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James Francis's avatar

I've enjoyed watching GTA 5 RP for a while. But it's very time-consuming to keep following!

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Exploring The Games's avatar

To be fair, I only get trolling videos. Playing Aneurism 4 opened my eyes to RP, though. Which is funny that I had a negative perspective to RP games, as I do enjoy playing TTRPGs.

Now I'm thinking there might be some serialized RP on YouTube.

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Trip Harrison's avatar

Wow, I haven't thought about this for years. I logged nearly 700 hours in Gmod DarkRP as a kid (2008 or thereabouts), and I know guys who racked up more than twice that. Most servers I frequented skewed very young and were light on actual RP, playing more like progenitors of Rust or DayZ than anything else. They were a decent social outlet for dudes like me who didn't thrive elsewhere.

But I also remember a server that was so serious about interpersonal immersion that I had to pass an English grammar test before they'd whitelist my Steam account — hard to imagine something like that flying nowadays. I'll have to boot up Gmod one of these days to see if the scene is anything like it used to be.

Great article, and thanks for the refreshing hit of nostalgia!

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Exploring The Games's avatar

A grammar test?! I've thought about looking into Gmod RP again, now that I'm older, but downloading 10 GB per server is a bit crazy to me.

Maybe those servers are still a thing, who knows?

And I can see why you put in so many hours, Aneurism 4 has been quite the experience for an RP nooby like me. Lots of memorable things happened to me already, and I only have 4 hours.

Thank you very much for reading, and the comment! I hope you enjoy trying Gmod again after so many years.

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James's avatar

The {potentially) interesting or fun part of roleplaying is, in my opinion, the open ended dialog. Which simply doesnt exist above conversion trees otherwise. The environment, setting, immersion, all that is complete fluff. There just needs to be characters pushed into some sort of conversational interaction. Recruit someone to help you, or not stand in your way, or tell on you, or sell something to you, or distract them while a friend sneaks by, or etc etc.

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Exploring The Games's avatar

I agree, as the interactions are the main point of these games, and they are super fun.

I wouldn't say the setting is fluff. If it wasn't for the setting, the conversations wouldn't occur. No point of recruiting someone, telling on someone, and so forth, if there isn't context. Setting, which js the environment, era, factions, etc., is the context that gets people to attack, trick, and unites people in these games.

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James's avatar

Well, fluff in the sense it could be anything. I guess I was trying yo encourage you to try things outside your niche. Its more about the players than the setting (good players=good rp=fun).

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James's avatar

In the highschool rp example, you could be the inexplicably wiseman janitor, or the hardass principal with a heart of gold, or the scarred school officer with Afghanistan flashbacks, etc etc etc.

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Alex Antra's avatar

Great article!

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Exploring The Games's avatar

Thank you!

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