Always stay in character and keep everything in the city.

Unless dealing with staff, situations do not go out of character. Stay in character while in-game, and keep in-game drama, gang beef, etc. in-game.

Harassment and OOC (Out-Of-Character) insults will not be tolerated.

Racism and other derogatory language will not be tolerated. We will not provide you with a list of banned words; we expect you to know what is and isn't appropriate.

Your way is not always the right way.

Just because you were caught, killed, or didn't come out as the "winner" of a scenario doesn't mean you have been wronged. Roleplay can go in any direction, meaning it sometimes goes differently than you want it.

Do not use exploits. If you do, you will be permanently banned.

RDM/VDM

(Random/Vehicle DeathMatch)

Randomly killing players will not be tolerated. Killing/attempting to kill someone with no roleplay or reason is forbidden. 

Examples of RDM/VDM:

• Driving over a random group of people in a car.

• Randomly shooting or driving over people you’ve never interacted with.

• Driving into or shooting up a gas station’s pumps to kill as many people as possible.

Examples of what RDM/VDM isn’t:

• Doing a drive-by on an enemy gang during an active gang war.

• Being killed by someone who you insulted.

• Being killed by police for attempting to interfere violently with a scene.

Power Gaming

Intentionally forcing, pressuring, or baiting someone into a roleplay situation they cannot opt out of is considered power gaming and forbidden.

Examples of power gaming:

• Holding someone hostage for no reason and refusing to let them go.

• Arresting someone during a traffic stop, before any interactions.

• Seeing /me commands through a wall and using that knowledge to take advantage of a situation.

Examples of what power gaming isn’t:

• Holding someone hostage during a robbery for a reasonable amount of time.

• Being robbed at gunpoint. 

• Using your police car to block an escaping criminal.

Not Valuing Life

Not valuing your life and the life of others is forbidden. You must value your life, and additionally, you must value the life of others and the consequences killing someone would bring.

Examples of Not Valuing Life:

• Being robbed and telling the robber to kill you because you don't want to hand over your stuff.

• Instantly killing someone over a passing joke or insult.

• Killing yourself or your friends to avoid going to jail.

Examples of what Not Valuing Life isn’t:

• Driving off a ramp during a high-speed pursuit.

• Running down the highway during a pursuit after your car breaks down.

• Killing someone after multiple insults to your gang, car, family, and pet goldfish.

New Life Rule (NLR)

When dying or respawning at the hospital, you must experience a "new life" and forget what you saw, heard or experienced leading up to your death. Using any knowledge to take revenge can be metagaming. 

Returning to the scene of a crime, violent altercation, or after death immediately is considered a violation of this rule. You must wait 15 minutes after your death to return to an area with an active scene or situation.

Examples of Not following the New Life Rule:

• Being killed by a rival gang, respawning, and then telling your gang who and where you were killed.

• Arresting someone after they have bled out and respawned.

• Telling someone how their "cousin" died.

• Remembering someone you killed.

Examples of what follows the New Life Rule:

• Being saved by an EMS and then taking revenge on the person who killed you.

• Participating in a gang war started over your death.

• Return to your death scene to pick up your car after 15 minutes.

Exploits

Abusing game mechanics to go through walls, bunny hop, gain unnatural speed, boost damage, or give you advantages through any abuse of mechanics is forbidden and will be strictly enforced.

Examples of Exploiting:

• Making multiple characters and giving away the starter money is forbidden.

• Use of any mod menu or exploit will result in a ban.

• Combat Logging: Quitting the game to avoid being arrested, robbed, or dying.

• Selling drugs through walls.

• Abusing emotes to break into areas.

• Using special texture packs such as sky packs to make people more visible or modify the sky (for example, Pink/red sky, all-day mods, kill effects) in an unrealistic way. 

• Kill effects (other than what comes default to GTA), including headshot effects.

• No texture packs that make objects invisible or remove collisions.

• Sound packs that amplify/show the direction of footsteps.

Breaking Character

Breaking character is forbidden. Players are expected to stay in character at all times while in the city unless dealing with staff directly. You must do your best to roleplay a situation, even if the other player attempts to break character. 

Examples of Breaking Character:

• Threatening to call the admin or interfering with an admin handling a situation.

• Saying someone is Fail RP, breaking character, referencing servers, safe zones, and other game mechanics.

• Asking an officer to give you a lower sentence because you are friends.

Examples of not breaking character:

• Talking out of character when an admin is present and has declared the situation is OOC.

• Recording a violation of rules, then submitting a ticket outside of the situation.

• Stopping someone from Force RPing with you in an inappropriate or derogatory way.

Metagaming

Using knowledge gained outside your character's experiences, outside communication (Discord), or other out-of-game platforms is forbidden.

Examples of Metagaming:

• Using discord to tell your friends you're being robbed so they can rescue you.

• Coordinating a gang war through discord.

• Stream sniping or streaming to your friends, so they know where you are.

Examples of what isn't Metagaming:

• Talking to your in-game friends while not playing.

• Streaming your gameplay to friends who aren't playing or in the city.

• Talking to and discussing in-game events out of character while not in the city.

Fail Roleplay

Fail Roleplay (Fail RP) is failing to roleplay, not taking roleplay seriously, or generally treating the city as a non-roleplay environment which is forbidden. It includes, but is not exclusive to: exploiting power gaming and breaking character.

Examples of Fail Roleplay:

• "GTA Driving" or driving recklessly everywhere you go.

• Baiting police, attempting to bait players to chase and fight you.

• Intentionally breaking scenes with no build-up, reason, or stream snipe.

• Using /me to talk instead of using /me only to show actions

• Using your friends as hostages or having voluntary hostages

Examples of what isn't Fail Roleplay:

• Roleplaying in an unconventional manner or an unconventional character within the world.

• Creating unconventional roleplay situations and events that still fit within the city.

• Refusing to roleplay a situation that has devolved into Power Gaming/Forced roleplay.

Standing around camping bodies to shoot at police or simply camping bodies for long periods to force respawn people is considered Fail RP. If your intent is to force someone to be fatal, then you're not RPing, just trying to abuse a mechanic.

Situational Rules 

Robberies, crime, and shakedowns are accepted aspects of city life. However, there are rules that you must consider before killing or committing crimes:

Robbery

Robberies, crime, and shakedowns are accepted aspects of city life. However, there are rules that you must consider before robbing someone:

Camping job sites or legal job locations is forbidden.

Robbing new players: Camping spawn areas to rob new players is forbidden.

If someone is complying in a robbery, you must let them live unless you have a VALID reason for killing them.

Violent Crime

Killing Police: Your roleplay cannot just be "Killing Police." You may defend yourself if threatened by police, attempting to flee, or in conflict with the police. Simply killing cops to kill cops is considered RDM/VDM.

Killing EMS: You may not kill or injure EMS unnecessarily. EMS must fear for their lives. However, EMS reserve the right to not respond to a scene if they feel an area is dangerous or hostile.

Killing New Players: While allowed, you cannot seek out and target new players to make them lose their starting cash or kill them for being new.

Shakedowns and protection: Gangs, criminals, and illicit organizations can shakedown drug zones, player-owned businesses, and other gangs to demand protection money. However, you may not ask for white-listed jobs or non-player-owned businesses (vineyards, hotdog sellers, etc.) for protection money.

You must adequately roleplay any of the above situations, and demands must be reasonable. The onus is on you, not the victim, to properly roleplay criminal situations.

Being accidentally killed in the crossfire of a gang war or a violent dispute in a known gang area is not necessarily RDM.

Gangs

What kind of city would Los Santos be without the seedy underground, gangs, and criminal networks? However, even gangs have rules they need to follow:

Gang Whitelists: Gang White Listing allows you to maintain your gang, "hire-and-fire" members, promote/demote, and access specific in-game mechanics only available to all gangs.

Gang Whitelist requirements:

• Four or more established members when founding your gang. 

• 100,000 Dirty Money or ten coins

Gangs are allowed to:

• Claim colors, vehicles, and clothing (we will NOT white list them for your gang, do not ask)

• Make alliances

• Demand protection money

• Fight other gangs

• Claim and defend territory from other gangs

• Own legal front businesses

• Have gang discords and community groups

Gangs are not allowed to:

• Conduct gang activity in unrealistic areas

• Act as friend groups and not gangs.

• Use platforms like Discord to coordinate gang wars, send information, stream, or metagame.

• Have more than five members who have yet to purchase more slots.

Admins will not:

• Mediate between gangs

• Mediate between gangs and businesses

• Mediate between gangs and police

• "whitelist" colors, clothing, cars, or any items in-game for specific gangs.

• Give you a location/HQ simply for being a gang.

As a final note on gangs, and to reinforce an important point, gangs who are found to be “friend groups” or to be in UN-brokered peace agreements with other gangs will either be delisted or given a warning. If you don't want to act like a gang, we will not treat you like one.

Gang Wars

To initiate a gang war, simply take over another gang's territory, and a rival gang will be alerted of the territory's status. This means any conflicts within this territory are Kill on Sight if the territory status is flashing. However, to keep gang wars fair and rules clear, please keep in mind the following restrictions:

Gangs are allowed to:

• Claim territory 

Gangs are not allowed to:

• Kill on sight outside of gang territories. Some roleplay or interaction must proceed any conflict.

• Ignore the basic rules of the city. Camping bodies, carrying bodies to prevent respawning, and other “tactics” are not allowed during gang wars.

• VDM is NOT ALLOWED during gang wars or any other situation.

• Kill each other outside of hospitals, police stations, or other unrealistic areas without heavy RP or build-up.

• Intentionally trying to bait other gangs into conflicts through chain robbing and RDM.

• Gangs not actively fighting over territory must always attempt roleplay by pushing other gangs out of an area or building up to the conflict.

Businesses

Any business that requires a license (Vanilla Unicorn, Burgershot, etc.) that requires you to have an active business license falls under this category.

Custom business requests like these require a diamond supporter role to request. Your idea is not guaranteed and must be approved and reviewed by server staff.

Business license requirement:

• Must have at least 7 accumulated days of playtime in the city.

• Approved by city officials.

• Business proposal.

• Business licenses must be paid upon receiving your business. City officials will set the price.

Businesses are allowed to:

• Provide services in exchange for money in the amount they decide.

• Can decide who is allowed to work for them.

• Can ask/hire a gang for protection.

• Can aggressively compete with other opposing businesses.

• Have business discords and community groups.

• Have gang affiliation (Only one legal business front can be owned by a gang)

Admins will not:

• Mediate between businesses

• Mediate between gangs and businesses

• Mediate between businesses and police

• Provide you with any sort of incentives for being a prominent business

As a final note on businesses, a license can be revoked by a city official for any reason not listed in the rules when necessary. These rules are subject to change at any time, and you must know them.

White List Job Guidelines

The Following whitelisted jobs are required to complete a minimum weekly playtime:

• Police: 8 hours

• EMS: 8 hours

• Approved businesses: 4 hours

The following whitelisted roles are required to complete a minimum weekly playtime:

• Chief of Police: 10 hours

• Chief of EMS: 10 hours

• Whitelisted and approved businesses owners: Four hours 

Please note that Chiefs and business owners are expected to keep track of these hours as they see fit. These are not strictly hard numbers that must be met every week without exception as long as you give notice that you can't meet your obligation.

Equivalent Hours Rule:

To keep EMS and PD active, all members of PD (aside from recruits) must play the equivalent time spent on their civilian or gang character on their EMS or PD characters.

For example:

If your character is a gang member, and you have a character that is a police officer, and you spend 4 hours fighting in a gang war, you must play an equivalent 4 hours on your character that is a police officer (on or off duty).

This means you are allowed to be on your LSPD character off-duty, but must maintain your character. You can still do non-PD jobs or activities on that character but must remain in the city and roleplay as an off-duty cop if you are not on duty. 

Please note that this requirement only requires those who are active on civilian or alternative characters. Someone who plays 8 hours as EMS is not required to play 8 hours as a civilian.

Hours will be generally tracked by EMS and LSPD management, and those found not meeting equivalent hour requirements will be given a warning or asked to leave their position.

Hours do not need to be done back to back or all in one block, but playtime between characters must be balanced.

Whitelist Role Requirements

To maintain the integrity of RP scenarios, high-ranking EMS, Police, and certain whitelisted, player-owned business people must maintain separate characters if they decide to create a criminal character.

Requirements:

• You may not share inventories, money, inventories, vehicles, houses, or stashes between characters.

• You may not hold a commanding or decision-making role within a criminal organization or gang.

• You may not reference your role as the whitelisted character (going out of character) at any point, even if you see department/company rules being violated. 

• You may not share information or knowledge between characters.

• You must maintain an entirely separate existence between the two characters. This rule will be strictly enforced, and people found transferring items, information, or resources between their characters are at risk of losing their roles and having their characters wiped. 

Below is a list of jobs and their corresponding ranks required to follow the above rules:

• EMS: Chief and up

• LSPD: Corporal and up

Safe Zones

Safe Zones are various areas around the city designated by city officials as safe from things like dying, killing, and theft. You'll find these in areas like the skatepark. 

Safe Zones are not exempt from searches, arrests, and police activity. If police spot you in a safe zone following a crime, they can still arrest you and search you if they have cause.

You are not allowed to:

• Camp safe zones or use them to avoid dying during an active confrontation

• Steal out of trunks

• Lockpick and steal locked cars 

• Conduct drugs deals and weapon deals, and use the safe zone as protection

• Handcuff others

Note you may threaten, and bare your weapons in a safe zone in situations involving hostages or police. However, police are allowed to tase you if you use it to draw out the situation.

You are expected to respect safe zones and behave in a realistic manner near areas such as Aldore and police departments, where running gun battles and duels would not be considered realistic.

If someone attempts to rob or kidnap you in a safe zone, you are not obligated to go through with their RP. However, you cannot use safe zones to deny others in situations like this.

Police Operations

Due to the difficulty of policing and interpreting ambushes, surprise attacks, and other "mass casualty events" in the city, we have decided to implement additional countermeasures and specific rules to balance out the lopsided interactions when it comes to PD vs Gang interactions in these events. 

To balance this, any sort of "mass casualty event" Where a large number of gang members or criminals commit mass murder or destruction will be reported by civilians in the area to LSPD HQ. This means that depending on the severity of the attack or mass killing of officers (or even civilians and other gang members), police are authorized to declare a state of emergency for areas where this happens.

 Mass Casualty Event Rules: Following a mass casualty event, LSPD may request authorization from city officials to place an area where such an attack happened under a State of Emergency (SoE). Following approval, Police may institute the SoE in the following 12 hours. 

- An OPERATION will last 12 real-world hours (or until restart if started after reset). 

- Police may arrest individuals associated with the group, association, or gang on sight, and if they are armed, may shoot non-lethals on sight. If they have the weapons on hand, the police may switch to lethal. 

- Police may raid homes, and vehicles, and search people affiliated with the target of the operation. 

- Police will be authorized to use specific weapons and vehicles restricted to operations.

The operation will end after a large number of arrests or 24 hours.