bad example of civillian roleplay.

 

I hope we can use these two examples to understand what falls under good civillian roleplay, and the oh-so-commonly mentioned Mary Sue, fearless and brave "mallrat". Civillians should understand that they should try and lead a normal life, much more than anyone. Going around acting like Discount Bruce Wayne is what brings a bad name to civillian roleplayers in general, and ultimately, all the community hurts from this kind of behaviour.

 

[AlphaBatal]

24 minutes ago, sh4dw said:

I wanna use this thread to talk about two cases of study, which could be used for examples of both good and bad portrayal of civillian characters.

Let's call the first example of Bob. Bob is a guy that's partying at a club, minding his own business, after a long day of work. Despite having a lot of script money, Bob still drives a jallopy of a car, since his character's occupation doesn't allow him to afford anything more expensive. Bob doesn't own a gun, despite living in a rough neighborhood, because a) his character doesn't see a need for it, and b) Bob's player understands that civillian will only use that gun for self defense only. Also, Bob happens to know the owner of the club both on an IC and OOC basis. Now, Bob here is approached by a person, trying to sell him cocaine. Pretty common occurence inside a nightclub, right? Since Bob isn't interested, he just denies the offer, warns the owner IC'ly and moves on. Doesn't cause a fuss about it, doesn't try to play hero, nothing. After all, Bob's gotta work the next day, from nine to five, and having his ass beat the previous night won't certainly help him trough the next hard day of work. This, in my opinion, is a good example of civillian roleplay.

Now, onto our second example, and let's call him Discount Bruce Wayne. Discount Bruce Wayne is partying at the exact same club, at the same time. Bruce is also filled with script money, which he "inherited" from his dead father that was a very rich person in FuckWhoKnowsVille. Bruce drives a supercar, despite not having any income to maintain it, he only dresses in expensive suits, despite the ocasion not being the most suitable sometimes, and most importantly, Bruce owns a legal firearm, despite living in a mansion at a crime free area, and never leaving it unless he's going to other rich, expensive, violent crime free areas. Bruce also knows the club's owner, on both basis. Now, Bruce also gets approached by an individual trying to sell him cocaine. Again, pretty common occurence inside a nightclub, right? Instead of just turning it down and telling the owner, Bruce decides to take matters into his own hands. He takes the dealer outside and proceeds to berrate him, saying that he's done with all the people selling drugs in his city, saying all kinds of insults and slurs. Of course, the dealer threatens him with an ass beating of a lifetime. Instead of accepting that he's way out of his depth and take the proverbial L, Bruce, an upstanding citizen so far, with a clean record, decides to pull his legal firearm and shoot the dealer. Bruce, the role model citizen, has just commited murder, and in the process, got himself reported for poor escalation. This is what I deem a bad example of civillian roleplay.

 

I hope we can use these two examples to understand what falls under good civillian roleplay, and the oh-so-commonly mentioned Mary Sue, fearless and brave "mallrat". Civillians should understand that they should try and lead a normal life, much more than anyone. Going around acting like Discount Bruce Wayne is what brings a bad name to civillian roleplayers in general, and ultimately, all the community hurts from this kind of behaviour.

 

damn, ive never met a bruce wayne in a club despite being there for 6 consecutive, unbroken months. maybe more. and i havent missed a single opening since my character's involved in how said club's ran;

what i've seen however is 14 year old characters try to barge their way in, fight security with bats for being told they're underage and being denied entry, bands of ((gang rpers)) fighting patrons and, indeed, security, for being told to leave over sexually harassing patrons; over 10 counts of the most braindead extortion rp, where you have a band of russian/chechen/hispanic/black/wood/biker characters ride/drive across town and even, in some instances, across the state to ask the entirety of the club, the patrons, bar staff, security and even folk outside about the identity of the owner.

do you actually speak from experience or are we hitting it with hypotheticals right now? because if that's the reason behind the bias, you might want to roleplay out of your circle for a change; connect, socialize. just because a character isnt an illegal roleplayer or a cop doesn't mean they aren't fun to be around.

yeah, don't worry. non-erp civilian characters are usually pretty forthcoming if your character doesnt look like a mural drawn up with permanent marker. even moreso if it's an interesting concept.

just to note, discount wayne's pretty rare from what i've seen. i see that your complaint is that people own guns and use them, but could the somalian crimerates be the reason? or is it that discount wayne does precisely what's done day in and day out by the person he shot, as the report forums can attest to? maybe discount wayne's just an alt of some illegal roleplayer from davis, but it's poor escalation because he doesn't have facial ink, wear a flag and isn't a different race than caucasian?

discount bruce wayne might be a rat, but he isn't the only person that practices poor escalation; go look at the report section. there's dozens of reports of people wiping upwards of five people with guns just because somebody had a fistfight on their block.

Edited March 30, 2021 by AlphaBatal

[DasFroggy]

18 hours ago, AVAR said:

I've never seen someone RP a developed legal civilian char properly, somehow they are all rich as fuck with basic jobs- driving around in super sports vehicle with a CCW

When can we meet? ...because I may have quite the surprise for you.

[DeFuria]

18 hours ago, AlphaBatal said:

what i've seen however is 14 year old characters try to barge their way in, fight security with bats for being told they're underage and being denied entry, bands of ((gang rpers)) fighting patrons and, indeed, security, for being told to leave over sexually harassing patrons

You clearly missing the point here. We're not talking about illegal roleplayers here, we're talking about civillians. Yes, there's also a lot of things wrong with illegal roleplay, but I don't think it has anything to do with this thread.
 

7 hours ago, Lop said:

It's stupid that we have to pretend that parts of our own, specifically written script don't exist in-universe. That just means the economy is fucked and needs rebalancing.

I get what you're saying. On one hand, it's not very healthy that money is sort of easy to come by. It means that financial hardship is pretty much non-existant unless you're willing to roleplay it, ot /charity your money. Still, it's much better than having to grind script jobs to get money for a car or whatever, like some past experiences I had. Yes, the economy could be better, but as of right now, it's not in a bad place either. It allows people to roleplay as they like without having to spend too much time grinding. I see that as a good thing, IMO.

[Greyfeather]

7 hours ago, DasFroggy said:

On 3/30/2021 at 7:55 PM, AVAR said:

I've never seen someone RP a developed legal civilian char properly, somehow they are all rich as fuck with basic jobs- driving around in super sports vehicle with a CCW

When can we meet? ...because I may have quite the surprise for you.

I'll meet you there too. You can say hello to my van.

 

The problem, it seems to me, is really that there's too many people making unfounded generalizations about others. It's just tribalism. Simple tribalism. Unfortunately, when those generalizations and assumptions leak into various aspects of the game - like property management - that's where we start to get real problems. 🙄

[AlphaBatal]

19 minutes ago, sh4dw said:

You clearly missing the point here. We're not talking about illegal roleplayers here, we're talking about civillians. Yes, there's also a lot of things wrong with illegal roleplay, but I don't think it has anything to do with this thread.

nah.

we're talking about the identification of civilians in a particular way. to fully explore the topic we need to ask ourselves who, why and when. as it stands, labeling a whole group (thats to say one of the three, legal/illegal/civilian) as rats is something only one of the other groups, in my experience, is vocal about. what we're talking is why. why? because there's some awfully imbecelic characters that deserve it. but why is it the go-to label for people? because it's easier to put somebody in a box.

pretty sure that anybody that claims no decent civilian characters on the server doesn't roleplay out of their own social group, as folks like @DasFroggy and @Greyfeather prove by showing out of the woodwork with arguably stellar characters.

the point here is, discount bruce wayne's largely a myth. what you have issues with is easily resolved on the forums. somebody pulls a gun while having a few aimed at them? you report. somebody shoots you out of the blue with no reason? you report. somebody escalates the situation poorly? you guessed it.

the way i see it, discount bruce wayne's breaking the rules. so unless he's being reported, (which he should be), the whole hypothetical's just being thrown out there.

log on, play a character that isn't an absolute knuckledragger and see if you'll encounter the dude. pretty sure you won't, as the whole "aggressive ccw pf vigilante" stereotype is more of a boogeyman than most would like to admit, and certainly not as widespread as people presume.

then again, if you get clapped by a ccw owner for robbing somebody on a main boulevard, it might be closer to poorly selecting your target than getting intentionally targeted for dm; i've seen it happen. play stupid games, win stupid prizes. and i presume that's what a lot of folk mean, as the poor escalation iteration is easily reportable.

[knppel]

14 minutes ago, Greyfeather said:

The problem, it seems to me, is really that there's too many people making unfounded generalizations about others. It's just tribalism. Simple tribalism. Unfortunately, when those generalizations and assumptions leak into various aspects of the game - like property management - that's where we start to get real problems

Amen.

 

The whole thing is not even about stigmatizing people or characters, it's all about self-identifying as a "non-mallrat".

As transporting this behaviour ic is of course more than just questionable, the people doing it tend to do it repeatedly to constantly assure themselves their rp quality is oh so high (at least in comparison to the people they don't know and call out).

 

While pretending and reassuring oneself, this mindset ironically leads to lowered standards (why? Because the self-proclaimed non mallrat high quality player is constantly surrounded by mallrats ingame, and thus can adapt to their level and still pat their own shoulder about how awesome their character developement is despite most decisions being based on ooc grounds, lol).

 

And last but not least, you're totally right such a mindsight within the staff has to be actively filtered out. We need referees and game masters in this position, not lobbyists for this and that style of rp.

[Petey]

19 hours ago, sh4dw said:

Now, onto our second example, and let's call him Discount Bruce Wayne. Discount Bruce Wayne is partying at the exact same club, at the same time. Bruce is also filled with script money, which he "inherited" from his dead father that was a very rich person in FuckWhoKnowsVille. Bruce drives a supercar, despite not having any income to maintain it, he only dresses in expensive suits, despite the ocasion not being the most suitable sometimes, and most importantly, Bruce owns a legal firearm, despite living in a mansion at a crime free area, and never leaving it unless he's going to other rich, expensive, violent crime free areas. Bruce also knows the club's owner, on both basis. Now, Bruce also gets approached by an individual trying to sell him cocaine. Again, pretty common occurence inside a nightclub, right? Instead of just turning it down and telling the owner, Bruce decides to take matters into his own hands. He takes the dealer outside and proceeds to berrate him, saying that he's done with all the people selling drugs in his city, saying all kinds of insults and slurs. Of course, the dealer threatens him with an ass beating of a lifetime. Instead of accepting that he's way out of his depth and take the proverbial L, Bruce, an upstanding citizen so far, with a clean record, decides to pull his legal firearm and shoot the dealer. Bruce, the role model citizen, has just commited murder, and in the process, got himself reported for poor escalation. This is what I deem a bad example of civillian roleplay.

 

 

I mean, dumbasses like that exist IRL. You gotta draw the line between actually roleplaying being dumb and abusing that to do wicked shit.

[Dom.]

On 3/27/2021 at 6:31 PM, Stiggz said:

Because it’s very rare you see someone roleplaying with ULSA who’s not completely OOC’ly against every illegal faction and drives some expensive car. If you drive an expensive car and your character is in their 20’s I immediately think you’re a mallrat. 

generalization is cringe on both sides my boy

Edited March 31, 2021 by Dom.