LORD_DirtyWorka

I don't know about retirement from the club, but we certainly have frequent turnover in our leadership team. Most officers serve six months to a year before either stepping back or sliding over to a different position. With 8 officer positions in each charter there are frequent elections and new appointments. Lots of new blood circulates throughout the leadership roles. In terms of ages within the club I think our youngest member is 19 and our oldest is over 50. If I had to guess, I'd say the majority of members are probably late twenties to early thirties. Regardless of age all LORDs have a voice and a vote. Any LORD can motion something for a vote and as long as their membership is in good standing, any LORD can run for an elected position.

There are certainly some LORDs that prefer GTA to Red Dead, but all LORDs understand the need to put the club before self-interest. In the early days after the move they pinched their noses and did their duty on Red Dead. Now that we are well established on Red Dead the need for all hands on that game is not as significant, so they are free to slide back to GTA more often. I personally have been playing GTA a lot since the Casion Heist came out. I miss it right up until my bike gets blown up by an Oppressor.

Thanks man. It really is an honor to be able to be part of this club with so many great people. I upload the motovlogs to youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/user/DirtyWorkaGTA I hope you like em!

For me personally it opened up a whole world of friendships. If you had asked me 10 years ago if some of my best friends in the world would be people I have never seen in real life, I'd say you were crazy. I now have a completely new appreciation for how much love you can have for people without sharing the same physical space. I have met many Reaper Lords in the real world, but the close bonds of friendship were there long before that. I am truly thankful to be part of this family.

Celebrating our 11 year anniversary!!! I can only say that with great confidence because I know the challenges we've overcome and I know how committed our members are to carrying on our traditions. As a club we have many goals and plans for the future that wouldn't be appropriate to share here, but have no doubt we are stronger than ever and focused on a bright future.

Yeah. A bunch. Like any group we have lots of different personalities and many stressors both internal and external. We've had our share of ups and downs but one of the great things about being a Reaper Lord is this sense of obligation to the club. We really do try to put the club first. It's hard to fully explain just how much work has gone into building the club. From the outside people only see the tip of the iceberg. Internally we have a massive operation that administers club business. Many LORDs are shocked at what they find after earning membership. What from the outside looks like any other gaming clan, on the inside operates more like a miniature government or corporation. It's too much for me to even go into. The point is, it's this underlying foundation that has allowed us to weather the storms. We have robust protocols in place for dealing with many situations and a collective sense of duty to the work done by those before us. Another significant factor is our culture. We have very well established ways of communicating, resolving issues and most importantly respecting each other. We certainly have arguments between members within the club, but it just doesn't get out of hand. When things start to get too hot, other members start jumping in to cool things off. I can't stress enough how important it is to just focus on family as well. We are very judicious in how much external drama we allow into our club. We focus on our friendships and what's best for us at all times. We pay very little mind to what other clubs think of us or our relationships with them. We certainly maintain friendships with like-minded clubs, but for others that seem to thrive on drama and conflict, we just ignore them.

We certainly have lots of club that consider themselves our rivals, but we really try to just focus on ourselves. At the end of the day there's really no way to win wars in video games. We maintain the same name, same player accounts, and same standards for years. Others don't carry that burden the same way. We've had many many many clubs make runs at us over the years, only to shut down, change names, and pop up as other crews to start shooting at us again. As such, we've learned not to take game beefs too seriously. That said, I've certainly been in many club wars over the years and they can be great fun. It's just important to maintain balance. Our club is full of mature gamers and individuals that like to participate in all kinds of gameplay activities, like racing or taking photos, so as a club we need to be conscientious of that fact. If all we do is fight continuously online it would not be much fun for our more casual members.

I don't see us abandoning GTA. For many of us GTA remains our favorite game and we'll always go back to it. The problem is simply that the game isn't what it was when we started. All the crazy weapons and vehicles have made it kind of absurd for a motorcycle club. Additionally, the free aim MC community in GTA is very small compared to the overall player base. Most individuals that have a shot at earning membership in Reaper Lords have either tried out and not made it, or made the decision it's simply not for them. As with any organization new blood is vital to sustainment. We need new ideas, new energy, and new personalities to help keep pushing us forward. In a longstanding club like ours it's easy to fall into the trap of saying "that's the way we've always done things" and assuming it's right. We need that new patch energy to fuel us and the GTA pond was largely fished-out. So for today we're on Red Dead, but we've always got our eyes open for new opportunities. We'll always make whatever moves are necessary to keep the club strong and vibrant.

It's just a matter of focus. We're still very active on GTA, but to make the move to Red Dead successfully we needed the full attention and energy of the club behind it. Our recruiting process is extensive and requires a lot of club resources to support. If we split those resources I'm not sure we would do a great job on either game. As such, we decided to invest in making Red Dead a success and ultimately I think it was a good move. Individuals that earn club membership on Red Dead also earn the privilege of wearing the patch on GTA. Ultimately a Reaper Lord is a Reaper Lord no matter what game or console they are playing on. We recruit people, not accounts.

The founding fathers were people that had a passion for video gaming and motorcycle club culture in real life. They wanted to recreate club life online and find like-minded individuals from around the world to form close bonds of friendship with. The purpose of Reaper Lords is all about fellowship. As online gamers many of us spending many hours of our lives online. That time is made better when you have truly good people to spend it with. I have no doubt that many of us have formed life-long friendships that go well beyond gaming. I personally have met up with many LORDs in real life and what has struck me the most is just how comfortable it is. There is none of the initial awkwardness you associate with meeting someone for the first time. We become so close through our online interactions, that it just feels completely normal and natural for us to carry on in the same fashion offline. As for gameplay style we have always prided ourselves on playing with honor. We engage in a lot of fights, but do not grief other players. We have a "shoot back" policy for our rules of engagement, meaning we do not fire first. We love meeting other players online and will help guard deliveries and stuff like that for randoms, but if someone fires on us, we will swarm them until they disengage. With members from around the world we have no problem sustaining battles with fresh blood for many hours straight. While we don't like doing that all the time, it's nice to know we can when we choose to. I've been in some epic battles on GTA that go for 10 or more hours with other big crews and it's a lot of fun. The problem for us is that with some of the recognition we've received in gaming publications and from R*, we've attracted a lot of trolls and silly as it sounds a lot of other crews that are envious of the attention we've received. It's probably not hard to imagine how annoying it can be at times. For that reason we work to maintain a balance between combat and peaceful club activities. Lord knows we could fight around the clock every day if we chose to engage with every group of kids that wants to shoot with us.

They are both products at the end of the day, so like any other product people will buy them until something better comes along, and R* will keep selling them as long as they are profitable. I suspect the franchises will continue on separate, but related paths, with GTAOnline seeing many more updates between now and the release of GTA6. The game is still wildly popular and earns great profits for R*. I see no reason for them to do anything but support the heck out of that game for years to come. Same thing with Red Dead. If they follow a similar development cycle as they've done with GTA, we can expect much evolution and many updates until they develop something better. I would personally love to see Red Dead begin to evolve over a timeline from where it is now up to something like the early 1920's. Dirt roads get paved. Lanterns become electric lights. Wagons become model Ts etc etc... I think that would be a lot of fun, is technologically possible, and would keep players coming back for years to come.

We're all very much looking forward to GTA6 and whatever else may be on the horizon. Red Dead was a major change for our club, but as GTA evolved from a petty crime simulator, to some kind of futuristic battlefield, it became unconducive to our game play style. It's not reasonable to role play as a biker club, gathering for bike shows and doing large formation rides, in a universe where flying bikes with homing rockets indiscriminately kill any unarmored moving vehicle, or an entire gathering can be destroyed with one orbital cannon strike. One of the great joys of playing GTA as a motorcycle club is seeing all the bikes together snaking around the map and then gathering in large groups for nonscripted activities. For us, the open world in GTA and what we love about the game was ruined. On GTA we adhere to the old MC 1% code which requires us to play freeaim with ARs or lessor weapons against dismounted players (no holds barred on vehicles). In the early days of GTA the game was fairly well balanced. Tanks could be killed easily with some sticky bombs and RPGs, and jets were relatively difficult to obtain and a challenge to kill, but could be shot down with well-timed RPGs. Today, the game has drifted into something highly unbalanced, which requires use of increasingly fantastical weaponry that just isn't fun for us or consistent with playing as a biker. My personal hope is that R* will bring back hardcore lobbies in the future so that we can enjoy immersing ourselves in an environment as near to reality as possible. From a club perspective, we will continually evaluate activity and how much fun we're having on whatever game we're engaged with. If something better than GTA or Red Dead comes along, we'll certainly consider moving. At the end of the day, we just need a platform for gathering our members. Maintaining the brotherhood is our primary focus. The gameplay environment is secondary.

We do have some "bikers" and a bunch of motorcycle enthusiasts. Many of us have gotten together to ride in real life. While we are most active on Red Dead lately, at our core this was a club founded to build fellowship between individuals with a passion for gaming and motorcycles.

We do. We play lots of different games together. Many of us have multiple consoles and PCs, so we can slide back and forth between the various charters to play with each other. In addition we do watch parties and other online activities together. Outside the game we have members that are blood relatives or live nearby to each other so they interact frequently offline as well. Each year we also host club events in real life that we call ReaperCons. These events are hosted in the US and EU. The last ReaperCon event was in Los Angeles where a bunch of us got together for partying, riding motorcycles, & visiting sites that are featured within the game. We attended E3 where we met some of the actors from Red Dead as well. During that event a film crew was present. They followed us around and conducted interviews for an upcoming documentary on the club.

We follow a traditional Motorcycle Club hierarchy. National President sits over all charters of the club. Within each charter we have: President Vice President SGT at Arms Secretary Road Captain Enforcers Treasurer Tail Gunner We have a constitution that ensures the rights of members and accountability of officers as well. All major club decisions are put to a vote and any full member can motion a vote on any subject they wish. Members are also free to run for elected positions within the hierarchy. This structure provides the authority necessary for officers to lead the club, without the ability to run roughshod over it.