Zeusplane

This looks promising. Pretty much goes over most things that I had an issue with over the years with several roleplay servers. Endgame is always something that needs to be planned ahead of time- and the fact that you guys have thought of that is great. On top of that; understanding that there does need to be something in the background facilitating the experience (which doesn't mean dictating as you've said, it simply means adding something to keep things going and players engaged) is amazing. I'll be joining the discord for sure and looking forward to what takes place!

This sounds fantastic. If this is still around, let me know, I'd love to join.

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.