Gameplay & Roleplay Rules

These are the primary rules for all in-game activity on County of Los Angeles Roleplay.

1. Cheating, modifications, and exploits

Any software, modification, macro, automation, or configuration that creates an unfair advantage is prohibited. This includes aim assistance, health or armor manipulation, speed or handling advantages, teleportation, wall visibility, automated farming, and tools that reveal information unavailable through normal gameplay.

Cosmetic modifications are permitted only when they do not change collisions, visibility, weapon behavior, vehicle performance, or other competitive elements.

Bugs must be reported. Knowingly duplicating assets, bypassing cooldowns, avoiding system consequences, or teaching others how to exploit a vulnerability is treated as abuse even when no external cheat is used.

2. Metagaming

Metagaming is using out-of-character information to influence in-character decisions. Your character may only act on information learned through valid roleplay or approved in-character systems.

Examples include:

• Using Discord streams, private messages, forum posts, name tags, or player lists to locate someone.
• Recognizing a masked or disguised character without sufficient in-character evidence.
• Passing information between your own characters.
• Treating OOC knowledge of factions, properties, vehicles, or hidden operations as character knowledge.

3. Powergaming and forced outcomes

Do not perform impossible actions, ignore reasonable consequences, or write another character's reaction for them. Commands and animations support roleplay; they do not automatically decide contested outcomes.

You must give others a meaningful chance to respond when an action affects them. A can describe your attempt, while may establish observable details or ask about the result. It cannot force injury, fear, surrender, discovery, or consent.

4. Deathmatching and unjustified violence

Attacking or killing another character requires a believable in-character reason and reasonable escalation. Minor insults, traffic disagreements, accidental contact, or OOC frustration do not justify lethal violence.

Random attacks, baiting people into combat, returning solely for revenge after death, and killing to avoid ordinary roleplay consequences are prohibited.

5. Character death, memory, and return to scenes

A normal death does not automatically permanently kill a character. After respawning, you may not immediately return to the same conflict, recover dropped knowledge through OOC means, or pursue the people involved as though nothing happened.

A character should not remember precise details surrounding a death when those details would create an immediate revenge advantage. Permanent character death requires the owner's consent unless management applies it as an extraordinary consequence under a published policy.

6. Combat logging and consequence avoidance

Do not disconnect, force a crash, enter an inaccessible area, abuse an interior, suicide, transfer assets, or use commands to avoid an active scene. When a genuine connection problem occurs, return as soon as reasonably possible and contact the involved players or staff.

This rule applies to arrests, robberies, searches, pursuits, medical scenes, property seizures, and other active consequences.

7. Fear and self-preservation

Characters must value their lives. A clear and immediate lethal threat should influence behavior, especially when a character is unarmed, restrained, injured, surrounded, or at a severe disadvantage.

Fear roleplay does not guarantee compliance in every case, but reckless resistance must be supported by the character, circumstances, and a realistic chance of success. Repeated suicidal behavior may be treated as poor roleplay.

8. Injuries and medical roleplay

Injuries must be roleplayed according to their severity and cause. Being shot, struck by a vehicle, falling from height, suffering major burns, or being involved in a serious collision cannot be ignored because the health bar remains high.

Do not sprint, fight, drive normally, or resume heavy activity while portraying injuries that would prevent those actions. Medical treatment should create continuity rather than instantly erasing major trauma.

9. Vehicles, collisions, and pursuits

Drive according to the character, road, vehicle, and situation. Deliberately using a vehicle as a weapon requires strong justification. Repeated ramming, unrealistic off-road driving, impossible jumps, sports-car mountain climbing, and ignoring severe vehicle damage are prohibited.

During pursuits, both sides must allow the scene to develop. Law enforcement may use reasonable tactics; fleeing players may evade capture, but neither side may abuse desync, interiors, water, or map boundaries to force an outcome.

10. Safe and controlled locations

Hospitals, government service points, spawn locations, tutorial areas, and staff-designated event zones may receive additional protection. These locations are not universal immunity from consequences, but players may not exploit them to begin or escape conflict.

After committing a violent crime, a player may not enter a protected location for 15 minutes solely to avoid retaliation or law enforcement. Entering to surrender or receive emergency treatment is allowed when the scene is continued honestly.

11. OOC conduct during scenes

Keep OOC communication brief and necessary. Do not insult players, argue rules at length, coach allies through private channels, or use OOC pressure to control the outcome. A staff member may pause, correct, or void a scene; players may not unilaterally declare it void.

12. Common sense and fair play

Using a technical gap in the written rules to create an obviously unfair or unrealistic result is still prohibited. When uncertain, choose the action that creates better roleplay and gives everyone involved a fair opportunity to participate.