Roleplay Expectations

[DrAmazing343]

Hello chat. It’s that Time again.

I’d like to hear and discuss the community’s expectations of roleplay, on each level. What do you believe the definition is, and what would you like to see?

If this thread is to make any policy changes, it will hopefully just be clarifying what our expectations are, because I’ve seen and actioned a lot of rather NRP stuff in the past few months. It’s been worse, and it’s been better, but I’d like to nail down what the expectations are of each of us.

Personally, roleplay to me is more than just yapping— a very quiet player can still roleplay excellently to me with only a bit of effort. To me, roleplay is to immerse yourself in the setting, and to avoid as much OOC-speak as possible. To say “there’s a Revolution about” instead of “it’s revs.” To pretend that a CC announcement is actually from Central Command, instead of Le Admins.

To react as your character would to situations, rather than perhaps how you would each time as a player who’s likely seen it all— and moreover, to build traits and behaviors that your character has, whether little idiosyncrasy or important moral stand. All of these add to the roleplay value of the experience, the theater-play we’re all cooperatively taking part in!

At least to me. Let me know what your thoughts are!

[TheBibleMelts]

i would like a base standard established and maintained for what we're looking for as an overall level of immersion, and by contrast, what dips into metagaming.

metagaming should be a hard line on "your character does not know that." - when in practice it's only used against ghostknowledge/secondlifing/metacomms.

we allow people to know every detail about every antagonist, but there is a massive amount of dissonance in reconciling that with expecting people to not go over the line in anticipating/swiftly reacting to those threats in such a way that leaves the game boring, frustrating, or both.

i am all for letting people still have this knowledge, but having some policy about the type of mindset that a shift of ss13 should begin on would be a good step to creating an enforcable standard of immersion/buy-in to the atmosphere for best ss13 in practice. do we let people continue starting their shift as though they've just played through 50 wartorn hellscapes and numb the tension and buildup for themselves and others by gamifying things? or do we create a baseline expectation that the events of ss13 are an extreme exception to what is normally a regular workday. i think the latter would create a better space to play your role in, to antagonize in, and to administrate.

edit: also remove threat reports.

[TheRex9001]

Roleplay is very hard to define, but at the basic level its just playing a character. Personally I build my character in relation to the round, I'll be on the same static name but playing it differently, sometimes hes just a grumpy ol bartender, sometimes hes a MIXOLOGIST and needs everyone to affirm that title, I don't like to be chained to a single way of acting whenever I play with that name. To me the most important part of roleplay in this game is the improv style "yes, and", to actually engage with people and the environment either with words or without, if you say "its revs" or "there is a revolution" is of course part of the set building but to me I'd rather play on a server full of "its revs" where people actually engage with each other when prompted and pull the story in different directions rather than a server full of "there is a revolution" but none of the engagement.

[dendydoom]

instead of dumping 9001 words on the topic immediately i'll just say my general feelings on the purpose of rp in general:

i see the game as an improv sandbox with a lot of entropy from its many intricately interacting systems.

without each other, the game is just an empty space station that slowly falls apart. the only thing worth playing for is to interact with each other.

there is a competitive element to this game. mostly seen between a dichotomy like sec vs antags. your mechanical competency is important.

but i feel that what's even more important is to try and have some kind of layer of abstraction between yourself and the goal of the video game. what i mean by this is that instead of thinking "i need to kill the antags so that i can stop them from winning and allow the crew to win", these goals within the abstract become something like "i am a security officer and i need to protect the crew."

i think this mindset is important because it doesn't stop you from chasing the same end goal and using mechanics to do so, but it helps you to ensure that the motivations behind your actions are narratively appropriate rather than just trying to use mechanics to enable a win condition. you might act differently if your motivations exist entirely within the IC rather than following what you've been taught to enable a victory condition for a video game.

ultimately the point is to inhabit a role and play that role to tell a story. and i am concerned that there's often this link between "rp" and "you have to talk a lot and be boring." i disagree with this. i think people should be spontaneous, chaotic if necessary, and never have to impose "safer" (re: boring) gameplay routes if their motivation to be destructive makes sense. those parts of the game are very fun and should be preserved.

but i think that the ruleset should motivate this mindset rather than twist the arms of players into playing in a sterile way. it should just have to make sense within the narrative. "rp is king" as they say.

[EmpressMaia]

id really like if power gaming and metagaming was cracked down harder on manual. its not uncommon to see assistants or janitors armed to the teeth for little to no reason, and to see security members doing mental gymnastics as to why the should be able to confiscate the bag of someone with poppies in it because they might be a heretic

[britgrenadier1]

i would like a base standard established and maintained for what we're looking for as an overall level of immersion, and by contrast, what dips into metagaming.

metagaming should be a hard line on "your character does not know that." - when in practice it's only used against ghostknowledge/secondlifing/metacomms.

we allow people to know every detail about every antagonist, but there is a massive amount of dissonance in reconciling that with expecting people to not go over the line in anticipating/swiftly reacting to those threats in such a way that leaves the game boring, frustrating, or both.

i am all for letting people still have this knowledge, but having some policy about the type of mindset that a shift of ss13 should begin on would be a good step to creating an enforcable standard of immersion/buy-in to the atmosphere for best ss13 in practice. do we let people continue start their shift as though they've just played through 50 wartorn hellscapes and numb the tension and buildup for themselves and others by gamifying things? or do we create a baseline expectation that the events of ss13 are an extreme exception to what is normally a regular workday. i think the latter would create a better space to play your role in, to antagonize in, and to administrate.

edit: also remove threat reports.

Let me be clear that enforced stupidity and or any Groundhog Day esque rulings would be awful for the game and roleplay. I’ve played a lot of Beestation and old CM where they enforced lack of knowledge about threats and it sucks. Having to say red dog over and over instead of runner or saying “glowy sword” instead of esword gets boring very fast. Theres only so many times I can react to the first time seeing something.

Put simply the game is more interesting when I can act like I know what I’m dealing with, because otherwise there is a serious dissonance between my words being “Oh gosh I’m just a medical doctor and this unknown assailant with a glowy hand is acosting me!” And my actions when he ends up on the fucking floor. I seriously doubt you’d be in favor of enforcing people dumb down their gameplay because IRL a medical doctor would probably lose to a trained syndicate terrorist.


Anywho RP expectation. I expect people to act like a character in the setting who wants to keep their job. For MRP that means you wouldn’t be breaking into places unless it was an emergency, and you wouldn’t be starting random fights with your co workers either. Crew should probably try to de-escalate fights when and where possible, and security should make a good attempt to bring threats in to central command alive and breathing for interrogation. Ultimate your duty should be to safeguard the station and get everyone out alive, even as non sec, but admins should also never be punishing people for justifiably nuking bad guys when it needs to happen.

[TheBibleMelts]

i would like a base standard established and maintained for what we're looking for as an overall level of immersion, and by contrast, what dips into metagaming.

metagaming should be a hard line on "your character does not know that." - when in practice it's only used against ghostknowledge/secondlifing/metacomms.

we allow people to know every detail about every antagonist, but there is a massive amount of dissonance in reconciling that with expecting people to not go over the line in anticipating/swiftly reacting to those threats in such a way that leaves the game boring, frustrating, or both.

i am all for letting people still have this knowledge, but having some policy about the type of mindset that a shift of ss13 should begin on would be a good step to creating an enforcable standard of immersion/buy-in to the atmosphere for best ss13 in practice. do we let people continue start their shift as though they've just played through 50 wartorn hellscapes and numb the tension and buildup for themselves and others by gamifying things? or do we create a baseline expectation that the events of ss13 are an extreme exception to what is normally a regular workday. i think the latter would create a better space to play your role in, to antagonize in, and to administrate.

edit: also remove threat reports.

Let me be clear that enforced stupidity and or any Groundhog Day esque rulings would be awful for the game and roleplay. I’ve played a lot of Beestation and old CM where they enforced lack of knowledge about threats and it sucks. Having to say red dog over and over instead of runner or saying “glowy sword” instead of esword gets boring very fast. Theres only so many times I can react to the first time seeing something.

Put simply the game is more interesting when I can act like I know what I’m dealing with, because otherwise there is a serious dissonance between my words being “Oh gosh I’m just a medical doctor and this unknown assailant with a glowy hand is acosting me!” And my actions when he ends up on the fucking floor. I seriously doubt you’d be in favor of enforcing people dumb down their gameplay because IRL a medical doctor would probably lose to a trained syndicate terrorist.


Anywho RP expectation. I expect people to act like a character in the setting who wants to keep their job. For MRP that means you wouldn’t be breaking into places unless it was an emergency, and you wouldn’t be starting random fights with your co workers either. Crew should probably try to de-escalate fights when and where possible, and security should make a good attempt to bring threats in to central command alive and breathing for interrogation. Ultimate your duty should be to safeguard the station and get everyone out alive, even as non sec, but admins should also never be punishing people for justifiably nuking bad guys when it needs to happen.

i am unsure that you understood my post.

[britgrenadier1]

do we let people continue start their shift as though they've just played through 50 wartorn hellscapes and numb the tension and buildup for themselves and others by gamifying things? or do we create a baseline expectation that the events of ss13 are an extreme exception to what is normally a regular workday. i think the latter would create a better space to play your role in, to antagonize in, and to administrate.

Do elaborate then.

Edit: more specifically how would you implement policy without going down a Groundhog Day/restricted info route?

[TheBibleMelts]

do we let people continue start their shift as though they've just played through 50 wartorn hellscapes and numb the tension and buildup for themselves and others by gamifying things? or do we create a baseline expectation that the events of ss13 are an extreme exception to what is normally a regular workday. i think the latter would create a better space to play your role in, to antagonize in, and to administrate.

Do elaborate then.

Edit: more specifically how would you implement policy without going down a Groundhog Day/restricted info route?

by doing what i mentioned - treating the events of ss13 as the exception and not the rule. people can still be trained in what the threats to the corporation are and be aware of one when they see it without entering every round ready to game like they expect it.

[DrAmazing343]

I think that bearing some scars from prior shifts and carrying some persistence in events is okay, but using that to act super jaded and unsurprised by anything fails to impress me. The way I've always handled it is by referring to past shifts in a very vague way, and lampshading it by referring to antag shifts as dreams or odd outlines that I can't make any sense of. It's made for fun roleplay and I do think that meta-stories carrying over rounds have value so long as they're not utilized to circumvent rules vis-a-vis metagrudges or to weaken the setting by making ur lore as being an ubergamer mary sue who's never phased. Part of the fun of roleplay is roleplaying SOME stuff as SHOCKING and FUCKED UP and OH MY GOD WHY DID THAT GUY JUST EXPLODE OUT OF NOWHERE WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING???

[TheBibleMelts]

I think that bearing some scars from prior shifts and carrying some persistence in events is okay, but using that to act super jaded and unsurprised by anything fails to impress me. The way I've always handled it is by referring to past shifts in a very vague way, and lampshading it by referring to antag shifts as dreams or odd outlines that I can't make any sense of. It's made for fun roleplay and I do think that meta-stories carrying over rounds have value so long as they're not utilized to circumvent rules vis-a-vis metagrudges or to weaken the setting by making ur lore as being an ubergamer mary sue who's never phased. Part of the fun of roleplay is roleplaying SOME stuff as SHOCKING and FUCKED UP and OH MY GOD WHY DID THAT GUY JUST EXPLODE OUT OF NOWHERE WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING???

there's a pretty wide gap between "i have never seen shit go down" and acting like you're just in CoD match #4572 where you allow nothing to bounce off of you in an IC way, i think.

[RedBaronFlyer]

Roleplay is very hard to define, but at the basic level its just playing a character. Personally I build my character in relation to the round, I'll be on the same static name but playing it differently, sometimes hes just a grumpy ol bartender, sometimes hes a MIXOLOGIST and needs everyone to affirm that title, I don't like to be chained to a single way of acting whenever I play with that name. To me the most important part of roleplay in this game is the improv style "yes, and", to actually engage with people and the environment either with words or without, if you say "its revs" or "there is a revolution" is of course part of the set building but to me I'd rather play on a server full of "its revs" where people actually engage with each other when prompted and pull the story in different directions rather than a server full of "there is a revolution" but none of the engagement.

I was going to write something but Rex made the point better than I so I'm just going to say +1 to this.

I can't really describe good roleplay, but I know it when I see it.

The biggest things I notice are that some players tend to gear up a bit too much for no tangible reason a lot of shifts. For instance there was this janitor main on manuel that for literally months on end every round would make bolas and if the autolathe wasn't moved into the cargo lobby, they'd break in to print out a bonesaw or a hatchet (I forget which).

The other thing is that security and antags are stuck in this weird prisoners dilemma. Pardon the poopy image that I made a while back but basically this:



As long as I've been playing SS13 there's been this weird balancing act where security will get in trouble if they gamer too hard on antags, but if they let antags cook a decent chunk of them become station ending threats. I don't know if it's possible to find a good balance imo, I think it just varies round to round. As long as you can't both type and do stuff at the same time, you're going to have the issue that the most efficient way to do combat is wordlessly killing your opponent.

[Blacklist897]

our current manuel ruleset is a good starting point and we should honestly have all /tg/ servers use it as a base , but admins need to nuke problem players that act nrp or skirt naming policy more.
currently we have this feedback loop where players play it like TTT so the codebase shifts towards TTT with shit like the dynamic-sec feedback loop and game balance obsessison
if action to raise overall rp to the utter baseline of attempting to play a character is taken, perhaps we will once again be trusted with decaps

Para has this cool IC knowledge thing, so you dont know that deathsquads or their version of battlecruiser syndis exist untill you have seen them

[Vekter]

I think things are relatively fine on MRP for the most part. LRP can kinda do whatever it wants up until people start treating the game as a combat simulator and not an actual role-playing game.

If I had my way, we would have MRP on all servers with slightly stricter RP rules, set around the idea of making the game less about "antag vs. crew" and more about actually role-playing. Your motivations for doing something should always relate to something that's going on in the game, not "I want to do this because I think dunking on antags/crew is fun" or "I just wanted to do it even if it doesn't make sense in-character".

People always balk when I suggest that you should have an IC reason to do ANYTHING, but the bar is pretty damn low - it could be as simple as "I beat him up because my character needed the thing he had and he refused to give it to me". That's fine by me. Where we run into problems is things like "I beat him up because he had a shotgun and that's more effective than the weapon I have now", or "I killed him because I think it's fun to kill everyone as a bad guy".

My big evil mean guy MRP main take is that I don't personally care about the opinions of anyone who plays the game solely because they want to powergame the mechanics or own antags and finds no joy in it otherwise. If I had creative/maintainer control over the project, focus would always be placed on making the game more interesting for roleplay and creating good stories, not whatever will make antag more fun to play.

I'm rambling a bit but basically I think MRP is fine for what we have now, I just think we should clamp down on the number of people who are focusing on min-maxing every aspect they can or doing nothing but hunting antags, as well as cutting out the OOC in IC meme bullshit. Those are my two biggest desires, on both LRP and MRP.

[bastardblaster]

A lot of the sec gamering on antags phenomenon is informed by the context of the game balance. Prog-traitors, heretics, like half the midrounds, cult, revs, spider spam ling etc., all have mechanical late-game powerspikes weaved into their designs. It's no surprise, then, that security is mechanically incentivized to merk antags ASAP. The nature of the bulk of antags that make up any given round - heretics and traitors mostly - having the ability to stealth while still progressing their power means that for every second you spend processing a prisoner for a trial is more time for Joe Traitor to merk a couple more station pets and assemble exodia out of his PDA and shank the entire station to death. I think that this needs to be a serious discussion amongst maints as to whether this is a direction that is intended and good and should be regulated with policy or vice versa.

[Timberpoes]

It's definitely noted on the admin side. Our players tend to play around the potential that something could happen.

Even though the number of heretics that ascend is low and the number of traitor final objectives is low, part of the reasons they are low is because players know they exist and have adapted their roleplay to prevent it.

Such roleplay adaptations tend to be NRP disguised as HRP - "it would make no RP sense to release the traitor caught stealing a loaf of bread, through metaknowledge I know their mechanics, they have the potential to end the entire shift, execute"

[NecromancerAnne]

Iunno, there haven't been terribly that many executions that I've seen that aren't already backed by the fact that the bad guy in question has employed a considerable amount of lethal force, or things are blowing up so bad that there is no longer room for roleplaying out this interaction.

But I've also seen plenty of HoS mains (Jeffs actually been killing it as the most lenient I've seen) trying to push for a catch and release process if they can't immediately clarify what that bad guy has done and there aren't immediate threats currently compounding the problem that a single antagonist causes.

I am going to sound like a broken record, but I'll never stop going on about it as long as dreary doesn't either. The acceleration towards roundend as a result of dynamic vomiting more and more threats onto the round and thus undermining the potential roleplay of established antagonists does not at all help this problem. We cannot even begin talking about roleplay expectations and proper escalation until we address the elephant in the room that is the need to keep making every new threat a completely separate time bomb that will wipe the station. I think this discussion is pointless while we already have players trying to do their best despite this, since there is so much that could start happening to cause MRP to slip into a totally mechanical state past a certain minute mark as it is that I cannot fault players for entering it whatsoever.

[dendydoom]

I am going to sound like a broken record, but I'll never stop going on about it as long as dreary doesn't either. The acceleration towards roundend as a result of dynamic vomiting more and more threats onto the round and thus undermining the potential roleplay of established antagonists does not at all help this problem. We cannot even begin talking about roleplay expectations and proper escalation until we address the elephant in the room that is the need to keep making every new threat a completely separate time bomb that will wipe the station. I think this discussion is pointless while we already have players trying to do their best despite this, since there is so much that could start happening to cause MRP to slip into a totally mechanical state past a certain minute mark as it is that I cannot fault players for entering it whatsoever.

1000%. we cannot enforce standards through administration when the game teaches players to engage in an entirely different way. if the game encourages you to act one way, but we punish you because you didn't do the opposite, then this is setting players up to fail in an extremely frustrating way.

what constitutes "good rp" is that people engage in good faith (recognizes that they are in a shared social space and that they are participating in a game that can only work if everyone takes the responsibility to not play selfishly) and that their decisions are driven by IC motivations. that's it. the rest is improv that is encouraged and prompted by what happens in the game.

if the game constantly gives you threats which have no rhyme or reason to why they're there or why that specific series of antags are chosen, then there is no narrative "thread" that emerges to link it all together and give it some consistency that people can play off of. it is just nonsense that you have to survive in the right way or risk getting in trouble. nonsense which, initially was intended to "spice up" the "same old" gamemodes, but which has now ensured that only 2 types of rounds exist: no antags or oops all antags, with no logical consistency to which ones are chosen.

i brought it up in adminbus, but in old gamemodes, when i was a detective searching for a traitor, then i stumble on a crime scene that introduces another antag that is actually a ling, i don't go "oh man this is so chaotic and doesn't make sense", i go "oh man the plot just thickened, there's a second stealthy enemy lurking around who has entirely different abilities but likely similar goals." the same does not happen when a traitor round is also a cult round is also a space dragon round is also a spy round. it makes no sense. it is just white noise. it is just the computer jangling keys to encourage the chimps sitting in front of them to press buttons. there is no thought behind it, and that frustrates me when we have to twist a system like that administratively into a social space that produces good stories for our players.

if you roleplay with an antag, in the back of your mind you know that more antags are added as the round goes on. to have a chance at survival, you must deal with threats efficiently. but this is bad, because it encourages deference to strategies that aren't in the interest of creating an interesting situation or motivated by the immediate situation, but rather informed by prior experience that to survive you need to just kill an enemy as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

it is similar with progression antagonists, specifically traitors. traitors used to inhabit this role where they would just access a toybox of contraband and do whatever they wanted with their licence to antag. there were no predefined expectations outside of the few objective "tells" like when you find them with the captain's jump pack and ian was killed 5 minutes ago. now we inhabit this sort of progression traitor superposition where traitors aren't dangerous until they are, and players are aware of this so it factors into their decision making.

dynamic and progression objectives are both separate issues but feed into the same problem. they create expectations for rounds which lead to behavioural issues both when those expectations aren't met and when those expectations are met so often that the response to it becomes unthinking and rote. it is an issue when our roleplaying story generator teaches players to *anticipate* rather than *react genuinely* to situations.

and to get ahead of the possible conversation based on prior experience, i think it would be a mistake to start pulling data on this without asking why the data could be that way. last time i brought this up and pushed for it to be changed, there was a very long winded argument about the stats of not many traitors actually getting to their final objective. but i posit that this sort of thing doesn't matter, because players will act on incomplete information and their perception of events.

thanks for reading the 9001 words i said i wouldn't post...

[MothNyan]

I feel I'm just reiterating what's already been said but;

Dynamic doesn't support roleplay, nor does it support antags who try to build up neat gimmicks, nor does it support antag/sec interactions, nor does it support players who feel like they're cattle.

But I also feel like dynamic has been around so long at this point that most players would struggle to integrate into any other way of handling antags in shifts. Most people who don't like dynamic have already left to other servers loooong ago (I remember a lot of people leaving when dynamic first came in due to the intensity and chaos not being their cup of tea), and the people who stay get antsy and bored when the station is not going up in flames from 20 antags because they are on guard and constantly trying to prep for the inevitable flood of antags that they don't try to do anything else. People don't do gimmicks because they know that antags will ruin all the effort they put into pulling one off. (Usually if you can rope a lot of people into a gimmick, there's a higher chance you can pull it off, but that still gets ended by random blobs or nukies or other devastating midround antags.)

And it also leaves this weird push and pull because many people love the constant chaos and intensity of highpop dynamic rounds, yet interacting with the game in any way that it's not a constant wild goose chase or "cops vs bad guys" type gameplay falls way behind.

If you aren't an antag and not playing security, you're just fodder for the antags. I've felt this way since dynamic was added, the game is still enjoyable because of the players of course, but it's really tiring and I've find myself less and less motivated to do gimmicks or anything neat because usually either an antag comes and destroys it OR no one can actually interact with it because they're too busy with the existing antags.

I do prefer alternative lowerpop servers these days because I can actually have more meaningful interaction and take my time doing stuff that's not constant run and chase gameplay... And people who play more antagonistic roles can actually take their time developing why they're evil, create tension and build up leading to actual conflict.

[britgrenadier1]

Current gameplay really does not facilitate roleplay at all. Particularly when the crew gets nerfed into the ground and antags keep getting reworked and or buffed to have outright counters to crew weapons (looking at you increasingly useless winstick). The simple fact of the environment that we’re in is that one must game and game hard in order to stand a chance against anyone who knows what they’re doing with an uplink. Some of the onus is definitely on the antags to chill out as well, but the social contract for both parties to chill is so fragile that it’s hard for that to materialize. As the chart above suggests: if I roleplay I have fun 50% of the time and the other 50% I get run over by gamers. If I don’t roleplay then I have fun 100% of the time.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

It would be nice if a basic expectation on the roleplay server was that people would try asking for things before wordlessly breaking into departments to get it themself. I mean its not like Terry where you usually just open the doors for them to reduce the property damage since its the easiest path but it does happen casually enough to vex me.

Sure you can beat them up and throw them out according to the rules but like. What if I dont want to pick a fight with someone who is by virtue of bumrushing cargo with a screwdriver and wrench roundstart advertising themself as either an extremely petty baby who will grudge you all round or a combat enthusiast who will probbably kick your non-fighty non-prepared ass out?

[warbluke]

as well as cutting out the OOC in IC meme bullshit. Those are my two biggest desires, on both LRP and MRP.

Please I beg of you please do this. I don't understand what a significant amount of players are saying during the round and I refuse to look up what their babbling means.

[Vekter]

as well as cutting out the OOC in IC meme bullshit. Those are my two biggest desires, on both LRP and MRP.

Please I beg of you please do this. I don't understand what a significant amount of players are saying during the round and I refuse to look up what their babbling means.

You are always welcome to just ahelp us and drop whatever FOTM shit someone's saying in the ahelp and we'll look at it.

[kieth4]

When you look at something like "roleplay" I think it's impossible to set expectations that make sense for everyone. - I think do the subjective nature of things like this it's very hard to define a baseline. Although I think to improve standards you need to start at the top and work your way down. I have no hatred towards things like the snoy or silly admin events but I'm going to be frank, seeing a snoy shooting out little snoys breaks my immersion more than anything a player can say- (NO HATE TO THE PERSON WHO DID THIS THIS IS JUST THE MOST RECENT EXAMPLE) I think it's hard to tell dudes, hey man you need to rp more whilst then throwing down a bunch of immersion breaking events or announcements or w/e and it is for that reason I am very happy about how lax everything is

[conrad]

I think better RP comes from tolerance of someone else's RP breaks and quirks here and there moreso than expectations. Especially since this is more of a comedy game than something serious.

[TheSmallBlue]

To me what differentiates between no-rp and rp is the context in which you decide to live in while playing the game. Like, you can either see it as a game, (talk about rounds, the concept of antags, cry about how low the chances for antags are in a yellow shift, etc) OR you can see it as a world you're actually living it (talk about shifts, EOC's, the level of the orbit).

But this falls a bit short of what I'd consider the full roleplay experience. The real deal I think has two main factors:
1. Something that I call "Tone acting". Basically people going "Wha- *takes a step back* N-No... You... killed the captain?! Why you heartless wrech! I will see that you wont see the sunrise!! Have at thee!!". With light roleplaying you immerse into the setting, in this level you immerse into the character you're playing and their speech mannerisms.
2. The depth of the setting itself. Right now if you join manuel, you're not expected to know the entire history of Nanotrasen and its contested areas of space and its relationship with the delegation nation of dingus blingus you can just hop on and play. If you join a server and it goes "WARNING. THIS ROLE BELONGS TO THE DELEGATION NATION OF DINGUS BLINGUS" then that's a high RP server, it expects you to not only immerse yourself into the setting, but also to understand it thoroughly.

Personally I hate no-rp since I feel it leads to plenty of shittery, mid-rp is where its at, and high-rp just feels like a writing exercise (but i still enjoy it from time to time, sometimes it hits that beautiful spot of historical marvel that you keep thinking about for decades to come).

[DATAxPUNGED]

It would be nice if a basic expectation on the roleplay server was that people would try asking for things before wordlessly breaking into departments to get it themself.

9. Stay in your lane.

This means that you should do the job you signed up for and not try and do other people’s jobs for them or lay claim to their department. If you need something from another player you should attempt to ask them to get it for you instead of just taking it. Straying from your lane at the expense of another player should only be done where strictly necessary.

This IS already a basic expectation from MRP, feel free to ahelp when you see people going out of their way in an unreasonable way

[BrianBackslide]

If we're following IC logic, then why am I, as a medical doctor, making medical patches for the crew that they shouldn't need because it's "supposed to be another day at work until it isn't." I don't like the idea that such actions up to and including light gearing up would be OOC. Particularly when the game is thought of as a paranoid experience on a metal deathtrap.

I don't even think that there's an inherent problem with dynamic itself, the problem is in the pacing. There's little to no downtime in a 90 minute round. That's 90 minutes of near constant tension as the station is torn apart. When you have no release of that tension, no matter the job, you're going to build bad anti-RP habits like gearing up and overproducing medicines as a way to reduce the stress of the round. Even just the chef/botanist job by their job content alone have near constant stress of what they have to manage.

Add to that the constant power struggle between antags and sec (because coders are COWARDS and don't want to nerf stamcrit) and you, as regular crew, just end up getting yanked in every direction just trying to save your own hide.

[Jake]

Current gameplay really does not facilitate roleplay at all. Particularly when the crew gets nerfed into the ground and antags keep getting reworked and or buffed to have outright counters to crew weapons (looking at you increasingly useless winstick). The simple fact of the environment that we’re in is that one must game and game hard in order to stand a chance against anyone who knows what they’re doing with an uplink. Some of the onus is definitely on the antags to chill out as well, but the social contract for both parties to chill is so fragile that it’s hard for that to materialize. As the chart above suggests: if I roleplay I have fun 50% of the time and the other 50% I get run over by gamers. If I don’t roleplay then I have fun 100% of the time.

Luckily those people are few and inbetween.

We don't balance the game around outliers, doing so will just ruin the experience for everybody else.

even still security has been pretty damn strong for quite a while now, I'm surprised it took us this long to even tackle batons.

Security And Antagonists being at odds against each other doesn't result in bad RP, that's how they are designed to interact with one another.

Neutering how effective our antagonist are for the sake of roleplay has been paraded around as an argument for god knows how long, I'm legit sick of hearing it.

Things going to hell, is very much in the spirit of SS13, You'd have a more relaxed experience as a sec off If you'd just come to terms with that.

[Vekter]

Current gameplay really does not facilitate roleplay at all. Particularly when the crew gets nerfed into the ground and antags keep getting reworked and or buffed to have outright counters to crew weapons (looking at you increasingly useless winstick). The simple fact of the environment that we’re in is that one must game and game hard in order to stand a chance against anyone who knows what they’re doing with an uplink. Some of the onus is definitely on the antags to chill out as well, but the social contract for both parties to chill is so fragile that it’s hard for that to materialize. As the chart above suggests: if I roleplay I have fun 50% of the time and the other 50% I get run over by gamers. If I don’t roleplay then I have fun 100% of the time.

All I'm hearing from this is that we need to clamp down on people who are just gaming 100% of the time.

[ItzRiumz]

Current gameplay really does not facilitate roleplay at all. Particularly when the crew gets nerfed into the ground and antags keep getting reworked and or buffed to have outright counters to crew weapons (looking at you increasingly useless winstick). The simple fact of the environment that we’re in is that one must game and game hard in order to stand a chance against anyone who knows what they’re doing with an uplink. Some of the onus is definitely on the antags to chill out as well, but the social contract for both parties to chill is so fragile that it’s hard for that to materialize. As the chart above suggests: if I roleplay I have fun 50% of the time and the other 50% I get run over by gamers. If I don’t roleplay then I have fun 100% of the time.

All I'm hearing from this is that we need to clamp down on people who are just gaming 100% of the time.

This must go both ways. Clamping down on only the crew makes the game miserable to play when antags decide to just game. Antags also have to be told to calm down and stop gaming. Unfortunately, due to rule 4 existing as the way it is they can’t be told to stop and calm down without invoking rule 0. Which is its own can of worms depending on how rule 0 is applied.

[Blacklist897]

I think that we have to bite the bullet and remove dynamic, and lower the amount of prog stuff

[Vekter]

Current gameplay really does not facilitate roleplay at all. Particularly when the crew gets nerfed into the ground and antags keep getting reworked and or buffed to have outright counters to crew weapons (looking at you increasingly useless winstick). The simple fact of the environment that we’re in is that one must game and game hard in order to stand a chance against anyone who knows what they’re doing with an uplink. Some of the onus is definitely on the antags to chill out as well, but the social contract for both parties to chill is so fragile that it’s hard for that to materialize. As the chart above suggests: if I roleplay I have fun 50% of the time and the other 50% I get run over by gamers. If I don’t roleplay then I have fun 100% of the time.

All I'm hearing from this is that we need to clamp down on people who are just gaming 100% of the time.

This must go both ways. Clamping down on only the crew makes the game miserable to play when antags decide to just game. Antags also have to be told to calm down and stop gaming. Unfortunately, due to rule 4 existing as the way it is they can’t be told to stop and calm down without invoking rule 0. Which is its own can of worms depending on how rule 0 is applied.

I don't recall mentioning that this would only apply to crew and not antags.

[britgrenadier1]

Snip

Luckily those people are few and inbetween.

We don't balance the game around outliers, doing so will just ruin the experience for everybody else.

even still security has been pretty damn strong for quite a while now, I'm surprised it took us this long to even tackle batons.

Security And Antagonists being at odds against each other doesn't result in bad RP, that's how they are designed to interact with one another.

Neutering how effective our antagonist are for the sake of roleplay has been paraded around as an argument for god knows how long, I'm legit sick of hearing it.

Things going to hell, is very much in the spirit of SS13, You'd have a more relaxed experience as a sec off If you'd just come to terms with that.

Good players are neither few nor far between. If an antagonist possesses all counters to crew kit then the crew has very little incentive to pump the breaks and roleplay. The reality is that roleplay requires the lowering of the guard a bit. No one will lower that guard if they are helpless against a foe. They need something they can fall back on that's reliable so that they don't have to go seek out the FOTM powergame strategy. Security is by no means powerful, it's never been. Even in the time of tasers and 1 tap winsticks the soft skills that surround the gear dictated so much more in how a fight went. Antagonists always have the edge because of the nature of the game. They decide where, when, and how fights will take place. They get first strike. Things going to hell is indeed very much in the spirit of SS13. However, if your takeaway is "Things going to hell means the crew losing" or a one-sided stomp, then you've lost the plot. SS13 is about that struggle against the tide of chaos. It's not about taking turns playing the unkillable bad guy role.

Anywho, back to RP expectations.

All I'm hearing from this is that we need to clamp down on people who are just gaming 100% of the time.

Eagerly waiting for this day to occur (It won't). Time has shown that relying on admins to tell antag or crew gamers to chill doesn't reward us with a good-for-RP environment. It's a social contract between players and no amount of bwoinking will solve that if the people aren't interested in agreeing to that contract to begin with. As much as I love the grand sabotage rework I can't help but think about what role the MRP rule rework played in leading us to the point we're at today.

[Jake]

The crew is supposed to be at a disadvantage against antagonist, because they are the crew, Security's job is to protect them, and again I won't describe the crew as defenceless by any stretch of imagination.


Holy melons can be mass produced in 10 mins and completely shut down the entirety of Heretic arsenal, Space lube ignores no slip and it's in the pocket of every medical doctor these days, I could go on.

You should ideally never totally lower your guard because that's against the spirit of the game, the feeling of paranoia has already been but neutered over the years.

Antagonists might get the first strike, but they are also systematically hunted down by the entire station the moment they are caught, They get to be powerful because they are outnumbered 90% of the time.

All I'm hearing from this is that we need to clamp down on people who are just gaming 100% of the time.

I think that's just a can of worms we don't want to open, we already have several restrictions on MRP, the freedom that comes with being an antag is part of what makes it fun.

[britgrenadier1]

The crew has always and forever been at a disadvantage. What we’re doing now is stacking even more disadvantages and people are adjusting by roleplaying less since odds are unkillable uplink holder number 4000 is going to roll their department as they’re immune to most things the crew can throw at them. Slips? Stun shove removed from slips, it’s a ping check. Holy melons? Heretic has riposte/lionhunter (you gave it knockdown and shoot through walls ability lol)/beepsky transformation mobs, without even checking I would wager disgust buildup from rust tiles ignores magic protection, void conduit slowdown ignores magic protection… I’m probably missing stuff. Even cult has sharpened long sword and EMPs.

I also have the note history to prove that you can’t cross map antagonists and hunt them down on mrp. You killing people on lowpop and getting killed for it is just desserts. Gaming on lowpop is cringe and the MRP traitor rules are so flimsy post rework that anyone can justify mowing down half the station if they play their cards right.

[Jake]

The crew has always and forever been at a disadvantage. What we’re doing now is stacking even more disadvantages and people are adjusting by roleplaying less since odds are unkillable uplink holder number 4000 is going to roll their department as they’re immune to most things the crew can throw at them. Slips? Stun shove removed from slips, it’s a ping check. Holy melons? Heretic has riposte/lionhunter (you gave it knockdown and shoot through walls ability lol)/beepsky transformation mobs, without even checking I would wager disgust buildup from rust tiles ignores magic protection, void conduit slowdown ignores magic protection… I’m probably missing stuff. Even cult has sharpened long sword and EMPs.

I also have the note history to prove that you can’t cross map antagonists and hunt them down on mrp. You killing people on lowpop and getting killed for it is just desserts. Gaming on lowpop is cringe and the MRP traitor rules are so flimsy post rework that anyone can justify mowing down half the station if they play their cards right.

Lowpop is never ever gonna be balanced, nor can we can design the game around it, you could make an argument that the dynamic needs to be more tuned to operate on lowpop hours and It'd be reasonable one.

And you should probably double check some of the things you claim , because yes anti magic blocks rust disgust and void conduit.

Regardless, this very idea that progression mechanics on antagonists has been the cause of a decay of RP on our servers is just a snowman.

the amount of Heretic ascensions and finals achieved is as low as it's ever been, because most people don't bother with the progression system at all.

,Manuel average round lenght still sits around the 90 minutes mark, that's plenty of time to engage in some RP, but like....rounds have to end eventually, that's part of the reason why dynamic got introduced.

I really don't know how not to sound like a broken record at this point, but the situation is not as catastrophic as you claim it to be.

[FlapjackKong]

To react as your character would to situations, rather than perhaps how you would each time as a player who’s likely seen it all— and moreover, to build traits and behaviors that your character has, whether little idiosyncrasy or important moral stand. All of these add to the roleplay value of the experience, the theater-play we’re all cooperatively taking part in!

At least to me. Let me know what your thoughts are!

I agree with this statement but I don't think all of the admins have the same opinion on this, or at the very least are doing a bad job making an environment conclusive to this.

Playing security for instance, is awful on the mrp (and depending on the admin lrp too) server and the people who put up with it have to seriously lobotomize their critical thinking skills to make sure the criminals dont get sad. This is mainly because of admins literally breathing down their necks for trying to keep peace as a security officer of a facist megacorp on a Space Station, researching a highly flammable and unkown powerful resource in a high-risk sector of space. Almost any character in this scenario would be both on edge and cynical, and probably some of them violent, on the edge of a crashout. I don't think security officers should be required to act fairly or without emotion, it doesn't make sense as a character and as a player it it grating to the experience.

Admins however always have questions about how the department is running and criminals are treated, boinking halts my round to a stop, and changes my mindset from my character to dissolving an administrator issue, that almost always gets cleared up. Let sec arrest and beat up criminals without worrying about a boink, and deal with it admin wise later if someone complains.

Roleplaying antags can also be awful, why am I getting boinked and warned on sybil 20 pop as a changeling for killing two people. If I'm trying to be in character it makes sense for the bloodthirsty alien from outerspace that sucks genes out of people to KILL, thats the character, thats the roleplay.

All I am trying to say is admins, start learning how to use IC ways to communicate with the crew if roleplay is the way you want this serber to go.
Secoff with questionable judgement? Fax the lawyer or security office as HR or some shit, put him on the stand. Ling going on a murder spree? Thank god for Nanotrasen's ERT. Captain being condom? Send a centcom inspector or send the space IRS to tax their ass.

[Jamarkus]

While I did real all the posts, Im sure ill repeat what someone else has said. Ill leave my 2 cents on what I feel RP should be like, coming from LRP, to MRP, to HRP, then back to MRP

RP to me is just pretending to be a character that isnt you. ITs basically acting but instead of you being the actor entertaining the audience, you are the Actor entertaining the people around you, who are also in on the bit and entertain back.

In essence, when I RP, I set a precedent I try not to sway from unless it happens naturally and in a context that makes sense. As an example ill make a character that used to work on ship engines. Space shuttle repair man. There, ill determine his roles and reasons to play specific jobs, and give him a personality that he isnt allowed to sway from and act that way. Unless things change naturally but that dosent matter rn.

If im facing what is an antag, just from implication from all the metaknowledge that I myself am aware of just from playing for so long, I try not to tap into the Oh fuck this guys an antag hes gonna kill me section of my brain, and just act out what my character would do. It becomes Less RP when the antag themselves dosent reciprocate that same feeling, and decides to just shoot me because im a target. Then sure, ill turn on my gamer brain, they shut down the scene.

What I said above I still feel is completely fine, since alotta HRP servers demand you RP out the scene first, and thats pretty gay considering that this gives the "good guys" time to amass a sec army to beat ur ass, and these rules are covered in interpretation that begs for a ticket.

I think the issue lies in what MothNyan said,

Dynamic doesn't support roleplay, nor does it support antags who try to build up neat gimmicks, nor does it support antag/sec interactions, nor does it support players who feel like they're cattle.

Why bother to even RP with an antag, or someone who is an antag when later, you have to deal with the shitstorm thats probably going to arise because the captain or AI annouced Black orbit or Red star or whatever the new naming scheme is. On top of this, having the orbit be unknown actually makes things WORSE. Now everyone is paranoid and assumes the worst is about to happen and preps for that. If you cant be aware on how to prep, fuck it, overprep so that you are sure you can deal with whatever hell happens. I think a form of secret would be nice. Like extended secret maybe? Secret, but the round dosent end because all the antags were killed, and from there the admins can choose to adminbus, or allow the crew to cause their own shenanigan's that they have to adapt to. Possibly even an announcement stating that the threats are gone, and the crew did a good job. then the crew can become something of their own "lite antagonists" where they could RP out petty crimes, or really start up some serious crimes with proper escalation. Round still ends with a shuttle call, but it would at least allow gimmicks to be built up, and the crew to enact whether the threat is ACTUALLY JUSTIFIABLE to call the shuttle instead of calling the shuttle because 3/4ths of the station is gone because theres 2 heretics, a rev, a space dragon, and a ninja gunning for that greentext while the one traitor on the round that started their gimmick got shut down because of all the other shit sec has to deal with. Funny enough this also allows the crew to interact with sec more naturally because once the threats gone, all sec has is the crew to police. While it may mean things could go stale, it at least puts it in the hands of the crew to decide the end of the round still, instead of it ALWAYS being the antag.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

Dramazing was meant to close the thread but forgor i think