u/DatZaddy

I am DMing for my group in the 2d20 Fallout RPG system (starting in an alternate timeline of the Fallout 4 Commonwealth setting) and they've chosen to build up a building they've holed up in on the outskirting edge of Cambridge.

I've never built any sort of terrain that isn't just a static map with cover. I have made little pieces of cover and environmental stuff, but never a building with multiple floors and I was wondering if anyone had any tips or advice on where to start? It's supposed to have 3 floors and the only start I've made is rendering the building they've selected with ChatGPT that's located in the game. I have some 3d printed terrain just to represent the 1st floor that we used for that session.

They fought a custom sentry bot I made for a boss fight.

The story so far (this being the 4th session in an alternate timeline of Fallout 4s Commonwealth): They group took control of a small band of raiders in Cambridge and met "The Sheriff", a pre-war ghoul that is turning into a glowing one and starting to turn feral. He learned of a research facility where a fellow prewar ghoul worked as a doctor on a regenerative medicine, but the doctor stopped coming around and his stored supply was running short. The group was able to enter the facility as patients and take over the facility from within before fighting the boss sentry bot (custom rusty/deteriorating version with a flamer arm for decontamination) and then securing the experimental regenerative medicine.

But they learned this medicine was derived from an invasive fungus that merges into the subject's DNA to regenerate the body accordingly and this fungus can also take control of the host's nervous system to turn them into fungal "zombies" if the dose is too high.

More of my Fallout terrain.

I've been finding and recycling my old 40k terrain I printed for my Fallout group I GM for. I bought some cheap truck toys, burned them gently, then smacked them around with a hammer to give them a roughed up look before I painted them to look rusted away. I painted some industrial toys too. I've got a toy train and some cars coming in that I'm going to mess with too.

To preface this, I've played on Highlife RP for 6 years. I started back in 2020 during COVID and I've played off and on ever since. I usually play for a few months and then take a break for roughly the same amount of time. For most of my complaints here, I will share video links to my YouTube videos on that specific issue if I have them available.

One positive I can give them is that their anti-hack/cheating is managed well and they keep up with fighting those.

As far as activities, there's really not too much to do criminally besides making and selling meth, shrooms, or weed and that gets super repetitive. The big robbery activities aren't fun because police have literally every possible advantage and you're basically only getting away if they completely fumble the chase or something. Me and my group have tried putting in recommendations to get them to add crafting or processing of other drugs or other criminal activities (like in our suggestions, we spelled out every detail and even tried to recommend processes that are already in their city so it should be a matter of using assets and actions they already have access to), but they just refuse for some reason.

I've even tried doing lawful play throughs as a lawyer, but police actually just get to do whatever they want and if you become too successful at defending clients, they will just take every opportunity to harass and make problems for you until you quit. In this video, the cop that started creating issues for me was one that actually made a complaint against me that led to my loss of my whitelist lawyer role and then I was never allowed to get that role back. Long story short, there was an incident where a player showed up at the lawyer office and held us all hostage with bombs strapped to our chests and it was a whole thing. When they did a News livestream for the incident, afterward many players started coming by to cause problems of their own and troll us. Well one of those players pulled a gun on us and tried to have their own hostage situation with us and when they had us call the police, they got upset with the wait and then left. Cops showed up after they left and I gave a description of them and the gun and then that guy walked by as I was talking to the cops. It turned out that the cops were friends with this guy and they refused to search him for the gun (it had a silencer and i named the specific gun so it would have been obvious if they saw it). They did nothing and I actually gave them a few words of frustration with their performance (basically called them out for trying so hard in criminal cases that I have to defend but refusing to do anything for the criminal defense lawyer and everything I said was within professional terms) and they submitted a complaint against me. It was the officer in this video that always harassed and bothered me. https://youtu.be/-NAEPTb3ghA?is=tLx0tRrQ5BbWgFiI

Most recently, during this year's wipe of the city, I've discovered a heavy amount of favoritism in the city. For weeks, we had issues with another long-time group in the city VDMing and randomly robbing us. We were both doing MC RP this wipe and while we were riding on motorcycles, they would run us over with their vehicles and then put us at gun point, steal everything out of our inventories (complete inventory wipe) and then leave only to do it again 15 minutes later. This would happen multiple times a day every day for weeks and staff never actually did anything about it because this other group wasn't staff, but they were friends of staff and a few of them did editing for the city's server wiki page. An example of what we would deal with commonly, this being their MO for every interaction. Not a single staff action was ever taken for literally DOZENS of reported incidents exactly like this. https://youtu.be/CYNUhqzMFMc?is=8BX6HTf3py4R_ubV

Now, I will make it clear for this point that I am gay irl. The leader of another group learned this and started posting on the in-city social media app about it even though my character isn't gay (or has any sexual interaction at all. I dont really do any of that RP.). He would also use slurs and derogatory statements in city about my out of city sexuality and such and every time this happened, it would get screen shot or clipped and that player would report it. To my knowledge, all they ever did was give the guy one warning and when he continued to do it, nothing would happen. He still does it to this day with zero repercussions. Highlife just genuinely doesn't care about derogatory and homophobic interactions or apparently ooc talk.

For my last issue, that same player mentioned above ended up becoming an informant for a federal anti-drug agency and then started an "outlaw" motorcycle club of his own. He gave multiple statements to police and feds and even walked them around and showed them our illegal operation locations and buildings and for this, some of my whitelist criminal cartel allies got upset over because it affected them too (by the way, these whitelist criminals are some of the best roleplayers you'll ever meet and they are the only good part about Highlife, love those guys). Essentially, in this first video, my group and the cartel organization captures the snitch/informant player and then he admits to everything and is executed by them by firing squad. Most servers have a rule for when you die and Highlife has a very specific rule for being reminded of actions that led to your death. That specific rule states that you can't be reminded of the events of your death in order to take hostile action or revenge. https://youtu.be/VT8-R_LWk-o?is=UCAO32KGKH-aU5ZG (it's a long video but feel free to skip around, I suck at editing but this was an hours-long story line that ends with him being executed)

So you would think that's that right? He gets executed so he shouldn't remember anything and there's even a specific rule stating he cant take revenge about it right? Well in Highlife, rules are just a suggestion unless the staff doesn't like you. About an hour after he's executed, this player and his small group ride out and ambush us after we had a group ride. I had my gun in my hand when I saw them and as soon as one of his people points their gun at me, I raise mine and tell her to drop it. She doesn't, so I shoot and kill her. I didn't manage to get a clip of this, but she did and she reported me for it. I get banned for 30 days and they state that because of my report history of 5 previous infractions (remember, i have 6 years of history on this server)​. What do you think they did after this New Life Rule violation? Absolutely nothing. Even when the rule was quoted to them, they did nothing. I even spoke to multiple senior members of staff and nothing.

Finally, after I was banned and quit, my friend still in city attends a meeting with this other group and they still have their shit ooc talk at this meeting. And he reports it because this same player is just talking ooc, not staying in character, remembering things he was dead for, admitting to other rule breaks, and staff actually tell him he shouldn't be reporting multiple instances of rule breaks and close the ticket without action. They want you to report one incident at a time, even if there's multiple rule breaks in one instance and they won't do a second review to action it. I'll post two links here, one long version of this issue and then one shorter edited version. But this is the actual state of roleplay in Highlife and they just refuse to do anything about it.

https://youtu.be/hFLZhrpQqJo?is=lJy1ZhOLgH535E-D

https://youtu.be/QOOkrAsD2fE?is=Hqcu7bL29PIv7CTt

Honestly, it might not be a bad server if you're friends with staff or you don't mind there being nothing to do for criminals. So maybe if everyone was cops that would work. 😒 But after 6 years I absolutely don't recommend playing here.