First Steps for Red Dead RP

You’re brand new to all of this? Awesome! You’ve got an amazing journey ahead of you and we’re excited you chose to let us be part of that. We can’t wait to see where you go with all this. Remember that we’re always here to help. Let’s get you started.

1. Download Software

We know it looks like a lot, but if you’re here, there’s a good chance you already have one or more of the programs listed already installed on your computer.

Here’s the most necessary stuff. You can’t load in without these.

Once you’ve installed Red Dead Redemption II or Red Dead Online, load into the game and play for at least 15-30 minutes, or until you reach a stage where you can free roam. This will load a lot of the game elements onto your computer more efficiently and prevent extended load screens once launching RedM.

Recording Software

We strongly recommend that you download screen recording software and make use of it to record your gameplay whenever you are in the server. This isn’t just for streamers or for saving highlights (although it’s great for that too). More importantly, having the ability to make a video clip gives you evidence of events in case there’s an incident of a rule break.

2. Basic Roleplay Etiquette

In order for multiplayer roleplay to work in a way that stays fun for everyone, there are certain ground rules that need to be followed. When these rules aren’t followed people get hurt and no one is happy. Luckily, they’re pretty basic.

No Excuse for Bigotry

Keep in mind that historical roleplay is alternative history. It does not matter whether it may be historically accurate for your character to use slurs or express harmful views about different demographics. It is not acceptable in this setting. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, any other forms of bigotry will not be tolerated in this community.

No Winning or Losing

RP is not about winning and losing; it’s about writing stories. In any good story, the protagonist will face hardship in order to grow. Sometimes you’ll need to let your character have bad things happen to them. You will get robbed at some point. When you make a criminal character, they will eventually get caught. If you approach every situation with a need to “win” every interaction, then you are taking realistic RP away from the other players in the encounter.

Consent Comes First

Consent is crucial. Crossing boundaries without checking is an easy way to ruin everything. While this is an 18+ server and players should be prepared to encounter crime, violence, and adult themes in the game, they should still be able to enjoy their time and have some control over their character’s story. You must obtain prior consent out of character before engaging in romantic RP, supernatural RP, torture, or maiming. You may not force anyone to permanently kill (perma) their character. Only they are able to make the decision of when their character dies.

No Metagaming

Metagaming is the practice of allowing your character to use or act upon information that you (the player) obtained outside of the game and your character would have no way of knowing. Examples of this would include having your character refer to a scene they did not witness, but you read about in the Discord chat, or determining another character’s location by watching that player’s stream and sending your character to go meet them there.

Avoid RP Bleed

RP Bleeding is when you bring your character’s emotions and reactions to their lived events outside the game and allow them to influence your out-of-game behavior, or vice versa. What happens in the game should stay in the game. We are all here to write stories and act as fictional characters we’ve created. If your character is wronged by another character, that does not mean that you as a player have been wronged by the other character’s player. Keep it separate.

Don’t RP Fail

RP Fail is exactly what you’d expect: it’s any time someone fails to roleplay. This includes out-of-character conversation, dropping character mannerisms, or behaving in obviously unrealistic ways. For example, if your character sustains a serious injury and gets stitched up by a doctor, if you immediately take them gator wrestling instead of giving them time to recuperate, that’s Fail RP. If your character – who is living in the year 1901 – starts conversing about social media and livestreaming, that’s also Fail RP. If your canonically illiterate character reads a note someone slipped them, that counts as Fail RP too. If you’re in game, stay in character, and play out the natural consequences of events.

3. Common Terminology

• IC – In character
• OOC – Out of character
• The Storm – Server reset
• The County – The game server (The Gunslingers RP in this case)
• The Newspaper – The Discord server
• Wake up – Log on
• Go to sleep – Log off
• Take a nap – Reload the game
• Headache – Game glitching, freezing, or crashing
• The Government – Server staff
• Make a memory – Take a screenshot or video clip
• Think [command] – Hit your T key to open up the command line and then enter the text
• Flex your ________ muscle – Press whichever key or button got filled in the blank
• Seeing / hearing things – Having a visual or audio glitch respectively
• Spirit – The player behind the character
• Meta – Using information gained OOC while IC
• RP Bleed – Allowing IC events to affect OOC feelings & behavior or vice versa
• Fail RP – Neglecting to participate in RP realistic to the situation

Got it? Alright, click the button to move on to the next phase and we’ll get you into the server!