Roleplay, RP for short, means giving life to a character you made up, inside the game. You can be a cop, a doctor, a cab driver, a mobster or someone who just goes to work every morning; what happens next is up to you. It is a bit like writing a book or acting in a film, with one difference: there is no script. The person across from you is real too, and playing a character of their own.
What is GTA roleplay like?
In regular GTA you do missions, and when the story ends so does the game. On a roleplay server there are no missions; you live in the city. You find a job, rent a place, meet people, get into trouble or stay out of it. Everything that happens comes from what the players do in the moment.
The one condition is that everyone stays in character. If your character gets shot, you act wounded; if your character has never met a man, you play it that way even if you know the player from Discord.
IC and OOC: the first two words to learn
IC (in character) is your character's world; OOC (out of character) is yours. Every rule in roleplay is about not mixing the two. An insult aimed at your character was not aimed at you; the fight your character lost is not one you lost.
Our founder explained this on the forum with his own characters. Luca Valachi is cultured and full of himself. Martin Capelli is the opposite: so clueless that he thinks an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is where the neighbourhood kids get together to drink beer, and he spent a month getting beaten up in Little Italy. The same person plays both. You are not your character, and that is the whole point.
How do you roleplay? /me and /do
In text roleplay two commands do half the work. /me describes what your character does; /do describes what happens or what can be seen. A small example:
Alıntı/me pulls a crumpled twenty out of his pocket and drops it on the counter.
/do The man at the register holds the bill up to the light and takes a long look.
Notice that neither line forces an outcome; both leave room for the other player to answer. There are more in the /me and /do guide.
Three mistakes every beginner makes
| Mistake | What it means | How to avoid it |
| DM (deathmatch) | Attacking someone with no roleplay reason | Every fight should have a story and some tension behind it |
| MG (metagaming) | Using information your character does not have | Your character only knows what they saw or heard in game |
| PG (powergaming) | Leaving the other player no way to respond | Write your action as an attempt and leave the result to them |
You do not have to memorise these on day one. All the abbreviations are in the roleplay glossary.
An idea for your first character
Start small. Your first character does not have to be a mob boss or a police chief; most people who start that way are bored by week two. Someone looking for work, a regular at a local business, a relative who just moved to town: a simple idea produces roleplay too.
Who is your character, why did they come to the city, and what do they want? If you can answer those three, your character is ready.
Starting out on Vice
Register on the site and activate your game account. Send a character application; your answers to the three questions above are enough. Once it is approved, connect to 54.37.194.16:7777 with classic GTA San Andreas and SA-MP. Most of the community plays in Turkish.
Roleplay is giving life to a character; the story, the character and the ending are yours. Which is why, as we like to say, roleplay is never just roleplay.
Stuck somewhere? Open a ticket under Support on the forum or come to our Discord; someone is around at any hour.
