Sal

Haggis.

May I offer you some relief

I looooove the court house, great work! How about a City Hall?

Is there a link to this somewhere? Been looking around for more info on companies but clearly looking in the wrong place!

Changelog: 03.02: Added link to discussion on Government support

The video below is a whistle-stop tour on how to effectively roleplay a journalist character, based on my own experiences. If listening to my voice isn’t your thing or you’d prefer some more in-depth explanations, read on: _____________________________ Part 1 – Introduction to journalist roleplay Why roleplay a journalist? Roleplaying a journalist can be incredibly rewarding and fun provided you have the right mindset for it. It’s mostly legal roleplay (though there are of course options for corruption which may spice things up a bit) and as such, it’s not for everybody. As a journalist, you’ll find your character conducting investigations, interviewing public figures, writing up their findings and potentially broadcasting them too. With commitment and consistency, your character will also likely develop a certain level of fame and recognition. I’ll say this ‘til I’m blue in the face though: journalism roleplay is meant to be fun – and that’s the main reason why you should consider it! If you try it out and don’t find it fun, maybe it’s not for you (or maybe you’re putting yourself under too much pressure – take it one step at a time). _____________________________ What type of players could this appeal to? It’s fair to say that not everyone would enjoy journalism roleplay, but here are the typical traits of the people who do: Good writers. If you’re confident in your writing ability then this can translate very well into your character’s outputs. Writing is essentially going to be your character’s job; it’s what they’ll be judged against and paid for, so you either need to be confident in your current writing ability, or committed to improving it over time. Investigators. If you like roleplaying as a nosy sleuth then journalism is right up your street. A journo can spend a long time investigating a given topic before actually writing about it, plus you’ll often find that stories have “layers” which get deeper and deeper the more the investigation continues. Risk takers. If you want the juicy stories, you’re going to have to accept that your character is likely to end up in dangerous situations. Whether that’s as simple as venturing through a dodgy neighbourhood, or more involved like trying to infiltrate an organised crime outfit, life as a journalist is not without its risks. Organised people. All that investigating and writing is great fun, but being organised will help you pull it all together. If you as a player consider yourself as organised, either in your home or working life, then this should translate well. If not, then you may find yourself getting easily frustrated with the many stories you may be investigating at any one time. Fortunately, being organised is a skill that you can quite easily work on as you go along. Those who have broad shoulders. You have to be willing to accept that yeah – sometimes people are going to love your writing, and sometimes people aren’t. Some people may see your broadcasts as useful, and others may see it as spam. You’re going to be in the firing line with someone at some point, so having broad shoulders and not taking such comments to heart is important. Naturally, it’s also important to maintain a mature attitude when genuine critique and feedback is offered. _____________________________ What type of journalists are there? In the real world, there are so many different types of journalists based on the media they’re employed in (a magazine, newspaper, radio station, TV station, social network) and the niche they may specialise in – if they’re not a mainstream reporter. On roleplay servers, I’ve typically seen journalists manifest in one of two ways: the tabloid gossip reporter and the professional reporter. The differences are probably obvious, but I’ll list them here anyway: Tabloid gossip reporter: · Typically less concerned with printing the whole truth · Focuses on sensational and dramatic stories · Embellishes for entertainment · Willing to print rumours without substance · More likely to speculate · Stronger personality · May be bias, but isn’t ashamed about it · Marmite – you’ll likely love or hate them Professional reporter: · Generally speaking, more concerned with “truthful” reporting · Sees it as their job to inform and educate · May embellish slightly, but not at the expense of integrity/believability · Less likely to print rumours · Not likely to speculate · Generally try to present an unbiased ‘front’ even if there is underlying bias · Reserved, more serious personality. Arguably a little more forgettable? · They’re just the messenger – you’re not likely to have a strong opinion on them. You may choose either path for your character, or perhaps a mishmash of both. I’ve seen some really effective reporters who get the balance just right; they report on serious things but do so with personality. _____________________________ How do you report on an RP server? There are many ways and much of the time, it’s dependent on a few factors: · The capabilities of the script. Although there are no news factions planned at launch, it’s likely that scripts will be added later depending on level of interest. · Whether you’re a lone wolf or part of a company. Lone wolves have historically tended to post articles in an ‘internet’ section on the forums, or similar. Some have set up their own separate websites before as well, or focused on using in-character social media. In companies, you may have access to dedicated websites and broadcasting capabilities. · Whether you’re willing to speak up. For the brave souls who aren’t afraid of a little voiced roleplay, you can also consider recording news updates yourself and posting them. In some cases, they could even be featured as regular updates on player-ran XM stations. Really cool if you’re willing to do it, here’s an example: So with this in mind, here are your primary options for journalism outputs: · Internet articles · Forum articles · Forum magazines (more in-depth pieces, covered later) · In-game broadcasts (once the capability is there) · Pre-recorded radio updates (when you’re willing to do some voice RP) _____________________________ Part 2: Getting started Character setup Journalists in real life often come from a variety of backgrounds, so it’s not entirely necessary to have a full list of qualifications or previous experience. I’d advise you to make decisions for your character based on your own understanding/mastery of the English Language – if you feel like you still have some learning to do, it might be best not to give them 1st Degree Honours in English Language. If you’re feeling confident that you can deliver a character that demonstrates such prowess in writing and communicating, these are some of the subjects your character may have studied: · English Language · Media Studies · Journalism and reporting · Communications · Public Relations · Marketing There are more, but you get the gist. Other considerations for your character are: · How old are they? Young ones are more likely to be rough around the edges, but also more likely to be daredevils and risk takers. Time and burnt fingers tend to teach seasoned journalists when it’s best to back off from a situation, or let something go. · What’s their personality? If you’re roleplaying a gossipy reporter, it makes sense for your character to have a strong and outgoing personality. For serious reporters, you tend to find that these individuals are slightly more reserved and professional. · What’s their goal? Most people in the real world go into journalism because they’re driven to it for some reason. It’s not a massive money-maker, particularly when low down in the ranks, so reasons tend to be “the pursuit of truth” or “holding public figures accountable” and suchlike. · What’s their moral compass? Is your character going to play by the rules, or ‘break some eggs to make some omelettes’? Are they going to accept bribes? Are they going to let their own prejudices affect how they report on things? All important questions to answer about your character – and don’t forget this can all change over time! _____________________________ Your character’s first steps So you’ve made your character and are ready to get going with roleplaying a journalist. Getting started can be pretty intimidating – but it needn’t be. Here are a few top tips: · Just start writing. It doesn’t matter whether what you write will eventually be published; you can spend too long trying to overanalyse what to write and then never actually end up putting pen to paper. Write about anything your character sees during their day, and see if you can make it entertaining or interesting. · Get out and drive around. You’re bound to stumble upon something potentially of interest; a robbery, a fire, a business opening, someone with an interesting story to tell… but you’ll never know if your character stays stuck in their apartment all day (or offline!) · Start establishing a network. Get out there and meet people, make sure your character is making new friends and contacts all the time. Be sure that they know to contact you if they come across anything interesting – and thank them if they ever do get in touch with something. · Find your character’s tone of voice. This only really comes with consistent writing – but you’ll soon find that you as a player likely have your own quirk to how you write. Make the decision on how you’re going to inject your character’s personality and goals into their writing; just because it’s how you would write something, doesn’t mean it’s how they would. · Publish! If it’s on the forums, get some articles up. If you’re in a news company and youhave the permissions, get some broadcasts done. If you’re producing voice clips, fire up the microphone and get it sorted. · Promote. Whether it’s using in-game advertising, social media or in other parts of the forums; make sure people know where to read your articles or find your broadcasts (or logs/records of your broadcasts, if it’s in-game). That’s all there is to it. Rinse, repeat and keep getting better as you go. _____________________________ What can you write about? There are a wide variety of topics that your character can choose to write about – much of it is dependent on what’s happening in the world, but there are other options which are almost constantly available to you if it’s a ‘slow news day’. Things to report on as they happen: · Crime. Keep an eye out for car chases and police activity. In most situations, your character is likely to be asked to keep a safe distance. Depending on how you’re roleplaying the character, you may decide to abide by these requests, or not. But remember – keeping the police on your character’s good side (at least in the beginning) might lead them to be less resistant to any requests you make in the future. · Fires and other disasters. Building on fire? That’s newsworthy. Where did it happen, how did it happen, is anyone hurt, did anyone die, who’s involved, was it deliberate? So many questions, and it’s your character’s job to find out and publish the answers. · Political updates. These can come from the Government, or from the legal services which may have their own press offices. It’s important to keep an eye on what these institutions publish, so that you can analyse it and potentially repurpose it for your reporting. · Events. Sometimes the Government or other organisations hold events like races, careers fairs and so on. It’s always good to attend these events and do a write-up afterwards; both players and their characters would no doubt appreciate reading about anything they’ve missed. Other subjects you can write on at any time: · Business reviews. Obviously, it’s dependent on the business being open, but this is also a great way to get to know who the influential people are in the city. Be careful though, your character will have a choice to make: do they remain truthful even if it pisses off the owner, or do they chum up to the owner and constantly post good reviews just to increase their network? Both have pros and cons! · Interviews with public figures. This is where the “not pissing people off too much” part comes in. If your character has maintained positive relations with certain people of interest, or the businesses they work for, they may be willing to have an exclusive interview. You’re then free to set the terms of what the interview covers, and if it goes well, they may be willing to come back for more in the future. · Area guides and informative pieces. People who are new to the city would no doubt find value in learning about the hottest spots in town – not just businesses, but “places to be” and “things to do”. Think about what players would find interesting to read; this is fine, so long as you then write it for their characters and from your character’s perspective. · A specialist subject. Perhaps your character is interested in fashion, or cars. Find a niche that others would be interested in reading about, along with something to say about it (perhaps a new fashion trend), and give it a go. · Opinion pieces. If you’re happy with your character losing a bit of their objectivity, then it’s fine for them to publish their opinion on a given matter as well – similar to how columnists and contributors do in real life. Pick a subject or a recent event, then analyse it through your character’s eyes. There are no doubt more – please let me know and I’ll add them! A few important points: do not make things up completely. I have generally found that very people enjoy reading things which never actually happened – for obvious reasons. Surprisingly however I did receive a lot of requests for this in my time roleplaying a journalist; mainly because someone wanted me to publish a character’s “backstory” and establish them as some kind of badass. I personally advise against this; it’s up to the players to promote their own backstory. Their character’s reputation is then theirs to make and shape. Perhaps they’ll do this by working with you in the game, which is great, I just wouldn’t accept “this is what happened in Liberty City one week ago” type requests. _____________________________ Part 3: Top tips for improving your journalism roleplay I did journo roleplay for a good couple of years, running news factions as well as doing my own things as an independent. I learnt a lot, so if you want to take your RP to the next level, here are a few tips from me: · Remain consistent. Set yourself goals for how many “outputs” you’ll produce in a given time frame, but don’t put yourself under undue pressure. It’s far better to consistently produce 1 article per week, than suddenly do 5 articles one week and none the next. Consistency is better than volume. · Have a brand and a personality. If your character works for a news company, you already have a corporate brand. But give them a personality too; make people enjoy hearing updates from your character. Make them interesting, give them depth. · Never stop getting your character’s name out there. It takes time to become known as “the news person”, but once you get there, finding stories becomes a hell of a lot easier. Why? Because many people will actually start sending YOU the stories rather than you having to go out and find them. Ironically this is how things work in real life: PR executives throw stories at journalists, and they get to decide what to use and what not to use. · Connect with media relations early. Most of the legal factions have their own dedicated press office or media relations department. Ask to be put in touch with them early and they’ll no doubt help your character along their journey... provided you aren’t always printing controversial stuff about them. · Don’t be afraid to piss people off. This may seem contradictory to the above point, but it isn’t: generally speaking, most people value the truth and can see through obvious brown-nosing. Good journalists are known for thoroughly investigating and informing the public, even if this ruffles feathers. · To earn money, you need advertisers. You’re not likely to have much interest in the beginning, but if you’re consistent and you can prove that you have readership, then there will be a demand to advertise with your publication or on your channel. Keep at it, and the money will come. · Put in extra effort. If you have the time and are willing to do so, think about how you could really show off your character’s journalism. Perhaps you could create your own magazine on Photoshop, or take the step into doing voiced reports, or something like that. It’s easier to stand out from the crowd when you do something different. · HAVE FUN! It’s far, far too easy with legal roleplay to fall into the trap of treating this like a second job. It is absolutely not meant to be a second job. You’re playing LSRP to have fun, and you should never feel pressurised like you may do in a real life studying or work situation. If you ever feel like this, it may be time to take a break. Often in the past, this has come as a result of players or their characters criticizing my work; it takes a lot of maturity and some broad shoulders to consistently rise above that. If it gets a bit much, don’t worry at all about taking it slow. Your sanity and enjoyment should, as ever, be the key driving factor here. _____________________________ I hope you found my guide to roleplaying a journalist interesting – I would love to hear your feedback, comments and suggestions likewise if there are any journo RPers out there who have additional ideas to add on, let me know and I can consider putting them in here too. UPDATE: I've started a discussion on how the Government can support certain types of roleplay, including media and journalism. If you'd like to join in, take a look here:

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Mmmm nah, I think I'll get all the nostalgia I need once the old forums are accessible again. I doubt I'd feel the need to actually log in there - plus it would create all sorts of continuity problems and split people up as Mikee said. Best to let it rest methinks.

Yeah but this is what I mean though - World found a way to straddle the line between the standard grindy jobs and ones which require roleplay. So working in shops, or as a mechanic who fills up people's gas, was handled by the script itself and not by players. It worked well in some ways because it made accessible, less grindy jobs for new players... but the flipside is that I don't think anyone ever roleplayed as like the "Manager" of each establishment. I could be completely wrong here, I didn't play enough on the server to understand how it works exactly. The money does have to come from somewhere, you're fully right there. I just think favouring a job system which doesn't put the player on a "go here, do this, drive here, click this button a few times, drive back" track is good progress - especially when we've seen that there are systems like the one on World. Not saying it's perfect, but the vision behind it is clear: pump money into the server in a way that promotes roleplay. Although I also get that new players might be pretty intimidated by the idea of being put in a position like a shop worker, where they're still relatively new to RP and might be like "ohhh my god what if I fuck up". A standard script job like the ones implemented or that you've suggested would obvs be more appropriate for easing people in.

I think script jobs will always have a place, but ideally it should be more profitable for individuals to engage in actual roleplay with other people rather than it being a grindfest. As Venta already mentioned, there'll be contracts and things like that. Running businesses should actually be profitable too; I remember back in the day nightclubs never actually made money. In fact most of the time, they lost money purely because entry fees and drinks never covered the inflated cost of hiring security, DJs and funding all those damn dance parties... I liked World's feature where you could sorta pick a shop or a garage to work at, then you earned money for being in there and earned even MORE money if you made RP-related sales. This seemed like a happy medium, and made shopping far more interactive. For instance, my character went into a phone shop and roleplayed browsing and purchasing a phone, setting up a contract etc with another player who was working for the shop at the time. That player received money just for being "on duty", and a bonus at the end of making a sale with me. I also tipped for the roleplay - and think most people would do this too.

I can't really comment on how this has worked in illegal RP, back when I did it we just basically signed our character's life to a faction and the leadership was then able to bump you off if deemed necessary. Don't know how that worked in faction wars etc. I think in generally, I support the idea that if someone activates rambo mode rather than being logically careful, it should be considered at the very least. It's so subjective really though; some characters' personalities would naturally make them more likely to take risks, and I don't think that should be punished provided it's done well. Honestly this is a complicated topic - hard to pin down a policy that would work in every situation. So I guess it'd have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

This is really interesting actually and it's nice to be in a digestible format too. I'm sure someone could spend hours scouring Google for some pretty basic answers that you've put here. Wasn't even aware of the different characteristics of each group, so yeah nice work m8.

Ah I didn't know that actually! Is there a lot of variation? Or just like one or two per skin?

Welcome back ol' timer

I’m also gonna put my support in favour of ped skins. It does limit clothing options but the difference in body types and heights etc is something that I think everyone would value. Age too. Most folks spent long enough on SAMP wearing the same clothes every day, so that’s the compromise that would be needed. Obviously adding body type and height modifiers to the GTA online character would be ideal too, but I don’t know how doable that is.

Still waiting........! Send send send I need my hit of nostalgia.

This is me, in need of a hair cut:

I meant to respond properly to this earlier - thanks for taking the time to explain. I think that sounds really good. I suppose you'll have to see how it goes upon launch but it seems like a lot of this has already been thought out quite thoroughly!

I do remember this being a bit of an issue a couple of years ago; the fact that gun shot wounds were the main cause of hospital inpatients was probably a bit boring and repetitive for the FD staff as well. I think back then, the FD member would essentially PM the player to ask if they wanted a more in-depth or expedited RP experience - this wasn't just for GSWs, it was more of a courtesy because of RL time constraints like people needing to go eat and so on. A realistic process often took upwards of an hour, after all. Would be keen to hear FD's thoughts on how this sort of thing would be handled for sure.

Hello! I like the direction you're taking this in tbf, it's reminiscent of how it was a couple of years ago as you say. Also fully, one hundred percent agree that there has to be a balance between making things fun and realistic - I don't think anyone should expect actual trained medical professionals, but I know the old guides were thorough enough to provide a realistic enough experience for everyone. I think, as with most things, it's best just to see how things go and be flexible too. Agree as well on having events, and encouraging "regular checkups" perhaps like a GP surgery should provide enough RP. Perhaps even a guide on common ailments, showing people that they can easily roleplay having "something" then coming along, getting diagnosed and receiving treatment of some kind? Just thinking out loud here. Regardless, best of luck with everything, looking forward to seeing y'all in game

Title says it all. Mine's a vodka and diet coke unless i'm feeling classy, then it's wine. Or martini. If I'm on holiday then it's a San Miguel.

Ok I think this is my favourite one yet - love the bluetooth pairing, spatial audio and the fact that there can be multiple audio sources. I wonder if we'll get player-ran XM stations like there were a few years back? Love this so hard.

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I stan this, I like how neat everything looks. Goodbye using text commands for literally everything!

This is looking great. Is there a bleed out timer for people where they can be recovered, before progressing to fully dead? All I remember is the /acceptdeath command. In fact, how is death in general being handled this time around?