HL2RP Eve | Half Life: Downfall Roleplay

Hey!
My name is Sixx and if you've been around C16 for long enough you'll already know about my community - Eve Gaming. Originally created by @Lev, @NightAngel and myself, Eve was one of the biggest Fallout Roleplay servers post-Spire, and many people have been asking about the status of the community for a long time.
Well, I and my Co Owner @Diggysean happy to announce our newest project; a Half Life 2 Roleplay server with a fresh and unique twist that is guaranteed to catch your attention. Directly influenced by Kurt Wimmer’s ‘Equilibrium’ Universe, I’m happy to present Half Life: Downfall.

1942. Nazi Germany are winning skirmishes against the United Nations and the whole world fears the extent of their powers. German Scientist Heinrick Manstein and his team of captured UN scientists (of which included Cove Johnson II Sr.) are forced by the socialist party to develop a weapon that will allow Nazi forces easier access into enemy territory. Research on an illusive new material found in Camargue, France known as “Xen” is believed to be the key to building such a weapon, and they work on constructing an inter-dimensional portal device. World War II has come to a violent close. The rise of political figures such as Hitler and Stahlin and the hateful genocides that ensued their ascensions to power strike fear into the hearts of all men. The dizzying capacity of hatred and the blood that was shed as a result of man’s ability to spite serve as a lesson to all for many years to come. Unbeknownst to the world of mankind, the Combine, a super race of alien humanoids on the hunt for Xen, watch and observe as humanity scrambles amongst the fragments left by war.

1998. The Black Mesa incident occurs. Aperture Science continue vigorous testing with Xen in underground laboratories using the unfinished research of the Nazi scientists. The first portals open and the Combine begin plotting their move against humanity after rifts sent out by the opening of the portals catch their attention.

2001. Two years later, after preparation and cunning observation of the Human Race, the Combine invade Earth, bringing with them a holocaust that kills billions. Within weeks, the Combine Civil Authority is formed with the intent of enslaving what remains of mankind to further their research and planetary excavations for more Xen. At the head of the Civil Authority, the High Council decrees that mankind’s greatest weakness is its capacity to feel. Wars, crime, grief and pain are all caused by our lust for feeling. The new society of Unionists are forced to take Prozium, a drug which nullifies emotions. Any and all possible stimuli for emotion are eradicated. Galleries, museums, libraries and theatres are all burnt to the ground. Possessions such as family photos, portable music players and other forms of memorabilia are considered contraband and those found carrying them are sent for execution. Literature that isn’t High Council contraband is incinerated.

The current year is 2002. The world has settled into the new oppressive regime of the Combine, and civilisation is somewhat restored to its former nature. Rumours are spread and mostly ignored of an underground Resistance; a plain-sight movement of people undermining the Combine and making secret efforts to get out of their rule. Every Citizen that resides within the established Cities are forced to take Prozium, emotion is completely outlawed, and society is forced to work to survive. However, this is more than that. This is no longer your fight for your survival. This is your fight for your humanity.

Roleplaying as a Citizen is usually quite boring, right? We’ve all been there - join a new server, passiveRP in the plaza for a little bit, wonder where everyone is, find out the slums are the place to be, generic fight to retake the City. Nothing happens. You get no satisfaction out of being another blue shirt. At Eve, we want to negate this from happening as much as possible, we want to run a server that gives you something to do at all times. From the second you walk out of that train station and into the bold new world of HL2RP, you’re a Citizen that’s assigned work, a housing block in which you will be assigned a roommate, an allocated Unionist representative with whom you must meet with on behalf of the Civil Authority, and a prescription of your favourite blue pills.

Citizen Roleplay generally consists of interacting with other characters just as lifeless as you, deciding whether you are going to conform or try to resist the Union’s efforts to destroy every shred of humanity you have left, and working in a very organised sector of the City. (This can include Prozium distribution, janitorial work, store clerk, Union representative, etc)

Instead of being constantly hassled by the classic PickUpTheCanRP, Citizens in this world of HL2RP are treat relatively different to the Citizens of any other dystopian universe, in the sense that your only real enemy is yourself. Unless under suspicion of ‘sense offending’, you can expect to live a fairly normal, albeit restrictive and overwhelmingly daunting lifestyle. The Grammaton Clerics do not patrol, but watch. Every move you make is recorded. Everything you think about is regulated. Everything you do is in the name of the Union. Or, at least, it better be.

Since the MPF (Or, our version of the MPF) no longer need to make you fear them, you won’t sigh as you’re being beaten for the umptieth time because of powerhungry CP’s. And since the Combine assume there is no rebellion going to rise against them out of the anger and passion of Mankind, there are no slums in which Rebels can hide, you instead have 100% access to every District from the moment you step outside.

Instead of having the usual MPF systems most conventional HL2RP servers use, there are but a few ranks to climb in the Civil Authority; Recruit, Cleric, and High Cleric, with ranks such as Sectorial (or the Downfall equivalent of this rank) being played from behind the scenes. This negates the issue that a lot of servers seem to have, where there’s either too little players to man each division or too many divisions spread thin across a decent playerbase. Of course, removing divisions altogether does mean that players won’t necessarily get to pick and choose their preferred style of MPF RP, but it does mean that going through training (and being trained in all classic divisions) is a lot more rewarding and reaching the coveted rank of Cleric feels less like something you can take for granted.

All Recruits that are taken on by the Civil Authority are first brought in as Recruits to the Monastery. Trained in CQC, firearms, logistics and judgement to become the eyes, ears and the force of the Union, coupled with the often fatal effects of Prozium i2, the purest strain of Prozium designed to completely and permanently eradicate the brain’s capacity to produce hormones and chemicals, making it a one time + permanent (albeit often severely damaging) dose, Recruits are put through the process of being effectively turned into machines of the Union’s will. The cogs that turn the wheels of society and enforce the absolute laws of sense offending.

As a Recruit, you will Roleplay through various training scenarios that won’t be done in one whole day - to make the experience as rewarding as possible, Recruits will have to learn how to properly process offenders of any kind, combat Resistance members efficiently (let's be honest, there will be Rebels), and how to govern the ongoing Xen research efforts. No more throwing random Citizens in cells and stumbling across the Rebel base as an 05; Recruits are not allowed to patrol. Instead walk into the Monastery as a naive recruit, and walk back out into the streets as a certified City Cleric. To make up for lack of divisions, Recruits are trained in all manner of fields, including fundamental field medics, tactile breaching, demolitions and all manner of conventional firearms. It’s a gruelling Roleplay experience that will harbour great rewards and satisfaction, which is something not akin to most server RCT systems.

The backbone of the Authority’s power over the Citizens of the Union, the Grammaton Cleric are given every possible tool to be used at their disposal. Trained extensively to carry out the war on sensory material and the human ability to feel and individually think, Clerics that make it past the training stage and survive through the chemical brainwashing essentially become walking computers; scanning and analysing the everyday populace for any sign of sense offence.

Every piece of material that isn’t immediately disposed of is logged and processed by the Clerics, every Resistance member that isn’t killed on sight is interrogated and executed by the Clerics and every aspect of the City is inspected and regulated by the Clerics. There isn’t a corner of the City that can’t be checked by you. There isn’t a person that’s out of your grasp. Roleplaying as a Grammaton Cleric generally consists of going out and inspecting and observing the everyday populace, from making housing block sweeps to performing drug tests on unsuspecting Citizens, all in the name of cracking down on sense offence and enforcing the Union’s order on all. Generally the same feeling as any normal MPF RP, with the same brutality and unforgiving judgement, only with much greater context and sense of purpose.

After showing exceptional skill in the field and undivided dedication to the Authority, Clerics that prove themselves worthy are initiated as High Clerics, and are automatically a member of the Monastery council, which deals with the recruitment of Clerics, processing of prolific Resistance members, and the guidance and leading of all Clerics beneath them. There is no ranking system within the High Monastery, and all decisions are made diplomatically. This rules out the vanilla systems where one corrupt Sectorial or Divisional Leader can absolutely destroy the RP experience for players involved in the faction, and prevents players from feeling competitive or headstrong over rankings.

Eve Gaming is a proven, hardened community with veteran Roleplayers at the helm. We train our staff to be as professional and diplomatic as possible. No Admin will ever use the ban button as a way to end an argument, no player will ever get physlaunched across the map for OOC reasons, no player will ever come across an unjust or unfair punishment for violating the community rules. We aim to make every event as involving as possible and we try to encourage interaction between players at all times. We do use a rolling system for our combat, with exceptions made for scenarios where P2L would be more logical. Combat is taken in rounds at the player’s discretion, rolling for initiative and advantage/disadvantage checks are taken into account, and all of our Admins are trained to oversee combat if called upon, so you can always be sure you have a fair and unbias’d overseer to your fighting.
Server Information TBC, we're still pondering maps and content and funding and the likes, this announcement thread is purely to gather interest in the schema and to explain this new concept.

Thanks a lot for reading, watch this space for more information!

 

Very nice thread! And I'm so glad to see eve make it's return.

However, I spotted a few spelling mistakes like "Stahlin" which I guess was meant to be 'Stalin'.

I have one question about the citizen roleplay, and it's this:

If you're a citizen who conforms more to the ideals of resistance against the Combine, would you be allowed to make a business and then use that money to funnel funds into the resistance? I ask because it's always an idea that's intrigued me - and I'm glad to see no mention of the Civil Workers' Union!

 

Bit confused about the emotion thing, looks neat though.

 

Appreciate the effort. Seems interesting except, It looks like you attempted to fix a problem while creating another.

Ok - Good. You don't have the "muh feels".
Ok - That's not good. Now you have all these robo-cops and, characters devoid of any feelings so what's there to drive them to improve or engage in something interesting, exactly - You won't be able to because the pills turn you into some doped up retarded kid on xanax going "...eh"

Otherwise, it's alright.

 

Yeah dude if you're a Unionist and you're giving all of your tokens to someone who is secretly fuelling the Resistance movement then the Combine would be none the wiser; they presume everything is going smoothly if there's no immediate danger. And since we have a big focus on that kind of "hide in plain sight" sort of Resistance rather than a "let's barricade the Fat Nargodian and stockpile scripts" sort of Resistance, that could be interesting!

They're just banned, basically

 

So everyone is like a robot?

 

The main spark for the RP comes from deciding that for yourself, do you wanna be a soulless tool for the Union and delve into the deeper parts of Loyalist lifestyle? Or do you want to try and defiantly cling onto the last thing that makes you not a robot? It's up to you how you build your character, removing emotions just adds context.

 

Neat, but it's essentially rehashed HL2RP and it's sort of tough to compare yourselves to other servers and say you're different. The mechanics you proclaim that Citizens have on your server have already been done, if not exact, then essentially the same. It's not to say Citizens in your roleplay won't be 'enjoyable', but it's to say Citizens in your roleplay won't be different.

I like the MPF system (sort of), it's a good way to engage players in things they don't quite usually do on a daily RP basis. By that I mean the fact that you remove 'divisions' because you're essentially encouraging players to act as every division. Although, understand that the filter applied to those divisions is there is because people doing Medical RP that don't know what they're talking about usually butcher it, and then the people who are elitists about it spew toxic shit because they studied their Army Ranger field guides 24/7. Either way, it's neat. I'm just worried how a corrupt High Cleric will go when no rank triumphs the rank (unless other High Clerics can 'vote' them out?).

Also,

What I'm getting from this is simply that players have the opportunity to decide it for themselves, but giving people that freedom on GMOD RP kind of makes it redundant because people will play RoboCop because they were told they could so why not? That or people make whiny piss-baby metro-cops that cuddle in the lounge.

Either way, it's a bit of a 'twist' with the whole Nazi thing, but I feel like there could be /so/ much more done revolving around this idea and there could be so much more actually implemented since it still just feels like HL2RP with things renamed and factions removed.

Also, I love Lev so I support this

 

I liked how you did the EVE header thing on your post. It feels like there's not much different, me and a friend read this over and it has some Project Kaskade vibes to it with the Nazi stuff. There should be a lot more explained though, it feels very empty.

 

A few errors, as Dogmos pointed out their is some spelling errors but it doesn't matter that much. (Cove Johnson or Cave Johnson?). And a big error unless you mean something else entirely, the United Nations did not exist until 1945. But otherwise this sounds like it's something new, I'll be there for release.

 

"The Grammaton Cleric" like from Equilibrium with Christian Bale?

Don't get me wrong. Take out the whole gun kata shit and a Equilibrium RP would be cool as fuck.

 

Yep. Sixx was pretty influenced by the movie

<3

 

Cool!

 

Hey everyone, thanks for all the feedback, for any spelling mistakes or dates I got wrong, as @Lev knows I'm pretty much only productive at stupid o' clock in the morning so I was pretty tired and didn't finish this until 4AM, apologies for any confusion, I'm not stupid, I swear
Just to address some of your comments;

Absolutely, the High Clerics all attend the Monastery Council where decisions are made on everything, including the integrity of their own rankings.

/shrugs, we're never gonna tell you how you should Roleplay your character, there could be not a single person on the server that takes their medication and wants to Roleplay as a sense offender and that would be okay. I am gonna take on board criticism about the Robo-Cop thing and make it so that Clerics can not take medication too, since that is kind of forcing a God complex onto people.

That's pretty much what we have here my man, no stupid Gun martial arts or whatever.

More information to come soon!
Also, credits to @Vasey105 for the Header poses which I put through Photoshop!

 

United Nations was just a term for the Allied Powers in WW2, (America, and those other countries that wish they were America)

 

eve back

 

This is actually mildly interesting.
I'm curious about the level of apathy prozium provides.
Also, how are the Combine going to do the "enslave all hoomans" masterplan if said hoomans don't fear them?
All-in-all, this looks great.
Good luck.

 

of course my laptop finally starts to break down once two promising servers appear

OT(Sorry): This rubs my hype gland well.

On a side note, what plans do you have for combine/rebel 'economy'?

 

did you use photoshop for those photos sir