Rule 20 (Continuity) Idea/Improvement Discussion

[shaobadman]

I can't see this fitting in any other suggestion section so I put it here.

 

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20) Lore and Continuity

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In order to create an immersive environment for players to enjoy, the admin team have defined the IC lore and continuity of the world we play in. In the same way other types of RP have their own lore, we have created our own. This rule exists to allow admins to ensure players are sticking to the lore.

Players are required to follow any lore and continuity outlined. This is to make sure everyone is on the same page. Intentionally ignoring any continuity can ruin the immersion in a given RP scene. An example is someone saying their character is from Los Angeles, which is replaced by Los Santos in our lore. 

All information can be found here. 

 

 

Obligatory "in my day" - I stopped playing in 2018 and we had nothing for continuity then, we all made it up as we went along, and since coming back, I think it's great to see something done to establish some kind of in-game universe/reality. In 2018 I had a character that I wrote to be from LC with a massive hip-hop background, and I ran into some problems because of how much wasn't included in GTA 4 like Staten Island or anything north of The Bronx.

 

I've read through all pages of the continuity questions and answers thread, and noticed a lot of questions were answered vaguely or were still to be decided. I wanted to throw a suggestion for the community to take and build on. Granted I've got almost a three year gap in playing here so I can expect some criticism in regards to how the roleplay climate stands, but maybe we can have a good collaborative effort here to clear up a lot of the questions that are still in the air regarding the server's continuity.

 

Here is the server's continuity as I understand it from the main thread and the Q&A thread, I'm only including points that are key to this suggestion:

• San Andreas replaces California, California does not exist. Every reference to California is also replaced with SA.
• San Fierro replaces San Francisco. For example, Nancy Pelosi does not represent San Francisco, but San Fierro.
• Every other GTA location such as Liberty City or Vice City no longer exist and players must use their real life counterparts.
• Blaine County no longer exists and is part of Los Santos County, which is the name of the island we see in game.
• The island we see has a bridge on its west and east side connecting it to the rest of "San Andreas".

 

The problems many players have brought up, including my own gripes:

• Pop culture references (any song that references California, movies made in Hollywood) all become mangled.
• Some players have set their character stories to heavily include locations like Liberty City or Vice City.
• San Fierro is included but we know nothing about it in the HD era and don't have much to go off, it would be odd to use GTA SA's locations because SF is not only small compared to GTA 5's LS, but even the smallest city in GTA SA.
• Los Angeles is so much bigger than Los Santos, Los Santos fails to include all parts of Los Angeles County as Rockstar made it with the key areas in mind.

 

My wacky suggestion is that SA/LS and other GTA locations exist alongside their real life counterparts. To get GTA locations out of the way, boroughs in GTA 4's LC are so small that Dukes and Broker are basically the size of the many neighbourhoods in Queens/Brooklyn and can be treated as such; they are all really only made up of a few streets anyway. Algonquin and Bohan could be treated the same for Manhattan and The Bronx, and Alderney could easily be a part of NJ. Unless GTA 4's LC ever becomes a playable part of this server, it's a non-issue as long as it exists in some ways and players can continue to have it in their backstories.

 

Vice City was already a part of Florida in GTA VC so it wouldn't hurt to have it fictionally be some small islands near Miami. San Fierro could easily be another small city/neighbourhood in the Bay Area, and Las Venturas is another mini entertainment strip in the Las Vegas area with some tiny suburbs around it.

 

The controversial part: Los Santos/San Andreas should exist alongside (and within) California. Some fictional imagination and suspension of disbelief is required here.

 

 

These are California's Channel Islands. For perspective, the island labelled "San Nicolas" is roughly nine miles long, and in game, San Andreas is around eight miles from top to bottom. This is a stretch but San Andreas is also similarly shaped to San Nicolas, and follows the naming convention of these islands (and a lot of the West Coast, having originally been inspired by San Francisco in GTA 1). I mention this to prove that it isn't so outlandish that another island of a similar size could exist there.

 

In this alternate reality I'd propose that, geographically, San Andreas is another fictional island off the coast of California that saw major development as an island city like Male in the Maldives or Singapore. It would not be a stretch to explain that it was heavily inspired by Los Angeles, which would also explain why only the key parts of LA were rivaled/replicated.

 

I assume players/management would have an issue constantly trying to abide by Californian laws in which case the island of San Andreas could be an overseas territory to maintain the reality of USA's current state count.

 

I believe the following will be achieved:

• Players aren't limited on what they can and can't reference because nothing major is removed from reality.
• The issue of distance/time (something I saw mentioned in the Q&A thread) ceases to be an issue because we're not trying to replace a large area with a small island. We take the size of the island/LS as is and deal with it.
• ULSA is tiny compared to UCLA but it would be acceptable because it doesn't replace UCLA. 
• No backstories get ruined. Players can validly write their characters to be from Brooklyn or Broker, they're not the same place.
• We become much closer to explaining why the city is so quiet - it would still be valid to assume there's a population there other than active players, but if we accept that LS is no more than a few square miles in area, then use numbers for the total number of players instead of the active player count, then it works out.
• This image, although entertaining, becomes invalidated by a new image of San Andreas being placed in the sea just off the coast of California.

 

Eight miles (San Andreas vertical length) does not really span that far at all. Not only does it not cover LA but LS is even much smaller than that eight miles, and is probably no bigger than some neighbourhoods/cities in LA (the City of Compton is approximately four by four miles). I think we can do better than outright replacing Los Angeles, and at the same time maintain some sensibility/realism in doing so. I can see tiptoeing around LA/CA references causing a few problems and this is the most sensible solution I could come up with. Obviously some of it is going to be weird like this tiny city having skyscrapers without the population to support it, but in any kind of fictional world you have to fudge some details, I don't think this is too outlandish or unreasonable but am open to comments anyway.

[Storm]

Nah. Continuity ruling about what we roleplay and where is fine as is and it's geared to work well with the current server climate where we have major factions such as the LSPD and LSSD directly influenced by their real world counterparts (as they should be). While the map scale and scope are not exactly LA (far from it), they include a diverse enough set of locations that nearly anything you'd want to portray in relation to LA and it's culture are present. I'd say we're fine as is. If we were to add the other "lore" cities they should be replacements, having both is goofy.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Storm

[Dom.]

I just think forcing San Andreas to be an island is fucking stupid. Makes no sense.

[Synapse]

On 6/28/2021 at 12:33 AM, Dom. said:

I just think forcing San Andreas to be an island is fucking stupid. Makes no sense.

 

[Late]

Our map is literally an island so it makes every since. The continuity thread has already said that San Andreas IS an Island, but connected with bridges... I'd much rather it be connected with a rapid ferry service than a bridge no one can see. But everyone freaks out when I suggest this, I don't know why. 

Think about it what makes more sense.. RPing the map as we see it with the mainland just out of sight, or pretending there is a bridge / land that ISN'T actually there. 

[Aquila]

We need to consider the fact that there will only be issues if you merge two universes together.

 

At some point we will need to accept the fact that this is a game, and sometimes we have to fudge reality so that things make sense. There is no logic for Los Santos (a total, pitiful, and incomplete copy of Los Angeles) to replace the city it's based off of; likewise there is no logic for San Andreas, a tiny state (which we only see a fraction of in the HD universe so far), to completely replace California.

 

I used to think we can replace NY with LC, and CA with SA, but it isn't that easy, because neither of the latter maps are complete. They're lacking so many neighbourhoods, towns, and settlements, and the ones that do exist are absolutely tiny. 

 

I see no harm in SA and CA coexisting. Yes, it'd mean we have more than 50 states but who really cares? It has almost no impact on the roleplay that goes on in this server. By forcing some strange lore on this server, people's roleplay and their character's backstories are being limited heavily. 

 

People who have played the GTA games know the existing lore as it is. Having to learn a completely new and incomplete lore is off-putting, and just overall silly. When you keep things relatively vague, it's easier to compromise and continue roleplaying with it, whereas if you set something concrete without proper research or considerations, then there will only be room for controversy, then there'll be clashes in backstories, and then immersion gets ruined. I'd say we accept that there are 50 states in this universe, but there are also the existing states/cities from the GTA HD world (Liberty City, Vice City, Los Santos). This is why I wish Rockstar would make a completely new, non-existing map instead of copying real life places.

[jcat]

21 minutes ago, Late said:

connected with a rapid ferry service

I agree.

[Jorgensen]

What I didnt understand about continuity is how LS replaces LA but LC/VC etc doesnt replace/or even exist. It'd make more sense if they were replaced.

 

What was also confusing is the part where people can RP being from parts of LS that existed in GTA SA but do not exist in this version of LS.

 

As it stands, continuity seems very mish-mashy and odd. I think it'd make more sense if ALL Rockstar lore locations existed and GTA SA locations like Idlewood etc didnt when well...they arent accessible (it was said somewhere that players can RP being from Idlewood etc)

Edited June 29, 2021 by Jorgensen

[shaobadman]

8 hours ago, Late said:

Our map is literally an island so it makes every since. The continuity thread has already said that San Andreas IS an Island, but connected with bridges... I'd much rather it be connected with a rapid ferry service than a bridge no one can see. But everyone freaks out when I suggest this, I don't know why. 

Think about it what makes more sense.. RPing the map as we see it with the mainland just out of sight, or pretending there is a bridge / land that ISN'T actually there. 

Hard agree, I can't buy that there's outside bridges because that would add some off ramps and other alterations to each of the highways (west and east), we can't see them, it wouldn't really make sense. I'd be more inclined to take Rockstar's implied land boundaries where north of Paleto is a river, and the east is separated by mountains.

8 hours ago, Aquila said:

We need to consider the fact that there will only be issues if you merge two universes together.

 

At some point we will need to accept the fact that this is a game, and sometimes we have to fudge reality so that things make sense. There is no logic for Los Santos (a total, pitiful, and incomplete copy of Los Angeles) to replace the city it's based off of; likewise there is no logic for San Andreas, a tiny state (which we only see a fraction of in the HD universe so far), to completely replace California.

 

I used to think we can replace NY with LC, and CA with SA, but it isn't that easy, because neither of the latter maps are complete. They're lacking so many neighbourhoods, towns, and settlements, and the ones that do exist are absolutely tiny. 

 

I see no harm in SA and CA coexisting. Yes, it'd mean we have more than 50 states but who really cares? It has almost no impact on the roleplay that goes on in this server. By forcing some strange lore on this server, people's roleplay and their character's backstories are being limited heavily. 

 

People who have played the GTA games know the existing lore as it is. Having to learn a completely new and incomplete lore is off-putting, and just overall silly. When you keep things relatively vague, it's easier to compromise and continue roleplaying with it, whereas if you set something concrete without proper research or considerations, then there will only be room for controversy, then there'll be clashes in backstories, and then immersion gets ruined. I'd say we accept that there are 50 states in this universe, but there are also the existing states/cities from the GTA HD world (Liberty City, Vice City, Los Santos). This is why I wish Rockstar would make a completely new, non-existing map instead of copying real life places.

Regarding your second paragraph, the continuity team said that San Andreas takes the shape of California and LA is taken out and replaced with the in game island, which is kind of weird considering how awkward the adjusted map is and how tiny LS is.

 

Fortunately it doesn't have to mean there's more than 50 states, this is addressed twice in the original post and wouldn't really hurt the server.

 

I really think the team could nail down some continuity without as many problems and questions that have been received on the original thread.

8 hours ago, Jorgensen said:

What I didnt understand about continuity is how LS replaces LA but LC/VC etc doesnt replace/or even exist. It'd make more sense if they were replaced.

 

What was also confusing is the part where people can RP being from parts of LS that existed in GTA SA but do not exist in this version of LS.

 

As it stands, continuity seems very mish-mashy and odd. I think it'd make more sense if ALL Rockstar lore locations existed and GTA SA locations like Idlewood etc didnt when well...they arent accessible (it was said somewhere that players can RP being from Idlewood etc)

I think the second part was unofficial and taken back by the continuity team after people argued against it, so that's a plus.

 

I agree with you but I don't think LC/VC should replace NYC or Miami. LC in GTA 4 might look fleshed out to most people but it's still missing many parts of NYC and a whole borough.

Edited June 29, 2021 by shaobadman

[hillievonb]

9 hours ago, Late said:

Our map is literally an island so it makes every since. The continuity thread has already said that San Andreas IS an Island, but connected with bridges... I'd much rather it be connected with a rapid ferry service than a bridge no one can see. But everyone freaks out when I suggest this, I don't know why. 

If we were RPing Los Santos as a tiny unimportant tourist village, sure. As a major city that kinda takes the place of LA, a ferry alone just makes no sense. The city would die, the presence of trains makes no sense, etc. It depends on whether you value the visuals of the game or game reality making sense, and how easily you can suspend your disbelief either way, I guess?