solving problems, adding options

[TheBibleMelts]

you thought because my name stopped being red i was done proposing widescale changes in order to address issues i've seen? think again chump.

this thread is regarding manuel and basil. this is to address player and admin concerns i've witnessed here, on discord, and ingame.

basil hasn't had the pop swing back for a while, and it seems like the sybil regulars who would typically facilitate that migration are instead moving onto manuel to play instead. this has lead to some issues cropping up;

[*]overpopulation of manuel during peak hours, with some players being unable to play at all.

[*]when they do, they are not experiencing the level of RP that they would like due to higher population leading to a natural decline of the social aspects of the game in favor of the mechanical gameplay aspects.

i have a proposal to address the two points above while allowing more choice to players of what kind of vibe they're looking to play out in their gametime.

make manuel the TG H(ella)RP server, and basil the TG M(oar)RP server

put your pitchforks down you feculent forumites, i'm not proposing the addition of any more rules onto the ruleset that manuel already has. i believe that the rules we have already established, if allowed to be enforced to their intended spirit, is the highest level of RP that /tg/station should have. what i'd like to do and see is for basil, in becoming the MRP server, is to adopt only a few of the core rules that manuel has. these rules being;

4. Non-security may only actively hunt global or round-ending threats.
You should not act like a vigilante if a security force is present unless you have a good in-character roleplay reason to believe a global or round-ending threat exists. Restricted antags that are not automatically global or round ending threats may still become so through their actions in the shift, the stronger your reasoning the more action you can take against them.

You can always defend yourself and others from violent antagonists.

Players that choose to act as security will be held to the same standards as security.

5. Antagonism and roleplaying as an antagonist.
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.

6. Deal with the bad guys in proportion to their crime(s).
Restricted antagonists (or crewmembers) should be handled in proportion to their committed crimes. The decision to execute an antagonist should have good in-character reasoning based on their crimes and the state of the shift. Punishments against antagonists that repeatedly commit minor crimes may be escalated. Only antagonists that have committed the most severe crimes may be met with immediate execution.

Security members are expected to consider the full range of punishment options available when dealing with antags. This includes (but is not always limited to) pacification, implants, timed brig sentences, gulag sentences, permabrig, forced borging and execution. Forced borging is considered equivalent to execution in punishment severity.

Explicitly friendly antagonists do not have this protection and may be treated as the crew or admin team see fit.

basil has had a low population for some time, and as a result have already been observing these rules for the most part due to that alone - the culture shock would be minimal in what the dedicated playerbase has already grown accustomed to, and we would be able to provide a space for people who enjoy the less murderboney sides of the game, both from antagonists and security, to play without feeling intimidated by the heaps of other roleplay rules that are present on manuel.

as far as the changes to manuel go, aside from the tag changing, it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow. players who have already been on board with the roleplay ruleset won't have to learn anything new, and can ideally play with more likeminded people who play on that server because of the added ruleset, and not in spite of them.

i believe this will alleviate the overpopulation issue that manuel has been experiencing, and allow people who enjoy a medium between the sybil/terry mindset, and the mindset that the manuel server was intended to foster.

thank you for reading.

[Blacklist897]

this is everything I want from manny and I will fight tooth and nail for this

[TheRex9001]

it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow.

Bagil proposal aside, how would you suggest this be accomplished?

[Timonk]

it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow.

Bagil proposal aside, how would you suggest this be accomplished?

3 different rulesets. yipee!

[TheRex9001]

it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow.

Bagil proposal aside, how would you suggest this be accomplished?

3 different rulesets. yipee!

How is this relevant to what I said Timonk!!!!

[TheBibleMelts]

it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow.

Bagil proposal aside, how would you suggest this be accomplished?

i feel like part of what has lead to less of the rpr's being enforced consistently is that it's a wide gap in expectations jumping from sybil or terry into manuel's ruleset with no inbetween. if admins know people are on manuel to experience higher roleplay standards, they can start putting more emphasis on RPR rules 1 and 8 when it comes to telling people to curb certain behaviors, with the suggestion to move to basil if they'd like to enjoy a few of the perks of manuel (murderbone restricted antags/proportionate treatment of antagonists instead of being an immediate valid kill, and less valid hunting in general) but don't enjoy adhering to a lane, chain of command, or the harsher attitude toward putting gameplay over roleplay in general.

[Timonk]

it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow.

Bagil proposal aside, how would you suggest this be accomplished?

3 different rulesets. yipee!

How is this relevant to what I said Timonk!!!!

are we recruiting HRP admins yet?

[TheBibleMelts]

it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow.

Bagil proposal aside, how would you suggest this be accomplished?

3 different rulesets. yipee!

How is this relevant to what I said Timonk!!!!

are we recruiting HRP admins yet?

basil has admins, and we have admins who will follow populations along (like me) without a whole lot of care for tying themselves to a single server. more people playing basil could also help with picking newer admins out of the playerbase, as well.

[TheLoLSwat]

manuel would need to be renamed Harry and basil would have to become Masil

[Vekter]

I am not a fan of this, mainly because I feel like it's going to significantly reduce what little RP is already done on LRP servers. I think you're going to see people who care about roleplaying but don't want MRP rules move to the new server while everyone who plays just for gameplay will remain. It'll basically make a "containment server", and I'm not a fan of that.

I'm open to arguments otherwise though.

[Drag]

it would be more of a culture shift for the administration to feel like they can more confidently attempt to enforce the higher standard of roleplay that the server is intended to allow.

Bagil proposal aside, how would you suggest this be accomplished?

3 different rulesets. yipee!

How is this relevant to what I said Timonk!!!!

are we recruiting HRP admins yet?

Hi that would be me

[Drag]

I am not a fan of this, mainly because I feel like it's going to significantly reduce what little RP is already done on LRP servers. I think you're going to see people who care about roleplaying but don't want MRP rules move to the new server while everyone who plays just for gameplay will remain. It'll basically make a "containment server", and I'm not a fan of that.

I'm open to arguments otherwise though.

I feel like this would be resolved by admins doing their part to enforce the status quo, we might have to be really 1984 until standards are put into place. This is a sacrifice Im willing to make

[Vekter]

I am not a fan of this, mainly because I feel like it's going to significantly reduce what little RP is already done on LRP servers. I think you're going to see people who care about roleplaying but don't want MRP rules move to the new server while everyone who plays just for gameplay will remain. It'll basically make a "containment server", and I'm not a fan of that.

I'm open to arguments otherwise though.

I feel like this would be resolved by admins doing their part to enforce the status quo, we might have to be really 1984 until standards are put into place. This is a sacrifice Im willing to make

I don't mind it, I just don't look forward to being called Hitler by everyone on a server because I dared to expect them to talk to people.

[Sightld2]

are we recruiting HRP admins yet?

Hi that would be me

Same

[iwishforducks]

you are tricking yourself into believing that there ever really was any roleplay quality on manuel. the idea that bagil players are coming to manuel and Ruining The Roleplay Standards is really funny to me, because a large majority of players on Manuel WERE Bagil players ever since Manuel was created

ruling with an ironfist to make Roleplay Better is such an unbelievably bad idea. mso literally just made a post on a player’s club thread where he outlines that arbitrary rules and enforcement based on Vibes and Fear is terrible, and that TG strives to stray away from that path. i don’t agree with mso often but i agreed with him entirely in that regard. you propose literally zero changes to the MRP to HRP policy other than “we will ban more people and enforce the policies and rules more heavily,” or to be more precise, you want to “follow the spirit of the rules more.” nobody seems to entirely agree on what the spirit of the rules for manuel are meant to be. (or maybe times have changed. i honestly havent played manuel in more than “just a bit”- but jesus i remember getting like a gazillion different answers and opinions on everything regarding manuel policy. both on the admin team and as a player)

[iwishforducks]

this is all entirely ignoring my main sore point of current manuel being an entirely different ruleset. yes, let’s add more rulesets to an already confusing sausagefest. but whatever i guess some admins just want an excuse to be bullies

[Blacklist897]

this solves the problem of the manny playerbase split: the higher rp dudes who like making lore and art and cross round events get the manuel that the rp rules set out, and those who want sybil with a extra pinch of rp and reduced silent murderbones.

I am not a fan of this, mainly because I feel like it's going to significantly reduce what little RP is already done on LRP servers. I think you're going to see people who care about roleplaying but don't want MRP rules move to the new server while everyone who plays just for gameplay will remain. It'll basically make a "containment server", and I'm not a fan of that.

I'm open to arguments otherwise though.

We already have a containment server in Terry

[TheRex9001]

I am not a fan of this, mainly because I feel like it's going to significantly reduce what little RP is already done on LRP servers. I think you're going to see people who care about roleplaying but don't want MRP rules move to the new server while everyone who plays just for gameplay will remain. It'll basically make a "containment server", and I'm not a fan of that.

I'm open to arguments otherwise though.

I don't think it will personally, just because a majority of players of LRP play for the antagonist freedom (rule 4) or in the case of Terry, their ping is bad on american servers. No offering of the new Bagil or Manuel is very appealing to this crowd due to it. I can't speak on Sybil though because its only active when Im asleep.

[Timberpoes]

i believe that the rules we have already established, if allowed to be enforced to their intended spirit, is the highest level of RP that /tg/station should have.

The rules we currently have are currently being enforced in their intended spirit. That intended spirit is outlined in Rule 1. I intentionally erred away from rules defining, dictating or forcing a certain level of roleplay. Quote RPR1:

The purpose of the roleplay servers is to provide a higher quality environment for roleplay. The roleplay rules are intended to promote more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen. They are not exhaustive, and admins have a very broad discretion to intervene where behaviours or actions could, if left ignored, contribute to a lower roleplay environment.

This rule makes clear that the RP rules are not about forcing higher roleplay, but about creating a better environment for roleplay to happen by reducing the freedom for players to avoid interacting with others. Admin discretion extends to killing stuff that contributes to a lower roleplay environment, not killing off lower quality or effort roleplay itself.

When I made the original draft of the RP rules that Spookuni inherited, I envisioned our MRP as a sort of enhanced LRP where the rules would push players into interactions. Antag restrictions excepted, I wanted a ruleset where the average good-faith LRP player could join Manuel and play normally without changing anything, and not break any of the rules.

They didn't need to wank eachother off with cringeworthy OC fanfic. They didn't need to brush up on their Shakespeare for grandioise multi-paragraph emotes.

They could join, play the role they got, notice that there was less tiding.
That if they manned a front desk they could be reasonably assured players would come to them and ask for things.
That if they were doing surgey or making a toxins bomb or ordering cargo, an assistant wouldn't barge in and do their job for them without asking.

That everyone was a bit more shackled - restricted antags and no-powergaming crew - so the LRP arms race to arm up and gear up could be broken and replaced with a bit more time to actually interact with other players.

I never, ever, ever intended to segregate tgstation into an us and a them. My goal was to try and more closely align LRP and MRP so that any good faith player could enjoy both LRP and MRP experiences at the same time.

The fact Sybil players are going to Manuel instead of Basil feels like a great big mission accomplished for my original goals - That players can feel comfortable moving between LRP and MRP so we're all one big tgstation community instead of divided sub-communities.

My hope is that if Sybil picks up in pop again, it will retain some of the MRP tendencies players are picking up from Manuel. And that Manuel will keep a bit of that LRP flair and spice that makes for such wonderfully chaotic and varied SS13 shifts.

And my opinion is that nothing is stopping players whom want to put in effort from RPing right now, but if you want a server where the 3 most anal admins will micromanage RP so the players don't deviate from the carefully laid out script for how an ideal SS13 shift should be RP'd, go to one of the other non-tg servers because that's what they specialise in. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself longing for that core tgstation experience again after a short while.

[dendydoom]

i personally have very little interest in this.

usually around the time people get sick of manuel and think the problem is the dreaded shitters, they make their own hrp downstream utopia where nothing ever goes wrong and the true thespians can finally roleplay for real. i can count on one hand the amount of times i've been involved in this and it hasn't ended disastrously. because it was once.

that's not a slight against people who enjoy hrp, but that the challenges involved just aren't really recognized.

i'm not interested in further stratifying player types into even more meaningless rp designations. the essence of improv in ss13 is predicated on the idea of its participants being able to contribute their own ideas about the story and have the show go on whatever happens. having a wide variety of player types has everyone learning from each other and maintaining a sense of dynamism where you're always rubbing off on people of a completely different type, and within that exchange you're sharing ideas about the space and what it can be used for.

i'm not interested in encouraging people to say "go play on x server lol" if they contribute in a way that isn't doing anything wrong other than going against some unwritten cultural code.

i'm not interested in allowing credence to a roleplaying "in-group" to be able to dictate the minimum standard for someone's contribution that's backed up by administration. "you aren't roleplaying good enough" typically has some level of "you're not doing what i want you to do" attached to it - and in my experience, this sentiment only increases over time as the whims of that in-group are established and entrenched.

i'm not interested in fracturing the ideology of the admin team further, especially not into one that throws out a lot of our principles to be able to "1984 them if we have to." the sense i get from this is that we're too light on "the shitters" and that it's holding us back from "true rp" in the "intended spirit" - i don't like what any of that says about attitudes toward our enforcement.

over the years some of my favourite parts of being in manuel has been seeing supposedly lrp players join, butt heads with the roleplayers, then over time become a beloved participant and staple character that everyone loves to see because they started forming an understanding of our space, and in turn our currently established players gained more of an understanding of the newly joined lrp player. there was no huge transformation in their behaviour, but rather it took time for mutual ground to be found and good interactions to be fostered.

sometimes the culture of the server will be tested, and we will have influxes of players who struggle to immediately conform to our supposed style. it's in these times that we have to be the most patient and the most willing to not just give up and encourage an oppositional stance toward "outsiders." very few players are inherently evil, and through these sorts of nebulous and arbitrary stratifications of player types instead of giving them the chance to mix will restrict us creatively more than help.

[warbluke]

I would be down for giving this a try if for no other reason than wanting a single bagil round where less than half the crew is antagonists.

[DrAmazing343]

over the years some of my favourite parts of being in manuel has been seeing supposedly lrp players join, butt heads with the roleplayers, then over time become a beloved participant and staple character that everyone loves to see because they started forming an understanding of our space, and in turn our currently established players gained more of an understanding of the newly joined lrp player. there was no huge transformation in their behaviour, but rather it took time for mutual ground to be found and good interactions to be fostered.

sometimes the culture of the server will be tested, and we will have influxes of players who struggle to immediately conform to our supposed style. it's in these times that we have to be the most patient and the most willing to not just give up and encourage an oppositional stance toward "outsiders." very few players are inherently evil, and through these sorts of nebulous and arbitrary stratifications of player types instead of giving them the chance to mix will restrict us creatively more than help.

This is by far the strongest takeaway for me; I've seen this play out time and time again, and it's real shit. New player comes to the block, new player does new player things (A Mild Amount of Tiding) and gets an awful reception, new player gets a few bwoinks, a few annoyed comments, and then finds that wonderful MIDDLE GROUND wherein they get to play out their character, their desires, yet don't step on toes or piss people off (as much) anymore. We've got very easy examples here for some popular (infamous?) players, but honestly, part of the reason this sways my opinion so hard is remembering that I, too, had to find that middle ground once. I think my own move to Manny wasn't a crazy shift— I've enjoyed roleplaying for a long time, so it WAS what I came for. But I certainly still took a few swings, got some ire back, and had to figure out what shit flies and what doesn't in the no-mans-land of MRP. Now, it's my home.

I think this is also the sort of idea I had in mind in the other thread in Player's Club lamenting (doomposting) about the state of MRP these days; the winds shift, the Tides turn, and I have faith we'll come upon another era where everyone will more or less just enjoy the experience with one another.

In terms of the proposal, it'd be an interesting thing to test, but I did outline some of my thoughts in the aforementioned Player's Club thread, and part of my thoughts there were that increasing rules will simply lead to more lawyering and restricted play. I believe attempting to create a 1984 enforcement would likely be much the same. As much as some gripe about perceived rule-breaks, I'd certainly rather our team be a bit lax instead of trigger-happy when it comes to second chances, notes over bans, and all that. Something like Harry-anuel would be something I'd be afraid of, even as a seasoned player, just for the bare notion that I may trip over a minor rule and get 1984'd, as it were.

I wish I had a grander plan to top off these thoughts but I think at the end of the day, I would like to keep our players on Manuel, rather than divide them further. I like my people a lot, even if not all of them are happy, and I hope it'll get better. Perhaps all we need is time.

[Ihateforums]

I don't think some people realize that roleplay rule 1, 5, 7 (or even 8, yeesh) is not metaphorically not enforced but *literally* not enforced with people getting away with constant tiding and no-word to single sentence one liners before murder and RR interactions getting in the way of people wanting to do anything with other people at all, one time I was murdered and gibbed in the first 7 minutes of joining the round, my murderers only reason was "the AI knows I'm the traitor so I assumed they were there to arrest me" (I was a sec) when I didn't speak a word, and was just getting a burger and actively leaving. and hey, they got away with it. because its "valid", they had a reason for it, sure. but is this roleplay? does this even count as an interaction between 2 people if you don't even get a word or action in? you absolutely want stuff to happen, but the difference between LRP and MRP would be a back and forth, the actual "improv" part. you do not get this in current Manuel, you would have gotten it 2-3 years ago (at times), but now with the current players no one is willing to have a standoff where you exchange a few lines of maybe too corny lines for the moment to make the other giggle before you do what you gotta, because the chances are the other will shoot, and no one will have your back when you say "that's just mildly lame, man. it's not like I want you banned or your fingers cut out or anything I was just kinda hoping for more there", enforcing of roleplay rules doesn't have to be "you are not up to the server standard, get banned, kid" it can just be "hello, please give people more leg room to interact with you and your character in the future!" and I'm sure a lot of people would be perfectly fine with that.

I don't think two servers is an actual fix for this at all, in fact I don't even really think it's a migration issue at all, I have had the 2020 Manuel interactions with sybil players before (it could still be a terry issue, the Europeans constantly recreate Ragnarok over there) but I would be willing to give it a chance cause it's new entropy and it deserves to stand proud before you judge it for what it shouldn't do and never can be.

P.S change H(ella) RP to H(onest) RP, you dweeb

[dendydoom]

yes, i came out the gate a little intense with this one because it's a subject i feel quite strongly about. but perhaps it would help to say that i'm not saying that it's entirely a hard no from me, but rather that i have very strong reservations that i would need to be convinced otherwise of in order to accept this proposal as it stands now.

some sincere questions if you felt like responding:

one time I was murdered and gibbed in the first 7 minutes of joining the round, my murderers only reason was "the AI knows I'm the traitor so I assumed they were there to arrest me" (I was a sec) when I didn't speak a word, and was just getting a burger and actively leaving. and hey, they got away with it. because its "valid", they had a reason for it, sure. but is this roleplay?

how would you rule on this situation differently in order to obtain a "hrp" environment? what messaging would need to be sent about the expected approach to roleplaying as an antagonist and as a security member (two opposing factions with probably the most mechanically competitive oppositional relationship in the game)?

then, how does this differ from what we have in mrp at the moment?

things like

"hello, please give people more leg room to interact with you and your character in the future!" and I'm sure a lot of people would be perfectly fine with that.

is already supposed to be how we approach mrp, and i'm having trouble following the dynamics of this sentiment. if there are admins who are willing to enforce in this way, and it's supported by headmins (or at least by me, i was in support of upholding a ruling against an antag chef for gibbing a detective against the general player consensus at the time) then it's becoming somewhat lost on me how creating an entirely new identifier for an even more divisive abstraction of our roleplay ethos would help at all.

what i would like to drill down to are the specific, intrinsic issues underlying all of these roleplay designators. what difference is there between mrp manuel and hrp harryuel and the enforcement that takes place on those servers and what problems would those changes resolve?

[Archie700]

This is not a solution, this just adding problems.

First, how would you find admins that could handle Basil MRP, given that current MRP on Manuel is going to be renamed "HRP", per your words?

Second, I don't think there's a problem with the shift of players from LRP to MRP that can't be solved by admin action, this feels more like a reaction to more enforcement than anything else.

[Ihateforums]

yea alright I'm here

how would you rule on this situation differently in order to obtain a "hrp" environment? what messaging would need to be sent about the expected approach to roleplaying as an antagonist and as a security member (two opposing factions with probably the most mechanically competitive oppositional relationship in the game)?

then, how does this differ from what we have in mrp at the moment?

I still do not think this fix is meant to make a literal HRP server it's just how they chose to brand it being a little weird, the real fix is just getting the roleplaying rules enforced at all on Manuel with at least a collective philosophy as to what "MRP" actually means.

firstly, security and antags being opposed to eachother does not actually mean anything at all since we are playing a social interaction game here, not an FPS. by the virtue of playing this game at all the chances are both parties are fucking nerds, and the digitally chosen side doesn't change the fact that the players are here to interact in the chatroom with space theming on top, and should have trust in the enforcement of these standards enough to not forget that they aren't locked in a room with an NPC character that brings nothing to the table except trying to kill them. in this specific scenario with the gibbing I do not think I have to argue that the interaction that did play out is not RP or even much of a social interaction. improv cannot be done in a vacuum with nothing to yes and, "character a walks to character b kills them" cannot be improved on, it stays as a blank moment in time, where you do not get a showcase of the characters motives, beliefs or behavior, with fluent change in action or resolve depending on the characters back and forth.

how you would obtain RP in this scenario is obvious, by enforcing that each side is protected in the case of blatant opposition to the RP rules, you let character A to take it slow and start an actual scene where stuff happens, because in the reality (this one) where they didn't let that happen, they went in with the belief that they were a danger but resolved the situation before it could even be confirmed or come into play in any meaningful way, something that would take mild interaction. if you take that in good faith, they were so paranoid and had so little trust in RP environment that they truly chose the option that came with the smallest possible interaction as possible and most chance for ruining someones experience for their own game to not be ruined but also came with the lowest amount of RP satisfaction, which is bad or if you take it in bad faith, they were aware of how RP enforcement is, and believed they could get away with not risking letting the opposition interact with them with the possible result being that their traitor game is cut short, (which is what I took it as cause an exact quote of them in deadchat was "I just wanted your equipment lol") which as a results causes people to be way more reluctant to be interact with others, having a slow, gradual decline of social aspects in their entirety.

this is gonna start getting nostalgia baitey in a minute but if I had to give an example on how it has gone years prior and how it should go, during a small interaction between tom brondl (seccie) and pigment comes to mind. tom brondl tracks down pigment the heretic into science maints, these characters already know eachother and know the other side is will not bomb rush the other, so with the comfort of knowing an interaction of any kind if rewarded, pigment starts the usual heretic psycho "what I'm doing isn't all that bad, I just want power teehee" speech, and since, again we want to give the other room to breathe, the interaction goes on with Tom listening to speech and desalinating by responding to his lines logically, while also trying to contact for backup as would any member of sec. this goes on, for what must have been at least 30+ seconds, before pigment who has sec comms, hears the call for backup, and signals that the moment is over with a "tch, wrong choice" and they start click on dude until they tilt 90 degrees, this isn't a long interaction, it isn't ground breaking, but it would be wrong to claim that both parties didn't walk away happy with the interaction, as small of a moment as it was, it let 2 character interact, show their personality and current motives, and it wasn't bogged down with an immediate but unfun reactionary action of one trying to attack the other instantly for the initial advantage, this is about the lowest form of scene you should always be allowed to expect on Manuel, but as I have said so, this specific one was from 2 years ago, but the gibbing incident? that was about 6 months ago. just let anything at all happen, "losing" is not real if you are actually just playing a character with goals, being unsuccessful in a task is not losing, it is just how improv goes, and you must adept to it. but you need to be put in a position where you trust your RP partner to make being unsuccessful still be fun if it comes to pass. and the current enforcement both doesn't give you that trust, and neither do the players.

I mean sometimes the antag/sec doesn't even need to actually say anything to be the catalyst for a scene, one time (long ago, seeing a pastern I hope its pretty ham fisted.) a ling that's stun immune from atmos gas and a wielding a chainsaw came into the SM room trying to break the plasma glass to the SM. and from the simple fact that we didn't just go to fix the problem we had a pretty funny scene, with Tom first asking the guy to calm down and leave, turning to the CE, saying he doesn't think its working, doing it again but more stern and firing warning disabling shots, turning to CE again to confirm its not working, asking for backup on comms, trying to keep the engineering people safe with the "THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE VALUED EMPLOYEES, PLEASE TAKE YOUR GOVERNMENT PROTECTED LUNCH BREAK AND CLEAR THE PREMISES, HUT HUT" looking over at the CE one last time to say that there is no way this works but he must do it for the safety of the department and for the protection of corporate assets, then going in and getting being hard crit and being saved by the engineers he asked to leave. the line about the game being a space opera is true, let things breathe, don't take stuff too seriously, this game is still a comedy.

"hello, please give people more leg room to interact with you and your character in the future!" and I'm sure a lot of people would be perfectly fine with that.

is already supposed to be how we approach mrp, and i'm having trouble following the dynamics of this sentiment. if there are admins who are willing to enforce in this way, and it's supported by headmins (or at least by me, i was in support of upholding a ruling against an antag chef for gibbing a detective against the general player consensus at the time) then it's becoming somewhat lost on me how creating an entirely new identifier for an even more divisive abstraction of our roleplay ethos would help at all.

I seriously don't want to be the guy to outright say this since it almost feels like political satire, but there is a serious disconnect with "how its supposed to be" and how it's done. how it's done is that it isn't done. and that's why people want such drastic changes, I mean come on the example you gave walks pretty close to my gibbing experience, the difference being a sec and not a det (and the untold differences in the actual scenario at detail but I don't know those :O) ) but that one the chef got into trouble, but in mine they didn't. so it's how you enforce it, and how its "meant to be enforced" but it's not how it's enforced. there is no consensus on what MRP means besides the warning when you join the server and that it's not being enforced as what it advertises, and when TG players tend to take break for years at a time with new players filling the slots they left behind with no knowledge on how it worked previously, it becomes too diluted to actually recognize the change of enforcement, and harder to enforce a rule based on the vibe.

[dendydoom]

I still do not think this fix is meant to make a literal HRP server it's just how they chose to brand it being a little weird, the real fix is just getting the roleplaying rules enforced at all on Manuel with at least a collective philosophy as to what "MRP" actually means.

this is good, because i'm in agreement that it won't. it will just create another mythical land of milk and honey that the true roleplayers can continue to aspire to one day reach until this annoying little thing called reality pulls them back down.

firstly, security and antags being opposed to eachother does not actually mean anything at all since we are playing a social interaction game here, not an FPS. by the virtue of playing this game at all the chances are both parties are fucking nerds, and the digitally chosen side doesn't change the fact that the players are here to interact in the chatroom with space theming on top, and should have trust in the enforcement of these standards enough to not forget that they aren't locked in a room with an NPC character that brings nothing to the table except trying to kill them. in this specific scenario with the gibbing I do not think I have to argue that the interaction that did play out is not RP or even much of a social interaction. improv cannot be done in a vacuum with nothing to yes and, "character a walks to character b kills them" cannot be improved on, it stays as a blank moment in time, where you do not get a showcase of the characters motives, beliefs or behavior, with fluent change in action or resolve depending on the characters back and forth.

i disagree in that i believe there is an inherently competitive aspect to the game that is rooted in storytelling, in that its component parts are meant to encourage a narrative through the belief of its participants that the component parts are important and should be regarded within an IC context.

pretending that this game is nothing more than a chatroom is in the same vein as players who only regard mechanics and their design, rebuking any importance of those elements within the context of a story. to take a trite recent example for lack of a better one: thinking that being a borg is better than being a cultist because as a borg you are in some ways mechanically superior to your teammates, rather than placing importance on being a cultist because you are meant to be in a cult.

storytelling and gameplay go hand-in-hand. they are not antagonistic to one another. gameplay doesn't always mean combat without an ultimate purpose. storytelling doesn't always mean stopping everything to have a monologue.

how you would obtain RP in this scenario is obvious, by enforcing that each side is protected in the case of blatant opposition to the RP rules, you let character A to take it slow and start an actual scene where stuff happens, because in the reality (this one) where they didn't let that happen, they went in with the belief that they were a danger but resolved the situation before it could even be confirmed or come into play in any meaningful way, something that would take mild interaction. if you take that in good faith, they were so paranoid and had so little trust in RP environment that they truly chose the option that came with the smallest possible interaction as possible and most chance for ruining someones experience for their own game to not be ruined but also came with the lowest amount of RP satisfaction, which is bad or if you take it in bad faith, they were aware of how RP enforcement is, and believed they could get away with not risking letting the opposition interact with them with the possible result being that their traitor game is cut short, (which is what I took it as cause an exact quote of them in deadchat was "I just wanted your equipment lol") which as a results causes people to be way more reluctant to be interact with others, having a slow, gradual decline of social aspects in their entirety.

this is gonna start getting nostalgia baitey in a minute but if I had to give an example on how it has gone years prior and how it should go, during a small interaction between tom brondl (seccie) and pigment comes to mind. tom brondl tracks down pigment the heretic into science maints, these characters already know eachother and know the other side is will not bomb rush the other, so with the comfort of knowing an interaction of any kind if rewarded, pigment starts the usual heretic psycho "what I'm doing isn't all that bad, I just want power teehee" speech, and since, again we want to give the other room to breathe, the interaction goes on with Tom listening to speech and desalinating by responding to his lines logically, while also trying to contact for backup as would any member of sec. this goes on, for what must have been at least 30+ seconds, before pigment who has sec comms, hears the call for backup, and signals that the moment is over with a "tch, wrong choice" and they start click on dude until they tilt 90 degrees, this isn't a long interaction, it isn't ground breaking, but it would be wrong to claim that both parties didn't walk away happy with the interaction, as small of a moment as it was, it let 2 character interact, show their personality and current motives, and it wasn't bogged down with an immediate but unfun reactionary action of one trying to attack the other instantly for the initial advantage, this is about the lowest form of scene you should always be allowed to expect on Manuel, but as I have said so, this specific one was from 2 years ago, but the gibbing incident? that was about 6 months ago. just let anything at all happen, "losing" is not real if you are actually just playing a character with goals, being unsuccessful in a task is not losing, it is just how improv goes, and you must adept to it. but you need to be put in a position where you trust your RP partner to make being unsuccessful still be fun if it comes to pass. and the current enforcement both doesn't give you that trust, and neither do the players.

it's very difficult to talk about this specific situation without having investigated it. without trying to undermine your point, how certain are you that this situation had no greater context that could've influenced a different ruling? perhaps the admin truly was in error and made a bad ruling. i cannot do anything about it unless someone tells me about it and what round it took place in. it's why we have processes to investigate and overturn these things if it's necessary.

a lot of these situations come down to disappointment in how they turned out. a mismatch in expectations from either side. there are rules we have which allow for antagonists to be treated proportionately to what they're doing and which restrict their ability to cause death and destruction, but in that same sense there are rules which allow antagonists to be antagonistic in a way that might not suit every participant and in those cases we actually want to protect them from this minefield of OOC expectations about how they must act in an antag-by-numbers way.

enforcement that allows only one way of navigating a situation by definition restricts the scope of available actions to a player. if you do this enough then one could make the argument that you're not left with an open emergent sandbox that creates its own narratives through the open and impulsive interactions of its participants, but rather they are locked into a contrived series of unbreakable and codified expectations that ultimately remove your meaningful choices from how to approach a situation at all.

I seriously don't want to be the guy to outright say this since it almost feels like political satire, but there is a serious disconnect with "how its supposed to be" and how it's done. how it's done is that it isn't done. and that's why people want such drastic changes, I mean come on the example you gave walks pretty close to my gibbing experience, the difference being a sec and not a det (and the untold differences in the actual scenario at detail but I don't know those :O) ) but that one the chef got into trouble, but in mine they didn't. so it's how you enforce it, and how its "meant to be enforced" but it's not how it's enforced. there is no consensus on what MRP means besides the warning when you join the server and that it's not being enforced as what it advertises, and when TG players tend to take break for years at a time with new players filling the slots they left behind with no knowledge on how it worked previously, it becomes too diluted to actually recognize the change of enforcement, and harder to enforce a rule based on the vibe.

once again, it's worth me saying here that it's extremely difficult to put my finger on the pulse of the community and go "ah, 17% more enforcement of mrp rule number 6 today." i can only address situations which are brought to my attention, and in those situations i'll do everything i can to see that they're resolved. the purpose of headmins setting precedents in rulings is for other admins to see them and assume that it's the intended method of enforcement. if admins choose not to follow that precedent, then it should either be because extenuating circumstances changed the situation enough that it warrants a different consideration, or they were mistaken. in either case, each individual situation is its entirely unique thing.

that's not reassuring to hear when players rely on admin rulings to understand the boundaries of the rules, but in a game as freeform and nebulous as this, it's just simply impossible to maintain that level of consistency across the board as unpaid volunteers to a giant never ending tabletop game of infinite possibilities. we must be measured in our approach and not overcorrect, because these things are only as true as the latest situation that stoked that sentiment. in a few weeks we'll have a slightly heavy-handed antag or sec ban and people in the peanut gallery will be back to saying that mrp is too heavy-handed and out of touch with what makes the game fun, that antags can't antag and sec can't sec anymore because of the uncaring admins and their disregard for nuance and context.

as long as there are groups of people coming together to participate in something, there will be disagreements and discontent in how things are managed. at the end of the day, i cannot realistically manage and operate on hurt feelings and lost sentimentality; these things are important, and i'm regretful that players end up feeling this way, but there is no quantifiable end goal to such an endeavour. what you have at the end of it is some shifting of the goal posts to a distant rp dreamland. if such a place were possible, it would already exist, and you would already be playing there.

instead what i'm offering is a pragmatic, realistic approach to solving tangible issues that players rub up against in-game. i will look into these issues on a case-by-case basis and make headmin rulings as appropriate to disseminate how i would like to see them enforced. we have processes in place to address rulings which are mismatched or mistaken from this, but people will need to look into utilizing those processes to get them resolved.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

This kinda seems like the exact opposite of everything we've ever tried to do with Manuel.

[TheBibleMelts]

i would like to make sure that folks know i threw this idea out to solve a few specific problems that have cropped up - i am not attached to this idea beyond thinking it would alleviate the deterioration of RP quality that happens when population grows too high, and so that people do not get locked out of their regular server during peak times when a chunk of the players may only be seeking a population vs. wanting to follow all of the RPR's. a siphon of some of the players to basil via offering TG MRP with a lessened ruleset was a solution to that in my mind.

this proposal doesn't serve my personal agendas, because i still think we'd ultimately be better off to remove tags from every server and have one single globalized ruleset to follow. barring that, i think this proposal can help with some current standing issues that are being raised.

[Higgin]

nobody's going to go to basil for this alone. pop has gravity. basil has a small, personal pop and a niche as a more chill lowpop spot for the people who hang out there, sometimes newer players wanting to test stuff out, and sibyl players are following the pop, not the rules (as in the ruleset - not to say they're coming to manuel to break the rp rules.)

it's a challenge to the culture and administration to address that people are coming to MRP for the pop, not necessarily the MRP.

the challenge isn't to the culture and administration of MRP though - it's to whatever is reducing the pop on LRP. if people are overall just playing less on LRP and it's the people who don't want to play lowpop LRP going to MRP, the problem to fix is why fewer people are playing and enjoying LRP enough to play there.

the solution is not to change MRP to HRP and try to create a middleground space for people you've already lost unless the reason they're leaving is that LRP isn't the MRP you're proposing.

do we have any idea what might be making LRP less attractive right now or as to what the people predominantly playing LRP before might want to make it a better experience within its own terms?

(*separately, a unified ruleset might be the answer if people are just generally tired of the play on LRP, but we should keep Terry in mind here, not just Sibyl. Sibyl getting lower pops does not mean people aren't enjoying LRP and the base ruleset gameplay in a large part of the community.)