Doug52392

Firstly, you may have noticed some other people popping up on my blog. This is due to the fact my blog�s a little popular but as of late there isn�t really a whole lot to write about. Secondly, other�s perspectives are valuable. It�s all too easy to pass off my opinions as untrue, bitter rants, but when there�s other people who�ve been there themselves saying the same as me, that should get the point through to you.

Secondly, Argus from AftermathRP, which recently moved on from GMod, requested I post one of his essays on GMod RP up. It�s pretty big so, without further ado:

Hello there, I�m Argus.

I�m certain most of you don�t know me, but thats fine. I�ve spent almost a year now running a little corner of the Gmod RP woods known as AftermathRP. We recently closed down our Gmod server and have since been taking the story and concepts we developed there.. well, away from Gmod.

This is going to likely be tl;dr for most of you. Thats fine. This isn�t really meant to be for everyone.

I�ll start with this: RP on Gmod is a parody of RP prettymuch everywhere else.

Lets give a little history, since a surprising number of people that I keep encountering first started RPing on Gmod. Naturally, before the internet, there was tabletop. Roll your dice, check your books, talk about the stuff your character is doing. Pretty simple. LARPing came out of this. You start getting interconnected computer systems though, and in 1980, the first MUD was born. Whats a MUD? Well, its like a text based multiplayer game of D&D. By the late 80�s early 90�s, some pretty common codebases started emerging. This is when the concept really took off, and alot of people started playing. This is about where MUD�s dedicated to RP started cropping up.

Around this same time period, people started doing some of the same on Bullitin Board systems and chatrooms. You�d usually get some very good writers posting up intricate stories in these venues. The internet was still relatively young and still relatively limitedly accessable though. Mostly college students and adults were the only ones on these, as younger than that you just didn�t find that many with regular internet access. The end result of that is that young, immature players were uncommon, young owners were nearly unheard of, and because this was the early internet with few centralized repositories of game listings, there was no sense of a meta-community (Indeed, I never heard of a game and its players referred to as a �community� before I myself came to Gmod). There was drama to be certain, but little of the juvenile antics that Gmod�s community is rife with.

Give that sort of scenario about 20 years to develop up to the current and you have a number of relatively professional, inexpensive to operate (You can host a MUD/MUSH/Website for about 10 dollars a month, and IRC channels you can get free on alot of servers.) RP environments. They�re not flashy, but they�re often in depth and elaborate because you largely only have the text to express any actions, thoughts, places.. whatever. If someone wasn�t getting the same visual image as you were, it usually stemmed from the fact that you were struggling as an understandable writer and RPer.

That�s the sort of background that most RP on the internet comes from.

Then theres Gmod.

I don�t admittedly know a whole lot of Gmod�s developmental history when it comes to RP. I hear of certain places like Melonbrew, DSRP and TSRP referred to as the RP Cities of Ur, ancient metropoli long since collapsed. Given that HL2 is less than 5 years old however, theres not a whole lot of room to genuinely grow up in there time-wise. Most of these places as I understand, developed with small scripts that added small sets of features and functions, but left things like combat, skills, etc, up to either the player�s ability to type it out, or to sweps. To a large degree, this has not changed since then. Inventory management and minor economic systems seem to be the current trend in development of scripts. Weapons too. Everyone loves weapons. Lots of them. With big custom models.

I�m sure someone else could detail the history of RP in Gmod alot better than I, but there doesn�t seem to be a whole lot of it. The Ur communities were born, collapsed, and then DarkRP was born, with TnB style servers following not long after that, and have been hatched and collapsed ever since then. I�ll touch on these two models later, as there is significance in the fact that most gmod RP servers are based on one or the other concepts.

Now that I�ve probably rambled and strayed a bit, lets get down to the point.

Gmod is a parody of RP everywhere else because of a few things.

Firstly, Gmod is very limiting for mature, expressive RP. Text input is limited to about 255 characters at a go, and nuance and detail is nearly impossible to express in such a small bit of space. In most player�s minds, this is somewhat made up for by the visual aspect. You don�t have to describe a place when you can jam it full of props, or simply walk around. Crouching becomes the analog for being wounded, sitting, laying down, etc. Pointing guns is unholstering and waving your mouse around. Some places have animation lists where you can do things like.. lean against walls, sit down.. and a few other things. You can�t get a whole lot of detail and nuance out of even that still though. This contributes to a few other points later on.

Secondly, Gmod is infinitely exploitable for people wanting to disrupt gameplay. Common tools like the physgun, toolgun, gravgun, whatever, have tremendous capacity for misuse, and the only way to control them is either through rules that have to be actively enforced, or very restrictive code settings. Most places go with a mixture of both, and neither is ideal or completely effective. Even without toolguns and such, if you can spawn a single small prop, you can be disruptive. Walk up to someone out in the open, look straight up, spawn a cinderblock, and they�ll be dead in a second. RP interrupted, and global channels likely flooded with swearing. It�s not just random assholes that do these sorts of things either: Admins and regular players partake in this sort of behavior pretty frequenly on alot of places, only for them its often somehow justified in their own minds. I�d say the thought process is something like �Because I�m not a random asshole,its just joking around�, nevermind that while they may not be a -random- asshole, they�re still an asshole. Theres also the fact of the 3rd point.

Third point: Most people playing Gmod are under 16 years old. I don�t have any actual numbers on this, but experience has lead me to believe that this is an accurate statement. I have yet to find evidence to refute that, and the fact that the game costs 10 dollars (Right in the range where someone who�s young, jobless, and relying on their parents credit card to play games online can afford) tends to support it. This leaves alot to be said about the relative maturity of most of the players, or specificly the lack of it. Add that lack of mature, developed thought to the fact that most of the players are of the 4chan/b-tard mindset (lulz are good, you�re a macho-man or you�re a fag, and being an asshole is ok so long as you can get someone else to laugh at you being an asshole to someone else, and you cant ever take anything seriously except for not taking things seriously) and you have a volitile bunch of horny, hormone addled children seeking to be the head of their peers, usually by being the biggest and funniest asshole they can be. Go to a MUSH and you wont find many people younger than 20.

Converse to the people in the third point, you have the developers making up the 4th point. Most of the people doing the developing on Gmod are also the people who own and administrate the majority of the RP servers. In order to make their server distinct from the hundreds of other servers out there, they come up with elaborate models, maps and flashy code. This is alot of work. More work than most of the players realize. This leads to two things: Egos and large content packs. The egos fit right into the younger playerbase, because they have the talents and skills everyone wants, and when you�re the guy actually -making- things it puts you in a pretty advantagious position in gmod�s never-ending dicksizing contest. All who cross your path, naturally, have to be destroyed, because you�re at the top of the food pyramid. Doesn�t mean you�re not still an asshole however. The large content packs add to the cost of entry: I�ve seen Gmod servers that require larger downloads and more updates than some commercial games. They also raise the complexity of getting a place going, and since most unique ideas require unique (and unavaliable) maps, the unique setting is often lost with the use of a generic, minimal effort map. Egos arent uncommon on other places such as MUDs or MUSHes or forums, but the learning curves aren�t as dramatic, and as a result theres alot less of a tolerance for flagrant asshole devs.

Fifth of my points, are scripts. The matter of scripts is something of an elaboration on the first point, in that what Gmod limits you to is slightly alieviated by the scripts, but also very constrained by them as well. There are, in most RP environments, two schools of thought: One is to leave all of a characters abilities and their success at such abilities up to the code/rules, as determined by a characters stats. The other is to leave those decisions to the players, as they know their characters best afterall. Both are valid, but depending on the environment one or the other wont work, so you usually have some degree of a middle ground. What Gmod runs into is the complete limitation of combat to the SWEP system, which then in turn basicly turns combat into Counterstrike. Theres a little wiggle room for what weapon you have, and on some servers theres a stat for how accurate you might be with a weapon, but combat is still almost entirely at the mercy of player skill, rather than a character�s abilities. Then theres the weapons themselves. You�re essentially locked out of the combat system entirely if you dont have a gun. This leads to the obsession over having a gun with you at all times on most Gmod RP servers. Outside of gmod, I have never seen such a patent obsession with loading up on weaponry. Some might say that people can punch eachother all they want as an aside, but you will almost never see someone punch a gunman to death in Gmod. Its simply neither a viable portion of the combat system nor expressive from an RP perspective. The most help that a script does in Gmod towards enabling RP is character management, inventory management, and access to building tools and item spawning. Occasionally you see a gimmick such as sitting in a chair or making a chuckle sound, but neither of those are expressive or terribly contributory. You�ve got combat regulated by the script in a manner reliant on player, not character skill, and then everything else is basicly whatever someone else claims they can do unless someone in authority calls bullshit on it.

Aside from where most scripts don�t help, theres the parts where most scripts actually harm. With the obsession over guns, there needs to naturally, be a way for players to get guns. Usually this is done simply through a black market type system where money is then, the only barrier to the combat system. How do you get money? On some servers, its simply given to you over time for just being connected. On others, theres the �buisness� system, which largely consists of spending money to attempt to sell people items that dont actually do anything for them. Why buy a health kit when death has no consequence? Just suicide, run back, and act like nothing happend and you�ve got your health back. Food? Don�t usually need it. A radio is useful as a one time purchase perhaps, but given that every single person running a buisness everywhere can sell such a thing.. the market is saturated. Ultimately this makes the built in financial system a complete bust, unless you have players that are willing to part with their money for simply RP purposes. You occasionally find that, but generally only among people who already have exorbident amounts. This tangets later to the -real- money side of the problem: Trading USD for in game assets. The economic systems of the scripts at best, shove people into a parody of working a job, and at worst get people to start spending actual cash money for what is genuinely just OOC power.

The.. Sixth..? Yes, sixth major point of issue with gmod servers is the real world financial aspect. It costs most servers between 30 and 40 USD a month to remain online. Given the relative youth of most of the server owners, as well as the players, most don�t have an independant income that can easily dismiss a monthly cost and so very often the owner(s) will attempt to recoup the costs with donations from the players. Given that most of the players aren�t generally awash in cash either, theres usually some incentives offered to help encourage these donations. Some places keep it sensible, with largely intangible and inconsiquential benefits, but some simply attach a price-tag to everything they can think of. Weapons, in game money, stats, and tool-use rights are common, as are in some places, things such as administrative privlidges, unbannings, and perma-killings. At this stage, you�re substituting player quality for dollars. Now, I will admit that it is -very- helpful to have a community be able to pay for itself. Its rather plesant actually, and is a genuine acomplishment. A degree of pride in that acomplishment is worthy. When a community begins to require hundreds of dollars a month to operate however, and these additional benefits are offered to meet these needs, a community starts entering a dangerous area. If someone has donated significant amounts of real-world dollars, but is a problem player, and the community genuinely needs money, they�re not very likely to be willing to cut off the cash flow. This is especially more so when the cash flow reaches significant proportions, such as some of the rumored �400 dollars for admin� pricetags attributed to certain communities. At the point where the inflow of cash exceeds the need, you end up with reserves that can be quite tempting, especially when the mindset of �I�m selling services, not collecting donations� sets in. Rumors have persisted for a very long time that certain well known community owners are able to enjoy comfortably padded incomes because of this. I myself have faced requests for temporary loans from my own community�s funds. Slippery slope. When you start getting money involved, especially -lots- of money, peoples expectations change, and you start substituting quality of players, quality of people, and quality of rp.

Dilution of RP quality for personal gain? Welcome to Gmod.

Getting close to the end here, lets adress the Gmod�s developers themselves. Garry Newman makes no effort to hide the fact that he doesn�t approve of what the RP �community� has done with his creation. There are numerous blog posts from him on the subject where he assails them for their insular nature, the console based nature of their scripts (This is admittedly more of a design argument I believe, based more on the fact that gmod was never intended as an environment for RP than the merits of gui�s versus text input for RP. Still a point he makes though), and the fact that for being as niche as they are, RP servers (particularly DarkRP) account for a very significant portion of the total number of servers. This feeling from him has of course, resulted in something of an official slant against the RP community overall. The subtitle of the RP section of the facepunch forums is �No real friends? Like to dress up as a fox? Want to pretend to be someone else to block out the sound of your mom�s suicide attempts? ROLEPLAY!� after all. Sets the tone doesn�t it. So then aside from the hostility on the forums, you�ve got the fact that Garry really doesn�t feel that bad about introducing code to Gmod itself that essentially breaks most any RP script. Alot of places still haven�t got fixes for the disabling of name changing for instance. Now, I can�t really blame him for that. Its a design decision on his part, but the fact that it broke alot of scripts can�t have gone unnoticed by him. The basic point of this paragraph is that the game�s creator is somewhat hostile towards RP, and not only makes no effort to support it, but doesn�t mind making it harder to do as well. Not entirely the environment you�d want to entrench yourself into as an RPer.

Theres a few more things I could address here, but I know I have a tendancy to rant and stray from the original points, so Ill call it quits for now. If there is anything that I hope someone reading this takes away from this though, its this: Gmod simply is not a viable platform or community for expressive mature RP. Its too limiting, the players are by and large too immature/undeveloped/just plain assholes, the developer is hostile towards it, and the code that nearly -every- server relies on is inherently and fundamentally broken by comparison to how any other RP environment works. Gmod simply is not viable for expressive, mature RP, and rp on Gmod in its current form is -awful-.

So what�s that mean to you guys, many of whom are running/launching the next group of attempts to match the mountain that is TnB? Well. Don�t be TnB first off. Wanting to be them was your first mistake. (While I agree that TnB is in decline, it�s been that way for over a year now, and has survived just about every noteworthy member of its administrative team jumping ship, as well as a major hack. It�s too financialy lucrative for DaveBrown to let it die any time soon. Its almost an institution in itself, (albeit an arguably failed one)). I would encourage you to consider another platform for RP. Go out and look up MUDS and MUSHes (Here, I�ll point you towards a good place to find some: www.mudconnector.com ), find a good forum to RP on, something else other than Gmod. If you -have- to run it on Gmod, well.. Be something different. Pick one thing in particular to focus on, and stick to that. Don�t try to be the biggest, or most unique or most flamboyantly developed, just pick a field and specialize in it. Be willing to be somewhat exclusive. If someone doesn�t meet the standards of what you want, be willing to show them to the door (I never have understood why places are afraid to say that they�re not there to teach someone how to RP. You detract from your own quality and your own enjoyment if you dont -want- to teach them). And, while this last suggestion is more of a personal suggestion than the result of any of these lines of thought: Don�t do HL2 as your theme. HL2 needs to be put to bed because far, far to many people have done it, gotten it wrong, and tainted the common perception of how to play any of it well. There really doesn�t feel like a conceptual link between any HL2 servers Ive played, and HL2 itself. Seriously. Go play through HL2 again then pick a random HL2 server, see if they feel anything alike.

The last suggestion I would make is to be professional. Run your place in a mature manner, and you�ll get more maturity out of your players (Or you�ll have to ban alot of them. They�re not the kind of people you want to play with anyways.)

I lied about that being the last suggestion actually: Seriously take another look at RPing somewhere other than Gmod. I know of two places that are getting out of the Gmod racket already. Best decisions they�ve ever made.

For those of you that made it all the way through that, I hope I didn�t ramble too much, and I hope my point was clear. Feel free to leave comments, but don�t waste your breath if you haven�t got anything intelligent to say. That means most of you.