Codify "family guy chicken fights" with metafriends as against rule 3

[Maxipat]

What it says in the title. While i am aware that it's against the rules and some other admins do as well, i couldnt actually find it codified anywhere (headmin rulings oage and such), only some mentions in bus that it kills roleplay. I don't mean situations like building a ragecage or a designated area to fight your friends, its whatever. What i mean is just fighting/killing your metafriends in public halls/medbay/other departments disrupting their work and other people.

tl;dr write down fighting your metafriends in places that disrupt other people for no other reason than "me metafriend me go toolbox" as against rules. (i'm 99% sure its already against the rules, i only want it written down or an official policy being given i.e: "it's already against rule 3")

[Jamarkus]

Does this also include shove fights that happen in the halls when players are goofing off? also its hard to tell if it is a spontaneous brawl because two players are very likeminded, or they are actually just metafriends. how do you codify it anyway?

[Maxipat]

Does this also include shove fights that happen in the halls when players are goofing off? also its hard to tell if it is a spontaneous brawl because two players are very likeminded, or they are actually just metafriends. how do you codify it anyway?

Exact wording is probably up to headmins, though it's already been against "Keep IC out of OOC, and OOC out of IC. Your words and actions ingame should be distinguishable as an in-universe character, and not as a person playing a game." part of rule 3, what im asking for is actually writing it down somewhere that it is in fact a rule 3 break (a thing for admins to point at during tickets) rather than just adminbus hearsay and legends. (It's already enforced like that, i myself noted several people for having NRP fights)

About whether theyre metabuddies or not, it's usually super obvious when across several rounds the same 3-4 people keep fighting with barely any say logs.

[bingusdingus]

There's been a lot of people hanging around together round after round that always seem to coincidentally pick assistant or end up as the same department. I never want to claim metacomms because its a hard accusation to prove, but I at least try to point it out when I see it. Been seeing it a lot since the servers came back. I get having a close knit community that remembers each others character interactions, but I feel like the overton window of what is considered metafriending has been shifted drastically in the past couple years. As someone that doesn't play a static, I do get the feeling of being on the outside of the greater universe at times, because everyone else is integrated into these social circles that I'm not privy to because I don't play the same character. Like you can't say your personal experiences from past rounds, influencing the way you go about your character interacting with someone else's character based on history together, isn't meta-"something" right? It feels like metafriending with extra steps. It makes all of /tg/ feel more akin to an elaborate collaborative writing project than a game that should be theoretically a "fresh start" every round, and hinders fun things from happening because of these implicit biases people have built towards certain players based on recognition allowed by their static.

I am not saying is intentional in every situation, but it is something that has bothered me because of how prevalent it has become, and I wish we could do better to mitigate. I also just wanted to put into words the thought process of why I have distaste for statics in general.

[Jamarkus]

There's been a lot of people hanging around together round after round that always seem to coincidentally pick assistant or end up as the same department. I never want to claim metacomms because its a hard accusation to prove, but I at least try to point it out when I see it. Been seeing it a lot since the servers came back. I get having a close knit community that remembers each others character interactions, but I feel like the overton window of what is considered metafriending has been shifted drastically in the past couple years. As someone that doesn't play a static, I do get the feeling of being on the outside of the greater universe at times, because everyone else is integrated into these social circles that I'm not privy to because I don't play the same character. Like you can't say your personal positive experiences from past rounds influencing the way you go about interacting with someone isn't meta-"something" right? It feels like metafriending with extra steps. It makes all of /tg/ feel more akin to an elaborate collaborative writing project, than a game that theoretically should have every round be a fresh start.

IDK, I like when interactions carry onto other rounds. Its the core of my characters to have people remember things and recall them for the future. Like if someone said they had a headache, in passing I can ask, "hows your head?" or other light examples. I also do like the concept of rivalries for a characters disliking each other, causing fights due to past relations as long as both players are OK with that. I also can understand the meta-friend stuff too, it keeps a story locked away to a specific set of people, and isolates others. I try my best to get as many people involved as possible with said character developments, but it is in fact hard with people that dont play statics. I dont have an answer there, but Iknow Manuel was always like that from its birth.

[Vekter]

Does this also include shove fights that happen in the halls when players are goofing off? also its hard to tell if it is a spontaneous brawl because two players are very likeminded, or they are actually just metafriends. how do you codify it anyway?

I think the targeted behavior is people intentionally starting full-on fistfights that often spill into other departments. The ur-example of this was a trend between two Terry players that would often fight their way into medbay and cause a bunch of shit, including, but not limited to, attacking anyone who actively tried to stop their fight, taking it as cause to crit them.

Dumb little shove-fests in the hallway are also stupid but not what's being targeted here IMO.

[DrAmazing343]

In all honesty I think as long as they’re not dragging people into it, it’s not the most immersion-killing thing ever. I used to do this sort of thing with Kanaga Siegrist, Randy Highlands, and whoever else I became friends with— and it just felt like goofing off in a world with defibrillators and a surgery for everything.

I can understand anger if a fight spills into Medbay and they break every glass table with shoves, and maybe I’d be more amenable to ruling against that sort of thing, but it’s too funny for me to outright rule against.

[Omega_DarkPotato]

Exceptionally against chicken fights in departments and on MRP. Also against chicken fights in the halls on LRP, so long as they're unprompted and only caused by OOC reasons- if people have a decent IC reason to "chicken fight" in the halls on LRP, I think it's fine, which isn't your question but I'm writing it down anyway for clarity.
I've seen them disrupt roleplay and GAMEPLAY by members of departments and also cause members of security to just not care about shit going on because typically the metafriends will then turn on whoever's trying to break them up if people try to stop them from having their pointless shitflinging grief.

[DrAmazing343]

Rule 3. This is a sandbox roleplaying server.

Omega brought this up to me and I agree that I want some roleplay reason for these fights, even if it's just insults or something, and I also want undue destruction (all of medbay's glass tables) to be off-limits, but I still think there's a lot of fun and sovl in fights spanning the whole station between friends.

[kieth4]

In all honesty I think as long as they’re not dragging people into it, it’s not the most immersion-killing thing ever. I used to do this sort of thing with Kanaga Siegrist, Randy Highlands, and whoever else I became friends with— and it just felt like goofing off in a world with defibrillators and a surgery for everything.

I can understand anger if a fight spills into Medbay and they break every glass table with shoves, and maybe I’d be more amenable to ruling against that sort of thing, but it’s too funny for me to outright rule against.

Absolutely agree with this; I also would hate for the halls to become some super serious area where if you push your friends a few times you get banned. I think the current enforcement is enough where people get banned for involving randoms and destroying departments.

[Timberpoes]

My Discord take from 2 years ago:

Here's the problem: Round disruption is esoteric.

If two people Family Guy chicken fight together and **nobody** witnesses it, then there are no victims.

If they do it in a designated area like a rage cage or boxing ring or Holodeck combat sim, it's getting dangerously close to some form of SS13-quality roleplay to an outside observer. It may actually contribute to the atmosphere of SS13 to see organised fight clubs.

If they just do it at random in the hallways or in departments because that's all they do, use our servers to fight with their friends because every other serverbase has banned them for it, then we're encountering a problem.

[NecromancerAnne]

If they just do it at random in the hallways or in departments because that's all they do, use our servers to fight with their friends because every other serverbase has banned them for it, then we're encountering a problem.

This is explicitly how I would define a 'random chicken fight'. Spontaneous, wordless attack and subsequent fight between two players in a public space with zero justification or buildup because they're friends. Not just because of a scuffle over one of them swiping something they wanted from a public location. Not because they've been talking shit at each other over the radio and shoving one another upon encountering each other. Just completely zero words exchanged or inciting incidents then going into full escalation against each other on sight. I would accuse those people of metacomms if I saw it and didn't know what I was looking at.

It is entirely based on OOC justifications that are completely inappropriate for even the minimal level of roleplay that we have as standard across all servers. And already bumps into existing rules around treating players different between rounds based on OOC friendships.

I do not believe kieth even for a second that this is being properly enforced. If it is noticeable enough that people speak of it regularly occur to the point they see particular groups doing it frequently, and accurately enough that they're able to describe the same thing independently, and enough of an issue that it is the reason players are leaving those servers, it is time to stop fucking around and start putting into text this as an explicit example of what not to do on our servers. This isn't a deathmatch environment. It's a roleplay environment with very light standards for character investment and depth. We have a minigame if you are only interested in beating each other up over and over again. Just do it there.

[Archie700]

In all honesty I think as long as they’re not dragging people into it, it’s not the most immersion-killing thing ever. I used to do this sort of thing with Kanaga Siegrist, Randy Highlands, and whoever else I became friends with— and it just felt like goofing off in a world with defibrillators and a surgery for everything.

I can understand anger if a fight spills into Medbay and they break every glass table with shoves, and maybe I’d be more amenable to ruling against that sort of thing, but it’s too funny for me to outright rule against.

Absolutely agree with this; I also would hate for the halls to become some super serious area where if you push your friends a few times you get banned. I think the current enforcement is enough where people get banned for involving randoms and destroying departments.

No, I will never agree with letting hallways be an arena for chicken fights, if you want your fights, go to the holodeck and fight there.

Especially when it results in others intervening and getting robusted in return.

[Timberpoes]

I'm copying what I just said in the headmin channels to provide more clarity on my own stances:

Time and place are important. We are not a single player server and people killing eachother just because it's a game degrades the global roleplay environment other players exist in.

So the player needs to counter that to make their actions fit the environment. Turn it into a thing that isn't just two metafriends doing metashittery. They have to elevate their actions to fit the RP environment instead of the RP environment being forced to lower itself.

It's why rage cages with FNR fights aren't banned. It's why the combat sims on the holodeck with FNR fights aren't banned. It's why FNR matches in boxing rings aren't banned.

They're the right places. They're intended to offer that environment in an IC manner that doesn't utterly destroy immersion.

[Vekter]

Time and place are important. We are not a single player server and people killing eachother just because it's a game degrades the global roleplay environment other players exist in.

I think this is my main stance on the matter in general. I'm a little worried about the potential of players making up shallow, borderline OOC reasons to get into fights in order to skirt any rule about this ("Just have your guy tell me to go fuck myself and we're good") but I guess we can handle any situation where this is done more than a handful of times under rules 0 or 3.

[Itseasytosee2me]

At least having a manufactured, ICly agreed upon reason to start a conflict gives other players an on-ramp to believe and engage with your rampant skirmishing.

[Vekter]

At least having a manufactured, ICly agreed upon reason to start a conflict gives other players an on-ramp to believe and engage with your rampant skirmishing.

This is correct, but I feel like people who are doing this nearly every round are as much of a concern because it still has that same effect of driving down the RP expectations. The other people on the server aren't going to stop them and ask them if they have a good RP reason to be doing it.

[kinnebian]

Codifying it into rule 3 is a bit extreme I feel, admins already have the power to stop it if it gets out of hand. Id rather see this put in on a MRP rule or something alike if we have to.
Id rather we didn't outright ban it because largely its a fun, harmless [to those outside the fight] thing to do. Its only a few fights [of which few happen in the first place] that reach critical levels and starts dragging more people into it.
If two people are fighting and its causing destruction, Security should be the one to step in- not admins.

[Archie700]

Codifying it into rule 3 is a bit extreme I feel, admins already have the power to stop it if it gets out of hand. Id rather see this put in on a MRP rule or something alike if we have to.
Id rather we didn't outright ban it because largely its a fun, harmless [to those outside the fight] thing to do. Its only a few fights [of which few happen in the first place] that reach critical levels and starts dragging more people into it.
If two people are fighting and its causing destruction, Security should be the one to step in- not admins.

No, if you're just fighting just for the sake of it against some other dude, I don't believe you have an IC reason to fight. Using IC means to combat OOC behaviour like random fighting will always be troublesome and we already had it with the valid "l-word" clause.

[kinnebian]

Codifying it into rule 3 is a bit extreme I feel, admins already have the power to stop it if it gets out of hand. Id rather see this put in on a MRP rule or something alike if we have to.
Id rather we didn't outright ban it because largely its a fun, harmless [to those outside the fight] thing to do. Its only a few fights [of which few happen in the first place] that reach critical levels and starts dragging more people into it.
If two people are fighting and its causing destruction, Security should be the one to step in- not admins.

No, if you're just fighting just for the sake of it against some other dude, I don't believe you have an IC reason to fight. Using IC means to combat OOC behaviour like random fighting will always be troublesome and we already had it with the valid "l-word" clause.

If my IC character knows their IC character, and we want to do some good old fashioned fisticuffs- thats IC enough of a reason to fight. Its the same thing as if we just wanted to go to the bar together, in my mind. The future is wacky and bruises are cheap.

[NecromancerAnne]

Have you read Rule 2? Is random violence for little reason kind of in the same spirit as that or does it only count if there are antags involved? The rule is MEANT to stop metacliques and allow roleplay to occur organically within the round so everyone can participate.

To me, it's basically indecipherable what IS happening when people engage in this kind of play. If someone DID misinterpret the random and extreme violence happening in the halls as an active, real attack and get it wrong because it's several pals having an ongoing persistent deathmatch, they're liable to getting their shit pushed in because escalation definitely doesn't favour them at all should they get involved. Which, you know, means they can't engage with those players in a natural way whatsoever. That's a whole bunch of people who can't be touched or they'll turn on you. For what may as well be entirely OOC reasons at a certain point when it is really several players engaging in it that has no context within a round.

It's a fucking clique onto itself that is filling the space with their conflict, forcing everyone else around them to pause whatever they're doing and step aside, or find themselves pulled into it in an unfavourable position because they're not a part of the in crowd. It actively disrupts the real conflict drivers as well if security has to increasingly get more violent in clamping down on it, which them results in them clamping down on other threats. It turns all conflicts to mechanical ones first and foremost as a consequence. I'm watching it on a day to day basis at this point.

Why am I the person having to say that? I play a fucking felinid, goddamn.

[kinnebian]

Maybe we should calm down some? I'm able to change my mind, I'm not sure if you meant to come off that aggressive or I'm just misreading tone.
All I was saying is that sparring with someone you know for the sake of fun is a fun thing to engage in- and id be wary of banning it outright.

[NecromancerAnne]

Not meant to be aggressive. I am however a little exasperated with having the same response given to me. And having had this conversation at least several times over the years.

[Maxipat]

Codifying it into rule 3 is a bit extreme I feel, admins already have the power to stop it if it gets out of hand. Id rather see this put in on a MRP rule or something alike if we have to.
Id rather we didn't outright ban it because largely its a fun, harmless [to those outside the fight] thing to do. Its only a few fights [of which few happen in the first place] that reach critical levels and starts dragging more people into it.
If two people are fighting and its causing destruction, Security should be the one to step in- not admins.

I think there's a misunderstanding in what i want to achieve in this thread. (although it still lays on headmins in the end). I don't think we should ban fights for silly reasons outright, at least not on LRP since it can be fun. What i want to achieve is to re-iterate officialy something that's already been passed on by headmins in bus as basically "executive order", that people initiating conflicts with their metafriends across many rounds for LITERALLY no reason is bannable under rule 3. It's already a semi-ruling, since we've been basically told it's okay to do.

The reason this thread started was because i had a ticket due to the usual terry gang players that are guilty of "meta-fighting" doing it once again, and there was some confusion from the handling admin's side whether it's actually actionable at all or is it only MRP "executive order". The scale of the issue isn't just "me and my friend insulted eachother so we fought in halls", it's at the point where the same 3-5 people fight every round they play together, without many words said (or sometimes none at all), while dragging other's into it and wasting medbay's medkits and resources (those are bothersome to replace, especially that med players are rather unhappy to help bunch of guys that just trashed every table in the area, resulting in medbay storage tiding). Groups like these appear and disappear from time to time (at least on terry), but the overall rp level drops to nothing since there is NO rp at all to be done there. What i want to achieve is an official statement EMPOWERING admins (and players) to act and be able to point at something in situations like this.

[Omega_DarkPotato]

As previously stated by all three headmins in this policy thread, fighting with your friends in disruptive spaces (the halls, medical dept, et cetera) is against main server rule 3 if done so for no reason other than "they are my friends OOCly". Your actions are expected to have IC justification even on LRP.

As the policy discussion was opened with "tl;dr write down fighting your metafriends in places that disrupt other people for no other reason than "me metafriend me go toolbox" as against rules." and we've addressed this, I'm closing this policy thread. I think everyone's also fine with fighting your friends for shits and giggles if it's out of the way, or if you've got valid justification to do so in areas that aren't out of the way.

[Timberpoes]

Added to Rule 3 precedents now the wiki is back:

Rule 3 Precedents
...

2. Disruptive fighting with your friends in public spaces (sometimes called "chicken fights" or "Family Guy chicken fighting") is against the rules if done so without valid IC reason. If you do want to fight your friends for no real IC reason, keep it out of the public or utilise purpose-built areas such as rage cages, boxing rings or holodeck combat sims to make it RP-friendly.

...