largehazard

This is a poor reason in my opinion. I agree that it's a tricky issue for the LSSD to get around, but I don't believe our entire geographical lore should be based around the jurisdiction of a single law enforcement faction. I disagreed with GTAW taking this stance. I believe it's much more important for us to have the possibility of Northern California-style illegal factions open (which doesn't only include Norteños but several other varieties too). Obviously we are all going to have different opinions on which of these should be sacrificed, but I believe the decision affects those illegal factions much more. My suggestion for the LSSD would be to roleplay being contracted out to provide law enforcement services in Blaine County, which in turn can be roleplayed as a large county that connects the southern and northern regions of the state (as some California counties are huge). The LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the country and covers very broad and confusing jurisdictions in real life, so I believe this should be an easy thing for them to roleplay. Your suggestion is plausible, but in my opinion it's much simpler this way. Then only the LSSD has to worry about roleplaying its own lore and jurisdictional mandate and the rest of us can just roleplay Blaine County existing. This is much simpler considering Blaine County exists in-game, plus everyone who plays GTA V already knows it and considers the northern part of the map as Blaine County. If we were instead to roleplay it all as Los Santos County, that's an extra layer of pretending and imagining that everyone has to do and ultimately it's always easier to go with the simplest possible option. This is also the reason that when chuckles and I were discussing this stuff before the thread was posted, and the possibility was raised of adding a fictional county to cover how different the northern part of the map is, we decided to just go with making it Blaine County instead. It's far simpler, which for something as broad as this is always the preferable option.

Thanks for this. The only thing I really knew about their culture is exactly what you pointed out, they're more "black influenced" because that's the style in NorCal. But they also make a point of distinguishing themselves from Norteños so I think they try to "Latinize" some things up to be different, and more like Sureños.

This is a good point yes. This is the time to set these baseline standards and make choices though. You don't want to be dealing with the headache of juggling irl information with IC history later on, which always results in a mess, as happened on SAMP and GTAW to a lesser extent.

Most organized arms dealing, as roleplayed by factions, is the sale of stolen legal firearms or firearms purchased in poorly regulated transactions in gun states. The profit margin is significant, as criminals and gangs will pay several times the legal sale price for an unregistered firearm they can use in crimes. If you're selling firearms outside the bounds of the law, you are an arms dealer or arms trafficker rather than a legal gun seller. Arms trafficking can be divided into two basic categories: state and federal. California state arms trafficking charges are generally less serious - all you have really done is sell a locally acquired firearm without a license or without conducting the proper background checks. For this you may be sentenced to six months in county jail or fined, with more serious consequences for aggravating factors (e.g. prior trafficking convictions). Federal arms trafficking is much more serious, and applies more to most roleplayed weapons dealing. An arms dealing incident is made federal by transporting the weapons across state lines, which is how the bulk of guns used in California crimes enter circulation. Arizona and Nevada are major weapons shipment points, being gun states in which large amounts of firearms can be acquired in legally murky or outright illegal gun sales and also being states which border California, where those weapons can be sold for several times their retail value. The penalties for federal offences increase sharply, to a maximum of 10 years in federal prison and much more extensive fines. In addition most people who engage in these activities are already convicted felons prohibited from possessing firearms, which carries an extra five years. 320. Illegal Sale, Lease, or Transfer of a Firearm is the LSRP penal code entry for arms trafficking. It's a low-end felony. 324. Illegal Distribution of Ammunition will probably also come up. Between these two charges, being stacked (or multiplied) by the amount of arms and ammunition you're selling, your character is looking at heavy time. If your character is convicted of major arms trafficking you should probably also roleplay a more serious federal conviction, assuming you're roleplaying interstate transactions. I suggest this for 'realism' purposes, as any major arms trafficker irl is investigated by a federal taskforce and usually ends up with heavy sentences. Ultimately it's up to you though. Typically people are only ever charged with weapons possession on these servers, as arms dealing investigations are rarely done, so I don't see this particular issue coming up much. But you should be aware of the potential consequences your character faces and how serious arms trafficking is taken in a gun restricted state like California (and therefore San Andreas). There's also 319. Manufacture of a Destructive Device or Prohibited Weapon, covering fabricated weapons and arms conversion devices, which is a newer trend in arms trafficking. Shmoe has covered this here. In regards to your actual roleplay, you have a couple of options. This is assuming you are a faction member who is selling weapons directly acquired by your faction from the 'scheme' and you're unsure how to roleplay this. Generally speaking these guns will have crossed the state border, so you can either roleplay being that level of arms trafficker yourself or you can roleplay having acquired your weapons from somebody who specializes in this as their criminal 'profession'. From there your roleplay is a simple question of actually selling the guns on to other characters. I would suggest some people experiment with roleplaying a dedicated arms trafficker, as most people involved in this business do it 'professionally'. Weapons dealing in real life, unlike on roleplay servers, is much less profitable than drug dealing so the only people who seriously profit from it are those who specialize in it. Criminal organizations have constant easy access to firearms and do not really prioritize it as a business, as is done in roleplay. NB: You should not roleplay internationally 'smuggled' weapons, as is sometimes done, particularly by European factions. This does not happen, unless for some reason somebody has gotten their hands on a massive shipment of weapons somewhere and it's worth taking the risk to smuggle them into the United States for sale. The U.S. is the biggest gun country in the world - guns come from there, they are not smuggled there. International arms trafficking in the United States goes the other way, into Canada and Mexico. Your guns will be from the U.S., probably a gun state like Arizona, New Mexico or Texas. I hope this will be informative for some people who might not be familiar with how arms trafficking actually works in places like California.

Some of it's a big deal, some of it is trivial (like the use of city names). This mostly stemmed from the official ruling that we were to rp San Andreas as an island, which I considered a big deal. A lot of the rest of it is inconsequential or not that important but we might as well have some general set standards on what to rp while we're having this discussion

I assume the disconnect occurred in different rp communities. The illegal rp community has been roleplaying very California-focused for years now. I guess it just wasn't a problem before that people had different experiences. Anyway this is why we needed to have this discussion - incidentally, this development was also why GTAW took this type of approach. One of the few times illegal rpers were catered to actually

This is the strange disconnect that has been referred to here. A lot of us had very different experiences on LSRP. We started to roleplay San Andreas as a more-or-less exact replacement of California around 2016-2017. And we're surprised to learn people have different recollections.

My thinking with the island/coasts thing is just you have to simply not think about it. The state is only an island for game design purposes, the fact that it's an island is never mentioned in GTA V because it isn't - it's a California replacement. The east coast of the island has nothing important whatsoever on it anyway, if I recall, except a couple of unimportant coves maybe? The west coast of the island, which is the accurate one, is where the beachfront communities and the coastline drives are. The east coast is mostly out of view because of the mountains, which may have been Rockstar's way of addressing this very issue. As for the north coast at Paleto Bay, either pretend it makes sense or roleplay that it's a bay, as the name suggests it is. You can easily have a town with water to its north if you're on a bay.

This is basically why it's preferable to rp the GTA name but the irl history. Irl history, culture and trivia is known and can be researched and roleplayed about ig, just using the changed names.

This is the important point about GTA universe locations, yeah. It's just a changed name. Everything else about it reflects its irl history. This is how I always rped it, and I think most people did too

thanks for the discussion so far, it's encouraging to see interest and enthusiasm on this. I think one thing we can probably say from this point is that the GTA universe location names (San Fierro, Liberty City etc) should be used as alternatives for their irl counterparts. I remember that was always the general majority opinion and I can't say I ever disagreed as for the point on brands and using them if they exist in the universe, I'd say I do agree but also that it gets a bit murky when you're talking about that level of interchanging and depth. GTAW's lore team ran into the problem of having to make judgements on every single little thing and it's basically a joke. I'd suggest some minor things should just be up to player discretion or preference to avoid having too many of these little lore points that everyone has to remember, and inevitably fails at doing that. I would suggest the standard of something being up to player discretion being if the subject is of no more importance than basic small talk, something that affects nothing about anyone's character. Brands are probably the best example of this I think we need to come up with an official lore thread, branched off this discussion, which is simple and clear. Certain important things have a lore 'ruling' (locations, significant history, laws) and everything else (insignificant trivia) is player discretion. I believe this is the only way we will be able to come up with some coherent server lore without getting too deep into things and having everyone asking "well what about this? can I rp this? what about that?"

The Paleto Bay area (and Grapeseed) would both be similar to Bakersfield/Fresno under this. It'd be a general representation rather than a specific one, which is messy and tons of effort for not much gain. I think a list of laws which have been carried over from irl already exists somewhere.

i'd say we should probably keep references about these places vague for now (i.e. not determining that they either exist, or do not exist) just to keep it simple.

this is the time to bring something up if you have a strong opinion about anything here, or anything to do with lore the only issue left unresolved by this is how the LSSD is going to roleplay their jurisdiction in separate counties, but that's up to them and as a last note, Blaine County being so diverse and large isn't that weird. some counties in California are huge (Riverside, San Bernadino and Kern, which is the one we think it should represent)

yeah that's pretty much how I remember it lmao

Agreed. Norteños were almost always done pretty badly but their culture and way of doing business is very interesting, so in theory you could get a really good faction out of it. I would rather have that possibility open than not. Idk why it was locked off on GTAW. Anyway, I don't think the possibility of having norteños was ever in question here. This thread is more about the possibility of having accurate sureño gangs in the northern parts of the map as well. I would like to see both, and I can only imagine those who are already planning to lead norteño factions would like it as well considering their neighborhoods will be pretty inactive without something like this.

Since this server is going to have norteños, it makes sense to discuss their counterpart, which will inevitably be roleplayed too. The purpose of this thread is to cover the basic concept of "upstate sureños". I never saw this done on LSRP, and I wasn't even familiar with their history and culture until only a couple of years ago after I had already left. Therefore I'm assuming it's not widely known knowledge. I'd like to get this information out there so that it might be of assistance to anybody considering a faction like this, or perhaps it might bring these gangs to your attention if you're unfamiliar with them. "Upstate sureños" are sureños in northern California. They differ from Central Valley/'Centro Valle' sureños and proper Southern California sureños in very significant ways. Traditionally, the only sureños who actually had contact with norteños and fought them outside of prison were those in the Central Valley area, in towns like Bakersfield and Visalia where the north/south lines met. This changed with the growth of upstate sureños. Since the 90s, sureño gangs have been growing in Northern California and now represent a significant threat to the business interests of the Nuestra Familia. The important thing to note about upstate sureños is that they are not sureños from L.A. or SoCal who "moved", as some might think. They are homegrown northern gangs. Their roots lay in Hispanic varrios who had conflict with norteños. Many of them were 'paisas' or the children of paisas, who were considered southerners by the norteños and thus targeted. These groups started their own varrios, beginning in the 80s, and eventually took up the sureño identity purely out of hostility to norteños. These northern sureños would be exposed to SoCal sureños in prison, who up until then were not aware of their existence. At some point the Mexican Mafia, or more likely one member of it with central or northern territories, put these gangs under their flag. I am not familiar with the specifics of this story but it definitely happened, as northern carnales collect tax from them. This essentially made upstate sureños bonafide sureños, and there have been '13' gangs in the north ever since. Most of these varrios are located in the major cities in the Bay Area, but there are also some in traditional norteño stronghold towns like Salinas. Their combat with local norteños is vicious. The second important point is that these are no longer paisa gangs. They are in their 3rd or 4th generation and are now as northern as the norteños in their 'breeding', so to speak. It's just that if you're born into a 13 neighborhood instead of a 14 neighborhood, you're going to be an upstate sureño. I'm not totally familiar with all of the cultural differences between NorCal and SoCal sureños and how that plays out in prison, but I know that they are significant. Upstate sureños are notably different to, for example, an 18th St member. The Eme-NF truce inside the prison system has been very confusing and frustrating for both upstate sureños and for the norteños who have them in their communities. These gangs are brought up to hate each other in a way that is probably fiercer than most other gang rivalries, but are then told they are not permitted to fight them once they get to prison. Just an interesting point of trivia. I'd like to encourage discussion on this topic, and the possibility of having both norteños and upstate sureños roleplaying in Grapeseed/Paleto Bay. If roleplayed properly, there is potential for extremely interesting gang interactions and dynamics.

I think a basic vision will be critical to success. I assume the staff team has one but I don't know what it is. I hope that there has been a realization that LSRP is now a competing server, not the monopoly that it was on SAMP, which I believe contributed a lot to complacency and lethargy in its later years. There's no point in beating around the bush like we used to. At least, like I used to. Here's the thing: LSRP will have a strong competitor, but it's a competitor that has several very major and fundamental flaws. These will need to be addressed if LSRP is to succeed. The biggest is that GTAW sucks for illegal roleplay. It's better than it used to be (there was a period when illegal rpers were basically an oppressed people there) but not by much. LSRP will need to be a genuinely better place to roleplay if there's to be any point in playing here. "Learn from past mistakes" is a pretty good philosophy. And it means both from SAMP and from GTAW. This server technically has the benefit of being able to learn from both experiences, which means it should be better than both experiences. I emphasize both because there are some things GTAW actually does very well, and this server has just defaulted to how it was done on SAMP, seemingly just to be different? Learning from experience goes both ways - the good and the bad. But, ultimately, judgement needs to be held until this server is actually operational. Most things being said here are basically academic and hypothetical until that point. One thing that can be said though is that the staff team needs to rely on the experience it has floating around the community. A lot of experienced roleplayers have come here because they're dissatisfied with not being listened to elsewhere. Don't let that happen here.

I would rather rely on a real stash system (properties, or stash spots on the street). The V map is large enough and there are enough properties to prevent people from just running around looking for shit. Or at least, I think it is in theory? I don't know how well it works in practice though. I stayed away from gang rp on GTAW, and people with experience in that area would be the ones to ask. One thing that really needs to be considered here is that the SAMP system was basically the loophole that allowed hoarding. There's no risk to holding contraband indefinitely if you can just despawn it into the void. And big stockpiles of weapons and drugs is how you end up with an utterly shagged faction dynamic in a year from now, when everyone is just relying on built-up caches for every single new faction until they can apply for schemes and no new transactions are taking place. Not to mention the effect on the economy when there's no organic scarcity of anything because so much contraband exists in despawned vehicles. I would suggest trialing a real stash system from the beginning, and it can be addressed if that doesn't work out. Which sounds like it's the plan if there's already a stash system developed?

This is a good point. I didn't want to raise it initially so as not to take this thread too far from OT but yes, the lore team over there is a complete mess, basically a joke. I like the idea of it in theory so as not to have everybody going around doing their own thing but it needs to be done correctly and decisions need to made in accordance with community consensus. Based on this topic I don't have high hopes for this but we'll see I guess.

Chuckles is right. I don't remember it being an island beyond 2016-17. Some people roleplayed it as such earlier but after that period, we did not. I also agree that a broader 'lore' discussion needs to be had. By the end of my time on LSRP there were so many gray areas in terms of what was roleplayed and what wasn't, that everyone just ended up rping their own stuff. It contributed a lot to the overall vibe of "who cares anymore", if I recall. I think the staff team needs to take an active role in forming what kind of server this is going to be because you're right, now is the time to have these discussions. Standards need to be set and points of lore should be agreed upon as a footnote to that.

i'm both amazed and baffled that this argument didn't die in 2016. i'll reiterate, most of us will not be roleplaying San Andreas as an island. I really do not see why this has come up. What is even the benefit of it? Who wants this? this isn't even a murky "everyone has their own opinion" issue like many of the things that need a ruling are. There's literally numbers right there. A more than 10:1 ratio of people who do not support this. and on top of all that, this looks like we're starting off before the server has even launched with an unpopular ruling, in which the views of the community are not being considered. This is a terrible precedent to be starting with.

Most of us will not be roleplaying San Andreas as an island that co-exists with California regardless of any ruling. That's how stupid the idea is to us. I don't mean to be rude, only frank.

This is probably the only chance to set a standard and make it stick. I hope the same can be done in other areas too.

Roleplaying an empty shell that's "for the gang" 100% or the perfect mobster etc. is probably the biggest problem, at least for illegal rp. It goes hand-in-hand with people who don't create any roleplay on their own. Another related issue is when everyone is super friendly with each other within a faction. Characters, I mean. Most conflict in a gang or a criminal organization is internal, and much of it is about trivial personal things and personality conflicts. That is never reflected in roleplay though. And then I suppose there's how much OOC has seeped into roleplay in recent years. Both late LSRP and GTAW became discord roleplay servers, where people just log in to go through the motions. This is probably the biggest single issue I personally have with current roleplay habits. It doesn't necessarily make characters feel like NPCs but it does make it feel like you're roleplaying with the person, not the character.