{MRP} Enforce the goal of RPR5

[NoxVS]

I’m going to start this off by saying I expect this idea to be absolutely torn to shreds. I’m hoping that the inevitable criticism of it will allow for something of value to be extracted from what is honestly an unrealistic and extremely subjective policy. Even if it could be properly implemented I think other aspects of the game need to change to accommodate it.

The goal of antagonists on MRP is to create stories and make rounds interesting, for both antagonist players and crew-sided players alike. Antagonists are expected to put in at least some effort towards playing their designated role, though may break with it given sufficient in character reason. Some antagonists are restricted in the ways and quantities they may lend themselves to visiting death and destruction upon the crew.

When admins enforce RPR5 99% of the time it’s just the last sentence. This is pretty much just the no murderbone rule that you sometimes have to use to tell someone that they need to be antagonistic as an antagonist. Under RPR5 you are allowed to act without objectives if it’d make the game more interesting, but that doesn’t apply to when you have actual objectives. While the goal of antags on MRP is to make things more interesting, there is absolutely no obligation for antags to go about performing their objectives in an interesting way.

Treating RPR5 as nothing more than the “no murderbone” rule is what I think has led to several of the problems involving antagonists over the years. It’s what killed the attempt to make changelings unrestricted and I’d argue it’s what’s currently to blame for all the heretic policying. When the murderbone aspect of the rule is all we care about it leads to situations where we see a player going about their objectives in an uninteresting way that’s pretty harmful to the round and just shrug our shoulders. What are we going to do, tell them not to follow their objectives? It’s not even about using lame methods repetitively so that we can apply RPR10, at a certain level of skill you don’t really need those to win.

With that all lot of the way, onto the actual policy suggestion. As an antagonist, your job is to make the round more interesting. There is no expectation to have a gimmick ready to go every round or to have a manifesto on hand to spout out the moment your motivations are called into question. All that is expected is that you add to the round in such a way that isn’t observed when you silently speedrun all your objectives. If such a request feels too draconian to you, you aren’t obligated to roll for antagonist.

This isn’t intended to cut down on the amount of death and destruction antagonists can cause, and I hope it even empowers you to cause more devastation by focusing more on the “make rounds more interesting” aspect of the rule than the “no murderbone”. My goal is to see the cackling mad scientists with death rays of the world feel secure in their ability to carve a hole through the station because everyone kept interrupting their monologue. I think stuff like that tends to have a much more positive influence on the round compared to someone rushing to a 30 minute ascension.

[britgrenadier1]

I’m all for it honestly. A long long time ago when Manuel was first created I got a bwoink for instakilling a roboticist at roundstart when he was my objective. No action was taken, but those little “Hey man that was pretty lame” interactions were a core part of why Manuel was great back then.

Slowly the social contract has eroded (I blame the timber term where grand sabo got reworked) to now be that doing things in support of your objective even if it’s lame is okay. The culture changed from one where you’re expected to do a small thonk about the other person you’re playing with before killing them with your giga death ray, to simply killing them with your giga death ray.

Is it hugboxy? Yeah but that’s kinda what we signed up for originally.

Is there a way to enforce it without alienating the substantial portion of people who have migrated from Sybil? Probably not.

HRP save us, not because I necessarily would prefer HRP to real mrp, but because making a new server with a new label is probably the only pragmatic solution to current woes.

[KingKuma]

I agree with this statement, but I feel the existence of EOTC as a capital offense in space law is, in my opinion, the other half of a bad feedback loop with this, and shouldn't be overlooked.

It is within in-universe RP to classify any antagonist as grounds for instant permabrigging, under EOTC. This feeds into antags either not interacting with crew/making themselves vulnerable (leading to the common mrp 2 hours of nothing and then 15 minutes of chaos) or just going full killmode and causing the RPR 5 issue. This is responded to by sec treating all antagonists as a ticking time bomb, perpetuating a sort of prisoner's dilemma, where both the allowance of wanton murder and the fact antag is a crime in itself makes a very nasty vicious cycle that constantly pushes both sides to instantly jump to using maximum force, since both rules are so vague and nebulous bad actors can use the rules to just play to win (usually greentexting for antags, or preventing greentext as non-antagonists.)

TLDR: You aren't wrong in the statement that RPR5 pushes antagonists away from providing conflict besides murder, but when it's equally allowed for non-antagonists to shut your gimmick down solely cause you rolled antag, I can't blame people for not wanting to make themselves vulnerable like that, and waste their antag roll. A shift where all antags are instantly dumpstered and hauled off to perma is just as bad for conflict in a round as that antag randomly murdering people.

[Sonnzer]

...but I feel the existence of EOTC as a capital offense in space law is...

Not to be pedantic, but 405 EOTC is not a Capital crime. That would make it 505. 4XX crimes are Grand Felonies.

[KingKuma]

Not to be pedantic, but 405 EOTC is not a Capital crime. That would make it 505. 4XX crimes are Grand Felonies.

Ah, right. Capital means they can execute, not perma. My mistake.

[dendydoom]

it is a very difficult line to walk because oftentimes on the player end it feels like you're being sanctioned for not doing what the admin would do. i think the best way ive seen this rule applied is when used in conjunction with "sometimes you just die" to create a balance. death is part of the narrative. the most times ive stepped in is over RR when it wasn't necessary, and even this is more of a "did you really need to do that?" rather than a punishment to hopefully nudge people into a better mindset.

having said that, admins control reality and can make room for chaos while using their DMing abilities to turn it into something narratively valuable. the easy answer is ERTs when antags make way too much noise, but there are unlimited options if you have some creativity. i also sometimes pull on the strings of fate and a body will mysteriously be found by a bored medbay when otherwise it definitely would not have been...

adminning is just as often about round stewardship than refereeing

[NoxVS]

You aren't wrong in the statement that RPR5 pushes antagonists away from providing conflict besides murder, but when it's equally allowed for non-antagonists to shut your gimmick down solely cause you rolled antag, I can't blame people for not wanting to make themselves vulnerable like that, and waste their antag roll. A shift where all antags are instantly dumpstered and hauled off to perma is just as bad for conflict in a round as that antag randomly murdering people.

That was one of the things I thought should be addressed for this change to go through. I do think it would help alleviate the problem some since it'd serve to stop the whole prisoner's dilemma security is currently dealing with, but if the whole "antags exist to make the round more interesting" thing goes through it doesn't feel absurd to also apply the same to security.

having said that, admins control reality and can make room for chaos while using their DMing abilities to turn it into something narratively valuable. the easy answer is ERTs when antags make way too much noise, but there are unlimited options if you have some creativity. i also sometimes pull on the strings of fate and a body will mysteriously be found by a bored medbay when otherwise it definitely would not have been...

It is extremely difficult to go about this without either not doing enough to matter or making the player feel targeted. I'll use heretic as an example since it has the flashiest most impactful objectives completed outcome - I've seen a handful of rounds in a short amount of time have very quick ascensions. Maybe it was luck that allowed them to snowball, maybe security was just lacking, maybe they're just good enough - Either way they're on track to ending the round and they'll do it unless they're dead. So I need to send in an ERT unrequested, I need to make sure it's strong enough to pose a deterrence without actually outright killing the person because that feels pretty targeted and they haven't done anything exceptional worth throwing everything I have at killing them, and I need to do it fast to prevent ascension and inevitable round ending because who wants to stick around after a 30 minute ascension? There's not a whole lot more I can do that doesn't outright target the player. Admins can definitely intervene in the round to improve upon things but they cannot be relied on to be there for every instance that this rule would have otherwise applied. For stuff like this, where it's consistent behavior we are wanting to curtail, IC admin intervention really doesn't work.

[dendydoom]

in my opinion, it doesn't matter who wins or loses. antagonists exist as a catalyst for the good guy Vs bad guy disaster story. if they aren't very interesting or interactive because they steamroll the crew then it's fully within the DM's purview to make it interesting. it also works the other way: if the antag gets dunpstered immediately when they tried to do something interesting before it could flourish, it's also fully within the DM's right to find a way to get them back into the game. you touch in a fair point in that it is difficult to make it interesting, but in my view if you step in and note/ban someone, the round is still "ruined" and will be remembered as the game failing the expectations of its participants. if you can turn a bad story into a good one, people will at least walk away with a memorable experience. no one remembers or even cares about the binary win/lose condition at the end of a round, what they care about is whether the story they participated in was interactive and compelling. the best way to make it compelling is to have the world react to what happens in it. the way i approach ERTs (probably the biggest hammer in the toolbox) is to probe the station first and give heavy hints that centcom are suspicious. this gives people onboard to either ask for help or for the antag to respond and give a false all-clear, among myriad other outcomes.
it's interesting that you choose heretic, because at the risk of derailing the thread, i don't think it's conducive to the mindset we want to encourage where guidelines like RPR5 exist. in fact, it pretty flagrantly flies in the face of it by encouraging speed, efficiency and deep systems knowledge to depopulate the station in a very single minded and rote way, giving no real room for narrative expression outside of its mechanics. what is doubly troubling is its restricted status, where we ask the crew to ignore their own incentives to give room for a very samey scripted sequence of mechanical interactions. it's just not narratively interesting for the participants involved, regardless of how fun it is to pilot as the antag player. it introduces a strong competitive mindset where narrative takes a back seat. implementing RPR5 limitations would, i strongly suspect, be very frustrating for players because it asks them to ignore the single track they are on - there is very little, if any, narrative expression for heretics outside of progressing towards ascension.

[Cobby]

how can you ask players to not care about the obj if you yourself are struggling with diverting from someones wincon to make an interesting story?

I played wildgate recently and even a super gamey mode like that understands that quick wins make for boring games, and as such have a time limit before the win con is available (that is, the gate is locked) and separate ships far away enough that you are also time gated simply by weaponrange and not seeing where people are on the map even if you wanted to go full murderhobo second 1 into the game. Heretic could use something like that even for LRP imo