(MRP) hypothetical or reasonable conclusion? Loosen antag restrictions

[Longestarmlonglaw]

On MRP, you cannot murder on hypotheticals, but what is the line on a hypothetical (not allowed to kill) and reasonable conclusion (allowed)?
For instance as an antag on MRP, if you're not doing things in pursuit of your objectives, you cannot murder on hypothetical threats, however this usually spirals into a "waiting until shot at first" which goes against the philosophy of antagonists having the first strike. This leads to not being allowed to perform actions that would perfectly make sense such as:

You kill someone in accordance in without objectives death and destruction precedence, but are NOT allowed to round remove them if escalation policy didn't permit so, even though it would make sense to do so because of rule 4.2: the dead dog litmus test which permits your victim to arm up and pursue you to try and kill you.

You see a medical doctor loading a syringe gun/a cargo tech ordering a gun for self defense for IC reasons, you are planning to cause a ruckus in medical/cargo but doing so without disposing of the armed doctor/cargo tech will result in you getting shot. Even though it makes sense for your character to kill and round-remove them as its a reasonable conclusion that you will get shot by them, you aren't allowed to.

To conclude, this policy proposal wishes to:
Permit antagonists to round-remove over minor issues
Allow antagonists to kill and round remove you if you seem like a threat to them, even if you have not taken any hostile action against them.
Make actions have consequences, a traitor deciding they don't want to wait around and find out and kill you off because they think you're a threat to them, they no longer need to "wait until shot at first"

[dendydoom]

you are allowed to do whatever you need to do to complete your objectives. your objectives don't need to be coded, they need to be a set goal that you can define. "i need to sabotage the engine." "i need to kill john mcfuckly the botanist."

if people are feasibly in the way of your objective, you can kill them. eg, "there is a medbay sec officer and i need to kill a medical doctor as my objective. i will take out the medbay sec officer pre-emptively." "cargo is buying lots of guns and i need to kill the qm. i will sabotage cargo with a bomb because i can't fight that many people with guns." these are feasible, real things in the current round that you can point directly at and say "this is a thing i witnessed, i am basing my decisions off this thing."

the hypotheticals you're not allowed to use are when it's extremely nebulous, like "hypothetically security will try to stop me. i will kill them all." before you've stepped off the shuttle, or "hypothetically the captain will stop me from stealing a pair of insuls" when the captain hasn't left the bridge in 45 minutes and you haven't seen them once. every round will have sec. every round will have a captain. there needs to be a reason for them to have been killed that isn't just the concept of them existing.

you just need to be able to define what your goal is, and then you can easily point out the obstacles on the way to that goal directly.

pretty much everything at the end of your post is already allowed, when you can point to an in-round example and say "this is what lead me to believe this is the case, and this is what i based my decision on." if someone is following you around and makes you feel like you're being watched, this is a reason to escalate and kill them as an antagonist. "i saw jane bingus following me, so i killed them" is vitally different from "assistants might follow me, i will kill them if i see them."

[DrAmazing343]

Another big issue with allowing extreme hypotheticals like this to fly without justification via set concrete goal is that it can put the sportsmanship of the game into jeopardy. We are at our core a bunch of folks playing together to create a story— and I think it’d be a shitty book if the corrupt town guard executed Link the moment he picked up a blade because he MIGHT be the Chosen One or some shit like that.

Same diff with the Meddoc with a syringe gun— they will almost always have a syringe gun, since it’s a departmental tool, but if you have to steal the Hypospray and have overheard about their deathmix they’re gushing about on Med radio? This is the perfect context-driven reason to merk ‘em.

A lot of what you’re asking for is already ingame under another name. Antags have naturally light escalation even on MRP, but playing with sportsmanship allows you to do basically anything you’d like within the rules.

[Timberpoes]

As the person who wrote the MRP antag rules, I'm not going to permit antags to round remove over mere minor issues on MRP.

Minor issues are nebulous at best and include antags being able to kill people for being excessively nice. It's trivial to bullshit a reason to simply kill someone and that triviality was by design. It unlocked a path to for MRP antags to kill another player for a reason that was basically FNR or a reason so bad, minor, pointless or petty that it may as well have been FNR. It made antags inherently more dangerous in that respect.

A problem with such triviality in killing someone is that killing a player always 100% of the time leads to "I killed them and because I killed them I can be executed, I need them to stay dead because they'll rat me out if they're revived, thus I need to round remove them". The logic quickly becomes very circular. Every single kill always leads to a round removal and round removal becomes synonymous with killing because of it. Any antag can create an excuse to round remove anyone they kill under the basis of self preservation. At that point, the antag is basically unrestricted and the entire point of the RP rules - putting a stop to LRP's deathmatch gameplay loops - is defeated.

Accordingly, the ability to round remove over minor stuff was locked behind where it would be valid within (antagonistic/antagonist) escalation. It puts a fetter on how far an antag can go when deciding they're going to kill someone over a minor reason. This was again by design. That means that the decision to kill someone for dumb, minor, petty, pointless or trivial reasons is allowed but stops shot of forced round removal.

Finally, hypothetical threats isn't about waiting to be shot first. It's about not pre-empting something before it proves to be a threat.

You can't bomb cargo just in case they get guns, but if they do get guns and it's clear the guns are for self defense then it doesn't matter if they've used them against you - if you need to go through cargo to complete an objective then RIP cargo.

You can't bomb security just because they might foil one of your plans, but if security are getting close to figuring out you're an antag or are actively defending/around one of your objectives then even though they've done nothing to you they can still be dealt with.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

A problem with such triviality in killing someone is that killing a player always 100% of the time leads to "I killed them and because I killed them I can be executed, I need them to stay dead because they'll rat me out if they're revived, thus I need to round remove them". The logic quickly becomes very circular. Every single kill always leads to a round removal and round removal becomes synonymous with killing because of it. Any antag can create an excuse to round remove anyone they kill under the basis of self preservation. At that point, the antag is basically unrestricted and the entire point of the RP rules - putting a stop to LRP's deathmatch gameplay loops - is defeated.

Would that discourage antags alltogether from killing over bullshit/petty/dumb reasons entirely because of the fear of security and the victim retaliating, forcing them into an arms race with the station to fight off their pursuing victim/security?
through plenty of my time on MRP, i have never seen an antag use that privilege to kill people

Edit: would force-borging your victims as an antag also count as round-removing and not be accepted?

[dendydoom]

fearing retaliation for antagonism is just part of being an antagonist.

the point of mrp is to base decisions and actions within a narrative framework. things need to be done for a reason. they cannot be nebulous abstractions drawn from video game logic in order to satisfy a win condition.

as much as it may seem to the contrary, antagonists don't exist just to win the round; they exist as a catalyst for confrontation as a means for interaction, which allows the very basics of our hidden role rpg to function. in this way, even if someone is killed (or round removed) it serves a purpose for the story of the round because it used consistent reasoning based on events in the current round.

the purpose of these rules isn't to stymy any efforts by antagonists to be destructive. antags should be destructive and murder people. but this needs to make some sort of consistent, logical sense within the contained narrative of that round.

to summarize:
- antagonists can act decisively without waiting for direct attacks but must ground their actions in the shared narrative of the round.
- crew cannot be arbitrarily round-removed based on general fears or assumptions that have no basis in the current round.

this is equalized as much as possible by rules against validhunting. non-sec crew shouldn't go out of their way to hunt restricted antagonists *unless that antagonist is doing something that directly interferes with what that crewmember is doing*

eg:
if you walk into a room and see a restricted antagonist killing someone, you can intervene and stop them.
if you are working in your department and a guy holding a hand grenade walks in, you can stop them.
if you see someone walking through central primary in a blood red hardsuit holding a machine gun, you can stop them.

if you hear about a traitor in sci maint and you're a medical doctor, you cannot drop what you're doing, head to sci maints and start searching for them.
if you have not been told about any antagonist activity on the station or seen it yourself, you cannot start prepping against the possibility of antagonists by arming yourself and fortifying your position.

both sides are heavily discouraged from doing things "just in case" because all this does is feed into a rote, unthinking pattern of behaviour that serves no narrative purpose.

[mrmelbert]

Antag-sec dynamic is not in a good spot (blah blah "has it ever been") and this is proven to not help

[Vekter]

The problem with giving antags carte blanche to round remove on MRP is that it starts an escalation cycle that pretty much sets us back to rule 4 dynamics:

- Antags are able to round remove for small slights.
- Players rarely leave antags alive going forward, the justification being that they often kill and space people for something as simple as pushing them over.
- Antags stop playing within expected boundaries, now seeing it necessary to round remove anyone they kill lest security do the same to them.
- Security starts round removing antags on-sight because they're doing the same.

Yes, we could handle this with rules and bans, but I don't see the need to. It's easier to just tell antags that they need a good justification to round remove someone than it is to keep banning people who do it when it's not okay.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

I agree with timber and jane, no to the loosening