Server Rules

Everyone here is a real person who chose to spend their free time with us. This rule makes sure nobody's evening is ruined by abuse dressed up as roleplay.

Harassment, discrimination, hate speech, and targeted abuse are never roleplay, no matter how the scene is framed. Sexually explicit scenes are banned everywhere on the server, even when everyone involved agrees: simulated sexual acts, sexual animations, and sexually explicit /me or /do descriptions are all prohibited. Nudity is allowed only inside private clubs that are out of public view and advertise nudity at the door. Other heavy themes, such as torture and graphic abuse, need clear consent from everyone involved before they are played out, and any player can decline them at any time without having to explain why. If a scene is heading somewhere another player has clearly not agreed to, it is on you to steer it away. Your character can be cruel; the player behind them never should be. This rule applies everywhere on the server, including inside the Los Santos Exclusionary Zone.

The basic fair-play rules every community has: play the game the way it was built, and don't take shortcuts that ruin it for everyone else.

No cheats, mod menus, injectors, macros, or third-party tools that give you an advantage. No exploiting bugs, glitches, duplication tricks, or script errors. If you find one, report it to staff privately and don't spread it around. No ban evasion, account sharing, or alternate accounts used to get around a punishment. Playing in other roleplay communities is completely allowed. What you do on another server is between you and that community; it is not our authority to enforce, and it will never be held against you here.

When you're in a scene, other people are counting on you to see it through. Leaving mid-scene takes the story away from everyone else in it.

Don't disconnect, log off, switch characters, or respawn to avoid an arrest, a robbery, a death, or any other outcome you don't like. Don't use game systems, like storing a car in a garage mid-chase or stashing items while you're held at gunpoint, to escape what's happening in front of you. Real life happens and games crash. If you drop unexpectedly, come back if you can, let the people involved know what happened, and make a good-faith effort to pick the scene back up. This rule applies everywhere on the server, including inside the LSEZ.

The High Court is the final guardian of the Constitution. It exists so that no office, vote, or verdict in the city can quietly override the rights the Constitution guarantees.

The High Court is a council made up of every department head, staff leader, and community director or manager. It rules only on in-character matters, and only when the matter in question offends the Constitution. The Court steps in automatically in two situations: when the Civic Committee makes a ruling and the people oppose it, and whenever the Department of Justice hands down a sentence of life in prison. Beyond those, the Court only hears a case when a DOJ decision in an actual court case is appealed on constitutional grounds. It does not otherwise intervene. When it rules, it rules on the Constitution alone: not on in-city laws, and never on real-life court cases or case law.

Not everything can be written down as a rule. This one covers the rest: the spirit of the game, and the experience this community means for everyone to have.

Every rule added makes the list longer, and a long list makes the important rules harder to follow, the whole system less clear, and loopholes easier to find. So instead of trying to predict every situation, this rule covers anything that goes against esprit de jeu, the spirit of the game. If something is technically allowed but clearly works against the shared, story-first experience we're building, it falls here. Because this rule is intentionally broad and depends on the situation, breaking it is not a bannable offense on its own. Instead, staff may pull you aside under this rule to talk about what happened and how to keep it from happening again.

THIS RULE DOES NOT APPLY WITHIN THE EXCLUSIONARY ZONE OF LOS SANTOS, EXCEPT LS CUSTOMS.

Your character should act like their life matters, because in a realistic world it does. Fear, pain, and risk are what give a scene its weight.

Treat serious injury, lethal force, arrest, and credible threats with the weight they would carry in real life. When someone points a gun at your empty-handed character, your character should be afraid for their life and act like it. Characters can be brave, reckless, or defiant, but bravado has limits: taking on impossible odds because respawning is an option isn't roleplay. When a character is badly hurt, the injury should show in how they act for the rest of the scene.

THIS RULE IS SUSPENDED WITHIN THE LOS SANTOS EXCLUSIONARY ZONE (LSEZ), EXCEPT LS CUSTOMS.

Every player in a scene gets a say in what happens to their own character. Powergaming takes that choice away from them.

Powergaming is forcing an outcome onto someone else, or doing something your character couldn't realistically do. That includes narrating another character's actions or reactions for them, writing /me or /do lines that leave the other person no room to respond, and bending game mechanics to pull off things that would never work in the real world. Describe what your character attempts and leave the result open. Let the other player decide how their character reacts, and accept a reasonable answer even when it isn't the one you hoped for. Scenes move fast, but everyone involved deserves a fair chance to act before the next thing happens to them.

Your character only knows what they've learned in the world. Metagaming is letting what you know as a player leak into what your character does.

Anything you learn outside the game (from Discord, a livestream, a group chat, a friend in the same room, or another character you play) doesn't exist for your character until they learn it in the city. Don't use it to find someone, avoid someone, predict a plan, or know a name nobody told you. If you pick something up out of character, the right move is to play as though you never heard it. This rule applies everywhere on the server, including inside the LSEZ.

Characters can hate each other; players shouldn't. What happens in the story stays in the story.

Characters argue, feud, rob, betray, and arrest each other, and that's what makes the city worth living in. The players behind them should stay friendly and cooperative through all of it. Never turn an in-character loss into out-of-character retaliation: no insulting someone in Discord because their character beat yours, no rallying friends against a player over a scene, and no carrying grudges from one character to another. If a scene really did break the rules, report it through a ticket (rule 5-01) and let staff handle it.

Scenes only work when everyone stays in them. Breaking character pulls the whole scene out of the world, not just you.

YOU CAN REFUSE TO ENGAGE IN A SCENE THAT VIOLATES RULE 1-01.

Nobody will be forced to engage in harmful or traumatic roleplay that violates clear consensual boundaries.

Never stop or pause a scene, and never inject administration into it while it's happening. That means no talking out of character mid-scene, no announcing that you're sending a ticket, filing a complaint, or sending "prayers" to the city, and no arguing the rules with the people you're playing with. Play the scene out to its natural end, then follow up with staff afterward if you believe something went wrong. Staff can review footage and logs later; a scene that was stopped can't be put back together.

A little corruption makes a story richer; too much breaks the city for everyone. This rule draws the line between the two.

Anyone who is not a member of Staff, High Command, the Highway Patrol, or the Civic Committee may take part in corruption roleplay. That corruption has to grow out of your character's story, and it has to stay small: an officer who looks the other way for a friend, a clerk who can be bribed to rush paperwork, a supervisor who takes a kickback. Corruption that damages the whole server is off limits. That means large-scale theft of public funds, abusing scripts for personal gain, and handing out department equipment, vehicles, or access in bulk. The excluded roles hold the trust that keeps oversight honest, so they stay clean.

Public servants act on behalf of everyone, so their official actions need to follow the policies their department has published.

Arrests, searches, detentions, citations, medical care, use of force, and every other official act must follow your department's established policies and procedures. Characters make mistakes, have bad days, and cut corners because of who they are, and that's roleplay. A deviation only breaks this rule when it had nothing to do with your character's story or personality and you, as the player, should reasonably have known to do it differently. Put simply: a character flaw is roleplay; skipping policy because it's inconvenient is not.

Public institutions belong to the public, so the public gets to check their work.

Departments, public offices, and anyone spending public money have to cooperate when the Civic Committee or another authorized review asks to see what they did. Keep the records that make a fair review possible: reports, logs, and the paper trail behind decisions. Some details can stay private to protect an active investigation or a person's privacy, but "we'd rather not" is never a reason to hide something. Openness is how the city keeps its trust in the people who serve it.

THIS RULE IS SUSPENDED WITHIN THE LOS SANTOS EXCLUSIONARY ZONE (LSEZ), EXCEPT LS CUSTOMS.

Nobody should be shot without seeing it coming. Violence needs a clear reason and a clear warning.

ROBBING, AMBUSHING, OR ASSAULTING COPS ON A SIMPLE TRAFFIC STOP IS NOT ALLOWED.

Before initiating violence, the threat must be clear and direct, or assumed by the nature of the roleplay. A clear threat is one the other person can see and respond to: a demand, a warning, a weapon drawn with words behind it. Some situations carry the threat on their own, like a shootout already underway, a hostage standoff, or a pursuit of an armed suspect, and don't need a fresh warning every time. What isn't allowed is opening fire out of nowhere, or jumping from a heated argument straight to killing someone with no chance to back down.

Our crime systems exist to start roleplay, give others something to investigate, and build relationships across the community, not to be farmed for money.

Criminal activity should lead somewhere: an investigation, a rivalry, a negotiation, a name on the street. We will never punish legitimate criminal characters for committing crimes, but treating robberies and illegal jobs as a checklist to clear as fast as possible defeats the point. Grinding crimes and running between robberies will result in personal lockouts and staff intervention. Take your time, plan the job, and let the fallout play out before you start the next one.

Don't play to win. Play to fit the character you built.

If you commit a crime and get caught, play along with it. Being arrested, charged, and booked is part of your character's story, and some of the best roleplay happens in the back of a patrol car, in an interview room, or in front of a judge. Make it fun and memorable for everyone involved instead of fighting every outcome. And don't worry about losing your whole evening: the majority of your prison sentence can be served on parole. You'll be out before you know it.

THIS RULE IS SUSPENDED WITHIN THE LOS SANTOS EXCLUSIONARY ZONE (LSEZ), EXCEPT LS CUSTOMS.

The number of people at a crime should fit the crime. Bringing an army to a small job makes it impossible for anyone else to respond.

Keep the number of people involved in any criminal event proportional to the crime itself. A gang wouldn't take ten people to rob a corner store, and a small crew shouldn't be facing half the police force either. Law enforcement follows proportional unit maximums too, so both sides get a fair scene. Those limits come off when an officer goes down: once an officer is shot or seriously hurt, departments can respond with whatever they have.

When something goes wrong, a ticket is how it gets fixed: fairly, privately, and on the record.

If you think someone broke a rule, finish the scene first (rule 2-05), then open a ticket with staff in our Discord. Include what happened, when it happened, who was involved, and any clips or screenshots you have. Recording your gameplay makes this much easier. Don't take it to public channels, don't call people out in general chat, and don't try to settle it yourself. Staff will hear every side before deciding anything.

Staff need to be able to act quickly, and players need a way to challenge mistakes. This rule protects both.

When a staff member gives you a direct instruction in the moment, follow it, even if you disagree. Afterward you have every right to question it: open an appeal and a different staff member will review the decision. Good-faith criticism of staff is welcome here, because that's what accountability means. Harassing staff, arguing in public channels, or going from one staff member to the next until you hear the answer you want is not.

The community doesn't end at the edge of the map. Our Discord, voice channels, and out-of-character chat are shared spaces too.

Treat people in our Discord and in out-of-character chat the way you'd want to be treated. No harassment, hate speech, slurs, or personal attacks. Never share someone's personal information, photos, or real-life details without their permission. No spam, mass pings, or unsolicited advertising. Keep things in the right channels, and keep anything explicit or shocking out entirely. Disagreeing is fine; this rule is about how you do it.

The rules apply to everyone the same way. Rank, popularity, or supporting the server never buys an exception.

Staff, department leaders, long-time members, content creators, and players who support the server financially all follow the same rules as someone who joined yesterday. Staff who misuse their tools or position can be reported like anyone else, and those reports are handled by someone other than the person involved. Support through the shop keeps the lights on; it never buys protection from a punishment or an edge in a scene. It's the same accountability we expect from every institution in the city.