Manuel: Valuing Your Own Life

[NecromancerAnne]

One of the core oddities of our other servers is the general lack of consideration or care for ones own life most players tend to have. Largely this is because what constitutes being a character has few requirements, and self-preservation isn't one of them. It's a game, in a round, and you're not required to survive so you get people who will on a whim throw away their lives in ridiculous or silly fashion without consideration for whether they'll come back. Either in a new form (borging, resurrection into a podperson), or as themselves. Granted, it is mildly realistic in a setting where death can be fixed readily via cloning for death to be cheapened somewhat, but with the removal of this mechanic on the horizon, I think it's time to really give this more consideration.

Do note, this is not talking about suicide, the verb, or just killing yourself as a quick means to get out of the round. This is mostly players acting in a way that recklessly endangers their lives in the course of general gameplay that doesn't necessarily guarantee they're going to die. Just 'almost certain'.

People being abnormally careless with their own lives is relatively harmless, since it's only on the player doing this that this will have any round-affecting consequences for. That is, until you have people who use these suicidal tendencies to gain some kind of comeuppance over another player. The biggest and most glaring example of this is suicide bombs, that aren't mass destruction (IE most low yield chemical bombs) on a death switch, and I'll use that as my main example. Things that typically will end you permanently and remove you from the round as that character, but end everyone else as well as revenge. This is something generally 'allowed' to the discretion of admins, and I myself have had mixed feelings about but largely couldn't find an issue with it in the rules if used in some moderation over on the LRP servers. It was always a move that to me came from a fairly malicious place. That if you had to lose, nobody else can win, by any means necessary. It is a deeply meta tactic that forgoes any semblance of self preservation and people who would use this tactic did so frequently and often. We have rules and precedent in place to tell anyone who used this to the point of bringing the fun of the game down for everyone else to shove it, but nothing specifically about the practice.

It is, ironically, less often used by antagonists, the players who we give the green light to do whatever the hell they want. It's usually only used by players who already have a death wish (die gloriously) or have a team they don't want to negatively impact with their gamer gear falling into enemy hands (nukies innately have suicide bombs), or they are actually sacrificing themselves for the cause (revs). This is because antagonists value their lives as part of their objectives, and will go to lengths to preserve them, as well as hold out hope they might be recovered should they die, because they have incentive to do so. It's very unusual to see of all the people playing, antagonists will be the ones who care most about dying, because their role demands they survive.

Now, Manuel has a few rules that already cover this to a large degree. It's powergame, it's metagame, it's not being friendly to antagonists. It's not something you likely would do in the course of your job to consider. And rule 10 exists to give allowance to those who are genuinely being self-sacrificing in their attempt to suicidally stop something with the justification that if something calls for a noble sacrifice like that, then it is valuing your own life but putting it at risk or giving it up for the benefit of everyone else. This is usually things like BoH bombing Nar'sie. Or, in an example which is a personal anecdote for me, completely destroyed my own body as the chaplain to utterly prevent Nar'sie's summon at all. (that was actually claimed to be emergent gameplay by maintainers so fuck it, I'll use it and you better believe I roleplayed that shit). And it is a discretionary thing and contextual, so it had better make for a good story if you do it.

But a core concern I have is that the inherent nature of powergame is that what constitutes powergame is entirely reliant on what is normalized for that environment. Erosion of powergame standards can happen naturally over time. What might be seen as powergame and LRP now could be standard and normal later while still maintaining the presumption that it is MRP, using whatever justification is provided at the time. This kind of erosion seeped into other servers with differing play standards, based on playerbase and administration. And it's a problem we need to be aware of for Manuel, because it was still a problem even for Bagil, Sybil and Terry. Since there was real concern about those servers devolving into a lower standard than that. Manuel will pose a lot of new challenges and old problems coated differently.

Therefore, my proposal is that Manuel's RP rules have a clause about how best to go about valuing your own life, as well as when it is appropriate for you to be self-sacrificing and when that isn't appropriate. Simply as an assurance that players understand that as characters they need to be considering their character's life as important to them and that inherently suicidal characters run the risk of being too extreme, too uninteresting or flat out detrimental to the game. There is self-deprecating, there is majorly depressed characters. And hell, you can grow to being pushed over that edge over the course of the round (let's not get that edgy though, yikes, we're here for stupid fun). But make it a roleplay element and give us a singular rule that as administrators we can point to and say 'hey man, maybe you should not be carrying explosive charges in your chest like a paranoid psychopath, like the clandestine paramilitary forces who want to kill you utilize to wipe away any evidence they existed as quickly as possible because they have an inherent deathwish or don't have a choice in the matter'.

TL;DR Going out with a bang can be fun if done right, but either can be pretty bland or downright experience ruining if done badly. Let's have some codified guidelines for this.

[Screemonster]

Don't the RP rules already say you should act as if you still want a job at the end of the round

I'd have thought that "it's kinda hard to keep my job if I'm dead" would follow on from that

[Sheodir]

Don't the RP rules already say you should act as if you still want a job at the end of the round

I'd have thought that "it's kinda hard to keep my job if I'm dead" would follow on from that

Coulda Shoulda Woulda

We're a long way from the majority of Manue figuring MRP is anything past punctuation in sentences, and making some of it official in roleplay guidelines could help

[RaveRadbury]

I agree with the fundamental principle of this: that deathmix death-trigger grenades are being overused by a handful of players and that this should be discouraged especially when used by non-antagonists and every round.

However, I have a concern about how we go about this "life valuing" concept as I feel like a lot of fun can be had with things like accepting a shady persons offer to "see something really cool" and I'd hate to see that kind of thing be phased out by a rule saying that we're supposed to value our lives which then prevents us from taking mystery pills or accepting cigars that are offered to us.

I feel like this kind of goofiness should be preserved in MRP, as it involves the sort of "yes and" improv rule that can make RP opportunities blossom. This is a kind of throwing caution to the wind that I would argue is the opposite of the sort of powergaming fatalism that the suggested principle is trying to address. If we have players going around being isolated and standoffish to everyone because otherwise they are going against the rules then I would think that we'd have created a new powergaming issue centered around life preservation, which will then in turn become an administrative headache as that could drastically increase the number of ahelps.

[Copybass]

So VYOL has always been one of those terms that I understand yet irrationally hate. We're in a world where life should matter to each spaceman, yet a supercompany over our heads consistently devalues us and treats us as a disposable resource. (Not gonna bring up cloning as that already was discussed)

VYOL rules when done well can improve roleplay - VYOL rules when done wrong can stifle enjoyment, and we have to be careful where that line is drawn.

I'm gonna use a quick super slippery slope example, a bit back there was a GTARP craze that I unfortunately watched some of. VYOL there meant that if someone points a gun at you you're required to do as they say entirely, not pull a gun back, and let yourself be kidnapped without running or attempting to fight back. You're playing to their story now, and what happens in the end be it you dying somewhere or you being used as a hostage is just how the story goes. It's a form of Yes And, but it's one that is so on the far end of Yes And that you're practically becoming a puppet who has to pretend to be scared for the next 30 minutes.

One thing I prefer to just saying VYOL is "You are not the protagonist", but that in itself was wiped out of TGstation culture when Validhunting became something everyone does. It fits though; your character isn't a hero, you're a person doing your job. Sometimes people do heroic acts in their workplace, but in the end the story doesn't resolve around you, and the story should never resolve solely around "Make many red text mean good spaceman, who care if me dead".

[Mickyan]

Pretty much what RaveRadbury said, I don't think it's unfitting either for death to be viewed as not that big of a deal in a world where you can be blown to bits and still be brought back to life with relative ease

I think situations where this can be considered an issue are already well covered with the validhunting/powergaming rules, ex: making death-trigger grenades "just in case", suicide bombing not being as the last option (your example is stopping a station-ending event so it's definitely an appropriate example of self-sacrifice)

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have some official guidelines though

[NecromancerAnne]

I agree with the fundamental principle of this: that deathmix death-trigger grenades are being overused by a handful of players and that this should be discouraged especially when used by non-antagonists and every round.

However, I have a concern about how we go about this "life valuing" concept as I feel like a lot of fun can be had with things like accepting a shady persons offer to "see something really cool" and I'd hate to see that kind of thing be phased out by a rule saying that we're supposed to value our lives which then prevents us from taking mystery pills or accepting cigars that are offered to us.

I feel like this kind of goofiness should be preserved in MRP, as it involves the sort of "yes and" improv rule that can make RP opportunities blossom. This is a kind of throwing caution to the wind that I would argue is the opposite of the sort of powergaming fatalism that the suggested principle is trying to address. If we have players going around being isolated and standoffish to everyone because otherwise they are going against the rules then I would think that we'd have created a new powergaming issue centered around life preservation, which will then in turn become an administrative headache as that could drastically increase the number of ahelps.

I feel like this shouldn't be completely ignored, no, and I do agree there is a fun and interesting element of roleplay to completely throwing caution out the window. But I think this is a healthy way to go about it and is congruent with roleplay. It's why I wanted to discuss it further since I definitely didn't want to lose this part of the game, which is funny and enjoyable and part of the spirit.

Powergaming fatalism probably needs to be what is largely focused on, and what I would prefer to nipped in the bud before it becomes an issue. Maybe it is better to focus on that than to just outright incentivise self-preservation.