No, this isn't a thread regarding Anubis' new posting guidelines, though I think I'm not the only one having a lot of difficulty locating RP threads (both closed and otherwise!) now tagging them is not so widely accepted.

No, what I'm referring to is the actual roleplay. I know I know, it's been a little overly discussed recently but it's something I'll continue to bring up until people start actually practising good roleplay instead of paying it lip service.

I'm going to stray a little from the topic here as this is as much to do with the definition of forums as it has with roleplay - but why on Earth are there so many stories in the streets? It doesn't matter if you create a fasciniating piece of fiction. That is not roleplay. When you tell a story on the streets, you are literally telling a story on the streets. Correct me if I'm wrong here but that is more in the remit of a public performer rather than an organised criminal.

If you want to create, post it in the OOC; because it's out of character. The only exception to this as far as I'm concerned are stories that directly relate to the game and it's happenings, the best example I can find of this is Kates. When she tells stories in the streets, she tells of real events that have occurred, of real people and of real connections. This can be passed off fairly easily as logical, but a mobster saying about how he robbed the federl reserve with Jimmy when in fact that is a total fabrication is less than logical.

I'll get out the bibs now, you'll probably need them when you start frothing at the mouth because stories have ALWAYS been posted in the streets. Of course, if it's been done all this time, why not just continue without stopping to think why? I'll make a concession here, the streets as a whole is just bad RP, but the game would die without it. The difference is though, whilst I'm sure Mobsters did debate things behind closed doors in reality, they probably didn't tell ficticious stories to one another. Therefore, we bring the debates to the public domain.

Another salient point I'd like to bring up; some of the street threads we do see. In the business distict, for exmaple, anything goes really. Mobsters owned a massive variety of business as money laundering fronts, and if everyone ran a 'mob' like business - shit would be pretty boring. However, this doesnt mean things like handing out free mint, setting up lemonade stands, starting dating agencies or eating brains is ok. Sure, it makes things interesting for an extremely exciting 20 minutes, but there are other ways to have fun without completely betraying the 'role playing' foundation on which this whole community is built.

Again, concessions are to be made here. Community newspapers and radio shows weren't the sort of activities mobsters were generally involved in, but these are a lot more plausible than some kind of fucked up mafia fashion show that must've taken all of 10 seconds to conjure up and pull out of your jacksy.

Again, I'll ride the line of cliches here. Drug prices. Why the fuck are you even asking them if you're not from my family? If you're not from the same city as me, odds are I've never even seen your face before. If you were mobster and a total stranger came up to you and said "hey man, where can I get cheap cocaine?" are you really going to answer and incriminate yourself? No, more likely, you're going to be so paranoid you end up taking care of him. Even if you know this guy is a mobster, why are you going to help him out? Best case scenario, you're helping a potential rival make profit. Worse case scenario, you're signing your own death warrant. Shite RP guys, and with the existence of the tips system and there being the number of members in each city that there are, there's really no reason to ask those not from your city.

Pickpocketing. Stop with these daft arse quotes. Things like "pickpocket friendly" or "I don't like picpockets" are bad enough - but again a concesson is needed because people are so uptight and fannyish about pickpocketing that we need a visual display of consent or otherwise. Things like "Ask before you pickpocket" and "send me my money back after pp!" are just fucking ridiculous. Not just from an RP sense but from a 'This would look totally stupid and illogical to a child' sense. I don't really need to say much more, it's all been covered before.

Handing money out in competitions. What the fuck? This is only acceptable if you are in a position of considerable power and responsibility and looking to apply this to improving some aspect of the game, or if you are sure you'll get more out than you put in. We are not in the charity business. Again, not much more to say here other than point me to a benevolent mobster who handed out money with no strings attached. I'll save you some time here, don't bother looking because they don't exist.

Here's what pisses me off most though. "Subdivisions", "Status Reports", any other corporate term that has never been applied to the Mafia by anyone but the most dimwitted. I challenge you to find a reference of the Cicero crews as a "Subdivision" of Capone's Family. I challenge you to find an instance of Bonano giving Gambino a status report of what his guys are up to. For fuck's sake, it's not difficult to use a Mafia related term - even if you don't know any it would take around 5 minutes of googling to come up with something respectable. And if you're going to use such ridiculous un-criminal like terms, I'm going to have to ask for some consistency and suggest the addition of a Family Public Relations Officer; as well as replacing Capos with Regional Managers.

I apologise for the disjointed and probably hysterical sounding nature of this thread, I've not structured it properly and I've basically just written down what's on my mind whilst pretending to do some work, but here you have it.

And before anyone tells me to 'lighten up' and reminds me that 'it's a game', I always have these things in mind. In particular, the fact that it's a roleplay game. If truly immersing yourself in the game and acting like a mobster really isn't your bag, I'd suggest that you just go and play some GTA or something

LOVE YA,

Sprozz

From now on, when I say "You are all retarded", you may consider yourself omitted from the catch-all category. It will still apply to everyone else.

This should be required reading for all.

I read it, are you happy with me Ox?

And does this still mean I'm retarded?

Yes, and Yes.

Again, I'll ride the line of cliches here. Drug prices. Why the fuck are you even asking them if you're not from my family? If you're not from the same city as me, odds are I've never even seen your face before. If you were mobster and a total stranger came up to you and said "hey man, where can I get cheap cocaine?" are you really going to answer and incriminate yourself? No, more likely, you're going to be so paranoid you end up taking care of him. Even if you know this guy is a mobster, why are you going to help him out? Best case scenario, you're helping a potential rival make profit. Worse case scenario, you're signing your own death warrant. Shite RP guys, and with the existence of the tips system and there being the number of members in each city that there are, there's really no reason to ask those not from your city.

I think it would be great if, when sending a mobmail to someone in another city, there was a time-delay. Then it wouldn't be possible to ask ANYONE for drug prices, because by the time you've read it, the prices would have changed.

Plus, it's much more realistic.

And, yes, this might sound like a sarcastic reply, but it's not. I actually think it would be a great idea. :D

All extremely valid points... I think there is an will always be people who consider RP in extremely different lights and thus it will show with the quality of RP displayed in the streets. And id also like to mention that this is a RP game, not a OOC game with 1 RP forum. If passable RP should be used. I understand communication of important issues might not be best handled in a RP format but general conversation in mail can at least be. I mean unless you are announcing a rogue you can take a bit of time to go to some effort.

And Awesome if there was a delay system in place, then say sending a mob mail to a CL in a different city about a rogue shooter in their crew would have a delay. But then again this delay might encourage people to actually act like mobsters and take the shot them selves, which isnt a horrible notion to consider. But alas i am just a lowly RH so setting such policies are above me, perhaps for a reason? who knows...

9/10 times it isn't as easy as just being able to take the shot yourself, Calibre. It's hardly proper mobster conduct to go in shooting without authorization from your crewleader and most of the time a crewleader will choose to delegate the task to an enforcer/'hitsquad' member.

On to the thread though...

I agree with a lot of the points made, particularly the ones about drug prices and pickpocketing. However I honestly don't mind the competitions, as long as they're productive, although yes, most of them do not follow very strict RP guidelines, there's no doubt. If it isn't stupid and isn't too wayward of a tangent from being mafia related, I'll not object to them.

Actually i disagree, while i will always follow my family and city rules to the letter. I believe it is completly mobster conduct to shoot back. If you as a gangster got shot in the street would you contact your crewleader and tell them? Or shoot back at the person who was shooting at you?

And by gangster i mean occupation not rank

You didn't clarify that in your initial post, you merely said that people should shoot 'rogue shooter's in other crewleaders crews. Even so, it depends. If my gun was good enough that I was 95% sure I would hit, I would go for the shot if attacked first. Otherwise, I would contact either my crewleader or the crewleader of the shooter, in that order of preference, depending who was online.

If I were a criminal, and someone shot at me, and I had a gun, then I'd shoot back. Even if I knew that I had poor aim. If someone tried to mug me in the street then I would fight back, even if I knew that I'm weak and don't know how to throw a good punch. I don't think any mafia boss would object to one of their underlings defending themselves from assailants.

Mafia boss: "What!? You shot back? How dare you! You should have let him walk away! Just because he works for a rival family, and is now clearly attacking members of my family, that does not give you the right to retaliate! Remember the Golden Rule, FFS! Turn the other cheek!"

Yeah, right.

Depends on the situation...if we took a scenario where both parties were made; Some bosses would prefer to honour the sanctity of the rank and have a sit down to settle the issue, other Bosses would like their boys to kill kill kill and ask questions later.

In that scenario, I think both options could be argued to be RP accurate.

It's all about scenario really, which makes this a petulant argument that I'm regretting bringing up. Awesome, the mafia boss speech simulation right there? Seriously? If someone shot at me and I didn't have the aim to shoot back efficiently, I'd contact my leader or whoever is available and allow them to kill the assailant. Just because the shot was taken at me doesn't mean I have to be the one that takes it back. RP is such an open context that you could argue the shooter shot and fled, therefore you contacted your boss or a higher ranked member and they tracked down the attacker and killed them. Maybe you never had the opportunity to shoot back. 

A mafia boss might not object to shooting back but sometimes it might not be the smartest option, is what I'm getting at.

I think that if the shooter was mademan+ it is grounds for going to war. RP wise the shooter being made is in the inner circle and the victims CL might see it as a sign of attack. And I believe there was a rule about striking a made man in the mafia. I'm not sure on the specifics but it was seen as a extremly hostile act. But I think this no shoot back rule is one of those things where RP must be sacarficed in order to stop the game decending into a free for all. Shame really, I feel that with a mature enuf playerbase the leaders could allow people to shoot back but as we have seen time and again, such a powerfull right in players hands would constently get miss used and exploited by all but a few of the MR players

Thought I'd add something here that is equally as baffling and fucking stupid as the other things I've mentioned.

Picture the scene, your Boss dies, you and all his inner circle at the funeral, along with his real family. He was a good man, a great mobster and a legendary leader. It's a very sad situation, everyone's in black - you get the idea.

Then some cunt saunters in to the church, walks up to the coffin and says "HEY BRO HIT ME UP WHEN U GET BACK"

Unless this has turned into a zombie game, I'm fairly sure this won't be happening as they WON'T BE FUCKING COMING BACK, THEY ARE DEAD.

Therefore, you need to phrase it better, something like "Have you next of kin contact me" would work right? No wait, it wouldn't, because you can't 'have' a dead person do anything for you, you gigantic moron.

Those 2 obvious and glaring errors aren't the only things wrong with funeral threads though, pretty much everything is. In real life, people don't walk into funerals and say "RIP" then walk out again, they don't say "You had a great run!", they don't say 99% of the nonsensical gibberish that's seen in the funeral; so use your bloody common sense for a change.

i agree with you noah

Right, I agree largely with the stupidity you've highlighted and I'm sick of it, as well as a lot more things on top of that - "My bestie lover <3333333333333333333" links in profiles for example.

However, I won't start on my long list of complaints, because it would take me from now until Sunday to write them all down. What I will say though, is that while the role-play aspect of this game is obviously important, we have to make some allowances for who we are and where we are. To pretend otherwise would be naive and make this game boring in the extreme.

Whilst I'm sure the realism of the game would benefit from everyone adopting a more role-play orientated approach, people not being stupid and annoying for the majority of the time would be a significant step in the right direction.

~T~

A significant, but ultimately unlikely, step.

A step I wish you would take.

~T~

Noah will be starting roleplaying classes very soon for a small fee of $10, Contact him for paypal details.