Roleplay Guidelines

Here at Gutter Trash Alley (GTA) we welcome role-players (RPers) of all skill levels. At GTA, you are free to be yourself. Everyone must show respect to others and have acceptable roleplay behavior.

General Terms and Abbreviations

‘Emoting’ is when you display your character’s words, movements, body language and tone of voice all together to form a complete action or reaction to the events unfolding around you. All emotes start with /me in local chat.

/me was working on a vehicle when he heard a commotion, turning to face the source of the disturbance. “Hey, knock it off!”, he shouted at the group as he took a few steps closer, clenching the long wrench he held in his hand.

This is an example of an emote. It shows the character’s response to an event within their surroundings and initiates them into the roleplay. Remember, chat range is a radius of 20 meters, meaning anything that happens outside of that range, your character will not hear and have no knowledge of such. Don’t forget, emoting is ESSENTIAL to good roleplay and all roleplayers should be emoting on a sim intended for roleplay.

RP stands for ‘Roleplay’. It is the next level of immersion where you act, think and behave in game as if you were a character that game, not a real life player. You treat others as if they were part of that story and respect what you see and know instead of using game mechanics like the in-game camera to zoom-in far touch or teleport (unless you’re in a sci-fi based theme roleplay). Respect your surroundings and other people and use your wits and intelligence, ask yourself what your character would do with the current knowledge and resources they have; then act upon that.

OOC means ‘Out of Character’. It is your real life self. In an roleplay scenario, when communicating something OOC you do it in brackets like this: ((brb, need to grab some water)). It is merely how the two human people communicate during a roleplay scene. Always respect the persons time and let them know if you will be stepping away from your keyboard or otherwise unable to respond for any length of time.

IC means ‘In Character’. It is your persona that you play and give life to in Gutter Trash Alley. This persona might be like you or not, but is reacting to other roleplay surroundings as you emote and respond to your environment. If you saw someone get shot, your real self will know it’s a game and do nothing, but your IC persona might decide to help them or run away and hide.

‘Godmoding’, or ‘to God Mode’ is when you disrespect other’s people roleplay and put your own character in a god-like position where you can not be harmed or lose. When someone pulls a gun on you, don’t try to do a back flip, pull out two guns, reload and head shot the entire PD force in milliseconds. Let’s leave the superheroes in the movies. The idea is to play together, not to create a self-centered game. Nobody will enjoy playing with you if you conduct yourself this way.

‘Powergaming’ is the the act of using an in-game mechanic, any external information or a roleplay concept to favor their own character or story so to give them an unfair or unrealistic advantage. Powergaming can take several forms, but it is generally rooted in “playing to win” or a focus on playing the game, instead of honoring the creative roleplay. Playing your character should always be more important than playing the game.

‘Metagaming’ is when a player uses knowledge that is not available to their character in order to change the way they play their character (usually to give them an advantage within the game), such as knowledge of the mathematical nature of character statistics or the statistics of a creature that the player is familiar with but the character has never encountered. In general, it refers to any gaps between player knowledge and character knowledge which the player acts upon. Zooming in on someone 600 meters away to see what they are doing and then using that information is also metagaming.

RP Enagagement

It is strongly advised that all RP is announced OOC first to make sure all parties are in agreement and enthusiast about the interaction. IC actions of any kind, especially offensive ones should be initiated in an RP manner giving the parties time to understand what is going on and perhaps react. Your RP actions should not be final, but should be based on action and reaction.

When someone engages you in RP, make it a habit to check their profile as they might give out information about their personality types. Please remember most people choose to play different personalities then they are in RL. IC and OOC are always separated. If you are unclear about someone’s intentions, politely address them OOC in IM.

Refusal to RP is acceptable, but will turn you into an OOC persona, and we will stop RPing with you. Let’s say you commit an failed assasination or police tracks you down for a crime you commited, but you refuse the RP as a consequence of your actions. Is ok, we’ll consider you OOC and all future actions you take on sim will be seen as OOC.

If you can’t handle your own, and you are the type that begins OOC humiliations and insults immediatelly after a failed RP…stop RP’ing. For us, is a fun game between friends. If it’s not the same for you, you’re in the wrong community.

Combat Rules

Combat in GTA is not the purpose of the game, but it is allowed cause it can add to immersion. While engaging in combat it is advisable that you announce your intention in a roleplay mode, let others time to react. During combat, teleporting away , teleporting others to you, using any kinds of unapproved scripted items to block/or protect you is not allowed

Being shot down;

You can choose between Capture or Hospital
Capture lasts min x hours (right now is 1h) or more based on your RP. In capture mode you can’t use weapons but can be healed or take damage
Hospital mode means critical injured mode and you can not use weapons for x hours (right now is 24h) but you’re free to RP critical injured. You can not take damage, but you can heal yourself.

Private homes are not to be considered acceptable RP areas unless public RP is happinign inside (ex: someone kidnapped) or they are locations of known groups, you rrun into your private home. Otherwise you need consent.

Any of the following actions are considered the person to be neutralized: teleporting away, logging off, removal of the HUD, running into a private home (not a bases headquarters).

RP Areas and RP People

RP Areas

All public institutes: PD, FD, MD, City hall, Courthouse are to be conisdered RP area
All business locations/restaurants/clubs are to be considered RP areas
Mafia HQ are to be considered RP areas
RP areas are not allowed to have active Security Orbs. On request we can provide locklable doors

Private Homes are NOT RP areas unless so agreed with rental owner or they are part of RP that involves more people. (PD can consider private homes an RP area if they have reason or information of hostages , kidnappings, suspects)

RP People

All members of public insitutes: City Hall, PD, MD, FD are considered full RP personas
All business owners are to be considered full RP peronas
Any person wearing the GTA Civilian , Prostitute or Crack Whore are to be considered full RP personas

Words of advice

Think outside the box, be witty, use your imagination and question yourself. ‘How would your character think or act in this scenario?’ or ‘How would I go about it if this was real life?’.

Do not try to gray the lines between IC & OOC. Instant messages are ALWAYS considered to be OOC conversation. Do not treat your fellow roleplayers disrespectfully and then defend your actions as if they were your characters (IC). If you are on sim and not int he mood to roleplay, make sure that is known to all with a group tag or some identifier that states you are strictly OOC.

Emote only what is necessary. When planning scenarios or roleplaying, a lot of things might appear to be “by default”. You might think simply because you’re part of the mafia that you carry a gun, but that’s not always the case. Emoting something about the important aspects of your appearance. There is no need to tell us about your cute little butterfly tattoo on your left cheek or how your grandfather was a Colombian drug lord. Give out the details that we can use now, in interaction with you.

Be realistic. If you are surrounded by multiple armed men or women, react realistically. Try to talk your way out of it, reaching for your gun is a sentence to death. Think logically about how you might survive this situation and use your people skills. No matter the result, being a good roleplay partner means accepting consequences. If you commit a crime, give people the chance to react to that. Don’t TP out of the sim and come back later or check when the police are not around.

Real Life (RL) always comes first. If something comes up and you must exit the roleplay scene earlier than expected, it is common courtesy to respect your fellow roleplayers and tell them that you have to leave and when you might be back. Mutual respect goes a long, long way.

To reiterate, IM’s are NOT the place for roleplay. IM’s are meant for OOC conversation. Do not send emote IM’s across the sim to someone that can’t see nor hear you. Take the time to meet people and talk to them face-to-face. We’re all humans, not pagers.

Every action calls for reactions. Respect other peoples right to a reaction. I f you RP as a drug dealer but say you don’t RP with police, you don’t RP at all. RP in a community goes either all the way or no way. It’s all about respect. If you use the community to RP, you’re using the community for your own fun; but if you don’t give back the chance to others to interact with you and create a one-sided god mode game, you’re not welcome to roleplay at GTA. However, if you are willing to abide by these rules, you are certainly welcome to be a part of our community.