Serious Tell me about a time you felt so immersed that you truly felt your character was in the Half-Life games.

[Cindy]

Doing a poll in the interest of checking the pulse on what kinds of experiences/scenarios people associate with the source material the most from among their RP adventures.

Here are some questions I’d like for you to answer, in as much detail as you feel can do the moment justice with.



What was a time in roleplay that you didn’t just feel like you were roleplaying in a server based on Half-Life, but rather felt as though you were actually watching a scene unfold that felt exceedingly faithful to the spirit of the source material?:

What about that scenario resonated with you? What does it remind you of from the source material?:

And out of all the games and iterations of Half-Life’s creative direction, which game or era does it remind you of the most? Half-Life 1? Half-Life 2? One of the Episodes? Alyx? Elaborate on how you see the connection, if possible:

[B]What was a time in roleplay that you didn’t just feel like you were roleplaying in a server based on Half-Life, but rather felt as though you were [I]actually[/I] watching a scene unfold that felt exceedingly faithful to the spirit of the source material?[/B]:

[B]What about that scenario resonated with you? What does it remind you of from the source material?[/B]:

[B]And out of all the games and iterations of Half-Life’s creative direction, which game or era does it remind you of the most? Half-Life 1? Half-Life 2? One of the Episodes? Alyx? Elaborate on how you see the connection, if possible[/B]:

 

[Cindy]

Goes w/o saying but keep shitposts clear, trying to actually gather some data.

 

[Andrew]

I'll update this post with an actual post later but I feel like I should share I dont really like the source material it's kinda basic and barebones

 

[Cindy]

I'll update this post with an actual post later but I feel like I should share I dont really like the source material it's kinda basic and barebones

I’m going to save you some time and just tell you that this thread isn’t for you then, if you somehow manage to play on a Half-Life roleplaying server and yet you don’t like the source material.

Would rather not derail the thread trying to ascertain how you think it’s “basic and barebones”.

 

[Cineron]

Being interrogated on the city 17 map by a Combine in that cube that had transparent energy walls or something.
Fun fact: he let me ooc go poop during the endeavor.

 

[Erkor]

What was a time in roleplay that you didn’t just feel like you were roleplaying in a server based on Half-Life, but rather felt as though you were actually watching a scene unfold that felt exceedingly faithful to the spirit of the source material?:
So, back during the mid-to-late C45 revival period on [REDACTED], I had a lengthy kind of chemistry with another player's character. The character in question - Renata - had various different run-ins with mine. To better understand this, you'll need some context:

My character in that iteration was Han Yeong-Su, a pretty strict, by-the-books metrocop. Due to the nature of the setting, Civil Protection were not segregated from the ordinary citizenry; essentially, they led a double-life as a citizen and a cop. I elected to make my character's home -- generally for off-duty shenanigans -- in the Metropol's first story room. Above his was a chaotic stagmire known as Renata's apartment. Renata was played by an eccentric and very good roleplayer, and the character herself was a hispanic woman (I forgot her exact nationality, forgive me) with a slew of temper problems and a not particularly excellent grasp on the english language.

Renata's disposition was very chaotic. Yeong-Su's relationshi pwith her was rather tentative, as they'd only know one-another as the slightly annoying neighbor from above-or-below.

That was, effectively, the end of it, until a crucial shootout during a warehouse heist. The perpetrators escaped, but someone managed to get off a shot that struck a pressurized container full of a flammable gas; you can imagine the end-result.

Flash forward twenty minutes or so. Yeong-Su is off-duty. He goes home to sit in front of his dinky little state-mandated TV to watch the latest installment of Address Unknown from Max Payne 2 because I made a muffled soundbyte for it. Then, someone screams. Someone screams so loud it passes through the floors. Someone screams in blood-curdling agony. It's coming from above. Yeong-Su goes to check it out, knocks on the door with an apparent tinge of concern for his neighbor, and watches as Renata steps into the doorway and nervously tells him "no, everything's fine, don't worry about it."

There's a trail of blood behind her. Yeong-Su forces himself in. He follows it to the bathroom...
And comes face-to-face with five of the most notorious rebel figures known on the server.

I know this OOC. Yeong-Su doesn't -- really -- know it IC. The only thing he knows is that the man lying in the bathtub full of blood and being surgerized on is screaming awfully suspiciously for someone who got into a "workplace accident." Someone did just get struck by shrapnel from an explosion...

I am sweating bullets. Yeong-Su realizes something is terribly, terribly wrong. He excuses himself. He doesn't bring it up, but he knows.

Over the course of the next few months, Renata is revealed to have been a very active and very deeply-rooted member of an underground resistance network. We become enemies on these characters, in a general sense, although when the mask comes off and JUDGE-77191 becomes Yeong-Su again, that one-sided rivalry ceases. He can't make a move against her -- she's his neighbor, after all.

This all begins to crescendo after a schism in the resistance causes a lethal shootout. People are killed. CiviPro responds. 77191 is on the scene, and enters the sewers...

...And sees Renata, bleeding, wounded to the point of near-death. He knows her. She doesn't know who's behind the mask. He picks her up, then hauls her to the nearest safe area -- a small Combine checkpoint in a subway station, ironically not far from where her lover was shot in the back of the head while being held hostage.

Any ordinary cop would probably pop a cap into her head right now, not much unlike her companion was killed. Yeong-Su couldn't really do that, though. He patches her up.

In the end, Renata -- ostracized by the new Resistance cell for opposing its claim to leadership -- is funneled into Civil Protection. 77191 had a hand in this. He asked the local force commander to organize that induction. At the core, Renata is a cold-blooded killer, and Yeong-Su knows that she has a short but hard-to-reach list of names to strike off before she'll allow herself to leave this planet...

What about that scenario resonated with you? What does it remind you of from the source material?:
This entire arc oozes the kind of twisted and malformed buddy-cop aura that I think can reasonably permeate most Civil Protection units. Even if there's absolutely no connection to the actual game's goings on here, I simply think this has the same kind of energy -- but malformed and radicalized into a darker essence -- as Barney taking off his mask and saying "About that beer I owed ya!"

And out of all the games and iterations of Half-Life’s creative direction, which game or era does it remind you of the most? Half-Life 1? Half-Life 2? One of the Episodes? Alyx? Elaborate on how you see the connection, if possible:
The map this occurred on was rp_city11_beta_froyo. It's steeped in Beta-Aesthetics, and while people might be torn on it, I quite liked the run-down, fucked up appearance of the map. Coupled with the similarly messed up arc that Renata (and her partner, Anselmo, whom I also played-- although this wasn't discussed here) went through, it melds together into a particularly neat package. Would it be Half-Life 2? Maybe. Episode 1? Maybe. It's a bit of everything that this reminds me of, but there's a certain sensation about it that I can't get rid of.

fire apartment

 

[Cindy]

I rattle my tin cup for more posts... I am far from sated.

 

[FreeSpy]

I rattle my tin cup for more posts... I am far from sated.

What was a time in roleplay that you didn’t just feel like you were roleplaying in a server based on Half-Life, but rather felt as though you were actually watching a scene unfold that felt exceedingly faithful to the spirit of the source material?:
The best time I had on HL2RP was probably Linntrix's iteration.

For context, I played Stefan Petrovich, a Russian veteran of the 1st Chechen invasion, but not in the way of your general hooah fighter that has survived countless battles and killed so many people and has 300 confirmed kills, but as a mere conscript who worked logistics - A guy who drove trucks in a hazardous environment for shit pay in exchange for psychological torture and pain. Atleast that's how I intended to play him. After the 7 hour war, he put his skills to use and just worked as a maintenance man in i17, where he survived for a while, until it blew up and started the iteration. This character, with basicly no english speaking skills, managed to become much more than anticipated as he started working with a newly formed group in the terminal, a transit hub turned refugee camp.

He began working with Floyd ( @Numbers ), the leader of the skinheads, a not so morally sound group of resistance fighters who resemble extremist anarco-capitalists, black and yellow flag guys. This didn't really resonate with Stefan, of course, coming from the USSR originally, but it worked, due to how Floyd and Stefan went through a crucible like event. A rag-tag group of individuals fighting against the combine to get to a call about something I don't even remember, with close encounters and kills by all in the group, as they dove headfirst back into the radiated ruins of City 17.

One thing leads to another, and slowly our group is picked off. A synth kills a man named Bob, (in reality i killed him with a shit roll lol) we leave, we lose another due to an encounter with OTA, and another gets wounded. We go into a wasteland, we find some dudes, we kill them, patch ourselves up, and run into a destroyed supersoldier, and after all this treck, we arrive at a desolated and semi-destroyed apartment building on rp_apocalypse, where we were meant to find this contact we had gotten wind of... and they're dead. All of the fighting and loss of life that we incurred on our trip was for nothing and something was wrong, but by the time we figured out what was happening - well, it was too late. Transhumans knew of our location and were coming straight for us, and we were screwed. Everyone was low on supplies, low on morale as all of this was for nothing, one of us couldn't even walk right, and we had to leave. The transhumans were already outside - we battled them to get in there. They were lying in wait and that meant one thing. The building filled with vocoders. We did what we could but only me and Floyd left that building willingly, as our third was captured by them. We put up a futile rescue attempt, and cut our losses. We took our walking to our exit point - Where we were told to go after getting our contact, only to get into an encounter with 3 OTA, who saw Floyd. He feigned a surrender, and I killed one or two (can't say for sure if it was me or numbers who murdered the second), the third leaving and cutting his own losses. After going back, we found the employer, and we subsequently relieved him of his life, as he had set us up and sent us to our own deaths. And from then on that was the story of how we committed bioterrorism by detonating a bomb at the sealed infestation zone, act which required ambushing hunters in the fakelands, preparation and commitment via corruption of the CWU and the gracious credit economy of the early combine, abusing as many workshifts and rations as we could to equip ourselves with adequate equipment for what was to come after. We were ambitious, and we performed well, staging ambushes and doing what was impossible in Siberia, killing hunters (albeit it was a requested action and i'm not sure how easy they went on us, but we still did it.)

us after our excursion and ambush on the hunters.

There is another situation which I'll post about in a different reply as i already wrote too much

What about that scenario resonated with you? What does it remind you of from the source material?:

Probably the fact we were very much the underdogs- Unlikely people to do these kinds of things and be grouped up in such a composition, fighting for our own reasons but ultimately the same goal - fucking the combine over.
fighting that guerrilla war the way we did, it made me feel like we were part of a Half life game. Trying to just win the fight, in a realistic fashion in regards to what kind of individuals we had fighting (reminds me of how early resistance was just actual terrorists in Star Wars)

that whole iteration felt good in that manner as it was (atleast in the early parts) the sweetspot between roleplay and s2k. Cops got their share as people fought, and it was easy for civies to get a gun and shotcop, but required some work to get the guns and materials required for higher tiers of gameplay, most of which didn't require actual staff intervention (albeit it happened when it came to giving a slight boost to the economy or giving event rewards).

And out of all the games and iterations of Half-Life’s creative direction, which game or era does it remind you of the most? Half-Life 1? Half-Life 2? One of the Episodes? Alyx? Elaborate on how you see the connection, if possible:

Alyx, primarily due to when it happened. 2007 was early occupation (this was pre-hl:a, hl:a releasing mid-iteration and not a lot of the content being ported over until later iirc). it was the hopelessness that really nailed it down. ooc we knew that the combine would not be contested until the 2020s, but we still played the characters, knowing they wouldn't win but they still fought. maybe not exactly core core content but core ideals in terms of content. especially given we were infiltrators in a society that was closely monitored and we still managed to beat it at certain points in time, as we stacked our odds and scored a couple wins

 

[sots]

What was a time in roleplay that you didn’t just feel like you were roleplaying in a server based on Half-Life, but rather felt as though you were actually watching a scene unfold that felt exceedingly faithful to the spirit of the source material?:
I played a character called Liu Shuren, he lasted about a year and a half, or two years on server, but I ultimately ended up signing him onto Where Men Go To Die, which was an event which explicitly marketed itself as a suicide mission. Success would prevent a cataclysmic explosion of a citadel near City Eight where the server was based at the time, and would have real consequences on server if the mission wasn't a success. All this to say that it was an important moment in the servers lore that would have lasting consequences.

It was a trip deep into a terribly irradiated zone that had been torn apart by conflicting parties of Resistance members, and Combine forces, and the whole aesthetic reminded me a lot of the Half Life Episodes in the way that wrecked combine architecture was very common, especially upon arrival at the Citadel. Broken, looping audio of orders over the now dwindling Combine forces that had remained to defend their citadel, desperately trying to navigate a completely foreign environment that was the internal of the citadel, I've plucked a few screenshots I can compare to, though I don't have any of the actual event because I have a new computer, and the old iterations have been removed from the forum

Generally exploring this sort of environment was pretty unheard of in the server at that point, it was always a pretty organised Combine Force versus a Resistance force of varying quality, so experiencing that wrecked city, and the inside of a citadel on the brink of collapse felt like it could have been a mission from the source material, which I believe was the intention of Nexus and his little team

Not only that, but we found out after the fact that the G-Man was literally watching over us at the very end of the event, and none of us even realised until we looked back at footage, which literally felt like playing through the game, not noticing him watching over you in certain scenes until you *know* where to look, to see him. It also hammered home the fact that this was a lore changing scenario that the G-Man may have had a hand in!

What about that scenario resonated with you? What does it remind you of from the source material?:
Mentioned above! Sorry for the tangent. But in short, the aesthetic, the server itself had strayed from the source material for a long time with good reason, but in an event environment it was a great place to make use of it. Also of course the fact that the G-Man was there, and no one even realised until after the fact!

And out of all the games and iterations of Half-Life’s creative direction, which game or era does it remind you of the most? Half-Life 1? Half-Life 2? One of the Episodes? Alyx? Elaborate on how you see the connection, if possible: Certainly the episodes, the wrecked city and weakened Combine force felt straight out of the episodes.

 

[flowerbroth]

What was a time in roleplay that you didn’t just feel like you were roleplaying in a server based on Half-Life, but rather felt as though you were actually watching a scene unfold that felt exceedingly faithful to the spirit of the source material?:
I played a character called Liu Shuren, he lasted about a year and a half, or two years on server, but I ultimately ended up signing him onto Where Men Go To Die, which was an event which explicitly marketed itself as a suicide mission. Success would prevent a cataclysmic explosion of a citadel near City Eight where the server was based at the time, and would have real consequences on server if the mission wasn't a success. All this to say that it was an important moment in the servers lore that would have lasting consequences.

It was a trip deep into a terribly irradiated zone that had been torn apart by conflicting parties of Resistance members, and Combine forces, and the whole aesthetic reminded me a lot of the Half Life Episodes in the way that wrecked combine architecture was very common, especially upon arrival at the Citadel. Broken, looping audio of orders over the now dwindling Combine forces that had remained to defend their citadel, desperately trying to navigate a completely foreign environment that was the internal of the citadel, I've plucked a few screenshots I can compare to, though I don't have any of the actual event because I have a new computer, and the old iterations have been removed from the forum

Generally exploring this sort of environment was pretty unheard of in the server at that point, it was always a pretty organised Combine Force versus a Resistance force of varying quality, so experiencing that wrecked city, and the inside of a citadel on the brink of collapse felt like it could have been a mission from the source material, which I believe was the intention of Nexus and his little team

Not only that, but we found out after the fact that the G-Man was literally watching over us at the very end of the event, and none of us even realised until we looked back at footage, which literally felt like playing through the game, not noticing him watching over you in certain scenes until you *know* where to look, to see him. It also hammered home the fact that this was a lore changing scenario that the G-Man may have had a hand in!

What about that scenario resonated with you? What does it remind you of from the source material?:
Mentioned above! Sorry for the tangent. But in short, the aesthetic, the server itself had strayed from the source material for a long time with good reason, but in an event environment it was a great place to make use of it. Also of course the fact that the G-Man was there, and no one even realised until after the fact!

And out of all the games and iterations of Half-Life’s creative direction, which game or era does it remind you of the most? Half-Life 1? Half-Life 2? One of the Episodes? Alyx? Elaborate on how you see the connection, if possible: Certainly the episodes, the wrecked city and weakened Combine force felt straight out of the episodes.

i still remember @Trains awesome application.

speaking of that, how about we crack open the previous iteration archive eh?