Friendly Antags AKA The Embodiment of Vile Evil

[8bot]

I saw a wizard bar RPing and taking part in a costume contest on Manuel the other day.

What possesses people to play friendly wizards? Is it a desire to make the world an infinitely worse place? A rare opportunity that few players get to enjoy, one of the few antagonists on Manuel where you can actually, properly antagonize, with a wide array of remarkable spells and tools at your disposal, and you decide to roleplay in the bar and stand in a line for the costume contest. If only there were a way to peek within the twisted, abyssal mind of a friendly antag player - but I fear that those without sufficient psychological fortitude would have their own psyches torn asunder by the malignant chaos contained within.

Now, this is not to say that there are not exceptions to this rule; Deadpop is best, after all, when there isn't an antagonist murderboning the 7 (3 of which are SSD) crewmembers, but there are people in this world, on this forum, playing on Traditional Games Station 13™ that encounter the coveted wizard roll and immediately think to themselves, "Hmm, today I will engage in bar RP".

Of course, many will claim that my mistake was playing on Manuel - and I suppose, in a way, this is true. A friendly wizard RPing in the bar is, in a way, a condensed version of the worst aspects of Manuel that people (often ironically) complain about, and in my years of playing Space Station 13, it isn't as if I haven't seen such abominable atrocities before. I suppose it was a sobering reality check.

Contrary to popular belief, I do not loathe roleplay as a concept. I do not loathe character interactions beyond making spacemen go horizontal or spam-clicking while mashing your clap key. I can understand somebody taking another antagonist role, such as traitor or changeling, and doing something either laid-back or friendly in a variety of circumstances. It tends to irk me, but I can see their reasoning and respect it.

The reasoning behind friendly wizards, however, continues to elude me to this day. Much like a caveman, I initially responded to this strange and horrifying thing with hostility, but this last time, I simply gave my spaceman up to the ghosts - and, before departing, I saw what the others in deadchat had to say about this. They were quite defensive, with at least one passive aggressive smiley face being sent my way.

This is not an attempt at getting friendly antags banned, or anything. Just as, in my ideal world, antagonists should be free to do as they please, they can also take the deranged path of doing nothing of note. A wasted roll, but wasted of their own volition. This does not, however, absolve them of my scrutiny, nor did it stop me from sitting down at 6:53 AM on a Monday morning and writing this out. I cannot tell if I have transcended being buttmad or simply wish to examine the psyche of the friendly wizard. I do know, however, that I should begin getting ready for work.

This has meant nothing.

Friendly wizards (and antags in general, in many cases) should still have a legion of validhunting greyshirts descend upon them, however.

[Turbonerd]

A wizard bar RPing is fail RP. Ahelp it.

[warbluke]

Sometimes when I'm playing sec, I'll arrest someone for minor crimes or search them for being somewhere weird, and I'll find something like the hand tele or captain's gun.
And I shit you not, I have had people say "Oh yeah that's my objective can I keep it? I won't do anything bad with it."
Once what I did was hide the loot in a random secure spot of the station, tell them it's been destroyed, and then tell them where it actually was when the shuttle arrives to see if they can beat the odds.

[DaydreamIQ]

What you failed to mention is that said wizard had already finished their final ritual which brought an end to death on the station. So there was literally nothing either side could do in the situation beyond GBJ each other.

There already exists policy that basically says explicitly friendly antags are entirely valid and can be dealt with by both crew and admins as they wish. Though imo that policy is horribly worded cause it basically allows people to KOS any wizard who tries to do a gimmick that's not immediately lethal under the guise of being 'friendly'.

It's entirely possible to be antagonistic without murdering everyone on sight but a combination of security being unwilling to ever actually go along with gimmicks and antagonists being uncreative as fuck in most cases leads to shit like this where people piss and whine any time a wizard doesn't immediately end the round.

[Shadowflame909]

Wizards should get a spell that shoots out an orb and Hilbert's hotel anyone shot with it into a bar dimension that they must RP to get out of.

The incantation should be "B'AR AR'PEE"

[Itseasytosee2me]

I've seen this thread before. Circles in circles. Space ashes to ashes, space dust to dust. Like an ant death spiral that only attracts more ants as it spins.

[Hoolny]

Friendly antags are ass and their existence must be killed for they only bring boredom and order of a role that calls for them to be in conflict as an antagonist, once I felt bad for them yet knew their danger I let them live and they have propagated THEY MUST BE EXTINGUISHED AND SYSTEMATICALLY KILLED.


Specifically public friendly antags, non public friendly antags are just crewmembers with powers and are so minimal to the round is a waste of threat being used but can't even know their antags so whatever

[Hoolny]

I once saw as a midround changeling rolled and they did nothing all shift but absorbed full dead ghosted corpses and ghost chat gave me shit for saying they were a bad ling player, THEY WHERE they caused no conflict didn't improve the round Im all for people doing whatever they want that includes me giving shit to antags being shit at being antags

You may be a friendly antag BUT YOU SHALL DIE