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[Guide] Starting an Illegal Faction on RCRP!

Lee

Platinum Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,750
Contents:
  1. 1 Essential Information
    • 1.1 Illegal Faction Application Rules
    • 1.2 Illegal Faction Rules
    2 Understanding Your Faction
    • 2.1 Brainstorming Stage
    • 2.2 Researching and Familiarizing with Your Concept
    • 2.3 Location of Faction
    • 2.4 Character and Faction Development(pre-creation)
    3 Creating Your Thread
    • 3.1 Research, Format and Layout
    • 3.2 Rules, Guidelines and Permissions
    4 Maintaining Your Thread
    • 4.1 Screenshots
    • 4.2 Character and Faction Development(post-creation)
    • 4.3 Keeping the Thread Tidy

1 ESSENTIAL INFORMATION

  • 1.1 Illegal Faction Application Rules

    This guide will not go through the entire ruleset as they are mainly common sense, easy to follow mandatory rules that need to be in place. It is heavily advised that anyone looking to create a faction should read and understand these rules so you do not visit any complications when creating your thread. The rule regarding having 3 members in your faction is self explanatory, alongside the fact that it is incredibly hard to start and maintain a faction by yourself. You must also understand that Faction Administration reserve the right to shut down any factions if they are found in breach of all rulesets on RCRP / misrepresenting the server. Take your time to read through the faction application rules.

  • 1.2 Illegal Faction Rules

    Much similar to 1.1, you must also understand the illegal faction rules in place. These are applied when you are roleplaying in your faction to make sure the playing field is kept level from faction to faction. Factions found in breach of any illegal faction rules will receive retrospective punishment depending on the severity of the breach. This ruleset is also comprehensive and easy to follow. Make sure before even considering your faction you understand these rules.

2 UNDERSTANDING YOUR FACTION

  • 2.1 Brainstorming Stage

    This stage in the development of your faction is one of the most crucial. Gather up the players in which you are looking to roleplay with and decide the concept you are going to task yourself with. If you are new to creating factions, you may want to stick to something which suits all of your members' and your own strengths. Although, if you're looking for a challenge, task yourself with something that you have never done before. If you are taking on this, you must get yourself even more familiar with the concept before committing yourself to the roleplay so you are able to have an idea if you're going to enjoy the concept.
  • 2.2 Researching and Familiarizing with Your Concept

    Google is your best friend here. Once you and your group of roleplayers have decided what to roleplay, you must become familiar with it by researching it. Spend a fair amount of time ensuring your idea of the concept is strong, you could even make notes / lists to further mark your understanding. Going into your roleplay without a clear understanding of what you want to roleplay will have a detrimental effect on the outcome of quality produced. It'll lead to uncertainties on an OOC basis which may put your faction in a poor light.
  • 2.3 Location of Faction

    After you and your aspiring faction members have fully familiarized with the decided concept, you should delegate on the location where your faction will be based. When deciding this factor you should make sure that the location is beneficial to your roleplay(purchasable buisnesses, custom mappings to use, etc). It is always important to understand and roleplay as a part of your local community. Regardless of roleplaying a mob, a gang, or anything else you should base your characters off of the actions that happen regularly around the area in which you're roleplaying, but I will get to character / faction development in the next sub-section. It's advisable to start up a faction on turf that is not claimed so you have a chance to develop yourself and do not get thrown into the deep end.
  • 2.4 Character and Faction Development(pre-creation)

    One of, if not, the most important factors to roleplay. After getting familiar with the base of your faction you must then create and understand your characters. Make a word document, note down all of your traits, your personality and your physical build. Get to know your character, and most importantly, get in-character. Roleplay is most fun when you're not roleplaying a concept close to yourself. Go out of your comfort zone, if you're looking to roleplay something unique, get to understand it first so you can roleplay it as realistically as possible. Create friendships inside your faction. In big groups, they're not all the bestest of best friends, create tight-knit groups inside the faction. Be realistic!

3 CREATING YOUR THREAD

  • 3.1 Research, Format and Layout

    A lot of research goes into the creation of faction, and it starts with it again on the integral part of the process.
    Put research into the many different forms of which your thread can take up. Roleplay has evolved since it's emergence on early SA-MP, we've moved on from large headers with "Backstory", "Skins", "Vehicles", so make sure your topic is an evolved state also. Your topic does not need to be a stupid amount of characters, quality over quantity, always. You could write an article on a recent happening with your faction, be that gun violence, a robbery, any sort of crime which would be article-worthy. You could produce a wikipedia page, a streetgangs.com page, the list goes on, if you're going to roleplay a large organisation you could piece together a case file as your topic. Be creative!

    People want to be captivated when they enter your thread, make them want to read your thread. "One day Billy and Tom were living on the street, and they saw a killing, this encouraged them into the gang life" personal stories like these will not suffice. Write it in the third person, or even from another person's point-of-view. Make it believable and make it realistic. We don't need to know what vehicles and skins are accepted anymore. It's 2017. You also have to remember your faction thread is an insight into your faction, that is what will encourage people to roleplay with you, represent yourself properly and do not undersell your potential.

  • 3.2 Rules, Guidelines and Permissions

    After your first post has been completed, you've articulated yourself in a manner which is immersive and intriguing, you should get the second post on your thread by simply posting "reserved". This is heavily advised. In this post you can post what you expect of members(to follow server rules, typical ways to approach, ages(if a street gang), screenshot methods), inside this post you should also include screenshot permissions and CK permissions. These are a necessity to illegal faction roleplay. The CK perms ensure that you reserve the right to remove anyone from your faction IC or OOC, nobody wants a player misrepresenting the concept they have spent ages putting together. The screenshot permissions are to ensure that no screenshots that do not hit your quality standards reach your thread. Players will have to send a message requesting screenshot permission with an example of their image to your PM's. Here is a prime example of a good information post:

    Paxie said:
    Before joining our faction, there are several things you need to acknowledge;

    • This faction aims to portray a realistic gang environment with emphasis on individual character development.
    • Following the emphasis on character development, all current players roleplaying with the faction are outsiders except for a few who roleplay inducted into the set. Aspiring members should roleplay around the age of 12 to 16.
    • All recruitment is done through In Character events and it takes a long time to be initiated into our faction.
    • We do not condone rule breaking of any sort, and have a strike system for members which you will be told about once you become an Outsider of our faction.
    • We expect all aspiring members to send CK permissions to Paxie on the RCRP forums using the following format.
      • I, Firstname_Lastname, agree to be character killed for any reason whether it be IC or OOC by the management of No Fucks Given 14."

    • We do require screenshot permission and all aspiring members must ask for permission prior to posting screenshots. This can be done by forum PMing your screenshots to either Martin_Monterroso or Armando_Iglesias on our private forums.
    • All screenshots must be edited using this method.
    • We use our own private forum and expect all aspiring members to register and use it daily. Register on http://nfg14.prophpbb.com/ with Firstname_Lastname.
    • You must read Paxie's Gang Character Development guide prior to approaching our faction.
  • 3.3 Private Forums(optional)

    If you're looking to be completely organised whilst an unofficial faction you could create a private forum. Here you have free roam to manage your faction, have activity reports, modifications sections, character profiles, etc. Just be prepared that a faction admin may ask for access to the forum to monitor the on goings of the faction to make sure there is no rule breaks.

4 MAINTAINING YOUR THREAD

  • 4.1 Screenshots

    I cannot stress how important roleplay screenshots are in the maintaining of your thread. Screenshots are the cornerstone of your image. People come to your faction thread to see the quality of roleplay, they look straight at your screenshots.

    There are multiple ways to edit screenshots, and it is complete personal preference. Using LSRP+, the most straight forward method, can be effective in showing off roleplay at a moderate quality. A big turn off in LSRP+ edited screenshots is *The group completes an action* this is not proper roleplay that could have happened in-game. Faction administration will keep a close eye on all unofficial faction threads, their screenshots and the roleplay shown in their screenshots. LSRP+ is an easy way to manipulate screenshots and lie about what actually happened.

    The method of using photoshop as guided by Dexev or Haymann is, currently, the most favored way to edit screenshots. However if you do not have access to photoshop, you can use Woods' guide on Paint.Net. Here you can get a balance of your own preference. You can decide to crop the entire image into the picture, or a sole object which the roleplay is focused upon. You really have full reign over what can be done in photoshop as opposed to LSRP+ edited screenshots. There is also much more potential to create your own style of screenshots in photoshop. This method is also the most trustworthy way of editing screenshots as you have to pull the roleplay text directly from a /blindme screenshot.

    Posting screenshots on your thread regularly is all well and good, but you have to remember the key. Quality over quantity. You could have 100 pages of subpar screenshots, opposed to a faction with less pages but a faction who keep their quality high in every batch of screenshots. It is not a competition to see who can get the most pages, it's about creating and keeping a good image of yourself and your faction.

    Here is a quick list of guidelines that can be followed in regards to having the correct substance for your screenshots. This was a quick brainstorm in discord, and I will write up a definitive list that people can go off of by the end of tomorrow, at the latest:

    When posting screenshots and also when advising your members to post screenshots, this is a good guide as to what screenshots should be posted on your faction thread.

    Every screenshot posted on the topic should include at least one of these points:
    • The screenshot shows a meaningful development within the faction.
    • The screenshot shows a meaningful development of your own character.
    • The screenshot shows a meaningful development of another members character.
    • The screenshot shows an event that happened within the faction.
    • The screenshot shows an event that the faction got involved with.

    You should not:
    • Post screenshots using /do as NPC's or rping another character(real or not) through /me's created on a 3rd party program. Keep your roleplay to actual /me's that happened in-game.
  • 4.2 Character and Faction Development(post-creation)

    Now your faction is in full swing, keep on developing. No time to slack. The only way is up, and onwards. The development of not just character, but your faction also is the key to staying interested and motivated to log-in and roleplay. Keep everything fresh, ensure that what happened yesterday affects your character today, and some of the actions may affect the events of the faction in a good or bad way. If you have an influx of new roleplayers, make sure they're kept interested, this could be through being mysterious, or it could be through inviting them into illegal or passive activities. It's good to let outsiders roleplay with other outsiders but make sure they have some recognition once in a while otherwise they will be pushed away from the faction feeling like they aren't wanted there. In a faction, make sure the circles aren't kept too tight that it's impossible to break into.
  • 4.3 Keeping the Thread Tidy

    Your thread is the main place for faction administration to view your roleplay and contributions to the server to decide whether you're in contention to become official, which should be every faction's goal. After the inevitable page or three of good lucks, and comments etc, try to keep any chit-chat / arguments on your thread to a minimum. It looks bad if there's no media for two to three pages due to an argument that has happened. If someone comes to your thread with comments that aren't constructive and could be possibly defacing your thread, simply report their post and ask for it to be deleted. If you feel like contacting the person further you should hit their PM's and see if they actually had any constructive criticism about the faction, as all factions are liable to weak spots, we're all looking to become the best versions of ourselves.

Written & Composed by Lee
Sections and sub-sections aided by Paxie

I hope this guide is helpful for people creating a new faction. Good luck to everyone if you're using this to begin your faction. If I've missed anything obvious please let me know and it will be added.
 

Feniksxx

Silver Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2016
Messages
1,184
Location
Croatia
Nice, also thanks for the streetgangs.com. If you combine this guide with one guy who was in white fence you would be a very good roleplayer instantly lol.
 
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