Hello readers and welcome back to cd93.co.uk. The internet’s last bastion of Future Cop LAPD sympathisers.

This will be a familiar tale to those who have followed my activities on Twitch over the last five years, but as the anniversary of my time with Grand Theft Auto roleplay approaches, I felt it worth reflecting on.

In 2007, I booted up the magnificent Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force roleplaying modification for the first time and connected to my first Star Trek RP server. I don’t remember which server it was exactly, maybe Federation Roleplay (because before LRP, there was FRP), but I do know that the map was the USS Poseidon B. Yes, it had been preceded by the USS Poseidon A. Was there just a USS Poseidon, no bloody A, B, C or D?* I’m not too sure.

(*that’s a reference to the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation)

But materialising in the Poseidon’s transporter room was a daunting moment. There was no voice chat, yet it was no less intimidating than joining a server full of unknown players today. This was at the height of the scene’s popularity and the server was full. A quick hit of TAB and a glance over the player list proved that.

So what did I actually want to do here? Where could I slip in unnoticed (as though the console hadn’t announced my arrival to everyone already). Well, for one reason or another I decided that Sickbay would be my first port of call. I quickly changed my name, rank and skin so that I could be an unassuming Ensign assigned to the Medical team. Very bold of me to throw a pip on my collar for my first roleplay session, I know. But out into the metallic grey halls, into the turbolift and down to Deck 16 (I’ve retained the wrong knowledge in life) I went.

Stepping in to Sickbay, I made an immediate and astute observation. It was empty. So was the hall. So was the turbolift. So had been the transporter room. This was a full server and the chat log was active with conversations happening, so where was everyone? Well, another glance at the TAB menu revealed the truth. It seemed that most of the crew was on Deck 1, specifically on the Bridge. Not wanting to be punished for defying a clear all-hands mandate, I doubled back on myself to the turbolift and clicked the hell out of the Deck 1 option.

The doors slid open with a familiar Star Trek stock sound effect and revealed a large number of officers gathered on the Bridge, the command centre of the ship. Another rapid analysis flew through my brain. Everyone was holding a coffee cup. Not wanting to be left out, I scrolled through my default inventory and quickly equipped a coffee cup of my own. The effect on immersion was devastating. I hadn’t visited the Mess Hall. I hadn’t used a replicator. I just pulled this piping hot caffeinated beverage out of my ass in a turbolift. Nevermind, we had to fit in, continuity be damned.

This being a text-based communication system, the Bridge was silent beyond the comforting hum of the ship’s engines providing the background noise to the pings and whirls of the various computers and interfaces around the room. So glancing at the chat log, I tried to get myself caught up on what was going on at this Starfleet coffee morning. But at this point, only one player was type-talking. I don’t remember their character name, though I’m pretty sure it began with a ‘J,’ but I know it was prefixed with a bright red ‘CO.’ This was the Commanding Officer of the ship, the Captain, and the leader of this roleplay session.

You see, that’s how it worked. Outside of scheduled, planned roleplay sessions – some featuring a serialised storyline playing out across one session a week in the same timeslot, just like the TV shows – any player could join a server and lay claim to the CO spot. In the majority of cases, this meant that this player was volunteering to be the story-lead for the server. They would ‘whisper’ to other officers with prompts to move their story along. For example, they could whisper to the Operations Officer that their ship was being hailed by an alien vessel. The OPS officer would then announce this, with room to improvise, and everyone would react accordingly. One great big revolving wheel of ‘yes, and’ as all good things are.

This meant that across every server, at multiple times throughout the day, you got to experience somebody else’s story. Their vision. Their creativity. If they wanted, they could log on to an empty server, vote for a change of map to a Bird of Prey and set up a Klingon roleplay session. You never knew what you were connecting in to, but most of the time you were just happy to play along because it was Star Trek, it was cool and most importantly… there was just nothing else like it.

For the cream of the crop, you looked to the Serial Roleplays (or SRPs – we like our three letter xRP abbreviations in this space). These roleplays took place at the same time every week and were structured like an episode of the TV show. They had a title, episode names, special server configs, music packs and even sometimes opening credits using the in-game announcement system. These took planning and a commitment to long-term storytelling. Not everyone wanted to run these or commit to being a part of them. But it was the ultimate reward for those willing to invest the time and the payoff was often spectacular.

I also knew that’s what I wanted to do. So I did.

Within three months I had a Serial Roleplay of my own. Saturday nights, 6pm. Each session two hours long, each ‘season’ consisting of twelve episodes. I had to plan for three months of storylines at a time on and off for years. To say this, combined with incessant amounts of Garry’s Mod, impacted on the remainder of my education and early career would be a remarkable understatement. But I’ve always been involuntarily juggling an abhorrent amount of projects in my mind at once, even if one of them absolutely takes over the others from one moment to the next. No offence to my current employers, but I still spend most of my working days thinking about roleplay.

But what a privilege. To have ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty or more regular players come back again and again for stories that I had written. To see ideas typed on a Word document breathed into life by other creative people and excited players, new and experienced alike, was a thrill. The type I get now when a video project I’ve planned and slaved over for a couple of weeks is released.

Since those heady days, this world has only got more popular and accessible. The platforms and tools at the disposal of roleplayers and storytellers have continued to evolve. From forums and text, to voice and livestreams. From bite-sized machinima to feature-length cinematics. Even today, there are still lessons to be learned from the imagination and ingenuity required back then. But all of us can be fortunate to have the chance to do what we do now.

There is no singular Commanding Officer at Let’s RP. We’re all the Captain now.

From every faction leader and business owner to every news reporter and taxi driver. Every player has the opportunity to create stories and opportunities for others to follow, shape, engage with and enjoy. Whether it’s a scene, story or experience which sweeps away two other players or twenty, every contribution to our ever-developing world is valuable and should be something to be proud of.

I’ve heard players at Let’s RP lament about their ability to only play once a week or for a couple of hours a week, feeling as though they aren’t making a difference or contributing enough. Back in the day that was seen as the norm for some of the top roleplayers and storytellers in the business. Because people will wait for you. Some players create more memorable moments and set up more interesting story threads in two hours than I can do in a fortnight (took me three attempts to spell that right, thanks Epic. This wouldn’t be a problem if you had just kept making Unreal Tournament instead).

Thankfully, the ever-constant in my roleplaying career has been a sense of community propelling every project and storyline along. No, it hasn’t always been perfect. No, everyone involved in a story or group hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye. No, it isn’t always easy. At Let’s RP, that has been no different. But there have been few problems that haven’t been able to be resolved by the community collaborating to make the experience better for everyone.

I have been involved in video game roleplaying communities for over eighteen years now and seen a lot in the almost two decades of my life and brain space devoted to making the most of what we have with any given game at any given moment (there’s a whole other post that could be devoted to Jedi Knight Academy RP alone… and let’s not even talk about GMod Stargate Space Build. But boy was it cool to fly around Atlantis in a puddle jumper). Communication and the trust that everyone around you is working in good faith have always been key to a successful project, and that type of space fosters creativity and incredible storytelling.

Because if not to collaborate, if not to create and take part in stories, what would we all still be here for and investing so much of our time in to? When you strip back the cars, the MLOs, the money and the gold, storytelling is the bedrock of everything we do. Without it, there is no Let’s RP. Every graphic or video project I’ve ever worked on is utterly meaningless without it, and I would happily trade away all the fluff and flair if it meant keeping those stories coming… and those stories come in all shapes and sizes.

In this world, every player and character has a story to tell. Whether it’s personal to them or puts them in the spotlight for the whole server to see and engage with. It could play out over the course of an hour or over the course of a year. No player should feel discouraged from any perceived limitations on what they feel they are able to contribute. Your ability to make others think, laugh, cry and love is priceless. That’s the power of storytelling. It all counts and it is all valued.

One day these two decades will be behind me. One day these years with Let’s RP will be a memory. We never know when a chapter is going to close, so all that matters is what we do with the time that we have. Because one day the story is all we will have left.

So don’t waste this incredible opportunity. Tell your story.

As for what the Captain of the USS Poseidon had to say to all of his caffeine-addled crew back in 2007? Who the hell knows, my memory isn’t that good. But whatever it was… it was bloody captivating, and I’ve remembered him and that little moment ever since.

I wish I could tell him that.

Hello reader!

When last we spoke, Let’s RP had just launched its RedM BETA. What has happened since then? I’ve put a considerable amount of hours back in to Grand Theft Auto, of course.

A lot has happened. I decided to call it quits from spending most of my life thinking about creating content for roleplay servers and instead focus on enjoying just playing on them. The pace of Red Dead Redemption supported this slow-down. At the same time, I was enjoying doing my own thing with what I was streaming or recording from my time on the Let’s RP server.

The video series of my time with Francisco Fuentes is one of the things I have become most proud of since entering this space. An almost mini-series like tale with a complete story arc, which required an adaptation to my editing style in terms of tone and pacing. It was also just some of the most immersive roleplay I have ever been part of.

I made an early decision that my Red Dead character would cross the San Luis river in to New Austin on launch night, giving my viewers a natural introduction to a new and unknown world – as well as having a reason to set up camp and drive RP in New Austin despite much of the initial action taking place in New Hanover and West Elizabeth.

Exploring an unfamilar landscape without using the in-game map. Reuniting a brother and sister who had been separated. Hunting and being hunted by strangers and freaks in the wilderness. Learning of witches and (definitely real) mythical creatures who wandered in the night.

It was also potentially a last hurrah for the style of roleplay highlight videos I had been making for the past four years.

What I didn’t know at the time of labelling this “Act 1” was that any successive acts would have to wait. Behind the scenes that I was no longer privy to, the decision had been taken to wrap the RedM BETA and return the Let’s RP community to the streets where it was raised – Los Santos.

When the opportunity came to return to the fold and step in to a similar role as I had for the FiveM server previously, I was in the midst of spending a lot more time outdoors. A foreign concept, but one I was taking very seriously. I also had to question whether I was the right person for the job after a crisis of confidence before the end of FiveM 2.5.

But, the opportunity was a good one. The chance to roll out a soft reboot of the brand and the chance to continue working closley with my partner Danni and many other talented souls who I can call friends. I also thought back to how I felt editing the 2.5 Finale Promo.

Sifting through the footage of what was going to be our final FiveM event and storyline conjured up genuine emotions for everything we had accomplished together. The players we had brought together. The characters we had formed together. The stories that had been developed and entwined to all come together for this one climactic and apocalyptic experience. By the time I was finished editing it at around 1 or 2am, I was seriously asking whether this was really going to be the last time.

For as much as I adore Red Dead and enjoyed the RedM BETA, I’m glad that it wasn’t.

There are times when releasing a video that you wish you could be sat in an auditorium filled with your intended audience. That’s somewhat how I felt when deciding to open the FiveM 3.0 announcement video with a little Red Dead fake out – despite not knowing whether the moment would land or not!

But the real moment of the video wasn’t that. It was the re-reveal of the iconic Los Santos skyline at sunrise. A new dawn. Despite only being away for six months, it may as well have been six years – and that’s how I wanted it to feel. Both for those players who joined us for RedM and those players who did not. All the potential and possibilities for new characters and new storylines condensed in to one image. The colour palette of that one shot would go on to form the basis of the rebrand.

We had all been around the block numerous times before, so I felt that for the relaunch to earn legitimacy from the outside, this all had to feel fresh. To cement that, it was very important that the subsequent video we put together featured the Spice Girls, of course.

As the team worked incredibly hard to bring Let’s RP 3.0 together, we produced a series of videos highlighting new and reworked features that would be available at launch. Despite the work this entailed, my mind kept coming back to one element which hadn’t been settled on. The loading screen.

This is the first thing new players see and hear when connecting to the server. I have always seen it as an opportunity to both set the tone for what was to come and reward players by highlighting their characters and scenes. I have personally found many servers loading screens to be overly loud, obnoxious and completely unrepresentative of the brand or product they were attached to.

While it was ultimately unused, the package prepared for RedM had been a fun opportunity to run with a completely different style than I was used to with FiveM. Returning to Los Santos, I needed something to continue the ‘fresh’ vibe and before even thinking about the video itself, we needed a new theme. I spent many hours trawling through music tracks and nothing was clicking. In practice, I’m sure many of the tracks I considered and rejected would have been absolutely fine – even good – but nothing was passing the “I’ll know it when I hear it” test.

I expanded my search from familiar soft house offerings to jazz and ultimately funk. It was here that a recommendation was offered up to me from a Swedish music collective called Spring Gang. The track builds nicely, almost ethereally, which offers opportunities beyond just the loading video. But when the core of the track hits, it all comes together.

Immediatley I could see the refreshed Let’s RP logo exploding on to the scene. Sunrises over skyscrapers. Sunsets over beaches. Bank vaults and cat cafés alike bursting with energy. I knew it when I heard it – and when clips of streamers reacting to it came to light, the choice was vindicated. Thank you, Spring Gang.

Beyond all of this prep work, there was another question lingering in my mind. What the hell was I going to do when the server actually launched? With Francisco Fuentes gone and having been so satisfied with the conclusion of Jay Walker’s story after years of him being my main character, I had a decision to make.

Bringing back Wolf Myers was a relatively late decision and one I questioned even after “announcing” it with a teaser video for our use of Weazel News. The original version of the character was so strongly built around his belief in the extraterrestrial – with his story and mythos allowed to develop far beyond my wildest dreams – there was no saying whether it was worth bringing him back with a new backstory.

But with a few tweaks, his just-about-over-the-hill nature could make him work as a news anchor / producer trying to keep old media running in a new media world. I’ve certainly had a lot of fun both playing him again and tackling the journalism roleplay from a new angle. Thankfully I am so strongly supported by a group of amazing roleplayers doing most of the legwork (just as it was with the San Andreas Park Rangers).

I did another character, however. One that sounded more like me. One that could replace Jay Walker when my vocal chords needed a rest.

Toward the end of the RedM BETA – and featuring in a whole single Twitch stream – I introduced the character of Riley Winfield. He was a young man from Valentine who was going to be my RedM introduction to the news business. He also happened to be an excuse to give my voice a rest from playing Francisco for so long. I was excited at his potential and that of finding ways of reporting the news of 1899 without the use of a mobile phone and the internet.

His story may have been cut short, but I did really like the name. When creating a FiveM 3.0 teaser video on changes to how food businesses operate, I quickly – and accidentally – put together a character for the video that didn’t look too far removed from Riley Winfield. With a few tweaks, this look would be the basis for Riley’s official introduction to FiveM.

Armed with a black rose cardigan and matching trousers, contrasted with a mint top and peach Jordans, the new Riley had his signature look. But then I had to decide who he actually was and what he would actually do. Originally I landed on the concept of a young aspiring actor, landing in Los Santos to explore the dizzying heights of Vinewood. But what use would that ultimately serve? What was the endgame? After thinking about it some more, I ditched this idea.

But Danni had already planted another seed in my mind. During my time with FiveM, I had amassed over 30GB of screenshots. I’m always taking pictures – for work and for fun. Why not work what I’m already doing in to the character, in the same way making videos and reporting on server events was worked in to Jay Walker (and now Wolf Myers)?

Riley Winfield would be an aspiring photographer and photo editor. He would charge a modest fee for other characters to have their portraits taken and charge businesses for covering their events and promoting their products. Perfect!

I also decided it was an opportunity to do something I had never done before – work in a food business. Proto-Riley had worked at Burger Shot, after all. For real, though, I aimed for a job at the UwU Cat Cafe – where I had watched Danni work for so long and had also been quite sad to blow up during the Savala Strikes storyline having been such an iconic location.

Thankfully after a conversation with would-be UwU owner Celeste Loveheart played by Pearly, this came to fruition and I have tremendously enjoyed my time taking orders, preparing food, checking stock and otherwise engaging with so many players and characters who visit the cafe whenever it is open. I’ve even started using a Point of Sale app on my iPad, customised with the UwU menu and colour schemes, to take orders to cut out the math involved. Completely unnecessary but I think it’s fun!

Due to my working patterns, I had a window of a few weeks to be on the server a considerable amount and often during the day when I would otherwise be unavailble. Due to the success of 3.0 and with numerous players on the server during these hours, it was an opportunity to open a food business for them and get more RP at times that previously might not have been possible. This allowed me to workshop the character very quickly and allow him to become well known in a short space of time.

Despite being intended to just sound like me, I started subconsciously introducing quirks, stutters and inflections in to Riley’s speaking patterns that I did not plan for. I ran with this natural evolution which only enhanced how it felt to play him while allowing him to step out of Jay Walker’s shadow.

It may still be relatively early days, but I think Riley Winfield has been allowed a solid foundation to work from and I’m very much looking forward to seeing where Let’s RP 3.0 takes him and I.

At the point of writing this post, Let’s RP has real momentum. We have welcomed many new players to join us on this new journey and even reconnected with many old players from my first FiveM experience who I did not expect to see involved in this space again. The development team also have very exciting plans for the future.

While my professional life is about to disrupt my pawsagna making time with a vengeance, I’m nevertheless thoroughly enjoying my RP again and hope that I can continue to meaningfully help and contribute to the project alongside the Senior Staff team and Content Team once more.

Exploring the deserts and plains of New Austin was a new, valuable and satisfying experience. But it’s good to be home.

Well, here I finally am, writing something on this blog of mine.

Who writes blogs any more? More pertinantly, who starts a blog in 2025? Someone with either too much or too little time on their hands.

In this case, it is the desperate act of a man who has spent the past hour staring in to space paralysed by choice as to what I could be doing while finishing this bottle of wine on a Saturday evening. So long as the choices involve staring at a screen.

Therein lies the problem, most likely.

You see, I have a twitch. Or rather, two twitches. Of my eyes, specifically. What started as an inconvience toward the end of last year is now a daily source of frustration. I know that getting annoyed with the twitch will only make the twitch worse. But that’s not a great motivator.

I tried giving up caffeine. That didn’t help. I tried 8pm bed times, those didn’t help. I’ve tried trading games for art and trading screens for books. That didn’t help. Not least because I didn’t keep it up for very long.

I’ve drank the extra water, eaten the bananas, taken the supplements. None of that helped. For the last ten months I’ve cooked and eaten better than I ever have in my life. Has that helped? Doesn’t feel like it.

So now I drink the wine, eat the chocolate, play the games and hope that a doctor will do more next week than tell me to keep an eye on it. Seriously, if they actually tell me to “keep an eye on it” then I might not be responsible for the scene that I shall cause.

In truth, I probably am more stressed than I accept. It has been a horrendous 12 months but the highs have papered over the cracks of the lows and I’ve recently been without the biggest distraction of all. But now that has changed.

Last Friday, Let’s RP launched the RedM BETA server. Although I can’t pretend that I had much involvement in the last run up to launch compared to most of the staff team, it still feels like a milestone – finishing the fight since we produced our first teaser in December 2023.

Our final pre-launch LIVE preview on Twitch was a lot of fun. Such is the nature of the Let’s RP community that even a catastrophic wagon failure could just be laughed off like it never happened. After being too nervous to stream my previous Mexican character in FiveM more than twice, I’ve done nothing but with my RedM counterpart.

I’ve put out over thirteen hours of content with him in this first week so questionable accent aside, I think it’s safe to say I’ve overcome that particular fear. Whether any of it is any good we’ll find out in time, but for now I’m enjoying a new pace of roleplaying and adapting to that style in the editing suite.

Switching from Jay Walker to Francisco Fuentes highlight videos could bring on a case of whiplash. I’m told the RedM community values long-form, slow-burning stories. So hopefully they enjoy long conversations on horseback about the mythical jackalope. While I have one eye on the future and how best to contribute when our BETA period ends, for now I’m enjoying returning to an earlier style and workflow.

Roleplay tends to put everything else on the back burner. No doubt amplified moreso with a new server launch. But I’m going to try and ensure I have a better balance this time. I still want to finish our run of Nightfire Reloaded. I still want to play more Battlefield to satiate me until I get invited to Battlefield Labs (I can squeeze it in, DICE, I promise). Hell, I even downloaded Star Trek: RPG-X for a trip down memory lane. We’ll definitely get to that at some point.

I also spent some time tinkering with the Let’s RP website. First and foremost to transition from a GTA website to a Red Dead website. But also just to see what’s possible now that I have a little more WordPress experience under my belt. It’s a lot of troubleshooting and trial-and-error, but I enjoy the challenge and discovery.

In truth, the most frustrating thing is wanting to do all of these things in the 4-5 hours of time allotted on weekdays to do it. Only a few years ago that felt like an awful lot more time than it does today. Time compression really does kick in the moment you hit 30. Not helped by the inconveinece of muscle spams, back strains, heartburn, stomach cramps and crippling fatigue that haunt your every waking hour. I’m only 31 for goodness sake. I’ve got to put up with decades more of this – and it’s going to get worse?!

Don’t worry, I’m not going to complain about my fragile body in every one of these posts. If there are any more of these posts.

If I could get away with popping on some soft jazz and spending all of my free time following Procreate tutorials to make lovely little landscapes, I probably would. Perhaps then my twitch would go away. But I feel I would still be burdened by the notion of having left too much undone. So instead, I’m going to open up Photoshop and start working on something else I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Or maybe I’ll just watch a movie. Or play a game. Or scroll Bluesky.

Or…