Bottom post of the previous page:
So our roleplay rules have been through hell (and back?) and I remain deeply skeptical of many of the rules intentions and efficacy. Although I consider myself an avid roleplayer, and would love to see a higher standard of roleplay on the servers I play on, it does not seem like our MRP rules our providing that, at least by my personal experience.I believe it is fair to say that a roleplay rule is successful if it promotes a higher quality of roleplay within the server, and if you disagree with this definition, you also likely disagree with the mission statement of our MRP ruleset in the first place.
Lets focus our attention into one of the most hotly debated roleplay rule, rule 5
[quote = 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.[/quote]
Now the first part of this rule is not controversial. Antagonists are vital to many interesting stories, and antagonists should put forward some effort to "playing the role" of the given antagonist. If you area traitor you should do traitor things, and if you are a changeling you should do changeling things. This first part is also not enforced very often, friendly or passive antagonists are stigmatized but very rarely punished by administrative action (although an admin would explicitly be in the right to do so, as confirmed in precedents).
The full list of precedents can be found here for review : https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules#RP_Rule_5_Precedents
It makes intuitive sense to me how the first half of rule 5 encourages roleplay, it requires you make some effort to "play your role" as an antagonist, and forbids actions that would be antithetical to your role without good reason.
The second part of this rule "Some antagonists are restricted in the ways and quantities they may lend themselves to visiting death and destruction upon the crew," is where I and many others begin to take hesitancy. These exact restrictions can be found at this link: https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules#Rest ... estruction
What is not immediately obvious to me, is why these restrictions on antagonist action benefit the quality of roleplay. They appear convoluted, difficult to remember, and arbitrary, at least at first blush. Additionally, it seems like this would diminish the quality of roleplay in interactions with this antagonist because they are being explicitly prevented from doing actions which would otherwise be "within the scope" of their role. Furthermore, the complicated nature of the rules text leads to misunderstanding of exactly what a restricted antagonist can or can not do. This alongside the threat of punishment would presumably lead players, myself included at some point, to be very fearful of what kind of actions they are allowed to preform. This means the player is now worried about not breaking the rules of the game, instead of following the action that they think their character would best take.
For these reasons, the restrictions provided by the second half of rule 5 intuitively seem to do more harm than good for the quality of roleplay in the server.
But I come with an open mind, is it perhaps that there are roleplay benefits to rule 5 that outweigh negatives? Or is it perhaps that these negatives are not actually negatives in all reality.
To all the supporters of roleplay rule 5 (the second half specifically), I ask for your attempts to convince me that my logic is flawed.
