Serious What community did you come from?

[Hudson]

In trying to archive details about past Garry's Mod communities I've come up with a few sections to summarise the history of a community in a narrative. If you want to help build the archive then simply comment in this thread with the format for what parts you remember.

For example if all you remember of the community was the year it started and what the donation rewards were, then reply with those details, and hopefully there will be enough information gathered over time to catalogue that community. If you were a regular player of multiple communities before nebulous then feel free to answer about them all.

What was the name of the community, who was involved with starting it and what were their roles?

What servers do you remember the community running?

When did the community or servers start?

How were the servers funded? Did the community have donation rewards?

In trying to described the culture of the community and the experience of its server(s) - what did you enjoy about it? Or how did it compare to nebulous?

Did the community face any challenges? Why did it end? When did it end?

Do you have any links? For example: forum/Steam community group?

 

[Blackquill]

What was the name of the community, who was involved with starting it and what were their roles?: Heartbit, ran by a guy called BLT950

What servers do you remember the community running?: BMRP - some other smaller projects later on like SAMP, Tekkit etc

When did the community or servers start? Started in 2013

How were the servers funded? Did the community have donation rewards? Donations mainly

In trying to described the culture of the community and the experience of its server(s) - what did you enjoy about it? Or how did it compare to nebulous? It was really small and close-knit so everyone was really friendly with each other and had p good mindsets about things and dealing with issues; it's p much how I came to be on LP

Did the community face any challenges? Why did it end? When did it end? Playercount woes, limited interest in BMRP, limited event freedom, etc. Ended a few times, can't remember dates

Do you have any links? For example: forum/Steam community group?: I still have the majority of the people behind it on steam, still have their own group as well. Haven't spoken to some in a while

 

[Lynx]

What was the name of the community, who was involved with starting it and what were their roles?
Aperture Gaming; ran by Proffrink.

What servers do you remember the community running?
Heavily modified Phase Four, which is what I've been wanting for a /long/ time.

When did the community or servers start?
8+ Years Ago.

How were the servers funded? Did the community have donation rewards?
Donations, mainly.

In trying to described the culture of the community and the experience of its server(s) - what did you enjoy about it? Or how did it compare to nebulous?
Quite a small community, with many players knowing each other and forming groups. Loved the sense of progression the P4 schema allowed when combined with custom content.

Did the community face any challenges? Why did it end? When did it end?
The main problem was with a power trip with high end groups having all the best stuff (Silicon Powerarmour; G3SG1's; Stealth Implants) which lead to many groups being stomped by these groups. Endd a while back, maybe 2012-2013?
Do you have any links? For example: forum/Steam community group?
https://gmod.facepunch.com/f/gmodgd/ilhc/Aperture-Roleplay-IV-Phase-Four/1/

 

[Rabid]

-snip-

 

[Plankster]

What was the name of the community, who was involved with starting it and what were their roles?
Lemonpunch, my man Gurrazor.

What servers do you remember the community running?
Half Life 2 and WW3RP.

When did the community or servers start?
Man i'm not sure, someone help?

How were the servers funded? Did the community have donation rewards?
Donations I think?

In trying to described the culture of the community and the experience of its server(s) - what did you enjoy about it? Or how did it compare to nebulous?
Was the biggest HL2RP community, liked LPs servers more than Nebulous. Was just more fun for some reason. Maybe I lost interest idk.

Did the community face any challenges? Why did it end? When did it end?
I only know of the thing that got it shut down which was due to money issues or something? Ended in 2016.

Do you have any links? For example: forum/Steam community group?
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/lemonpunch

 

[axido]

What was the name of the community, who was involved with starting it and what were their roles?: same as @Blackquill, HeartBit, a rather small community ran by blt950 focused around bmrp mostly

What servers do you remember the community running?: Only BMRP and SAMP for a short while, wasn't around for other stuff

When did the community or servers start?: I think it was around 2013

How were the servers funded? Did the community have donation rewards?: Donations, once the community shut down blt950 gave all of the money to charity, hes a cool dude

In trying to described the culture of the community and the experience of its server(s) - what did you enjoy about it? Or how did it compare to nebulous?: I enjoyed mainly the roleplay, the black mesa universe was kind of new at the time and was really great, still have a lot of great memories - compared to nebulous though, it was much smaller but really a lot friendlier

Did the community face any challenges? Why did it end? When did it end?: It died mainly due to lack of interest in BMRP, I think the playercount went down by a lot after some time and blt was forced to close it - they attempted to restart a few times but it's not gonna happen again.

Do you have any links? For example: forum/Steam community group?: I don't

 

[All Adm*ns are Bastards]

What was the name of the community, who was involved with starting it and what were their roles?
Catalyst Gaming. Head honcho from the very beginning was Roflwaffle/Alaskan thunderfuck. His goons/chief admins/devs over the years included RTLK, Raiden, Kronic, vizion and a few others. None of them were particularly notable aside from the main man himself

What servers do you remember the community running?
HL2RP (both city and outlands), darkrp based game mode called harbour RP, gmod racer, fort wars, minecraft servers, orange cosmos RP, ttt and probably a few others. A lot of the non rp servers were never really busy and more just for community players to cock about on. OCRP was probably the biggest hit but the hl2rp was quite good as well

When did the community or servers start?
late 2010ish, heyday for hl2rp was early 2011-2013. went down and came back in 2014 but never took off again.

How were the servers funded? Did the community have donation rewards?
Either rofl already had a box or he was renting one, can't really remember. Donation rewards were primarily on harbour RP and OCRP, I don't think donating got you anything on HL2RP as you could apply for pet and all the other shit communities sell to you nowadays

In trying to described the culture of the community and the experience of its server(s) - what did you enjoy about it? Or how did it compare to nebulous?
The number one thing is that you could get pet flags without having to pay for them or jump through loops. I can't stress enough how much having pet flags makes or breaks RP. People actually want to and enjoy RPing if you have the ability to make nice detailed scenes instead of staring at 4 plain walls corr who would have thunk. Anybody that disagrees is probably shit at building, it's a tried and tested theory

I know for a fact I dont have rose tinted glasses on when I say the rp was of a much better quality and slower than nowadays. Nobody was using binds or copy pasting emotes and as much as people like to rag on it we got along fine with S2M and S2RP. People still liked their script items (who doesnt?) but there was certainly no /me grabs the gun in the middle of firefights. Don't get me wrong there was still some shit rp but in general it wasn't as shit as the stuff you get on many servers these days

The outlands server is unbeaten, not seen one as good as it. The rp on there was especially good and when ineu pass got made for it the server was really top tier. got many a fond memory but unfortunately only a handful of screenshots

Did the community face any challenges? Why did it end? When did it end?
It had all the usual drama: nepotism, rogue devs, squabbling within the admin team. None of it really had any effect on the community. Some of the drama was utterly fantastic, probably rivalling the likes of eastenders n corrie.

Rofl was very honest about spending the donation money on hot wings and weed. I find his honesty admirable. Place got ddosed a fair bit but I think they also ddosed other communities as is (was?) gmod rp tradition.

Quite a few periods of extended downtime which if anything seemed to help the place last longer. HL2RP died around late 2014. There was work on new semi serious rp gamemodes but place kind of trailed off and died by 2015. forums are still up

Do you have any links? For example: forum/Steam community group?
https://www.catalyst-gaming.net/

 

[aiaininja]

What was the name of the community, who was involved with starting it and what were their roles?
SLA gaming (Silent Loud Assassins), it was started by Chrik, he was the sole owner and main developer for all the servers.

What servers do you remember the community running?
The community's main server was a TTT one, however they ran a side-server of ApocalypseRP, which used custom coded mutants and fiends made by Chrik.

When did the community or servers start?
Around late 2010.

How were the servers funded? Did the community have donation rewards?
Donations and ads on the forums.

In trying to described the culture of the community and the experience of its server(s) - what did you enjoy about it? Or how did it compare to nebulous?
I had no clue about roleplay at the time and I never even got too involved in the server, however the sense of wonder and novelty intrigued me to explore the diferent types of roleplay. Comparing it to nebulous, both had a high amount of custom content for the server, however, the real difference is my experience, in nebulous I had already gotten used to roleplay and the sense of novelty was far gone, that was until I went to HL2RP, a practically new genre for me.

Did the community face any challenges? Why did it end? When did it end?
The roleplay branch of the community quickly fell as the playercount was low. The TTT side stayed strong until the owner (Chrik) shutdown the servers and blew all the donation money on blow and hookers. This was around late 2011

Do you have any links? For example: forum/Steam community group?
Every link and group are dead and gone now.

 

[Zombine]

Communities (top is beginning, to bottom being more recent):
Sammy Servers (2013) — DarkRP, Fretta.
Darkland RP (2006?) [group deleted] — Heavily edited version of DarkRP.
Sassilization (2008) — Custom Sassilization gamemodes, deathrun.
NoXious Net (2006) — Zombie Survival, Tribes Ascend, other particle-effect-spamming gamemodes.
Terminal Shell (2009) — Zombie Survival.
Pulsar Effect (2009) — Custom serious RP gamemode.
Not A Crappy TTT Server (2011?) — Crappy TTT edit.
GMod Tower — You already know.
LemonPunch (2012?) — some gay shit.
Debonair DarkRP (2016) — DarkRP.
LemonPunch (again) — eh

How were the servers funded?
All were funded via premium subscriptions of some kind.

Enjoyable qualities?
(Mostly) friendly people. Most were/are hot garbage in comparison to nebulous' development quality.

Challenges + reason for ending?
All, minus GMTower, relied too heavily on premium or paid incentives, even making some things P2W for the dumbest things. DarkRP servers all ended because of incompetent owners and staff, which is to be expected.