The State of Roleplay Servers in Vintage Story

[tibbers]

Where are the Role Players?

I've been in the VS community for a year now and it seems to me that Roleplay or RP servers seem to be different than what is defined as Roleplay/RP

Maybe it was Dark RP on Gmod or GTA 3-5 Roleplay that has changed the definition of RP/Roleplay into more of:

"I will act like myself on a hot mic."

There are servers out there that, in writing, are trying to be HeavyRP. Servers with rules like:

1. In game at all times you must speak IC when around other players. If talking OOC use ((I am talking OOC)) brackets to define your OOC.

or,

2. General chat has been deleted and there is only proximity chat and RP voice chat, only use this to communicate IC.

Before getting to the servers themselves, this is the most important thing from this thread:

1. The vast majority of players on RP servers DON'T ROLEPLAY. Even if there are strict rules by the server owner(s). (Where are the roleplayers?)

2. When you Roleplay or RP on a microphone/voice chat you are not separating yourself from your character. This will inevitably lead to confusion. (did their character say that? or IRL them? Was that OOC, or IC?) Hurt feelings. Drama is inevitable. He said She said arguments. This happens because players don't know the difference when a character insults a character, instead they're just throwing insults at themselves.

Alright, personal gripe over:

This is the State of VS Roleplay servers:

Every RP server with hardcore RP rules: I join a 18+ server and somehow the players who have characer profiles where they are a 120 year old Dwarf sound like a they are 16 (because they are using a hot mic). This just breaks any immersion and fun I could be having because they are a bit of a joke unto themselves. The rules state to talk in IC at all times, players around me are talking normally as they would on discord, on their mics in game, I ask them to speak IC and they say "we are." Okay.

Civilization RPPVP which means that the RP is done through what the Civilizations do and what their members within that Civilization do. These servers become a hotbed for drama, admin abuse, and usually groups of bad actors actually trying to ruin the fun of others. This is a very common server. Resurgence, Realms of Candor, Alathra, CoT. There's something about RP servers with any kind of hierarchy that forms within the game where drama inevitably forms. This is a game where a player could spend months building a castle and on this server lose it all because of Civ Drama. RP "wars" start over the silliest and most IRL drama.

CityRP server: which is a server that disables pretty much all the fun from VS and forces everyone to live in one place and play within their class. This means that if you're a tailor you can't go out and chop down trees, mine, fight, etc. The server I joined I was immediately met with a troll who told me on their hot mic to throw away all my characters clothes. Turns out that player was server staff. These servers can work but the issue with these servers are that the rules aren't properly displayed. This server I joined the 4th rule was "cannot leave town by yourself" and that was the only indication that this server was a CityRP server.

Worldbuilding RP server: I joined a couple servers like this that... are honestly great! No drama, you're just building and naming your towns and creating a world based around what other people are building. There are discord threads where you post your character profile, post your town and its lore. No PvP - no person-to-person RP.

I just saw a server that is RP and is advertised as a protected community for minorities and LGBT and that's great BUT it speaks to what the culture is like online on VS and many servers where their discord is run by bad actors or just have bad actors in it. Props to whoever builds a community that works for them.

Where are the Role Players?

How can these servers be fixed? Fixed, yes, they are broken because they do not last. They crumble in on themselves from drama. They are broken!

Leaders. Tyrannical, Angry, Rude, Edgelord/Nazi, Racist, Absent, etc:

Replace them with an NPC and the administration of the Faction is done by the faction playerbase voting on stories written by players within the faction. Instead of a 16 year old King drunk on power and starting drama for whatever reason, everyone within the faction makes the choice. Open to suggestions. Example,

"King Roderick of Asterheim declares that Davenport will be brought into the Kingdom by referendum." 4 votes yea, 2 votes nay
"King Roderick of Asterheim declares War on Davenport and the fledging village will be brought into the Kingdom by force." 2 votes yea, 4 votes nay
"Fuck Davenport." 0 votes yea, 0 votes nay

War.

VS multiplayer combat SUCKS. We all know this. Many servers have War rules and for the most part they are good. Alliances are formed, bullies get teamed up on, etc. Wars in and of themselves should be changed. This thread is all about ROLEPLAY. War could be "fought" with the simplest example being dice rolls with modifiers like "+2 to roll for Castle Deadrock, +1 town of Newport" etc. That is the simplest example. Hilariously CoT has a system where players fight in the game Mordhau which when I learned of this I laughed at loud. Hilarious but a good way to make duelling more dynamic and fun because, again, VS combat with latency/ping isn't very fair.

Banditry + Spies (fun as an idea but in reality just another great way to create drama and destroy/abandon servers)

Players come into an established server that has been going for a time. The server has towns, cities, Kingdoms even, it's Year 4-5 and they want to start "their own Kingdom" but it's too late to be King of anything so they instead become Bandits... aka (for the most part) little shits that try to ruin the fun of others on the server.

Closing thoughts:

The internet hasn't changed in the last 20 years. There will always be edgelords and nazis. All of which are the true roleplayers, because in real life they are Middle Class, usually white, who love their mum and daddy but online they brood and act like awful people. It's a tale as old as time. If you advertise your twitch, which has your facebook/instagram linked I will tell your mummy like I did on Alathra.

I didn't play Minecraft online, I skipped over Minecraft but I can only IMAGINE the kind of shit that would happen on the daily in Minecraft servers/discords.

[Big Shasta]

oh hey!

You like to smoke bath salts and play VS too??!!

[LadyWYT]

Out of curiosity OP, have you considered starting your own RP server? While it's a lot more work than just logging in and playing on an existing server, it will allow you to curate the kind of content you wish to see. There are likely other players out there looking for something similar to what you're after.

20 hours ago, tibbers said:

1. The vast majority of players on RP servers DON'T ROLEPLAY. Even if there are strict rules by the server owner(s). (Where are the roleplayers?)

Going off my days in the World of Warcraft RP community, the reason a lot of non-RPers join the RP servers is because they like the atmosphere and sometimes like to watch the RPers make the world come alive. Which most RPers were chill about, as long as the non-RPers weren't being intentionally disruptive.

There's also the case of...sometimes you just want to play the game and get stuff done, in which case you're going to save the RPing for Discord channels or something. The drawback of doing all the RP stuff in-game is that it does slow things down significantly, and not everyone is after that kind of experience.

20 hours ago, tibbers said:

2. When you Roleplay or RP on a microphone/voice chat you are not separating yourself from your character. This will inevitably lead to confusion. (did their character say that? or IRL them? Was that OOC, or IC?) Hurt feelings. Drama is inevitable. He said She said arguments. This happens because players don't know the difference when a character insults a character, instead they're just throwing insults at themselves.

Most roleplaying in general, really. I would say that aside from trolls, a lot of the drama is generated by players who are after very different things in their roleplaying, trying to play together. If you have people expecting a laid back "beer and pretzels" kind of story, they're not likely to get along with those who want a super serious in-depth story, and vice versa. Likewise, even if the story expectations are the same, there's also differences in writing quality, which can also sour a setting. It all comes down to what's expected of the server's playerbase.

Personally, I think serious storylines are best suited for small groups of players that are already friends with each other. Smaller groups are easier to plan for, and the players already being friends means they'll likely already have similar values and expectations. A public server, however(especially a big one), will require dealing with the general public...and anyone who's worked with the general public knows that's not usually a fun time. Not that it can't be done--there's obviously some that have had some success--but I would say that it's a lot harder to run serious stories on a public server.

[Awaryll]

As someone who's been in the rp game for a long while, it's REALLY hard to find a truly dedicated roleplay group that enforces strict rp guidelines. I'd love to join a truly dedicated group for something like this, so if you find something, lemme know!

[Forthh]

That's a really long post, so long that I got lost halfway through reading it. I've also been looking for a roleplaying server, so unlucky that I ended up creating my own that works reasonably well good

[Sir_Niccum]

-snip-

Edited November 26, 2025 by Sir_Niccum

[LoveWyrm]

I just wanted to chime in on voice quality and voice acting. I have GMed quite a few pen and paper rpg campaigns and I don't think I have ever rewarded thespian/voice acting in a gameplay advantage.
It's cool, of course, and I put on voices myself, but to me, role playing is just acting and thinking in the characters way, and people have different ways of doing that.

Some do it first person, some third person, some voice act, some method act, some dont' act at all but still play from the perspective of their characters.

So, to me, the 120 year old dwarf who sounds like a voice breaking puberty youth is fine, as long as he's doing his part in being the character.

 

But we all got our tastes so if that takes you out of it, then that's just how it is.

[Yuyoshi]

hi, this is my first time interacting with the forums here so i apologize for any failures of formatting. 

I began playing this game towards the end of Resurgence, where it was my first time joining a MP server and rp server. I was one of the leaders who colonized Fort Ambrose and turned it into New Ambrose with the previous base owner's permission. Life on the server with me and my friends began great until we were shown just how corrupt and abusive the admins were. We had heard rumors but having joined under Polaris (the admin faction), we had a good relationship especially with one of the main heads of the nation. Soon after joining, we watched as the main general of the nation go to another groups island, fail rp and just started slaughtering and spawn camping them due to our group accepting a dave statue that we had no idea was illegal to own. Now we happily accepted the statue, thinking it looked bad ass and loved the rp of smuggling goods, but this did not sit well with us one bit, especially after the response that the admin team gave to the event. completely on Moki's side (the guy who broke the rules) the admins decided to make the opposition's lives a living hell, eventually resulting in them getting chased off the server. they weren't the only folks who were chased off, as another player named Sophie who was an amazing rp-er and was absolutely a treat was harassed at her own island thousands of blocks away by a Polaris member via mic and ended up leaving the server. seeing as all the people we actively engaged with and rp-ed with leaving, we were left in effectively a dead server with empty towns surrounding us with Polaris reigning supreme. We decided to leave.

Finding another server called Candor, we were the first nation to set up. Known as Vanuchi, we picked the mouth of a river on the main continent to live in and rp as a trade nation dedicated to simply shipping and selling goods. To cut a very long story short, my group was bullied, griefed and harassed for an entire month at the behest of THE SERVER OWNER who actively encouraged this behavior and even gave info to the griefers to help them with their goals! by the end of the server, many of my friends refused to ever touch the game again due to the sheer amount of hate and griefing. So many things were wrong with that server that it sorta killed any and all motivation to play.

fast forwarding maybe a few months, we join up with Ironhold on Alathra, being some of the founding members of the main city and tasked with building it. What went wrong? infighting. The smiths thought we weren't doing anything and refused to work with us, we believed they were being greedy ****s who were ordering us around and not contributing, it was a whole mess. we didn't stay long as the server owner from Candor became a mod in Alathra. vowing to never interact with that bigot who encouraged everything in Candor, we left once more. 

Why am i posting all of this? From what ive experienced, there seems to be two main camps in the vintage story rp scene. You have the "soft" rp servers that are glorified survival servers with mild rp rules and little player interaction, and then you have the civ servers who 50% of the time are treated as basically Rust servers. My group wants to play again, to find a true rp server that doesn't devolve into hell again but it feels like we are constantly just bullied off the servers we join. Its unfortunate because i genuinely love this game, but theres simply no reason to play if i'm going to be alone.

[GarlicIV]

Pretty much 100% my experience. I do worldbuilding RP, just posting my updated lore profile and doing builds in a way that worldbuilds, but no person to person RP as I discovered 20 years ago during dungeons and dragons, people cant divorce RP from "Speaking in a hollywood midevil accent and referencing Tolkein" which is not how I see my character in the world that VS already gives us. 

[Fey Shadow]

You also have to worry about servers that advertise that they are RP servers and then they enforce nothing.  I recently left Vintage Story Civilizations because of these issues.  Youtube videos fake you out and the server is 100% different.  I filed a ticket because someone made it very obvious they were dm'in someone outside of game about ores on my land and I was pretty much ran off my land over it and staff told me "RP is not enforced".  I may have been a hermit/cave dweller but 90% of my interactions were just people usin hotmics, talkin slang, bringing up IRL politics, etc.

It's really hard to find anything decent. I have a friend that is doing one but he's looking for testers and stuff for it though so fingers crossed his can get up and running because he wants something more RP heavy.

 

Edited November 28, 2025 by Fey Shadow

[Yuyoshi]

On 11/28/2025 at 9:34 AM, Fey Shadow said:

 I have a friend that is doing one but he's looking for testers and stuff for it though so fingers crossed his can get up and running because he wants something more RP heavy.

 

Care to share when they start it up? ive got a group of.... 3 to 5 including myself who would be interested. i can share my discord if you like.

[Sparkplug04]

6 hours ago, Yuyoshi said:

Care to share when they start it up? ive got a group of.... 3 to 5 including myself who would be interested. i can share my discord if you like.

Might be interested as well.

I've been curious about trying a civ & story focused RP server but none of them are 1.21.4/5 and have Combat Overhaul which I just absolutely adore... A shame too, considering the CO suite offers some good RP potential! You get to make weapons of many classes and Blackguards get to rant like mad about their melee!
A shame to hear a lot of them are like the Cocoa Hoarders though.

[Zirinth]

On 11/28/2025 at 8:34 AM, Fey Shadow said:

You also have to worry about servers that advertise that they are RP servers and then they enforce nothing.  I recently left Vintage Story Civilizations because of these issues.  Youtube videos fake you out and the server is 100% different.  I filed a ticket because someone made it very obvious they were dm'in someone outside of game about ores on my land and I was pretty much ran off my land over it and staff told me "RP is not enforced".  I may have been a hermit/cave dweller but 90% of my interactions were just people usin hotmics, talkin slang, bringing up IRL politics, etc.

It's really hard to find anything decent. I have a friend that is doing one but he's looking for testers and stuff for it though so fingers crossed his can get up and running because he wants something more RP heavy.

 

i would also like to join are test if able

[aparkedcar]

I rent a server that i've had for a while, I play on it mostly solo or with my brother (lives on the other side of the country) and dont play multiplayer/RP for all the reasons stated above, despite very seriously wanting to play on a ADULT RP world building server. I'd be willing to make a discord and have anyone who wants to make it happen, I cant stand trolls/griefers/clowns that ruin the intended fun, so I would be pretty on top of kicking bad actors. Or rather, if someone gets a server like this going, I'd be pretty happy to join as well.

[OBAMFSpike]

18 hours ago, aparkedcar said:

I rent a server that i've had for a while, I play on it mostly solo or with my brother (lives on the other side of the country) and dont play multiplayer/RP for all the reasons stated above, despite very seriously wanting to play on a ADULT RP world building server. I'd be willing to make a discord and have anyone who wants to make it happen, I cant stand trolls/griefers/clowns that ruin the intended fun, so I would be pretty on top of kicking bad actors. Or rather, if someone gets a server like this going, I'd be pretty happy to join as well.

Vintage Armisteros on the current version. Check us out. We have a dragon and my village TerraCaelum is gaining traction in the world 25,000 blocks to the north of origin. Spawn on our world is on the equator and I do so oh love the cold. Check us out if you'd like. Our server curator won't tolerate griefers and jerks either so wed be glad to have ya join. 

[aparkedcar]

On 12/13/2025 at 4:19 AM, OBAMFSpike said:

Vintage Armisteros on the current version. Check us out. We have a dragon and my village TerraCaelum is gaining traction in the world 25,000 blocks to the north of origin. Spawn on our world is on the equator and I do so oh love the cold. Check us out if you'd like. Our server curator won't tolerate griefers and jerks either so wed be glad to have ya join. 

Id be happy to come check it out, i appreciate the info! 

[OBAMFSpike]

4 hours ago, aparkedcar said:

Id be happy to come check it out, i appreciate the info! 

great. let me know if you have any trouble finding us. we are in the forums. awesome game is the tag for our post. we also have a discord but an invite will need sent so let us know. enjoy your day buddy. 

 

[Zeusplane]

I haven't played any Vintage Story multiplayer, but I can attest that Roleplaying on any survival-based game such as this (mainly Minecraft and Project Zomboid) the problems you've listed happen all across any of those games. It sucks the fun out of a lot of it, and I think what I've learned after a lot of time roleplaying not only in games but also in DM's or public chats is this;

Text-based Roleplay Only

To keep a consistent theme and to encourage heavy-roleplay it is almost necessary to keep it text-based. I understand that isn't something a lot of people like and I understand the ease that voice-chat can bring, especially to immersion. I find however that this only works when you have a group of friends who'm you talk to consistently. Meeting strangers and talking in VC feels odd to a lot of people, and it also means the pace at which dialogue and roleplay happens is disjointed. You can speak words in a few seconds, whilst typing takes a bit longer especially if you're emoting your actions. To add onto that, emoting your actions whilst also voice-acting feels weird in a roleplay setting personally and doesn't give people time to read your actions before you start speaking again. Because of these things I find it important to keep a text-based roleplay only rule to servers who want to have a heavier and more serious roleplay experience.

Define Your Roleplay

Another thing I find important is to have a pre-determined "endgame" to a roleplay. This doesn't mean you end the roleplay or that it has seasons, but you have to understand that these servers will eventually become late-game experiences. Players will have good gear, towns will have been built, and boredom begins to set in for a lot of players. Players will grind themselves into the dirt and wonder why they aren't having fun, and if you want a roleplay to stay consistent not only for them- but for new players that join into a world that's already progressed quite heavily, it's important to have a plan in place for when you get to that point. This could be; having some sort of devastation reset a lot of towns and progress, or forcing the players to move to another area. A temporal spike that messed with the temperatures to force players to move; free roleplay is amazing, but there needs to be something in the back keeping it going for it to last. Sometimes, your players need a kick in the butt to continue having fun.

In fact, I've found that most roleplays end up dying because of the boredom effect. Rarely do new players want to join in on an experience that they're far behind in- not only in gear, but sociability. Everyone knows eachother already and players have been burned in plenty of other places by a sort of "cliquey" community. You have to have something that keeps new players entertained, and old players entertained. Conflict is obviously the key thing to move a story along but letting players simulate the conflict by themselves ONLY will DEVASTATE a community. As you stated OP, griefs, trolling, general antaggery begin to fly around. This will decimate the players who want to actually roleplay and they will leave in droves leaving only those who hardly roleplay and instead focus on personal gain within the game, using roleplay as a means to do it.

Character Based Roleplay

Character-based roleplaying is supreme. I find too many times that players will end up creating characters that are hardly a character at all and instead a vessel for them to play in. For more serious roleplays this falls flat very fast. They have no flaws and they play to the most optimized position possible- which in a normal server is perfectly fine, but for a roleplay it isn't. Play to lose, as they say; character-based roleplaying will keep players not only consistent with how they act but also dictate how they act. Perhaps a miner gets stuck in a cave and needs to be rescued, but one of the party-members on the rescue team is horrified of the dark, and once their torch goes out they freak out trying to get out; that right there is roleplay, drama, engagement, and storybuilding in one singular moment.

Community Focused - No Everyman

Community is required for a roleplay to function. Where everyone is not superman, where you go to others for certain things because their character excels at it. The trait and class system in Vintage Story does try to do this, and mods do help with this as well, but too many times have I seen a character who is meant to be a 'butcher' have everything in the game in order to be self-reliant. Don't get me wrong, being self-reliant is good, and no matter your class or traits you should be able to do anything you please, but it wouldn't make sense character wise. What you described in the city-RP is the way too controlled version of this. It needs to be somewhere in the middle. Not a rule, but something that the players understand that their characters shouldn't be an 'everyman' type. You can do everything in-game, but that doesn't mean you should. Visit your local butcher to get meat for home-made meals, or maybe hit up a tavern to get a more skillfully cooked meal- that sort of deal.

Admin Usage and Abuse

Admin abuse is rampant in roleplays. As someone who has been an admin on plenty of roleplay servers and even ran a few of my own in the past, I know exactly why it happens. Sometimes, its boredom, and boredom with the highest amount of power leads into extreme abuse. This could be spawning items in, giving themselves advantages nobody else has, or making executive decisions that benefit only them that the players are forced to deal with. Another reason is that somewhere along the way the admins begin to view the server as NOT a roleplaying server, but as a hangout server. "These aren't characters, they're my friends." When that happens, anything antagonistic (and I mean purely roleplay antagonistic, nothing in-game wise) becomes insulting.

You also have admins who are just straightup bad people who want to bully others.

My fix to this is- well, whoever is running the server needs to keep a good head on their shoulders. One good owner can keep most of this from happening, the problem is these servers often recycle the bad admins and they make new servers, and new servers, and new servers, and it ends up in one big loop of bad people that are the only ones hosting anything. As a previous owner myself when I used my admin powers it was to simulate events, to force events to take place to keep the storyline going- and I made sure that all of the players knew that I could, and was GOING to use it this way. It was not a shock to them when this stuff happened. I also used it to fix a few problems of course, and every now and then I "cheated" in a few things to make the overall process of roleplaying easier for the players. As an owner/admin your goal is to make it good for your playerbase, sometimes even sacrificing your own time and fun for theirs. That process however, is fun in itself to me.

This post is long enough and I could go on for ages. Maybe I'll host my own server like this, maybe not. At the current moment I believe the only way to get what I'd like is to have people that I can gather in a private-group and do it. Public servers is a no-go, and a whitelisted server with a whitelist process is too time-consuming for a single person to host without help. I'll still be checkin' around, hoping that maybe I'll be able to host my own thing or join one that adheres to the core values I hold to roleplaying but- who knows.