FailRP, powergaming and NLR: the RedM rulebook in plain english

FailRP, ignoring what happened to your character

Search for the failrp meaning and you will find a dozen definitions. The common thread: FailRP is any moment where you stop playing a believable character in order to win, save time, or dodge consequences. The game engine will let you do plenty of things a living person in 1899 never could. FailRP is doing them anyway.

The most common form is ignoring your character's own condition. A rifle round through the shoulder ends your afternoon, whatever the health bar says. Typical examples:

• Sprinting to your horse thirty seconds after taking buckshot to the leg
• Talking clearly and calmly through a jaw that was just broken in a brawl
• Laughing at a shotgun pressed to your head because you know respawns are cheap
• Riding off a cliff for a shortcut because falling costs you nothing mechanically

Powergaming, forcing outcomes on other players

Powergaming is writing another player's story for them. You declare a result instead of an attempt, and the other person never gets a say in what happens to their own character. The fix is a habit every good roleplayer shares, sometimes called the attempts convention: your /me lines describe what your character tries and what state they are in, never what lands on someone else.

Side by side, the difference is easy to see. The first line in each pair forces an outcome, the second offers one:

• /me knocks the stranger out cold with the bottle (forced outcome, powergaming)
• /me swings the bottle at the stranger's head, trying to lay him out (an attempt, fair play)
• /me ties a knot no man could ever slip (forced outcome, powergaming)
• /me cinches the rope hard around the man's wrists, checking each loop (an attempt, fair play)

Metagaming, knowing things your character cannot know

Metagaming in rp means using out of character information in character. You, the player, know plenty your character does not: who is behind a mask because you recognize the voice from Discord, where a rival camp sits because you saw it on a stream, that your friend needs rescue because they messaged you their location.

The test is simple. Ask how your character knows. If the honest answer involves a screen, a headset, or a ping, it is metagaming, and acting on it steals a reveal that someone else built. When in doubt, play dumb and let the story catch you up. Learning things the slow way is most of the fun anyhow.

The new life rule and what your character remembers after respawn

The nlr rule, short for new life rule, governs what happens after your character dies and respawns. In its most common form: your character forgets the events that led directly to their death, cannot return to the area where they died for a set timer, and cannot take revenge for a killing they no longer remember.

The line that trips up new players is downed versus dead. If another player drags you to safety or a doctor stitches you back together, most servers treat you as wounded, not dead. You keep your memories and you carry the injury. The new life rule in rdr2 roleplay usually triggers only on a full respawn, when nobody came for you.

Timers and memory rules vary more than anything else in this glossary. Some servers wipe the whole scene, others only the killing blow, and area timers commonly run from a few minutes to half an hour. Do not port habits between towns. Check your server's rules every time.

Perming a character, when death is permanent

Perming a character means the death sticks. The character is gone, the name is retired, and the story is over for good. On most servers this is the one outcome nobody can force on you: permanent death is opt-in, and the choice belongs to the character's own player, sometimes with staff mediating the big storyline moments.

You will also see PK for player kill, where the body drops but the character survives on paper, and CK for character kill, the permanent version. Communities swap and blur these definitions constantly, so ask before you assume. The consent culture around perming is strong for a reason: people sink months into a character, and a permanent goodbye should be a story both sides chose, not an ambush one side won.

IC versus OOC, and where /me and /ooc fit

IC means in character: everything your character says, does, and believes. OOC means out of character: you at the keyboard, with a life and a lunch break. The commands mirror the split. /me carries IC action and state, /ooc carries player talk.

Use /ooc sparingly and practically: a crash, a stuck animation, a quiet consent check before a dark scene. Keep the two worlds sealed off from each other. Dragging an IC grudge into OOC channels, or the reverse, is how most tickets start on most servers. A couple of honest /me lines for reference:

• /me presses a kerchief to the wound, hands shaking
• /me looks the deputy over, weighing the odds before speaking

How whitelist applications test these terms

Nearly every whitelist application asks you to define FailRP, powergaming, metagaming and NLR, then throws scenarios at you: a robbery goes wrong, a friend is arrested, your character wakes up after a shootout. Reviewers are not grading you on reciting a dictionary. They are checking whether you can apply the concepts under pressure.

Here is the shape of an answer that tends to read well to a whitelist team:

• Define each term in your own words and attach a concrete wild west example
• In scenario answers, narrate attempts and reactions, never outcomes for other players
• Show value of life: a character with a gun in their face complies first and schemes later
• Say when you would step OOC, like checking consent before a torture or perm scene

How a shared dice roll settles arguments before they start

Half of all powergaming disputes are really disagreements about severity. You say the bottle grazed you, the other fellow says you should be flat on the floorboards. A roll both players can see ends that debate before it becomes a ticket.

That is the whole idea behind the d20 roller at d20rp.com. Agree the dice decide, roll once in the open, and read the severity ladder: 1 is catastrophic, 2 to 4 severe, 5 to 8 serious, 9 to 13 moderate, 14 to 17 minor, 18 to 19 a lucky escape, and 20 miraculous. Pick whichever of the 133 fate tables fits the scene, a saloon brawl, a shoulder wound, a bad night with a rope, and the result hands you a concrete injury to play instead of an argument to win.

The roll is not a server rule. It is table manners. It keeps attempts honest, gives the loser a story worth telling, and turns the whole powergaming question, who decides what happens, into an answer everyone agreed on in advance.

Questions from the floor

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