The Serious RP Community

No credits, just found this on the Desertia forums.


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The Serious Roleplay Community
By Corbin "Roven" Mitchell

This document should be regarded as the practical constitution of a great community. It is from my heart, from my and certain others' thorough deductions on roleplay. This is a document I am writing not to be staunch, not just to write it, not to show off, and not to be unbanned or benefited; but for it to be known and understood.

The Script

The script is the core of the server, it is the source of everything roleplay, and though you can always see some wannabe-oldfag saying that all that matters is how well you can simply roleplay, it isn't that simple in modern Garrys Mod Roleplay. If you went on a Listen Server you'd eventually start building or killing.

DarkRP: DarkRP is an utterly disgusting script. It's sloppy, it's absolutely ardent about weapons, drugs, gangs, and other aspects of "roleplay" that will within thirty seconds attract shitloads of children vividly imagining being gangsters on the internet. "Druglab" and "/buypistol" should finish this paragraph with everything about the script evident.

*CakeScript: CakeScript is actually a very good script to start with. It is so cleancut and bland and though it may sound bad because of that it couldn't be better. All aspects of complicated scripting have been taken care of, except for economy, which isn't essential or necessary to a script if it only has one currency. The makers of the script literally made it so that people could script onto it or just write a new theme.
Thus, CakeScript is absolutely perfect for a starting community with an amateur scripter. It includes inventory, flagging, character selection and creation, market, and holster-compatibility along with animations for realistic walking and running.

TacoScript: TacoScript, though it looks good, is no better than CakeScript. TacoScript's simply streamlined, has the "Economy" feature (which without multiple economies is absolutely useless), and that's about the only difference other than TacoScript being far harder to update. It is so ridiculously hard to script into it's pathetic. What many don't realize, and I know RickDark intimately, is that he was not as experienced as he is now.
Rick's Chernobyl Script for example is probably the best script on the market so far, and it's relatively new. Though it has bugs here and there, it's inventory system is very complex and reminiscent to STALKER and Deus Ex.
TacoScript on the other hand was made a year and a half ago, breaching two years, and it still has inventory bugs that have never been fixed, a workshop option that was abandoned, and a 21,000 line-long script that is so complex and unreliable it breaks just about everytime it's updated. It's Steam on crack.

The Map

The map is the environment you experience. The correct environments fit the environment of the original theme. So STALKER Roleplay should have a ghost-town, nasty, radioactive look with shitloads of Cyrillic text everywhere; HL2 Roleplay should have Economic apartments that are standard, bland, and loads of places to hide. It should be gritty and destitute.
So basically, City 18 is far better than City 45 as a means of identifying the emotion that Half Life 2 Roleplay entails.
Maps should not be displaced like KnB's map that Engerius made. They should not come with respawning or spawnable weapons/ammo. They should not have any OOC references anywhere unless it is relevant to the environment.
The number of people who commonly frequent the server should determine the size of the map. If you don't have many members, Precint13 would be a great choice for your server. If you have thirty or so, City45 without S6 would be suitable, and if you had over that then C18 is your best bet at keeping a dense population content with little lag.

The Rules

The rules of a community definitely are important, because they are the order of the community. They bring balance to the community. Therefore, they must be defined and given reason, possibly even voted on by the intelligent, privileged members and administrators together. For example, flaming is obviously defined in a code of rules in TnB, but things such as "assgunning" and "DMing" are terribly defined in "initiatives", that are biased towards the majority's angst-driven views. Though majority-rule sounds nice, it isn't that nice if the majority are adolescent dumbasses.
Rules must be defined in an outline, they must be exempt of loopholes, and they must represent a philosophy that is widely supported by the Intelligent Class of roleplayers, those like Looter or Shellnew. They cannot be biased, they cannot be made without the consideration of the intelligent half of the community.

They must be regarded as the only law and must be met with absolute discipline, UNLESS rules are broken due boredom because of the lack of efficiency in the structure of roleplay (which is the Administration Team's responsibility). Meaning if the Administrators do not provide members with enough features and opportunities to keep them roleplaying their role with just as many things to do as a faction member, it is just as much their fault for that disruption of the rules than it is the said member. This is the biggest problem TnB has, and though Roven has attempted to discourse and suggest fixing it, he has been banned and called a "**N-Word**" in response by George Vince who was basically allowed to do whatever he wanted like any other RDA. Ironically Roven was banned recently for saying "negro".
All this situation needs for improvement is an unbiased, structured administration team or a minority of that team that is better suited with specializations that apply to the problem, which is in this case the lack of things to do for citizens, stalkers, etc. This is why people mess around so much in servers. They're bored, and there's nothing that a citizen can do in HL2RP, and there's never enough missions for a Stalker.
Rules must be represented by problems, and the solutions to these problems within the rules must be reasonable and unbiased. They must be efficient and handled by people who are capable of handling it.

If you are kicked/banned for a rule that doesn't exist in the public document of rules, then the administrator who banned/kicked you should By Justice be suspended for Administration Abuse and/or Ignorance of the Rules. Best way to avoid autocratic assholes in the administration team is to have a document not written as rules for members but exclusively for the administrators, for the purpose of making sure they don't just get away with whatever they do, and they don't persecute members because of their opinion or impulse.

The Administration Team

The adminsitration team must be organized into corporate branches of rank. All administrators must be approved of by the intelligent class of the community, the current administrators, and the opinion of the common member must be considered. Other people may know the administrator candidate better than you or the team, and you must consider the people's knowledge of that candidate. The greatest admin fuckups were born because of no background check.
The administrator must be in a body of a few ranks. Moderator, Basic Admin, Admin, and Admin Council.
The ranks should not collapse in on themselves on a small number of Basic Administrators, because only so many admins are needed, and only so many Admin Council members are needed. You may have also noticed that Admin Council is in the place of "Head Admin" and it says "council" implying that this person is not alone. This is true.

The Singular-Leadership theory of Executive-Administration is the belief that a Head Admin is necessary to maintaining a healthy community which is not true at all. Most Head Admins are young adults who have lives, party, and are allowed to do just about whatever the fuck they want in the community as the source of donations, scripting, hosting, or some sort of combination of the three.
These Head Admins go inactive for long periods of time, they are distracted by real life matters that actually are more important than a community of time-killing roleplayers on the internet wanting a good game. Though our roleplay pleasure is important, so is the speed that our problems are addressed, and the lives of those who have better things to do.
With Multiple-Leadership you have a balanced system that as long as the Intelligent Class and administration have voted well, will remain unbiased, odd-numbered, and obligated to act as a united body and make decisions out of popular vote of the council, (when it comes to very, very, serious issues).
This means that there will be no "Too fucking bad" decisions from Head Admins like those of Staplegun from KnB. These council members will be provided with more serious powers such as rebooting the server, adding things to the list of tools, weapons, and changing the script(updating it).

The administrator regardless of it's rank will never be recognized to be any higher, or lower than a member of the lowest social regard. Ever. A good community maintains professionalism and when it is called for, and this is especially called for when dealing with the leash on administrators. Equality however, must always be called for.
Many communities fall apart, split, fail, or continue in flaming grief because their admins are terrible, biased, inefficient, or careless. These admins do what they want and get away with it, i.e. George Vince, Bennet Dyson, Ace, etc. These admins are unfit and the reason why is because they were chosen by other admins in a method that could be related to Monarchy or Despotism.

* The Administrator is ranked simply according to intelligence, fairness, and efficiency.
* The Administrator is voluntarily respected, not obligatorily appeased.
* The Administrator is not to be powerful, but responsibly and efficiently powerful.
* The Administrator is absolutely equal regardless of rank, no exceptions in any field.

The Member

The Member is the lifeblood of every community, and in many communities is the disrespected, unrecognized, persecuted, oppressed, backbone of the community. We do not realize their worth, we do not get considered, we do not get listened to, and we are often persecuted according to the administrator's opinion. These kind of admins and members are a part of a community that participates in Informal Administration, which is basically a bunch of staunch, assholish, autocrats who are given power by their best friend, the Head Admin/Admin.
The Member should absolutely be considered because if the majority is pissed, and if there's an alternative to your community, you will lose the Player-Base which are the members.
Though we should be considered, we should also be recognized by our majority's intelligence, which in almost every case will be filled with retards. Which calls for the need of a higher class of member already mentioned to be the Intelligent Class of members. These members should be given right to vote in polls in the Polls and Election board on the forum. All decisions made by the admins should be voted on except for the disciplinary actions of admins unless the banishment of a member lasts a month or more.

* Council Admin
* Admin
* Basic Admin
* Moderator
* Intelligent Class Member
* Member

Many would object to this saying it is "unfair", but this higher class member will be nominated by the members in a child board of the Elections and Polls Board. If the votes go good, he's in, and if they're bad, well, he's not. This process will only need the administrator's action of upgrading the new classmember's account. Everything else will be handled by the committee of members responsible for nominating and voting for him/her.
This is because many people are dumbasses, and yet there are some critical thinkers that could be useful to the process of improving the community.