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GTAW + RDW - Which would you prefer? Excited?


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17 hours ago, Ink said:

As someone who has been part of multiple Western RP projects in the past, including one on SA-MP, I believe the setting itself lends itself better to the limitations of text-based roleplay. Red Dead RP would be refreshing because:

 

0) No "cameras" anywhere, so no need to argue about what would be recorded and what wouldn't, no arguments on the forums about if it's realistic to do XYZ in ABC place.

1) No phones or radios. No good excuse for why some players need IC VOIP over others.

2) No social media or other IC websites. Means more of the gameplay happens in-game. Still room for forum components, like boards for postings.

3) No nightclubs, DJs, or supermodels. Cuts out some of the most vapid parts of RP.

4) Less IC bureaucracy to hide OOC bureaucray behind. This was a world where you could make it just fine without knowing how to read or write, and you were answerable to very few government organizations--licenses, permits, inspections, so on.

5) There is a better IC justification for the world being a violent shitshow where everyone's carrying guns and ready to fight or shoot each other over small provocations.

6) No shitty non-RP driving and dumb looking cars. I'll take people with dumb haircuts on their horses and launching their four-legged companions into trees any day.

7) Police aren't as big of a deal, and people are more responsible for protecting themselves and their own communities rather than some ultimate organization. Suddenly the police are no longer this omnipresent, super OOCly protected organization, but just another faction like any other that needs to rise, and that people need to either accept or contend with. 

8) More opportunity for "criminal" RP which makes sense for the setting. 

9) Communities grow ICly as they would in reality--rather than portraying a fully functioning first world metropolis where we're supposed to have all this human infrastructure, it's up to the players to ICly build up the infrastructure in their communities--policing forces, medical services, and so on. 

10) There's more day-to-day slice of life RP available to people. Good storytelling often revolves around conflict. The conflicts of the modern world are mostly pretty boring and easy to solve, mundane. They don't make for good RP. "I'm out of groceries, I need to go to the store" can be a decent background RP on GTA:W with the right people, but it's not much of a conflict--you get in your car and go to a store. That's why most conflict RP on GTA:W is people threatening to kill each other or botched robberies and other attempted murders over minor disagreements. There'd still be plenty of this in a Red Dead RP community, but there's also a lot more room for people to always figure out something their character can be actively doing.

 

 

 

I think RP in Red Dead would just generally be a better fit in with the medium available to use--a slower pace, text-based RP. Less ADHD of trying to run around the map making it to openings or getting called in the middle of RPs to go to other RPs, less businesses competing for attention, more organic neighborhood-style RP (which is what we've seen works best for long-term RP).

 

It wouldn't be perfect. Red Dead roleplay would have a smaller target audience, so we'd be looking more in the ballpark of 50-150 player peaks, and it's a very large map with no easy IC way to coordinate over distances. Realistically, most of the RP would take place in and around one or two main towns players have developed around, and the wilderness would be pretty wide open (I think this would be awesome though). Certainly you'd have a lot of characters which don't "fit" and it'd take some extra moderation and coaching to help players adapt. 

 

Most controversially, however, the community would probably have to make some concessions together in order to create a more interesting roleplay environment. Some very difficult conversations would need to be had about how "realistically" we want to portray the rights/standing of women and non-white races. Roleplay in a historical period would definitely attract a lot of people who just want to have an excuse to RP incredibly sexist or racist people. Even if the community came to the sound agreement that we'd bend historical accuracy to allow people a more positive RP experience, there'd still be plenty of RPers who'd try to force racial or sexist conflicts. Some would argue that these conflicts form the backbone of the genre and getting rid of them is inauthentic, boring, and "pandering." The Western Genre as a whole is rife with incredibly racist caricatures and stereotypes, would those be the norm or would we buck them? Where would we draw the line on what's "too modern" and what's not? Would people RPing openly gay characters be OOCly punished, would there be an expectation that they will face severe IC discrimination and violence, or would we hand-wave that we have some modern, pragmatic sensibilities about this sort of thing? No answer is correct, no answer satisfies everyone, and every answer leaves a lot of gray area for what is and isn't acceptable divergent behavior.

 

tl;dr: I think it'd be awesome, but I don't think it'd be awesome for a community the size of GTA:W. We have too many people here, too many opinions, too many ideas of what RP "is" to please. This diversity is usually a strength in GTA:W, and on this community you can find almost every kind of RP you'd want if you take the time (and have the luck) to find RPers who mesh with you. A Red Dead RP server would need to be a lot more focused with its mission and objectives, and it'd need to draw some harder lines about what sort of RP fits and doesn't fit. This will drive away lots of people, but if it attracts a solid core group of heavy RPers it'd be one of the best RP experiences of any video game in our lifetimes, guaranteed.


Pretty much my views on RDW as a project. It has tons of limitless potential. I think the best setting to start in would be Saint Denis as you could explain many immigrants coming to the city. Other cities could become “incorporated” as more people roleplay there. If the population is small, though, you could confine the playable area to one state only and make it one of the more rural ones like Blackwater.

 

I think the issue of “rights” should be realistic to the era. Yes, there’s no suffrage, the United States is engaged in ruthless imperialism and just fought the Spanish-American war, immigrants are being abused. You couldn’t roleplay this setting without acknowledging the inherent problems of the era. I would say the compromise should be no roleplay of explicitly racist groups or “left-behind” Confederates or the KKK, you just let that happen off-screen. The standard for many characters in this era would be racism, but it’s based on lack of education, not radicalism. There would be plenty of “progressive” carpetbaggers and most of the Wild West had different perceptions of race than most people would think. The Wild West was not exactly the Deep South - “whiteness” meant they didn’t perceive groups like Italians or the Irish as non-white, but there was definitely still a feeling of dominance over the native Mexican populace or native populace in general. The Black Codes would absolutely apply in southern states, and these were evil. Police was also in its infancy, outside of a setting like Saint Denis you would have a single town constable to run the show or a Sheriff who would call local citizens to form posses. Saint Denis’ police would be the closest thing to actual police, but this was in an era when America police forces were VERY corrupt and controlled by local political machines, when elections were being rigged, when politics were super corrupt, beatings and unequal enforcement of the law were a standard. In New York for instance, the 1880s saw the Irish dominate the policing profession - you basically HAD to be Irish ancestry to become a policeman.

 

 

Criminality could easily be free form here. Gangs of all creed, race, or nationality would exist. You’d have Polish mafias still.

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I love RDR2, I love RD:O (obviously gold bar money meta not so much), I love the potential both of them have.

 

One thing I won't love if we go for it is strict realism, IE women/minorities having little to zero power or agency. Just kills on the types of characters that can have fun. 

I'd prefer an RD:O type grasp on realism, where you can sort of nod to the historical fact that that woman shouldn't be wearing trousers or doing anything beyond being a whore/home-maker, but you can't really expect that to be everyone's cup of tea for that character. Likewise you can poke fun at the ethnic minority having a legally allowed profession above bitch-work or being taken seriously by authority, but you can't make your mission to always lynch uppity non-whites.

 

I don't even think the KKK should be allowed to be portrayed, it'll just be horrible.

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On 3/30/2022 at 12:08 PM, knppel said:

I'd open a saloon!

And rent out rooms with view on the bank across the street

"You don't mind us usin' your Saloon to scout the bank, right, pardner?"

knppel: "As long as you don't destroy my Saloon and keep your hands off the whiskey, I won't have to shoot y8ou when you sleep!"

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