A STARTER'S GUIDE TO HL2RP
As someone new to the concept of Half-Life 2 Roleplay, you may be confused over the
complexity of the gamemode. I am here to clarify a few things and start you off on
the right foot!
View attachment 72
Introduction
HL2RP is a gamemode that has been around for a very long time, spreading over multiple frameworks. Despite this, it is still a niche and small community. There are many phrases confusing to the new roleplayer, which I will clarify here for convenience's sake, and you can always come back to refer to them whenever you are lost.
As someone new to the concept of Half-Life 2 Roleplay, you may be confused over the
complexity of the gamemode. I am here to clarify a few things and start you off on
the right foot!
View attachment 72
Introduction
- CWU - Civil Workers Union: An organization of citizens that authorizes stores and create workshifts so that citizens can support the economy.
- CMU - Civil Medical Union: An organization that acts as the hospital for any city, treating wounds.
- UAB - Union Administrative Board: A government system too complex to detail here.
- CP - Civil Protection: A modern-day 'police officer', protecting the peace.
- UU - Universal Union: Another word for Combine.
- OOC - Out Of Character: To speak or act as the player, rather than the character.
- IC - In Character: To speak or act as the character, rather than the player.
- PK - Permanent Kill: For a character to be banned permanently and unplayable (Exceptions do apply).
- o7 - A salute: When a character is permanently killed, they are often mourned by a wave of salutes in OOC chat (But this is advised against).
- ERP - Erotic RolePlay: To roleplay fornication. It is generally frowned upon.
- IX - Helix: A framework that HL2RP can be played on.
- CW - Clockwork: Ditto.
- NS - Nutscript: Ditto.
- Robocop: A Civil Protection player who fails to account for the emotions and opinions of their characters when roleplaying.
- Minge(bag): A player who does not have the intent to roleplay, rather to disrupt roleplay.
- Shotcop: To kill a Civil Protection character fast and possibly take their dropped equipment.
- Passive (roleplay): To roleplay in a non-action based way. E.G friendly conversations, making friends, cooking food.
Creating your first character is a fantastic milestone and very exciting, but it is not something you should rush. Take your time and decide who you want to play. Some players enjoy handicapping their character for an added challenge or making characters for the sole purpose of developing other characters. Things to note while making your first character would be their age, their backstory, their opinions of the combine and its subsidiaries, and finally, a unique goal and some motivations. Keep in mind, your character may have hundreds of goals at a time depending on their needs, but for simplicity's sake, let's start off simple with an example character biography.
Rémi Dubois
French
Male
18
Ex-Special Forces
His first sight during the Seven Hour War was seeing the Notre Dame in flames. Following that day, he has fought for justice against the combine restlessly.
His main goal is to avenge the fallen and fight for justice against the Combine. His motivation is his alcoholism and beer.
Although a good start, we shall address the flaws and benefits of this character. First off, a name with special characters makes it harder for admins to perform actions on a character. Secondly, the age of the character is a gray area in HL2RP. Teenage characters are often disallowed due to the fact that some disruptive members of communities ERP as underage characters, but also for lore reasons dependent on the server you are playing. For now, let's make him 23. Next up, his pre-war occupation, being a soldier. This is flawed primarily because soldiers would have been picked out from the crowd by the Combine to be used as soldiers and Civil Protection early on, and therefore we should change it. As for the backstory/biography, the character seems rather flat, and uninteresting. Flawless, meaningless characters tell a boring story. Give your character interesting motivations, and interesting beliefs, and an interesting upbringing. Remember, not everyone is good. Some Rebels, though they may be motivated to oust the Combine, have ulterior motives.
Remi Dubois
French
Male
23
Retail Worker
His first sight during the Seven Hour War was seeing the Notre Dame in flames, and suffering a broken leg from falling debris. Following that day, he has fought in memory of the old world and in hopes of having successors to end the combine.
His main goal is to avenge the fallen and fight for justice against the Combine, but his motivations are survival and fame over all else.
This already makes for a far more interesting character, who would most likely take a direct approach to be a rebel and live in secrecy under the city or in the outlands, engaging in combat against Civil Protection or the Transhuman Combine Soldiers often. Searching for fame means this character suffers from some kind of a protagonist complex, making your character stand out and more interesting to both play and interact with. Of course, this is not all that dictates your character. Personality traits, down to the subtler things such as nervous tics, add lots of depth to your character. Some characters may have mental illnesses that make it even more challenging to play them (bi-polar, schizophrenic). Ultimately, it is up to you how you make your character.
Character Development is a term you will often see thrown around. It refers to the experiences a character may collect towards their goal(s). This is generally attained through interacting with other characters and deciding how your character would feel about them (hate, loyalty, respect, admiration, affection) and reacting appropriately. Body language plays a big part in portraying this, and if these characters are something your character needs to progress in their life (love, allies, enemies), its important your character play their cards right around them, or if you would rather make it a challenge and force your character to recover the relationship, play your cards wrong around them. Contradictions and obstacles for the character to pass often make for excellent sources of character development. An example of this would be a pacifist character leaving behind their religious roots and accepting that killing is the only way to survive through roleplay with other characters, or a delusional loyalist coming to terms with the fact they are on the wrong side, and slowly falling into insanity as they believe they are being haunted by the people they got killed.
For the sake of convenience, we will also go over general roleplay and how to do it here. Most new players look at HL2RP like a new version of DarkRP, and I can easily make the difference clear by showing that DarkRP is a grind for money and power, whereas HL2RP is a dynamic, constantly running game of DND, in which staff are the dungeon masters, and there are almost no NPCs. With this in mind, treat normal chat as though anything you type there is something your character says. E.G 'John Doe says: "Thank you, Jane. I appreciate it." rather than 'John Doe says: "lol thats rdm how do i become a cp". You will also find the /me command more in use, as it is the main method of interacting with the environment and the other players. For example, "/me straightens his tie with a stern expression as he glances around the dark room." would become "John Doe straightens his tie with a stern expression as he glances around the dark room." /it also exists, the difference being that it does not mention a character. As another example, "/it The man hears the sound of footsteps creeping up behind him."
Regardless of whether you will use this guide or not, once your character is created you decide how you roleplay them and where you want them to go. This guide merely stands to provide assistance and clarify several things.
The bulk of any city and server's character population, citizen is a blanket term referring to any character not belonging to a particular faction, or sometimes just any character not associated with the Combine. It is important to clarify a few things before we go into this: A citizen is a character who is not in a faction. It does not specify whether they are a loyalist, rebel, or something else. A loyalist does not have to fully believe in the Combine or their ways. A rebel does not have to fight for the resistance, they may fight for themselves. A citizen does not have to follow the laws, and may instead choose a life of petty crime. Some players use the citizen faction as a pit stop for their characters who are yet to join a different faction, however, most prefer to have characters dedicated to a role as a citizen.
Citizens are often used for passive roleplay and are the easiest faction to understand. As a result, they are the faction you should stick to for your first character. Ways to develop your character as a citizen are causing trouble for CPs and being reprimanded for it, roleplaying with other citizens in cafes and the like, and intentionally starting arguments and making enemies. Sometimes, citizens may fight among each other in brawls regardless of the legality of it and find themselves both at the wrong end of a gun, so do be careful when you pick your enemies.
Loyalists are a touchy subject. Many rebel players dislike loyalists for the fact that loyalists so easily snitch on other characters and ruin hours of roleplay. A loyalist could merely be a person who wishes to live their life but is constantly caught up in traumatic events. One of the harder sides of the citizen faction to roleplay, loyalists are better off joining a faction such as CWU or CMU in order to be developed as characters.
Rebels are a common type of citizen, however, they are also very diverse. Rebels are more often than not blatantly obvious. Living underground, hiding their identity, speaking out against the regime and helping those who are in need. However, perhaps this style of resistance is not your cup of tea. Living in a residential block, secretly plotting cunning attacks and performing acts of terror on the Combine all while blending into the everyday crowd. As my personal favorite type of rebel RP, I cannot help but vouch for it in that it makes for the most fun and realistic roleplay overall, however, it takes patience and involves far less action than the run and gun type that dominates the underground.
Ultimately, there is no accurately right or wrong way to play as a citizen. Play however you want to play, and enjoy it, but keep in mind other people's roleplay matters just as much as your own.
A whitelist only faction which you have to apply for, Overwatch refers to any Combine military presence on Earth. The Combine Soldiers, otherwise known as Transhuman Arm, the Airwatch that consists of Gunships, Dropships, and the like. Synthetics, such as Hunters or Striders, and finally Civil Protection, the policing force. For this section, we will focus on Civil Protection, Dispatch, and Scanners.
Civil Protection is an enormous step in the career of a roleplayer. Consisting of strict leadership and pure brutality, Civil Protection is a difficult faction to master, but very fun and rewarding as one of if not the most important faction for a server. The face of the combine, and the face of the veterans of HL2RP, the CPs primarily provide roleplay for the community whilst also developing their own characters. Civil Protection units start always at a rank equal to nothing, with only a baton. But as they proceed through the rank ladder, depending on the server, they may gain new equipment and possibly even authority over others. Most new CP players often make the mistake of having their character immediately a hardened and careless officer. I intend to make sure no one makes that mistake. As a CP, you would be expected to be harsh, yes, but your character most likely would not be used to it just yet. Easing your character into the position, developing them as they begin to re-educate, bully, and even kill the citizen populace is vital for a good CP character. For example, after killing someone for the first time you may find your character in distress, regretting it and ashamed with the person they had become.
There is a particular stereotype among Civil Protection characters, and while not detrimental to a server in moderation, when abundant this character can ruin a good experience. Robocop is a term used to describe an invincible, steadfast super-loyal, apathetic sociopath/psychopath. They show no hesitation when murdering an innocent man, they show no hesitation when forced to attack their brother in arms gone rogue, and they provide no positive character development to any around them. Avoid robocops at all costs, and do your best not to become one yourself.
Moving on, we will discuss going rogue. An excellent move for character development, however unfortunately often unplanned and overdone. When a CP character reaches a certain point, the player might choose to go rogue. They would obviously need a justifiable reason and authorization from certain staff to allow this, for example having to have killed their own mother as a CP being the last straw, so they start to plan going rogue. It is suggested you do not try to make a CP prone to going rogue until you have a lot of Civil Protection roleplay under your belt.
Finally is the vast terminology and protocol Civil Protection utilizes (which I will not go into detail as that's already been done). A common mistake both returning CP players and new ones make is to immediately start their character off with an understanding of the entire system and be a flawless unit. A far better way to make a new unit would be to make many mistakes until you finally understand everything to a degree you are comfortable with. In summary: Your character will not have read the operations manual for Civil Protection until they themselves have been transferred to that faction. Almost no exceptions.
Dispatch generally consists of players who micromanage Civil Protection players and feed them orders to follow. A difficult whitelist to master due to the specific vocabulary and surgical speech of Dispatch, and also something you as a new player should not worry about. City Scanners serve as an extension to dispatch, more often than not giving information to both Dispatch and civil protection. In many servers, Dispatch is substituted for a militaristic high command-low command system, where officers and commanders are present to manage the Civil Protection. Lancer, on the other hand, uses Dispatch for it's lore-friendly and sometimes superior nature.
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