So in my time of 3,300+ hours on Garry's Mod. I've went through my fair share of servers and staff and that's not to mention my 1,200+ hours on my old steam account. (I do have a life btw, i've just been playing for a while).

First Time Staff:
The first time I ever staffed on a server was an old BHOP server back when it was first introduced. I had a friend who was pretty good with lua and he coded his own menus and gamemodes etc. And after time, he made a BHOP server and wanted my help running it.

I was very new to Garry's Mod and I had no previous experience at this point but it was pretty nice to learn how ULX and some of the old addons worked.
That server was later taken down due to my friend going off to university, but now I had experience, I thought i'd start asking around on some servers.

At this point, I was loving sandbox. About 1000 or maybe 2000 of my playtime has been sandbox building cars, mechanical stuff and wiremod builds.

Sandbox Staff
So, I thought I'd find a good server and work towards a staff application. Which by the way was an application which asked for my name, age and playtime. These three things made me trust worthy enough to have admin permission on a popular sandbox server. Mhmmmmm.

Soon after that server however, I found another server which was a bit more proffessional and that server was one of my highlights on Garry's Mod, I met a lot of people and went from a Trial Mod to later managing that server and the staff after about 1-2 years.

Moving on from Sandbox
Later after another 1-2 years jumping from different servers. I found one of the most popular servers on Garry's Mod (before DarkRP) which was LifePunch. It had lots of gamemodes and this was a rollercoaster of events as I dedicated over 3,000 hours to that server and eventually attained a rank called EVIP which was a donator rank that you had to apply for which gave you very limited admin rights such as kick and report but then, 6 months into EVIP, I got bored of how awful the server was getting so I kicked everyone and got perma banned from the server :)

Apart from getting perma banned for abusing my commands and stopping 5 year olds killing each other in Sandbox. I have also managed and owned my own servers.

A week or so after getting banned from LifePunch. I didn't really want to play Garry's Mod and ending up taking about a year off to play other games and to actually go outside.
However, I soon came back and decided I should just make my own server network so I can make my own rules, form my own ideas an everything was up to me.

This server featured a Sandbox and Jailbreak gamemode which I loved, it wasn't hitting record breaking numbers but it had a nice community with people I still talk to today.

I later closed this server to completely renivate the addons, menus and learn lua coding to get the server as custom as possible.

I am still working on this server today and it is currently featuring a Sandbox, Jailbreak, Battle Royale and Deathmatch gamemode. I'll soon make a guide on the server and all of it's features when it is ready to open again.

Apart from plugging my server. It was much, much better than being staff. I could decide what went where in my own time which was much better than having inactive owners who would just take the money and ignore the community.

Garry's Mod servers can get quite complicated. It highly revolves around the owners and which managers they employ. Some owners want a small community with friends and push out others that want to join or other owners employ hundreds of staff to make their server look good in the eyes of new players.

So, the question is, should you really bother getting involved with staff?

I would personally believe that if a server had recently been opened and was limited to staff then by all means, get in there quick and try and make a difference. You often find servers in the server list saying "Recruiting" or "Need Staff" and that's great, but most of the time with these servers is they'll have a staff application on a dead steam group asking for very basic details that anyone could find out and then you've got admin rights 10 minutes after posting the application.

I'd say, don't bother with them servers. Try and look for something more proffessional with a staff application being on a website or forum page. These servers want people to make the effort to sign up, not just have staff for the hell of it.

If you're trying to get staff on a 4 year old server that already has a list of loyal and long-term staff members, you're best bet it to play a lot and make a name for yourself rather than the owners looking at some random person that they've not seen do anything ask for staff.

Most of the time, you will be asked about your playtime and strengths on Garry's Mod so this is pretty straight forward anyway but certaintly don't just apply before trying to make an effort on the server.

So, here's the main part of the guide. The pros and cons of being a staff member. Just before you continue, I must mention that this could vary depending on the type of server but for the majority of the time, these pros and cons are relevant.

PROS
• Learn about common server rules
  
• Meet lots of people from all around the world
  
• Much better to be labelled as a staff member than an ordinary player
  
• Give your own advice and experience to help others
  
• Learn about commands and ULX
  
• Possibly learn about lua coding if you're playing a custom server
  
• Make a lot of friends
  
• Have a lot of fun with people
  
• Teach players new things about the game and even outside the game

CONS
• Very easy to abuse your power
  
• Deal with really annoying cases
  
• Meet a lot of people that you really start to hate
  
• Told you have no life for being a staff member (happens quite a lot lol)
  
• Have quite a bit of pressure on you if you're left alone
  
• May lose interest in the acutal game if you're just dealing with annoying people everytime you're online

As I said further up in the guide. This can vary depending on the type of person you are and what servers you are playing, but most of the time it will revolve around people really starting to annoy you as a lot of people that play Garry's Mod are on for a couple of hours just to troll people.

So you'll most likely meet a lot of people that you like and dislike, but as a staff member, you're not really supposed to express your hating for someone.

The main sort of problems you'll deal with is a player joining the server, doing the complete oppisite to the server rules and shouting complete cancer down the mic. In my case when this happens it's a straight perma ban with a lovely note attached: "please go away sir". Although, I've probably banned more people in my time with much worse notes than that >:)

Most of the time however, you'll only encounter one of these specimens every couple of days depending on how popular the server is.

Another common problem will be players that don't type or talk in chat but do petty things against the rules where you end up jailing them to tell them but they have no idea what you're saying and they do the exact same thing again until you eventually kick or get a response from them.

Although the two main types of players i've stated are complete noobs and are really annoying. They are not my worst types of people.

By far the worst kind of players are the ones that will testify every. single. sentence you say. And will somehow make out what they did was someone elses or your fault. These are the worst people and I litreally have no time in the world for them.

My worst experience was a rule on an old server I staffed that read; "Please do not discriminate other players for own enjoyment". To which a player responded "I'm not enjoying discriminating this guy, I'm just doing it because I can.

-_- Instant ID and server ban by yours truly :)

Overall, the purpose of this guide is get some of you out there to understand, being staff on servers is not everyone's cup of tea and from my own experiences. Owning my very own custom server is much more enjoyable and a good project to work towards.

Thank you for reading, hopefully you found this guide somewhat useful. If you have any extra tips or points to make, feel free to leave a comment in the discussion or just leave a Like and Favourite on the guide to help other players find it easier.

I have also written other very successful guides both on Garry's Mod and PUBG which you can check out here:
Stevie's Guides

Thank you, and good luck :)