The laws that govern the World of Darkness. Read them. Know them. Follow them.
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Los Santos After Dark is a World of Darkness server built for players who value deep character development, long-term narrative play, lore accuracy, and immersive storytelling. Every character exists within a dark, unforgiving world where choices carry weight and power comes at cost.
While the primary goal of LSAD is for everyone to enjoy themselves, that enjoyment comes from a shared commitment to the environment we are creating together. Players are expected to approach roleplay with respect for the immersive setting and for the story being told. LSAD prioritizes realism and feasible adherence to WoD Lore as the foundation for safe and compelling roleplay.
Note: Fun on this server is not found in breaking tone or rushing scenes for an end, but comes from engaging meaningfully with characters, conflict, and consequence in a way that feels grounded and believable.
On LSAD, HeavyRP is slow, intentional, and actually about playing a character instead of chasing moments. It is day to day roleplay that assumes the world exists before you log in and keeps going after you log out.
HeavyRP means putting thought into actions and emotes. Not just "/me blinks" or one-liners, but describing posture, tone, pacing, hesitation, and intent. It is about giving other players something to react to and build off of. Scenes are meant to breathe. Conversations do not have to rush to a payoff to be meaningful.
Decisions stick. People remember what you did, how you acted, and who you crossed. Reputation builds slowly and can fall even faster. Losing, failing, or being outplayed is not a problem, it is part of the story. HeavyRP assumes characters are not immune to the world or protected from bad outcomes.
Power, influence, relationships, and trust take time. Characters rise, characters fall, and sometimes they burn out or die, and that is fine. New characters take their place. Roles change hands. The torch gets passed. Nothing is meant to be static or permanent.
Important: HeavyRP on LSAD is for people who enjoy long arcs, messy politics, awkward conversations, and stories that take weeks or months to pay off. It is not about winning scenes or being the main character. It is about contributing to a world that feels lived in, reactive, and worth investing in.
On LSAD, HeavyRP also means playing an actual character, not a self insert with magical properties. Your character is not you, they are not invincible, and they are not entitled to attention, success, or relevance just for existing. They have limits, flaws, blind spots, and consequences, and those things are what make them interesting to play with and against, and what makes a world feel alive.
HeavyRP actively avoids behavior that exists only to grab attention or farm reactions. Overtly sexual comments that serve no narrative purpose, constant shock humour, or "comic relief" characters that contribute nothing to the story do not add depth, they drain scenes of weight. The same applies to cop baiting, crime done purely for laughs with no narrative goal, or law enforcement characters who exist only to chase wins rather than build cases, tension, and long-term outcomes. If the action does not serve a story, it probably does not belong here.
Characters should have reasons for what they do. Crime should exist because it says something about the character, their desperation, their ambition, or their environment. Law enforcement should exist to create pressure, consequence, and escalation, not just to rack up arrests. Supernatural characters should feel constrained by their nature, not empowered by it. HeavyRP assumes everyone is here to build something longer than a single scene.
This ties back to slow burn and consequence. When characters are grounded, imperfect, and vulnerable, stories last longer and matter more. When characters are played as exaggerated avatars designed to win, shock, or dominate every interaction, stories collapse immediately. LSAD's version of HeavyRP favors restraint, intent, and credibility over spectacle, because that is how meaningful arcs, rivalries, alliances, and legacies actually form.
On LSAD, we also leave room for ridiculous, spontaneous moments between friends. Yes, even things on the level of "hell, I'm gonna twat Murph with a car halfway across the city." Moments like that are fine when everyone involved is on the same page, the context supports it, and it stays contained to the people participating.
The key difference is intent and impact. If something chaotic or stupid happens because it fits the relationship between characters, the tone of the moment, or an ongoing dynamic, that can add flavour and memory to the story. If the same action exists purely to shock, derail, interrupt serious scenes, or drag uninvolved players into nonsense they did not consent to, it stops being fun and starts being disruptive.
Note: HeavyRP is not about removing humour or spontaneity, it's about knowing the time and place for it.
LSAD is a serious World of Darkness server, not a FiveM content farm. The following behaviors break immersion and are not welcome:
Remember: This is a narrative-driven WoD experience. If your goal is "100k or die" content farming, this is not the server for you.
"FiveM speech" is when game mechanics, keybinds, or server systems get talked about out loud as if they exist in the world. Your character lives in Los Santos in the World of Darkness. They've never heard of a keybind, a command, a tracker, or a voice-range setting. When those come up in an IC channel it pulls everyone nearby out of the scene, so try to keep them out of it.
A few common ones to watch for:
If something really is broken and it's affecting the scene, handle it out of character rather than writing the bug into your roleplay.
Use /pm. We have /pm in game exactly so you don't have to break a scene for this. Voice playing up? Want to check the other player is still with you? Need to sort something mechanical mid-scene? Send a /pm, deal with it quietly, and the scene keeps going. If it can't be sorted that way, wrap the scene up properly or open a staff report.
Remember: Everyone around you is trying to stay in the world, and one line of game-speak tends to pull the whole group out of it. Have a think about how your character would put it, or just say it in /pm.
"Blacking out" is the head-to-toe look: all black clothing, a skull mask or balaclava, a military helmet, a plate carrier, sometimes night vision, sometimes a full motorbike helmet worn indoors. It is a very FiveM habit, and it sits badly in the World of Darkness. The horror we are going for lives in ordinary streets and ordinary people, and a squad of operators moving through Vinewood pulls everyone out of that tone very quickly.
There is also a practical problem with it. Kit like that does not hide you, it marks you. In the real world, and in the world our characters live in, six people in full tactical gear are the most memorable thing anyone saw that night. A hood and a scarf get you a shrug. A ballistic helmet and a chest rig get you a helicopter.
Disguise within your means. When your character wants to hide their face, use what they could actually get hold of: a hood, a cap and glasses, a scarf, a cheap balaclava, a work jacket they can burn afterwards, a change of clothes before and after. That reads as someone with something to hide, which is exactly the point.
Military plate carriers, ballistic helmets, night vision, and comparable hardware are not things people come by casually. They cost real money, they are tracked, and getting one usually means knowing someone. If your character has that gear, it should be supported by their sheet and backstory, in the same way anything else they own should be (see I10 Playing to Your Sheet & Backstory). Some concepts genuinely justify it: tactical units on a call-out, a military background, an approved group with the contacts to source it. Those are jobs you kit up for, not a default outfit you log in wearing.
A good test before you commit to a look: would this pass on a real street? If the answer is that your character would be stopped, filmed, or reported within a block, it is worth rethinking.
Motorbike helmets are worth a specific mention. On a bike, entirely reasonable. Kept on through a bar, a meeting, or a full evening of scenes, it becomes the same thing as a permanent mask, which we already cover in S4.
Where we stand on it. We treat this as low-effort roleplay rather than a bannable offence. If staff see it, expect a quiet word and a request to change into something that fits your character and the setting. Concealing your identity is a great story beat and we want you doing it, just in a way that looks like it belongs in our world rather than a loadout screen.
To keep things fair and immersive, clear separation between in-character and out-of-character goods, services, and transactions are required.
Your account is your responsibility. Account sharing and misuse of access for any reason are not permitted.
Certain character types require a separate whitelist application due to their abilities and impact on roleplay.
To join the server, you will be required to complete a server application to demonstrate your awareness of server rules and expectations.
This server does not recognize imported character history, timelines, or lore from other World of Darkness servers (or any server within the same niche).
We strongly prefer brand-new characters, names, and concepts created specifically for this chronicle. Our Los Santos exists as a separate universe with its own timeline, politics, and outcomes. Even though we share the World of Darkness setting, their lore is not our lore.
You may reuse a name or general concept, but your character's story begins here. No prior events, relationships, titles, or achievements from other servers carry over. This includes (but is not limited to):
If you have a strong emotional attachment to a previous character concept, be aware that this server operates with a higher-danger, consequence-forward playstyle. Character loss, failure, and drastic change are real possibilities. Players bringing in familiar concepts should be prepared to let go if the story demands it.
That said, if you feel a previous concept was never given the opportunity to be meaningfully explored, you may advocate for it in a conversation with a Storyteller. Approval is not guaranteed and does not include prior history, status, or narrative protection.
In short: New concepts are preferred. Imported history does not exist. Your character's story starts here.
Read your splat's primer before you apply. Every splat we run has one, and they all live on the Primers page. They are not lore trivia or optional reading, they are the version of the setting we actually play, and they tell you how your character sees the world, what their nature costs them, and what they are and are not capable of on our streets. Applying for a splat whose primer you have not read shows immediately, and it is the fastest route to a denial.
Treat your application like sitting down at a tabletop. A Storyteller is going to read it the way one would across the table from you: not looking for perfect prose, but looking for a person. Where did they come from, what do they want, what has it already cost them, and why can they do the things you say they can do?
Every dot on your sheet is a statement about your character's life. It says they spent years somewhere, learned something from someone, survived something, or were born into something. It is not a stat to be maxed out because the points were sitting there.
Roughly how we read the scale:
So if you are taking a 4, your backstory needs to carry it. We want to see where it came from, who taught them, how long it took, and what it cost them. A 5 needs to be one of the load-bearing pillars of the whole story, the thing their life was arranged around. If we removed that dot and your backstory would read exactly the same, it does not belong there.
We are receiving five sentence backstories with five dot ratings in things the backstory never once mentions. That will not pass. A sheet full of high dots attached to a story that does not explain any of them is not a character concept, it is a wishlist, and it will come back to you or be denied outright.
Be ready to talk about it, too. If you have taken 4 or 5 dots in anything, expect a Storyteller to ask you about it, and expect to answer without warning and without a script. It is a friendly conversation, not an interrogation, but "I just thought it fit" is not an answer we can approve a sheet on.
Every Merit and every Flaw on your sheet has to appear in your backstory as part of the narrative, not as a list bolted onto the end of it. A Merit is something your character earned, inherited, or was lucky enough to be born with. A Flaw is a scar, a debt, a weakness, or a mistake that follows them around. Both should be visible in the story of their life.
What we will not accept is a character loaded with seven or more points of Merits and Flaws, none of which are explained. Flaws are not currency for buying Merits. If you take a Flaw for the points and never intend to play it, that is powergaming with extra steps, and it is treated the same way. If your character is haunted, hunted, addicted, disfigured, or bound by an oath, we expect to see it in play, not just on paper.
A good test: if you cannot write a paragraph about where something on your sheet came from, your character probably does not have it yet. That is what XP is for. Come in as someone with room to grow and earn it in play. It is far more satisfying than starting at the ceiling.
Storytellers will offer one revision. If something is unexplained, unjustified, or does not line up with your splat's primer, we will tell you exactly what needs addressing and give you the chance to put it right. It is not a rejection, it is us wanting the concept to work.
If the revision comes back without the explanations we asked for, the application will be denied. You are welcome to apply again later with a stronger concept, and unspent dots are never wasted, they just become room for your character to grow into.
Keep it in the right place: Staff decisions, tickets, reports, and in-character actions all have their proper channels, and that's where they should stay. Don't take them into someone's DMs to complain, argue, or attack them over the outcome. It isn't common here, but when it happens it puts unfair pressure on players and staff alike. If you disagree with a decision or an IC event, raise it calmly through the correct channel, not privately at the person involved.
One Character Per Story: Only one of your characters can be involved, at any given time, in a plot or storyline. If you find that more than one of your characters is involved in the same plot or story, you must decide which one you want to utilize.
Powergaming is performing actions that are unrealistic, or that force outcomes on others without giving them a fair chance.
A player shall not:
A player should not:
The following points are permitted so long as all characters consent:
A player should not:
Killing or maiming another character without a valid in-character reason, or for reasons that would not realistically justify such actions, is not allowed.
Safe Zones are areas where committing crimes, harassment, or intimidation is not allowed. This includes robberies, muggings, hold-ups, and similar actions. Safe Zones exist to maintain realistic city behavior, prevent abuse, and protect key locations.
Safe Zones typically cover highly populated areas or places realistically protected by security and cameras. These spaces are:
These exceptions exist for situations where the roleplay naturally leads there, not for initiating random crimes. You cannot simply walk into a Safe Zone and hold someone up, mug them, or start conflict unprovoked just because you feel like it.
When in doubt: Use /helpme to contact an Admin or Storyteller for guidance before acting. If you are unsure whether your situation qualifies as an exception, it is always better to ask for confirmation or oversight first.
World of Darkness explores dark, mature, and uncomfortable themes such as horror, manipulation, violence, trauma, and moral corruption. These themes are meant to enhance storytelling, not to make players feel unsafe or distressed.
Fade-to-black allows a scene to be acknowledged without roleplaying explicit or uncomfortable details. Fade-to-Black is employed when a scene must have an outcome but a player feels uncomfortable.
Fade-to-black should be used when:
Note: If you feel that a player is requesting fade-to-black to avoid reasonable roleplay, such as a regular conversation, you may use the /report or /lorehelp command to contact an administrator or storyteller.
ERP Policy: Erotic roleplay (ERP) is not permitted on the server. If your characters wish to engage in intimate content, you must fade-to-black in-game and take any continuation to Discord DMs between consenting adults. Pregnancy roleplay is also not allowed.
Robbing is defined as taking another character's possessions through force or threat of force. All robberies must be conducted strictly in-character.
Players who perform robberies will not:
Players who are being robbed will not:
Bank robberies may be performed once the required script items are acquired. The bank robbery script detects how many Police are online. Bank robberies must be preceded by appropriate roleplay. Staff reserve the right to ask for evidence of such roleplay through screenshots or chatlogs. Bank robberies must be planned and delivered entirely in-character.
Scamming is defined as agreeing to provide or receive a service or good IC and then intentionally refusing to pay or deliver it. All scams must be conducted strictly in-character.
Players will not:
Exception: Loaning money is done at player's own risk.
You may roleplay trashing or attacking another player's property without causing closure with permission of a Storyteller or above. Permission can be requested through the UCP or via /lorehelp
You must receive permission from a Lead Storyteller before burning or destroying any player-owned property. Permission must be requested through the UCP.
When a property is destroyed:
Important: You can, under no circumstances, destroy another player's vehicle.
Despite the dark tone of World of Darkness, some areas of roleplay, defined as unacceptable, are disgusting and will not be permitted. Server management is responsible for keeping ALL members of this community safe and we take this matter seriously.
Warning: Unacceptable roleplay is not allowed even with consent from other players.
The following are strictly prohibited under all circumstances:
Violating this rule will result in a permanent ban.
Our economy is intentionally easy to build wealth in. We don't want anyone grinding for weeks just to afford things that make sense for their character. The key word there is makes sense. Having money is not the same as having a lifestyle, and your bank balance is not a substitute for your character sheet.
You can absolutely be a character who is functionally homeless with a million dollars sitting in the bank, if that's who your character is. What you should not be is a character who owns three houses, an Infernus, and a storage unit with a hundred guns in it just because the funds happen to be there.
Resources reflect capability, not access. Your Resources background, occupation, and backstory should be the ceiling for what your character realistically owns and maintains, not your bank balance. If your sheet doesn't support it, you shouldn't be buying it.
A couple of examples of what this looks like in practice:
This isn't about restricting what you can afford, it's about what your character would plausibly have given their job, background, and standing in the world. Excessive, unexplained wealth on display breaks immersion for everyone around you and undermines the status and economy systems the server is built on.
We are not going to roleplay-check your garage or your house count. This rule exists so the expectation is clear, not so staff can start auditing inventories. Play your sheet, play your backstory, and use your judgement. If it doesn't make sense for your character, don't buy it.
That said, if a character's belongings clearly don't line up with their sheet or backstory, staff reserve the right to have a friendly chat about it, and if needed, walk back the purchase, refunding whatever was spent so nothing is lost in the process. We would always rather help a concept make sense than see it undone.
The numbers in your bank are big. The economy they sit in is not. Los Santos After Dark is priced to real-world scale: a coffee is around $7, a meal is $12 or more, rent is rent, and vehicles cost what they actually cost in real life. You might make $100,000 in a week, but that does not make $100,000 a normal amount of money to hand someone.
What we call the splash effect is what happens when it does. One player tips a bartender $10,000 because it felt generous in the moment. That bartender now has money they didn't work for, so they overpay the next person, who gifts items to the person after that. Within a week, nobody's wages mean anything, no job is worth doing, and prices that were carefully set to feel real are meaningless. It feels like roleplay while it's happening. It isn't. It's inflation with a story attached.
Pay real-world amounts for real-world things. If you wouldn't hand it over at a bar, a garage, or a checkout in real life, don't hand it over here. A good tip is a good tip, not a life-changing sum.
As a rough guide for what "realistic" looks like:
Generosity is good roleplay. A wealthy character being lavish is a valid concept, and there are moments where a large sum genuinely fits the scene, such as a patron backing someone's business, a debt being settled, or an Elder buying loyalty. The test is whether the money is doing narrative work, or just being moved because it's there. Overpaying everyone you meet isn't a character trait, it's a habit that quietly costs everyone else their stakes.
This applies to items as well as cash. Handing out weapons, vehicles, drugs, or stacks of crafted goods to people who haven't earned or paid properly for them splashes exactly the same way, and it undermines the crime, business, and status systems those items are supposed to feed.
We would much rather set the expectation than police it. Read this alongside I10 Playing to Your Sheet & Backstory: what you spend should make as much sense as what you own. Where amounts are clearly inflated, staff may have a quiet word and, if needed, reverse the transaction so nobody ends up out of pocket.
You control your own character and your own rolls. You don't control anyone else's. It's fine to suggest what you're attempting or what you'd like to see happen, but you don't get to decide another player's roll, tell them what they rolled, or declare the result of their action for them.
The difference is suggestional versus directional:
Calling for rolls, setting difficulties, and declaring how a contested action resolves is a Storyteller's job. A player acting as though they have that authority, whether they mean to or not, takes agency away from everyone else in the scene.
If you disagree on how something should resolve, pause and call a Storyteller rather than talking over each other. A ST's call is directional; a fellow player's is only ever a suggestion.
Death is the one ending the World of Darkness never takes off the table. Everything your character builds, every favour owed, every enemy made, every secret kept, all of it sits under the same quiet threat. That threat is what gives a scene its weight. A story where nobody can ever really lose is a story nobody needs to be careful in.
Because of that weight, we treat permanent death as its own thing, separate from being downed, hospitalised, torpored, or beaten half to death in an alley. Those are setbacks. A permanent death is the last page of your character's story, and it is handled with the seriousness that deserves.
There are exactly two routes to a permanent death here. Either you agree to it, or Staff approve a Character Kill against your character. Nothing else takes a character off the board for good. Learn the difference between them, because only one of the two is your call.
Where there is no Staff approval in play, another player cannot permanently kill your character without your out-of-character agreement. Not in a shootout, not in a duel, not because they rolled well, not because the scene felt like it should end that way. Without approval and without your agreement, your character survives it, however brutal the scene was, and the two of you work out what the aftermath looks like.
Agreement must be explicit and given by you, out of character, through /pm, /dm, or Discord. Ideally it is given before the scene concludes so nobody is left guessing what just happened. As with I6, silence is not agreement, and neither is your character having said something reckless in the moment.
Nobody may pressure you into agreeing. Badgering, guilt-tripping, or bargaining with another player out of character to get their character killed off is a staff matter, not a negotiation. If someone is leaning on you for a perma, report it and let us deal with it. The proper route for a player who believes a death is warranted is a Character Kill request, not your inbox.
You are also free to take the decision on your own terms, without anyone asking. There is real craft in knowing when your character's story has run its course, when going out means something, when a death lands harder than another month of scenes would. Choosing to give a rival the win, to die for the sept, to walk into the sun, or to let a plan fail fatally is one of the most generous things a player can do for the table. Take the choice when you feel it, and make it count.
This is where the choice stops being yours. Agreement is the rule between players, not a veto over your character's fate. Characters who spend their nights making enemies, breaking oaths, betraying their covenant, selling out their pack, or hanging the Masquerade out to dry have chosen the road that ends this way, and when the bill comes due, refusing to pay it is not an option on the table.
Where a character has genuinely earned an ending through their own in-character actions, the wronged party may petition Staff for a Character Kill. If we grant it, that death happens whether the player agrees to it or not.
Character Kill requests are made to Staff through the UCP or a staff ticket, never argued mid-scene and never used as a threat in someone's DMs. Staff will review the case, speak to the parties where needed, and decide.
An approved Character Kill cannot be dodged out of character. Once Staff have granted it, you are required to play the scene it produces. There is no appeal in the moment, no logging out, no hidden contingency, no ally who happened to be watching, no retcon, no "my character would have seen it coming". Disconnecting, hiding, or refusing to engage with an approved Character Kill scene is a rule break in its own right and is treated more harshly than the offence that earned the kill.
Getting out of the attempt in character is a different matter entirely, and it is allowed. See Surviving the Attempt below.
Approval is permission to end the character, not a licence to execute them in the street thirty seconds later. Staff may set conditions or a timeframe, and a Storyteller or member of Staff will be present for the attempt either way. The kill should still be roleplayed properly and should still read as the natural end of the story that produced it. Everything in I3 and I4 still applies while you carry it out.
If you are asking for someone's character to be permanently removed, you are the one who has to prove it is warranted. "They wronged me" is not a case. A case is an allegation, evidence, and a plan.
Requests that arrive without evidence will be denied, however confident the retelling is. We are not going to take a character off someone on the strength of a story that cannot be checked. Where the events happened in-game and Staff can verify them from the logs, say so and point us at the right night.
Abuse of this process is a bannable offence. That includes fabricating or editing evidence, goading a player into an offence purely to build a case against them, and using Character Kills to settle out-of-character grudges. Removing someone's character is the most serious thing you can do to another player here. Treat the process accordingly.
Every attempt on an approved Character Kill must have a Storyteller or a member of Staff present in the scene. This is not negotiable. There is no version of this where you run it privately and tell us how it went afterwards.
Bring somebody in with /helpme and quote the approval or ticket reference in the request, so the team can pull the approval up in our system and confirm it before anything starts.
No Storyteller, no Character Kill. A perma carried out with nobody from the team watching is an unapproved permanent death, whatever the ticket says, and the character will be restored. Wait for someone to arrive. If nobody is free that night, the scene keeps until they are.
A Character Kill is the last page of somebody's story and it should read like one. We expect depth: the build up, the confrontation, the things that get said before it happens, the scene the other player is going to remember. Walking up and shooting, stabbing, or beating a character to death with nothing around it is not an ending, it is a killing, and it will be handled as an unapproved one.
Staff may agree a blunter method where the story genuinely calls for it, but that is agreed in advance, not decided by you on the night. A rival mortal crew who have spent months building to it may well be cleared to do it from a car window, because that is exactly what those people would do. Ask for it when you submit the case.
Once you are on the medical death screen, your character is dead. You do not wait out the scene, let the attackers walk away, and then get back up. That screen is the ending landing, and treating it as a pause is a rule break.
The one exception is method. Where the way your character was put down could not have killed them under the rules of their own nature, the death does not stand. A Garou dropped by ordinary rounds with no silver and nothing else appropriate in play has not been killed, whatever the screen says. The same holds for anything else that needs a specific method to finish it. Raise it at the time, in /pm or with the Storyteller present, rather than after everyone has logged off.
An attempt on your life is not the same as your death. If your character gets out of that scene alive, they are alive, and they now know somebody wants them dead. That knowledge is theirs to use: the fear, the paranoia, the safehouse, the people they quietly stop trusting. All of it is fair play from that night onwards.
Where a target escapes, Staff will set a survival window based on the circumstances of the scene. Survive it and the approval is spent: the Character Kill is null and void, and the people who came for you have to build a fresh case and be granted a fresh approval before they can try again. That new request cannot be made until a week after the survival window has been served.
Separately, and however the attempt ended, no further perma attempt may be made on the same character for a week after a failed one. Somebody who has just survived an attempt on their life gets room to breathe before the next.
The Lay Low Rule. The survival window is time played, not time elapsed. You have to be in the city on that character, and you have to play what surviving an attempt on your life does to a person: watching the doors, moving carefully, changing habits, leaning on whoever will hide you. Parking the character for a week to run the clock down is powergaming, and it is treated as such. Where that happens the approval stands for as long as that character is played, as the consequence of dodging it, and the people holding it may come for them at any point.
Approval is permission to try, not a guarantee of the result. If the target gets the upper hand and downs the character who came for them, it flips: the attacker is the one who ends permanently, and the Character Kill on the target is null and void. Going after somebody's life is a risk you take with your own.
A target who lives through an attempt also has every right to hunt the people responsible. Revenge is theirs to take, in their own time, as far as their injuries allow. Somebody who lost an arm in the attempt is not hunting anyone inside forty eight hours. Use common sense and your splat's healing rules, and remember that I3 and I4 still apply while you do it.
Once the deed is done, the player who carried it out must make it clear in /ooc that this was a Staff-approved Character Kill, along with the approval or ticket reference. For example: "/ooc Staff-approved Character Kill carried out, ref #1234." Follow it up with a /pm to the player and a note on the ticket.
It feels clinical against the horror of the moment, and it is meant to. That one line is what separates an approved ending from a random killing, and it protects everybody involved. The player on the receiving end knows immediately that this was sanctioned and not RDM, everyone else in the scene knows not to report it, and Staff have a record nobody has to reconstruct from memory weeks later.
No /ooc line, no protection. If a kill is carried out without the approval being stated and logged, it will be handled as an unapproved permanent death, and the character will be restored.
This is the World of Darkness. Nothing here is built to last, and characters are not meant to. Elders fall, packs are broken, oaths are called in, and the city keeps going without any of them. Play like the ending is real, because eventually it will be, and the players who let their characters die well are the ones whose stories people still talk about a year later.
Some systems hold months of other people's work. No amount of dice buys your way into them.
Hunter-Net and SchreckNet cannot be hacked. There is no approval route and no roll that works. Do not build a character around it and do not ask. Both networks are reached by being given an account, in character, by someone who already has one.
The following require approval from Legal Faction Management and the relevant Faction Leads before any attempt is made:
Two things have to be true before one of those attempts is approved:
Why this exists. At a table with four or five players and a Storyteller, a hacker cracking the police database is a great scene. On a server of sixty or more, one good run of rolls can wipe out work that other players have spent months building. That trade is not fair on them, and no roll should be able to make it.
This is not a ban on hacking. Your dots still work on nearly everything else in the city: phones, personal devices, private security, cameras, businesses, vehicles, doors and the systems that belong to other players who can push back. The restriction is on the handful of systems that hold everyone else's history, not on the skill you bought.
Attempting a government system without approval will be reversed, and the attempt itself is treated as powergaming under I3. Approval is asked for before the scene, not after it went well. Attempting Hunter-Net or SchreckNet is a straight rule break, because there was never a version of it we would have said yes to.
Los Santos does not have enough NPCs to fill it, and there will not always be a player standing where a person should be. That is a limitation of the game, not a description of the world. A room with nobody in it on your screen is not an empty room.
Los Santos General has doctors, nurses, porters, a reception desk and people sitting in the waiting area at three in the morning. Mission Row has officers at their desks, someone on the front counter and someone watching the cells. Legion Square has people crossing it at every hour of the night. Shops have staff, buildings have security, and the streets have traffic whether or not the server has spawned any of it.
Assume you are being recorded anywhere that would realistically be recorded:
This does not mean every crime solves itself. It means the cameras are part of the scene. Cover your face, deal with the system, pick somewhere quieter, or accept that footage exists and that someone can go looking for it later.
It cuts both ways. Footage still has to be pulled in character by a character who would have access to it. Nobody gets to narrate what a camera saw as a fact of the world without doing that first.
Plenty of interiors can be walked into at any hour because the door has no script on it. That is not permission. The Observatory, art galleries, the library, City Hall, museums, schools and government offices keep normal hours. During the day they have staff, visitors and somebody at the desk. At night they are closed, and closed does not mean deserted either, because there are cleaners, night security and people working late.
If your character could not walk into a place at that hour, do not walk into it just because the game let you. If you want to be inside anyway, roleplay how you got in. Breaking in is a scene worth having. Strolling through a door the game forgot to lock is not.
In practice: before you act, ask who would see this. If the honest answer is a nurse, two porters and a waiting room, play it that way, or move somewhere your character would actually get away with it.
Treating a location as empty, unwatched or unstaffed purely because the server has not put anyone there is failRP, and using it to dodge consequences is powergaming under I3.
Every weapon your character has on them is a physical object that other people can see. Firearms are shown on your character by the server, on the hip or across the back, and that is deliberate. If you are carrying, people around you notice, and you should play as though they do.
Melee weapons are not drawn on the body in the same way, so that one is on you to play honestly. A melee weapon is either in your hands or it is stored. A bat, a machete, an axe, a polearm or a sword does not fit in a pocket and does not ride around invisibly on your back. If you want it with you, carry it openly. If you would rather not have the attention, leave it in a vehicle, a property or a stash and go and get it when you need it.
Genuinely small items are the sensible exception. A folding knife, knuckles, a screwdriver or anything else that honestly fits in a pocket, a waistband or a jacket can be concealed and drawn.
Walking into a hospital, a store, a club or a government building visibly armed will get a reaction. Staff refuse service, civilians call it in, security stops you and police respond. None of that is staff punishing you for carrying. It is the city behaving the way a city behaves. If you intend to go armed somewhere like that, plan for it and expect the scene that follows.
In practice: if you would have to explain where you were keeping it, you were not keeping it there.
Producing a weapon that was not visibly on you, or that you could not plausibly have been carrying, is powergaming under I3. So is making a large weapon quietly disappear mid scene to avoid the reaction to it.
Kindred and Garou cannot hold a position in the Police Department, Emergency Medical Services, the Fire Department or the Department of Justice. This applies to every rank, including reserve, auxiliary and consulting roles.
The test is simple. If lead can kill you, you can serve. Mortals, Ghouls, Kinfolk, Hunters and anyone else who bleeds and stays bled is welcome in any of these departments.
Why Kindred cannot. These are day jobs. Court sits during daylight hours, shifts are rostered across the morning, warrants are sworn in the afternoon and inquests are held when the sun is up. A detective who cannot attend their own hearings, a paramedic who cannot work a day shift and a prosecutor who has never once been seen before dusk does not survive contact with the organisation, let alone a defence attorney. The Masquerade does not hold up under a personnel file.
Why Garou cannot. The Curse goes everywhere you do. Witnesses, juries, colleagues and suspects are all put on edge by your presence without knowing why, which quietly poisons interviews, testimony and trials. Add the risk of a Rage trigger during an arrest, a resuscitation or a cross-examination, and the Delirium if it goes far enough, and one bad moment takes the whole case and several careers with it.
What you can still do. Nothing stops you working alongside these departments. Be a contact, an informant, a consultant on paper, a paramedic's spouse, a defence attorney's investigator, the reason a case file has a hole in it. Influence and Contacts reach further into a department than a badge ever would, and they do not require you to attend a nine in the morning briefing.
If a character is Embraced or Changes while already serving, they do not simply carry on. Speak to a Storyteller and to the relevant Faction Lead. Leaving the job is part of the story, and it is usually a better one than pretending nothing happened.
Police, medical and Department of Justice characters are not corrupt. No bribes, no tipping off, no losing evidence for a friend, no arranging a charge to fall apart, no selling access, no looking the other way for money or favours.
There is one exception, and it is the reason these departments are interesting to play at all.
Covering up the supernatural is permitted. Rewriting a report so it does not mention what the officer actually saw, quietly closing a case that cannot survive a courtroom, misfiling a body that should not be explainable, keeping a witness statement out of the record because the witness described something impossible. All of that is allowed, and it needs no approval in advance. It is the correct instinct for a character who wants to keep their job and their sanity.
Open a ticket anyway. Not for permission, for the paper trail. A cover-up that staff know about can be brought back later: by an internal affairs investigation, by a journalist, by a hunter reading the gaps in the record, or by whatever you buried turning up again. A cover-up nobody logged is just a scene that ended.
The exception covers the supernatural and nothing else. Using it as cover for ordinary corruption, taking money to bury something mundane and calling it a Masquerade breach, is a straightforward rule break and will be treated as one.
Your supernatural nature should always come before your occupation. We expect careers to complement your splat, not contradict it.
Kindred are creatures of the night and spend their days in the safety of day sleep. As such, they may not work professions that require regular daytime attendance or operation. Careers should realistically function during the evening or allow the Kindred to operate through ownership, influence, employees or ghouls rather than being physically present throughout the day.
Garou are not restricted by daylight, but their lives are defined by their duty to Gaia, their sept and the Litany. Careers should make sense for someone whose true calling is fighting the Wyrm. Employment should support their role as a Garou rather than becoming their primary identity or preventing them from fulfilling their responsibilities.
Tip: If you're ever unsure whether a career is appropriate for your character, simply ask a member of the Storytelling Team. We're always happy to help find a concept that fits both your character and the tone of the Chronicle.
What your character knows and what you have read are two different things. It's easy to pick up a lot about the other splats from the corebooks or a wikia, but that's your knowledge, not your character's. Your character only knows what they've actually learned in the world, and what their sheet supports.
Before your character speaks with authority on another splat, ask yourself where that knowledge would have come from. In practice it needs to be backed by one of:
Without one of those, your character simply doesn't know it, however familiar you are with the material out of character. Reciting weaknesses, hierarchies, powers, or secrets of a splat you have no IC grounding in is a form of metagaming, and it's unfair on the players who built their characters to hold that knowledge.
Backing it up: If your character is leaning on knowledge that should come from their sheet, be ready to show it. Use /showsheet to display your sheet to another player, or ask for theirs, so claims can be verified in the moment without dragging staff in. If it isn't on the sheet or in the backstory, play it as not known.
Checking is allowed, and it should be kind. Asking another player where their character's knowledge comes from is not rules-lawyering and nobody should feel awkward raising it. It is fine to check, and it is fine to ask. Do it out of character, do it politely, and treat it as teaching rather than catching somebody out. /showsheet exists for exactly this, so a claim can be confirmed in seconds and the scene carries on without anybody feeling accused.
What isn't allowed is using it as a weapon. Picking over every line somebody says, talking down to a newer player, quoting page numbers at them mid-scene, or making a public show of someone getting a detail wrong is a conduct matter under I1. Most people who get lore wrong are still learning it, and how you handle that decides whether they enjoy learning it here. Correct them the way you would want to be corrected. If a disagreement won't settle, drop it and take it to a Storyteller with /lorehelp rather than arguing it out in the scene.
This applies to every player and every splat, supernatural and mortal alike. Mysteries staying mysterious is what makes discovering them worthwhile. When in doubt, play your character as knowing less, not more, and let the world teach them.
Auspex and any power that mimics aura reading tells you what you see, not what it means. You might read the colour, the shade, or the texture of an aura, but recognising that reading as a specific type of being is a separate step, and one your character can only take if they have something to compare it to.
Knowing from the corebooks that a particular shade belongs to a Rokea, a Kindred, a Changeling, or a member of the Fera doesn't mean your character knows it. If they've never met a Rokea before, a matching aura reads as "something unusual", not "ah, a Rokea". You describe what you perceive; you don't instantly name the species.
Your character can make that identification when:
Otherwise, play the uncertainty. "Their aura is unlike anything I've seen" is roleplay; "yep, that's a Changeling" from a first meeting is metagaming, and it takes the discovery away from the other player. As with SU2, if you're claiming the Lore or backstory to make an identification, be ready to back it with /showsheet.
Tip: Reading an aura is a great hook, not an answer. Let it raise questions your character then has to chase down in play.
This rule covers what you are able to conclude from a reading. SU6 covers how the reading itself has to be played out, and both apply every time.
This applies to every power of this kind and every player who uses one. The same holds for mortals or any splat with a comparable ability. When you're not sure your character would recognise what they're seeing, they don't.
This one is less a rule and more something worth keeping in mind. Los Santos is full of monsters, but it is also full of ordinary people having ordinary nights. Not every flickering streetlight is a sign, not every stranger in a long coat is Kindred, and not every bad day is the Wyrm at work. Sometimes a mugging is just a mugging, a bar fight is just a bar fight, and the power going out means somebody didn't pay the bill.
The best characters are the ones that don't know they're in a World of Darkness game. They have jobs, debts, favourite takeaways and people they're avoiding. They react to the strange as strange, because the mundane is still their normal.
None of this means we want less supernatural roleplay. Quite the opposite. The horror only lands when there's something ordinary for it to interrupt, and a night that starts perfectly normal is exactly what makes the moment it stops being normal hit as hard as it should.
In practice: Let mundane things stay mundane unless you have a reason to think otherwise. Treating every odd detail as a puzzle to solve tends to burn out the mystery for everyone, including you.
Every splat on this server survives on the same basic arrangement: the world does not believe in you. Kindred call it the Masquerade, Garou call it the Veil, and everyone else has their own name for the same problem. Whatever you call it, it comes down to not saying the quiet part out loud in a crowded bar.
Talking openly about clans, tribes, packs, courts, powers, blood or anything else that lives on your sheet is the sort of thing that gets a person a psychiatric hold in the real Los Santos. Assume you are overheard. Bars have bartenders, streets have passers by, and some of the people standing quietly nearby are players you have not noticed yet.
Mortal characters are played by people who chose to play a mortal. A lot of them are brand new, and their first night deserves to be an ordinary first night in a strange city. Do not walk up to somebody who has been in Los Santos for twenty minutes and start explaining vampires to them. It takes a genuinely good story away from them before they have had the chance to have it.
Bringing a mortal into the know is some of the best roleplay on the server when it is earned. Slowly, in private, for a reason, and with an eye on the player's comfort as well as the character's. See I6 on mature themes and consent.
Being told about the supernatural in character is not the same as your character believing it, and it is never the same as you knowing it. Play the disbelief, it is usually the better scene anyway. See I2 on metagaming and SU2 on cross splat lore.
This one is deliberately soft. Nobody is counting slips and nobody is getting banned for a loose word in a scene. The people who enforce secrecy in this setting are other characters, so your own court, sept, pack or chantry is the first response, not staff. If it becomes a pattern, or somebody is clearly using it to dodge consequences or to spoil the setting for new players, a Storyteller will step in.
Aura reading is one of the most powerful tools any character can bring into a scene. It cuts through lies, it exposes what people are trying to hide, and it hands you information other players spent weeks earning. It is not a greeting, and it is not a scanner you sweep across a room.
Every aura reading must be roleplayed out with /me and /do. This is not optional and there is no version of this rule where it is skipped. Activating the power through the menu is a mechanic, not roleplay. If it did not appear in chat, it did not happen.
For example: /me holds her gaze a moment too long, eyes losing focus as they drift to the space around her shoulders. Followed by: /do The aura is a restless silver, guttering at the edges like it cannot settle.
Reading someone requires an in character reason to be suspicious of them, curious about them, or invested in them. Something in the scene has to prompt it.
Reading the aura of every new person your character meets is not permitted. Neither is reading everyone in a room, reading somebody the moment they walk through a door, or opening a conversation with a reading before a word has been said. There is nothing to justify it, it flattens the mystery for everybody at the table, and it is exactly the low effort play this server exists to avoid.
Doing the roleplay correctly does not change what your character is able to conclude. SU3 still governs that: you describe what you see, and naming a specific type of being takes backstory, Lore, or prior experience you can back up with /showsheet. A perfect emote does not turn an unfamiliar aura into a confirmed Changeling.
In practice: treat a reading as the opening of a story rather than the end of one. The best outcome is your character walking away with a question they now have to chase, not an answer they got for free.
A reading taken without the /me and /do did not happen. Anything learned from it is void, must be dropped immediately, and cannot be acted on or passed to anybody else. Repeat use without cause is powergaming under I3 and will be treated as such.
What another character is belongs to the player who made them. Their splat, their clan, tribe, kith, tradition or pack, and whether they are anything other than human at all, is theirs to reveal in their own time.
This is not a gag order. Secrets get told in this setting, and they should. Betrayals, warnings, confessions, reports back to your own people and information traded for something worth having are some of the best scenes anyone gets here, and we would rather have more of them, not fewer.
The problem is how cheaply it is being done. At the moment somebody's nature gets passed around as small talk, handed to strangers who have not earned it, and used to score points in an argument. When telling costs nothing, everybody knows everything inside a week, nobody has any reason to be careful, and there is nothing left for anyone to discover. Learning what somebody is does not entitle you to repeat it, and a room full of people who already suspect it does not make it common knowledge.
Telling another character is absolutely allowed. What we are asking is that it means something when you do. All three of these have to be true:
Demanding to know what somebody is counts too. Asking a stranger what they are within minutes of meeting them, pressing somebody who has already declined to answer, or treating a refusal as confirmation is the same problem viewed from the other end. Nobody owes you their nature, and a character who keeps asking should expect to be treated as exactly the sort of person who keeps asking.
In practice: ask what your character gets out of saying it. If the answer is nothing, it was gossip and it can wait. If the answer is something real, a favour owed, a debt cleared, somebody warned before they get hurt, then say it and play what follows. That is the version of this we want to see more of.
To be clear about where the line sits: telling somebody is not the offence. Telling somebody carelessly is. Outing another character as small talk, out of character, or without meeting the three conditions above is a rule break rather than a story choice, and doing it with knowledge you gained out of character is metagaming under I2. Persistent offenders will find their characters answering for it in play as well as their accounts answering for it with staff. See SU5 for the same problem applied to your own secrets.
Public Opening Requirement: Every rented business must open its doors to the public at least once a week for a minimum of 1 to 2 hours.
Passive Management: You cannot use a business solely as a private hangout or personal storage locker. If a business is consistently closed for 14 consecutive days without prior approval, the lease will be terminated and the property reclaimed.
Hiring and Staffing: Owners are expected to actively recruit and hire other players (mechanics, bartenders, security, accountants) to distribute roleplay opportunities.
Interactive Services: Businesses should offer actual roleplay services rather than just standing behind a counter letting scripts do the work. For example, if you apply to own a cafe you should roleplay the cooking, the customer service, and the atmosphere.
Transferring Businesses: Businesses are tied to the player approved in the application. You cannot sell, trade, or transfer ownership of a business or its physical location to another player without explicit staff approval.
Thematic Consistency: Business operations, and the roleplay surrounding this, must fit the established lore and atmosphere of the area.
Character Continuity: A business application will be instantly denied if it does not make sense for your character type, faction, or supernatural limitations. Your business must serve as a logical extension of your character's roleplay, not just a way to make clean cash or pass the time.
Kindred cannot apply to personally operate or manage daytime-only businesses (e.g., bakeries, daytime cafes, beachside surf shops). If you own a business, it must logically operate during the night, or you must have explicit, heavily roleplayed mortal proxies running the daytime shifts while you remain entirely behind the scenes.
Garou are strictly prohibited from owning or operating businesses that directly defile Gaia or serve the Wyrm. Applications for things like oil refineries, mechanic operations, industrial factories, or predatory corporate fast-food chains will be denied.
Changeling businesses must foster glamour. Changelings, therefore, cannot own or operate highly Banal, mind-numbing corporate ventures. If your character applies to run a soul-crushing corporate accounting firm or a sterile office building, they are actively inviting the undoing of their own Chrysalis.
Awakened characters must ensure their businesses do not actively invite Paradox.
Mortals have more freedom in terms of owning businesses for themselves as they are not restricted by supernatural limitations. Priority will generally be given to mortals who provide a compelling application for establishing businesses.