Make LRP more LRP

[pingytalker]

Hi all! I wanna open up with, I'm not mad at anyone or /tg/station or anything like that. The rules of the server's and way they are run should align with whatever makes the players happy- so feel free to tell me I'm totally wrong if my perspective is off on that.

I think LRP should be... more LRP. Or maybe just the rules more consistent or clarified better. I'm coming at this as a person who mained nothing but Hippie while that was a thing, so, my perspective is definitely gonna be a little different on how LRP it should be. That said, I've been bwoink'ed/noted in the past few weeks for things like: stealing an energy gun off an AFK/lagging security officer who was just standing in the hallway with it, accidentally hitting an officer twice over the course of 5+ minutes (once punch, once welder; 100% unintentional and a long distance apart) while trying to kill a gondola (killing the gondola for no reason was apparently also not allowed, which I understand now, though it is kiiiiiiiiiinda confusing with the sheer number of sentient creatures in grey areas; e.g. regal rats). Taking 3-4 insuls at roundstart as engineer to throw out to random people who wanted them (a few rounds in a row).

I admit I didn't have any RP reason for doing any of these things, so I'm not making any argument there. I was originally going to make this post an admin review about Iain0 (who was involved in all the above incidents), but, I realized its not really about that them as much as it is just overall policy clarification. (For the record, too, I think Iain0 is a good admin who communicates well and fairly, I just think possibly their interpretations might match up better to MRP than LRP.)

Anyway, seeing as there are a TON of SS13 MRP servers, and as far as I know, only this one LRP server (Terry, 'cuz sybil doesn't really count) so I just kinda was hoping for clarification or policy shift towards LRP being more defined/separate from MRP. Frankly, I don't think having "no reason" for doing something on LRP should matter. I think everything should be examined from a round-harm perspective; did you remove someone from the round? Did you take the gun from an officer in a firefight for their life, or did you do it because they were sitting still and nothing bad happened other than them losing a replaceable gun (which they can now throw you in gulag for, in round)? Stuff like that. For the record, I've never reported or complained about any in-round response to my antics. Most of the time I mess with sec I get gulag'ed for it, and thats okay. The times I stole the insuls my fellow engineers got together and beat me to death- bit dramatic, but yanno, I didn't ahelp it.

Basically LRP needs less expectation of ahelping to get permission to do things in advance, and less rationale for doing things that are ultimately not super harmful. Obviously random killing as non-antag, anything harm that would take significant time for the player affected to remedy should still be bwoinkable. Just my thoughts!

[TheLoLSwat]

Those notes sound terrible on LRP and you should appeal them imo. Also as someone who also mained nothing but hippie until /tg/, it could be a little jarring to see how different two "LRP" servers are but hippie was closer to NRP than LRP, and maintaining a distinction between NRP and LRP is important. Having a roleplay idea for the actions you take can seem superfluous (and it often is in tickets when explaining your RP reasoning feels like a skill check), but its to help keep people in the rp mindset when its all too easy to slip back to being an nrp avatar rather than an lrp character.


(im not an admin though or anything this is just my crackpot ramblings after playing a lot of LRP over years)

[pingytalker]

I do agree with that, yea- Hippie was closer to no RP. I guess I'm really just a big fan of handling way more stuff in round rather than notes/bwoinks; 'cuz thats how RP is made. I'd rather get adminbussed out of a round than a permanent note, tbh- but maybe that's just me. I just think if something solves itself in a round in a fairly balanced way (for instance, getting beat to death and the insuls taken back each time) we don't really need to apply notes on top of that. As for the notes, yea, I mean they fit 1000% into MRP. I just don't think they were things that are really even in that LRP/NRP grey area and I'd personally like the server to be distinctly LRP. I try my best to keep my gimmicks well within the standard of "would the thing that I'm doing take someone more than a few minutes to rectify in round?"- and I think I've done a good job at that. To me, that's the best standard for LRP; not the MRP standard of "does this thing make sense based on the persons character and such". I do enjoy MRP, and I've even played HRP before too and had fun; but given the severe lack of traditional SS13 LRP servers right now (and that the LRP /tg/ servers are basically dead for a significant portion of each day) they should stay strongly distinguished from MRP.

[Timberpoes]

Explaining RP reasoning is a skill check because more RP reasoning unlocks the IC issue button easier for admins. See Rule 0.

Many LRP players don't understand that they can avoid having to follow the rules at times where they can explain how their actions make RP/IC sense despite the rules.

This skill is seemingly lost to players that just want to point at the rules page for their every action. Doing that is fine up until the player's interpretation is different to the admin's interpretation. Then the player is going to have a bad time if they acted FNR or for a reason so bad it might as well have been FNR.

The most powerful shitters have the best RP reasons behind their actions. It's a vital safety net to preserve what little RP thinking there is to keep this in place, because it means the most optimal strategies are more available to people that can explain how the events of the shift caused their decisions. NRPers are more restricted in what they do because this isn't a set of NRP servers.

All RP is artificial. You're still just playing at a role. Thus, manufacturing an RP reason and having an RP reason are one and the same as long as the suspension or perhaps even illusion of disbelief can be maintained.

[Timberpoes]

Also if you don't like your notes and think they're too harsh or not justified, appeal them. Maybe the rules are fine and they just weren't appropriately applied or were done in ignorance or some important context that made your actions acceptable.

[iain0]

Hiya,

I think my roughest take on LRP versus MRP has been a bit like watching soaps, star trek or Forrest Gump, LRP players are powerhouses of being all knowing and having the freedom to make themselves able to deal with any situation in a way that doesn't really map out in real life. Meanwhile MRP (and I'm not really an MRP min so dont take this as gospel) focusses more around players having a realistic behaviour where doctors doctor and people with missions work on the missions etc.

When interacting with players I'll often draw the bottom line as having a reasonable answer to "Why?", and the number of times thats answered with 'funny' or 'bored' is sometimes surprising, but if what you're doing makes sense *IC* from your perspective then ... thats the game. What the game /isn't/ is round start crew vs sec for example, terry in particular will turn this into a meta if the reins aren't pulled, but there can be stories that play out that way, I remember a very self-antag heavy cargonia rebellion that resulted in lots of deaths and bombs, but no-one complained and everyone seemed to have fun so... admins have the freedom to let it be in those rarer cases (not recommending you try this though, sec tend to reasonably try take control and killing them over it is problematic). Occasionally a non-revolution rebellion can make sense, though security vs crew is very often inviting a bwoink, at either the crew or sec end.

I'm always happy to try chat at length to reach an understanding, though I will bail on what I perceive to be rules lawyering at some point, but I think that mutual understanding, more than anything else, is my primary objective ; to get all players onto the same page and understanding of the rules so we can all just play reasonably with the same understanding of where the lines lay.

As for things having "no reason", that's perhaps where we diverge ; and for example with the engineering gloves it was brought to my attention, mostly because you did it round after round rather than a one off, and thus you know how that goes, I would hope the points made at the time made some sense. Somtimes things are fine in moderation or as a one off but seeing them become a staple of play isn't really great.

Looting SSD people (who haven't just been SSD for ages) is kinda lame, SSD people are not really treated any differently by the rules, and I'm not sure what your attitude towards a role would be where you think robbing the effective equivalent of a police officer would be a reasonable or normal activity, as a non antagonist.

I will note that outcomes are something i take into consideration too, you can be a bit of a pain in the ass and if sec catch you and throw your ass in gulag, or you do something worth getting shot up over and that happens, then that /can/ be cool and is just a story. But there's a fine line between that and the people who do that kinda thing and expect to survive and win, because that usually comes at the detriment of everyone else, and a lot of people who do e.g. greytide vs crew are not looking to set up an interesting story with a finishing point, but just to PVP and win, to defeat the opposition at every turn, and once sec spend more time on a greytider than the actual valid antagonists, the greytider has become /the antagonist/.

These are all sweeping brushstrokes though, everything is context and nuance when it comes to implementing these rules.


I'll never forget watching multiple sec suicide because the greytide turned up at brig entrance being shitters 5 minutes into the round, was a very ongoing meta at the time and I don't ever want to see terry go back to that honestly.

Not a fan of ahelping for permission, do get a bunch of those and I usually turn them down and say 'figure it out yourself', partly because thats how it should work and simply i dont have enough context to answer most of those things, and no-one, not me nor the player asking, wants to wait 20 minutes while i read their entire round log to find out if their desire to kill sec officer X has any validity to it (it probably doesn't) (and targetting sec officer X is the generous end of these requests, usually its something like one sec officer slights a person and said person wants to bomb all of sec)

And as said elsewhere, if you feel I (or any other admin) have overstepped the spirit of the rules for LRP you're welcome to appeal to headmins, ultimately their guidance and direction is the meaningful last word on how things will be, and otherwise we're all just (hopefully) trying to do our best to fit the intended goal/targets, but nothing's going to beat headmins drawing a line somewhere in an appeal.

I may be monologuing a bit too much here for a post in the policy forums, so I'll try stop before I get told off, but obviously Terry and how it plays out is of particular importance to me, and I guess interested in what ideas you might have for changes that would suit, bearing in mind some of the considerations above and that I'm an entrenched fan of "having a reason" (though my take must follow rules/policy so if you got something about no reason passed then I'd abide by that, but I think that would be a step backwards for terry, which has been my home for 5 years now and I've watched it grow out of more chaotic and freeforall-pvp-game-like meta into what it is today, and I believe those changes have been for the best)

[GamerAndYeahMick]

This is all so vague and doesn't mean anything, we're going to close it