(Striders13) Projectzomboidplayer. Ka-BOOOOOOOOM

[Projectzomboidfan]

BYOND account: projectzomboidplayer

Ban/note type (Server Ban/Discord Ban/Forum Ban/Note): Server ban

Ban/note duration: 3 days
Ban/note reason: As spy RD, bombed medical with a TTV gibbing 4 people. 'Im allowed to do this by the rules' Not a fan try come up with a better reason for that next time
Time ban was placed: Today
Server you were playing on when banned: Manuel
Round ID in which ban was placed: 251064

Why are you making this appeal? (Put an x in the boxes):
(X) - The ban/note is factually incorrect
(X) - The ban/note is not against the rules
() - The ban/note needs modification
(X) - The ban was unjustifiably harsh
() - I was permabanned and I want another chance

Why should this appeal be accepted?:

I believe i should not be banned as blowing shit up is allowed under the destructive sabotage clause which states
"Mass station sabotage that is likely to kill people is allowed so long as the antagonist does not take any direct and specific personal actions to maximize the bodycount beyond what the sabotage itself causes. Examples of mass station sabotage include plasma flooding, causing a supermatter delamination and spacing the station."
Blowing up medical fits within this category. During the round, there were a lot of unsecured explosives and i wanted to teach the crew to be more thoughtful where to put those things.
This game is built on unpredictable, player-created stories, culminating in the shift ending in a steaming wreck. If striders13 forbidded the usage of these TTVs (as shown with me blowing medbay and getting banned) Then the shift will begin to slow to a crawl, then it will also show a form of "meta-safeness" Everyone keeps guns and bombs secure because antagonists will use them against the crew if they aren't. There's no need to keep a watch on potential high-sabotage areas if striders13 bans any traitor who wants to bring the station to it's knees by plasmaflooding/spacing/bombing and exercise that privilege.

As a spy, i do not have traditional objectives, so i mostly rely on the "without objectives" section of restricted antag death and destruction.
"Actions as an antagonist do not have to be nefarious or evil, but should make an effort to influence the story and meaningfully impact the shift"
Im arguing that my actions impacted the shift by blowing stuff up, picking up the brains, and borging the people caught in the explosions because i had a feeling the AI was Malfunctional. (Blue APCs, subtle tells, sixth sense.)
I also killed and borged a random engineer because i believed they were a spy who stole genetic machinery, turns out it was the other engineer, oops. Had great fun trying to prevent them from selling me out.

[Striders13]

Hey, thanks for appealing. So, a couple things.
Full ban reason:

As Spy RD bombed medical with a TTV, gibbing 4 people. Reason provided was 'I'm allowed to do this by the rules'. Not a fan of it, try to come up with a better reason for something like that next time.

As for the appeal,

"Mass station sabotage that is likely to kill people is allowed so long as the antagonist does not take any direct and specific personal actions to maximize the bodycount beyond what the sabotage itself causes. Examples of mass station sabotage include plasma flooding, causing a supermatter delamination and spacing the station."
Blowing up medical fits within this category. During the round, there were a lot of unsecured explosives and i wanted to teach the crew to be more thoughtful where to put those things.

Nah, I still believe throwing a ttv at patients in medical is maximizing body count.

This game is built on unpredictable, player-created stories, culminating in the shift ending in a steaming wreck. If striders13 forbidded the usage of these TTVs (as shown with me blowing medbay and getting banned) Then the shift will begin to slow to a crawl, then it will also show a form of "meta-safeness" Everyone keeps guns and bombs secure because antagonists will use them against the crew if they aren't. There's no need to keep a watch on potential high-sabotage areas if striders13 bans any traitor who wants to bring the station to it's knees by plasmaflooding/spacing/bombing and exercise that privilege.

If there was literally any story to it then I'd be fine with it. But the only reason provided was 'the rules allow me'. This doesn't mean you're never allowed to bomb medical, just means you gotta have any reason to do it.
Imagine this: a doctor tells a patient with bruises to fuck off, the patient comes back and bombs the doctor because there were free bombs lying around everywhere. This works because there was some build up to getting bombed, versus medical just randomly being wiped off the map.

I also killed and borged a random engineer because i believed they were a spy who stole genetic machinery, turns out it was the other engineer, oops. Had great fun trying to prevent them from selling me out.

See, that's perfectly fine, since your character had a reason to do it.

As for the duration of the ban, you do have a recent note regarding your antag play:

2025-03-16. Warned about maximizing bodycount as a traitor on MRP - with a Durand, killed their target on the shuttle. Afterwards, proceeded to try and depopulate the rest of the shuttle with the Durand - regardless of if those people were engaging them or not.

I really want you to understand that, even if the point of antags is largely to kill people, you gotta make some roleplay out of it too.

That being said, I would be fine with changing it to a 2 week-long antag ban, because I forgot those exist.

[Projectzomboidfan]

\
As for the appeal,

"Mass station sabotage that is likely to kill people is allowed so long as the antagonist does not take any direct and specific personal actions to maximize the bodycount beyond what the sabotage itself causes. Examples of mass station sabotage include plasma flooding, causing a supermatter delamination and spacing the station."
Blowing up medical fits within this category. During the round, there were a lot of unsecured explosives and i wanted to teach the crew to be more thoughtful where to put those things.

Nah, I still believe throwing a ttv at patients in medical is maximizing body count.
Then where does one throw the bomb?

This game is built on unpredictable, player-created stories, culminating in the shift ending in a steaming wreck. If striders13 forbidded the usage of these TTVs (as shown with me blowing medbay and getting banned) Then the shift will begin to slow to a crawl, then it will also show a form of "meta-safeness" Everyone keeps guns and bombs secure because antagonists will use them against the crew if they aren't. There's no need to keep a watch on potential high-sabotage areas if striders13 bans any traitor who wants to bring the station to it's knees by plasmaflooding/spacing/bombing and exercise that privilege.

If there was literally any story to it then I'd be fine with it. But the only reason provided was 'the rules allow me'. This doesn't mean you're never allowed to bomb medical, just means you gotta have any reason to do it.
Imagine this: a doctor tells a patient with bruises to fuck off, the patient comes back and bombs the doctor because there were free bombs lying around everywhere. This works because there was some build up to getting bombed, versus medical just randomly being wiped off the map.

I also killed and borged a random engineer because i believed they were a spy who stole genetic machinery, turns out it was the other engineer, oops. Had great fun trying to prevent them from selling me out.

See, that's perfectly fine, since your character had a reason to do it.

Nah, I still believe throwing a ttv at patients in medical is maximizing body count.
[/quote]
Then where does one throw the TTV then?

[/quote]
you gotta make some roleplay out of it too.
[/quote]
and how does one do that?

[Striders13]

Then where does one throw the TTV then?

Not at a group of people.

and how does one do that?

I did already provide an example but you know, use your imagination.

Imagine this: a doctor tells a patient with bruises to fuck off, the patient comes back and bombs the doctor because there were free bombs lying around everywhere. This works because there was some build up to getting bombed, versus medical just randomly being wiped off the map.

[Projectzomboidfan]

I did have a reason. Wanted to help the malf ai so i killed and borged some people. Earlier the shift i managed to get a binary key translator but made a tactical misplay and deconstructed it for illegal tech... probably should not have done that.
Blowing medical also helped the malf ai.

[Projectzomboidfan]

Also do i have to make sure nobody is around at all before i want to blow stuff up? Kinda makes no sense from an IC perspective why you would do that if you're an antag.

[Timberpoes]

So I'm the headmin that wrote the rule on RP antags and I want take a moment to clarify some things. And I'm also going to amend the rules to better reflect what I intended at the time - which doesn't reflect a change in them, more a clarification of what they're for.

So we'll start with what RP antags can do with objectives:

Spoiler:

With Objectives

Antagonist objectives are the core of what antagonists are allowed to directly do with no or limited roleplay reasoning. Actions taken to directly accomplish an objective do not have to be proportionate.

Causing death and destruction to help with indirectly accomplishing objectives must have an in-character roleplay reason. If questioned about a chain of events involving indirect actions, the antagonist should be able to clearly explain what events in the current shift led them to their course of action without resorting to hypotheticals.

If a player or department directly interferes with the completion of an objective, this is no longer a hypothetical as the antagonist can now point to specific events in the shift to justify their actions.

This has two arms and is fairly unambiguous. If you're going for greentext, this is what you need to have read first.

Directly accomplishing objectives never has to be proportionate, but you do have to be directly accomplishing it. It's not enough that your target is accidental or lucky collateral in some other escapade. Bombing your target is direct. Bombing their body when medbay's trying to revive them is direct.

Indirectly accomplishing objectives does require some level of proportionality and as a result your actions require you to justify why you did them from an IC perspective based on the current and actual events of that shift, without resorting to hypotheticals. Bombing medbay because they already successfully revived your target is indirect. Bombing the brig because security arrested you earlier that shift while you were trying to accomplish an objective is indirect. Pre-emptively bombing security because they might hinder you is a hypothetical and not allowed. Bombing medbay because they might revive your target at some future point in time is hypothetical and not allowed.

When operating outside of objectives:

Spoiler:

Without Objectives

When wanting to cause death and destruction not related to objectives, restricted antagonists may instead rely on extremely relaxed escalation.

They may escalate lethally sooner and with less justification, may use more lethal methods to escalate and may rely on antagonistic reasons for escalating. Such reasons may include escalating against people who are excessively polite or helpful as well as being mean or rude, escalating against groups of people who exclude them or escalating against people who ignore or avoid attempts to communicate entirely.

They have no obligation to treat their victims but escalating over minor issues should not result in the antagonist taking steps to permanently round-remove the other player unless escalation policy would otherwise permit it.

Mass station sabotage that is likely to kill people is allowed so long as the antagonist does not take any direct and specific personal actions to maximise the bodycount beyond what the sabotage itself causes. Examples of mass station sabotage include plasma flooding, causing a supermatter delamination and spacing the station.

It's special antagonistic escalation with more relaxed reasoning and no need to revive their target plus more restrictions on round removal, with one caveat and that caveat is what I'm going to address with a potential rule adjustment.

So we come to mass-sabotage. There exist a subset of things on the RP server that are almost meta-protected without some exception - atmos is a safe area because 95% of common antags can't even use it to plasma flood. The SM is a safe area for the same reason - can never delam the SM. You never need to worry about a mass station spacing event.

The goal of the mass sabotage exceptions was to enable such antagonistic actions on the RP server. Things that were so indiscriminate they could never form justification for directly accomplishing an objective, but also so disproportionate that they would never be valid for indirectly accomplishing an objective. By allowing these things, the goal was to require the crew to have to worry about them just as players on LRP have to worry about unauthorised access to atmos or some weirdo messing with pipes around the SM or whatever in the spirit of SS13.

So as a big old tl;dr to truck this appeal along for both striders and the player:

Because utilising TTVs and maxcaps and other explosives can directly accomplish an objective and, even when it's not direct, can still be proportionate and IC justified - the mass sabotage ruling does not apply to their use.

When using TTVs and maxcaps outside of objectives, they can fall under the "more lethal methods" clause but require really, really good IC justification that truly gets to the heart of where antag objectives end and the general antagonistic licence to influence a good RP shift of SS13 begins.

And that is part of the context that was omitted from the RP rules because I didn't think it really needed saying at the time. However, years later, I think that above piece of context is now of vital importance to the mass sabotage ruling itself in terms of future proofing it against any antag changes and clarifying what its purpose is for any player demographic changes. So I am going to be adding that clarification to the rules shortly after this post.

It's up to striders how to handle and/or approach this appeal as one of the incoming headmins in light of my commentary above.

[Striders13]

I did have a reason. Wanted to help the malf ai so i killed and borged some people. Earlier the shift i managed to get a binary key translator but made a tactical misplay and deconstructed it for illegal tech... probably should not have done that.
Blowing medical also helped the malf ai.

Great, should've mentioned that in the ticket, that's a start.
Given mass sabotage doesn't apply here according to large timberpost above, do you believe this helped to further your objectives? Or maybe you had a very compelling IC reason to help the malf AI in such way?

[Striders13]

Actually, given neither of us were aware that this isn't mass sabotage, I'm just going to lift the ban while keeping the note to not move the goalpost too much. If you can give me a good answer to the question above I'll axe the note too.

[Projectzomboidfan]

I did have a reason. Wanted to help the malf ai so i killed and borged some people. Earlier the shift i managed to get a binary key translator but made a tactical misplay and deconstructed it for illegal tech... probably should not have done that.
Blowing medical also helped the malf ai.

Great, should've mentioned that in the ticket, that's a start.
Given mass sabotage doesn't apply here according to large timberpost above, do you believe this helped to further your objectives? Or maybe you had a very compelling IC reason to help the malf AI in such way?

I wanted to help the malfunctional AI because of that engineer i borged is a loose end. The AI will likely keep it under it control and order it not to attack me if i helped the ai. If i went against it the engineer i borged would likely attack me.
Basically, if i acted helpful, and on their side. The AI would order the borgs not to attack me, saving my life, if i did not do this, the engie i borged would likely kill me later as revenge.
In the binary comms, what would likely happen is the borged engineer informing the malf ai about what i did, and requesting revenge, but because i blew up medical, they know im a traitor/spy and should not be harmed. (Also i killed the borged engineer with a reverse beartrap so they know im a spy and told that too.)

[Striders13]

I wanted to help the malfunctional AI because of that engineer i borged is a loose end. The AI will likely keep it under it control and order it not to attack me if i helped the ai. If i went against it the engineer i borged would likely attack me.
Basically, if i acted helpful, and on their side. The AI would order the borgs not to attack me, saving my life, if i did not do this, the engie i borged would likely kill me later as revenge.
In the binary comms, what would likely happen is the borged engineer informing the malf ai about what i did, and requesting revenge, but because i blew up medical, they know im a traitor/spy and should not be harmed. (Also i killed the borged engineer with a reverse beartrap so they know im a spy and told that too.)

Seems good enough to me. I'll remove the note whenever I'm at pc, ban's already lifted.