A Guide to Statuses: Enhanced Roleplay!
There’s a new feature on the server! You may notice now in the radial menu, that “set status” is now a thing. “But what is a status?” you may wonder. If you’ve never seen or heard of this type of roleplay feature before, there’s a few things to note.
What are statuses?
Statuses are used to help others identify physical traits of your character that might not be immediately visible or distinguishable through ped features, clothing, props. Etc by automatically sending a message once a character enters an approximate range of you. Maybe your character has a distinct smell of lavender after working a long shift at Remedy. Maybe they’re completely soaked to the bone after taking a dip in the pool. Or maybe they’ve been getting into some risky business and they’ve got blood stains on their sleeves.Any acceptable physical characteristics can be used as a status to help others notice things about your character that would be visible, audible, or olfactible. This helps add another layer of roleplay, as you can hint other people towards things your character may be experiencing or involved in, without having to explicitly say it. This also makes it so you don’t have to constantly spam /me when someone approaches you!
How do I use statuses?
Statuses can be accessed from the radio menu, under “General > Set Status”. You’ll then be taken to a screen where you can set a nickname for yourself, and set the status.
The nickname can be your character’s actual name, a nickname they go by, or a descriptive feature to help distinguish them in a crowd. Then you can set what you’d like your status to be.
Once you’ve confirmed your entries, you’ll see the confirmation in the chat box, in the format of “You notice that [NICKNAME] [STATUS].”
What makes a good status?
Anything that can be physically distinguishable by one of your senses! Sight, smell, hear - something objective. If your character always wears Piper Riggs’ “Summer of 95” fragrance from Remedy, that can make a good status! If your character’s shoes squeak as they move, that’s a funny character trait to display in status. If you’re covered in bruises, have stains on your clothing, always seem to sweat profusely, these make great statuses and can add an additional level of roleplay to your character.
What makes a bad status?
Don’t use your statuses to powergame people, or to force subjective opinions about your character on other people. This could include statuses like “you notice the brown-haired man is extremely handsome” or “you notice that the guy in the hat looks like Joe Schmoe ”. Someone else’s character may not be attracted to brown haired men, and wouldn’t find them extremely handsome. Someone may also not know who Joe Schmoe is, and would have no basis of comparison between them and your character. You also shouldn’t use statuses to convey thoughts or internal dialogue. “You notice that Bobby is contemplating stabbing the mechanic” is an unacceptable status, as that is an internal decision that no one else would be able to distinguish just by looking at or being in proximity of your character. Also, please do not use statuses to circumvent any existing server rules, such as sexualizing content or extreme gore.
What if I don’t want to see statuses?
Statuses can be disabled in the settings and toggles portion of the radial menu.
Keep in mind, however, that by disabling statuses, you might miss key traits and features of someone’s character, and could potentially hinder your roleplay experience with them by not seeing the statuses they have.
Important!
You can not learn things like a character's name from the status messages, that would be metagaming. If you have just met a new person, and their status shows up as "Mike is missing a finger" your character does not know that this person is called Mike. Do not start calling that person Mike. Your character has no idea who that is until they tell you or you obtain their name in another way.Thanks to @Rory Tanner for putting this together.
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