What counts as "Friend-tagging"? (And how do we stop it?)

[Jackary]

During my time in this community, I have always wondered one thing here more than I have in any prior server.

What counts as Friendtagging?

This idea of "friendtagging" has always been strange to me, Especially as someone with thousands of hours on Goon, where stuff like this is common.

Is escalation friendtagging?
Is pacifist antagging friendtagging?
Are gear shops friendtagging?
Is working with Security friendtagging?
Is being a head, and kicking out shitters from your department using antag gear friendtagging?
Is silently doing your steal objectives then just going along with your day friendtagging?
Where does this idea of a "friendtag" end, and an antag begin?

And how will we as a community stop this seemingly invisible threat onto our stations?

[Jacquerel]

Being a friendly antagonist is when you appear on the station and say "guys I'm a wizard but I'm chill dw" and then don't attempt to cause any problems even though causing problems is your job

Deciding that you and the whole crew are on the same side on a permanent basis, essentially, and not attempting to create any discord
This is likely to make the game more boring

If you're causing problems for anyone by any means (including while lying about being friendly) then you're doing your job and you are cool

The only things on your list that I think qualify are "working with sec" and "using gear to kick out shitters" and that's really still only if it is the ONLY thing you do
If you use traitor RD to play a totally normal round of RD then you wasted the roll and everyone's time


Even temporarily allying with the crew against a different threat can be cool, if there is a story to it
But not if the story is "I rolled up to sec roundstart and gave them all revolvers in exchange for letting me hunt other traitors"


Selling gear to randos is likely to cause problems
Causing problems without killing anyone is still causing problems
Causing problems stealthily is still causing problems
Causing just one specific problem and then continuing with your day as normal still caused one problem
If you aren't causing problems to any one on the crew you failed to antagonist, otherwise you're good

[DrAmazing343]

I was pondering the same question the other night when I teamed with a pair of BB's (both heads of staff lol) as a ling to fight cult, and I think that Jacq's got the right idea. I was still doing antag shit that round (welderbombing cargo, transform stinging randos) just with the goal of stopping the roundend boulder from rolling.

Never work with Sec unless you're undercover helping get someone get put into perma so you can Epstein them. That's fucking awesome for a story.

[dendydoom]

to me it's only an actual problem when someone tries to manipulate others on an OOC level into allowing an antag to exist without argument, and support this with OOC fiat rather than actual IC storytelling. what i mean by this is if a wizard announces that they're "friendly" and expects everyone to buy into this like it's a universal truth, with no suspicion or anything deeper going on just because they say so. it's lazy and, i'm gonna say it, entitled.

if you're using non-violence as a means to an end then i wouldn't call this friendtagging at all. imo you should be allowed to approach your antag round however you want to. but you shouldn't get extra protections on any OOC level just because you've decided that you don't want the crew to have a reason to fight you. they are also entitled to find a reason.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I do despise friendly antagonists. All of our definitions can be derived from the idea that the antagonist is supposed to be playing a character, and that character is the villain of the story. I'm going to analyze your questions as if the player was a reasonable actor in a play. I'm defining playing a friendly antagonist as: Being passive or helpful to the crew to the point that your character no longer make sense in the universe, and thus breaking the verisimilitude of the game.

Is escalation friendtagging?:

Escalating with people is not friendtagging. It makes sense that a particularly heartless traitor would bump someone off for pissing them off in a minor way, or for a low profile traitor to avoid and deescalate interpersonal conflict to keep their mission secret. Anything across that spectrum is fair game. Even being merciful as a traitor when you otherwise have nothing to game is beyond this scope, however if a traitor is sparing their opponent from every single battle they win, it becomes pretty uninteresting, as a roleplaying tip, I would recommend only letting the particularly pitiful or perhaps honorable combatants escape with their lives.

Is pacifist antagging friendtagging?:

You do not need to engage in direct conflict to be a believable antagonist, but if you are explicitly adverse to causing anyone harm no matter the circumstances, that is not good antagonist behavior. Your actions throughout the round should at the very least give the crew an excuse to hate you. Pairing an aversion to combat with a "why are you arresting me? I'm not attacking you!" attitude is about as bad as it gets with friendly antagonists, you could be fearful, pleading for mercy, stoic, or perhaps smug, but acting like you are entitled to be left alone just because you haven't hurt anyone yet makes no sense in character, and also have stupid gameplay ramification.

Are gear shops friendtagging?:

They can work if you are sort of doing a black market trenchcoat vendor thing, where you contact people secretly and do your dealings in dark maintenance tunnels. Bribing people with items behind closed doors also can work. But if you just set up shop in the commissary and start openly selling ninja stars for 50 credits each, I think that's pretty lame, but I might buy it given the circumstances. If you are openly selling and then get raided by security or even just well meaning crew members and then refuse to engage with them as adversaries, you have ventured into the territory of friendtagging.

Is working with Security friendtagging?:

Operating openly with security as an antagonist is friendtagging. If you are not revealed as an antagonist it can be excused as acting undercover. If security has some sort of leverage over you, it would be reasonable for you to begrudgingly follow their demands.
You can fight other antagonists, or even call a truce with security if there really is a big existential threat, but you should never be openly cooperating.
Is being a head, and kicking out shitters from your department using antag gear friendtagging?

Using antag gear openly and expecting no repercussions is friendtagging.

Is silently doing your steal objectives then just going along with your day friendtagging?:

This isn't friendtagging, but you could make the argument that it isn't particularly interesting antag play.

Where does this idea of a "friendtag" end, and an antag begin?

To openly operate as an antagonist explicitly helping the crew, or to openly operate as an antagonist with the expectation that you should be safe from harassment if you aren't.

And how will we as a community stop this seemingly invisible threat onto our stations?:

For MRP, uphold the text of rule 5 and note/antag ban people who play friendly antags
For both, losers who play as a friendly antag and then harass their killers in occ should be dealt a rule 1, and rule 10 ban.

[Higgin]

[real shit, this is a good breakdown of answers to every question in the OP as I see it]

Is silently doing your steal objectives then just going along with your day friendtagging?:

This isn't friendtagging, but you could make the argument that it isn't particularly interesting antag play.

Where does this idea of a "friendtag" end, and an antag begin?

To openly operate as an antagonist explicitly helping the crew, or to openly operate as an antagonist with the expectation that you should be safe from harassment if you aren't.

And how will we as a community stop this seemingly invisible threat onto our stations?:

For MRP, uphold the text of rule 5 and note/antag ban people who play friendly antags
For both, losers who play as a friendly antag and then harass their killers in occ should be dealt a rule 1, and rule 10 ban.

the only thing I have to add is that design can also play a role in this.

A lot of antags and their kits don't come with a compel or strict limits on how you should use them - in turn, this makes it easy enough to friendtag with them. It's also part of them being useful and interesting for more creative play which, to take from the above, can sometimes circumstantially look like friendtagging but not be.

More general solutions have included access restriction by snowflaking antag gear and abilities (Syndicate firing pins, inherent stuff like stands/martial arts/spells,) but I tend to dislike this because it takes the ability to access that stuff out of the hands of the crew (you should be able to pick up the DEsword off the dude who went for broke with it, imo) and means that it almost always constitutes a dead-ass obvious tell when you see it.

Even if they have those restrictions on who can use them, however, there's nothing that really prevents you from being basically open or friendly with them as long as they're in your hands - but there is one stand-out exception:



in His magnificence, he says "kill or die" and if you don't use him to kill, you will die. there is no friendtagging with Him.

In some other servers/codebases, if you fail to do your objectives or make moves on things like repaying a debt, killing a target, or getting things you need (food/water/drugs/a sight of your particular fascination,) you will die. There are ways we could work this into our antag design to punish friendtagging or even just to more generally light a fire under folks' asses about antagging more aggressively.

Because it would constrain and condition play, limiting player freedom, I'm not sure we would want to, but the levers are there - we could if we wanted to, or we could make it more of something where in order to actually use the tools of antagonism, you have to opt in to increasing levels of compulsion that will punish you if you don't live up to them.

That's the whole deal with His Grace. It's Blackrazor in a toolbox, and if we want people to be unlawful and evil, making more antag gear/abilities behave like Blackrazor is not a bad way to do it.

[yttriums]

And how will we as a community stop this seemingly invisible threat onto our stations?

Kill. Wolf. Muddler.