/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

I was responsible for the new/current name change policy that allowed for honorifics like dr. or titles like mr, doctor, or mononyms. This was based on there being the occasional historically allowed name like Luck, Officer Friendly etc. which were tolerated by admins since forever and more or less grandfathered into the new rules.

However, I've since seen enough names that I regret making this policy (e.g. toallet) and would like to change the name policy to add a strict first name last name minimum, no honorifics rule to make the game just slightly less immersion killing for players. Existing policy like 'if an admin thinks it doesn't fit would be kept. Reasonable nicknames in the middle of a name would still be allowed, although I never see them. Silly names would still be allowed, as long as they reasonably fit into a wacky space station setting.

current names that wouldn't fit the policy wouldn't attract a ban the first time, just an admin asking you to change it

OK I started writing for like a scoring system, but realised I was talking out of my ass How about "Character names with the following characteristics may cause an admin to ask you to change it:

• Famous real or fictional people
• Mononyms (a single name)
• Honorifics/Titles (e.g. Mr., Dr., Rev.)
• Poor taste or inappropriate
• The same or similar to others on the server

Lizards generally follow the naming convention of "does-the-thing" (e.g. "Mends-the-Pipes", "Walks-the-Halls"), and Plasmapeople take the name of an element or compound (real or fictitious) followed by a Roman numeral (e.g. "Borax XII", "Thiotimoline V")."

Though this does not get rid of the "but what about x".

The worst part about the naming thing right now is that SOME admins might allow your name and SOME might not, that doesn't fix it

oranges wrote:I think at this point we can assume safely everyone has very little faith in the credibility of the admins niknak, just look at the mess of a rules page we have now

Please dont play this game, everyone always says that regardless of what state the rules are in. They were 10 times longer, ausops rewrote them and everyone said "yea this is amazing and much better" and then slowly barely anything changes but yet we get to the same place of someone babbling on about "the rules page is a mess". Give it a rest

Armhulen wrote:The worst part about the naming thing right now is that SOME admins might allow your name and SOME might not, that doesn't fix it

This is true for like any server policy ever except maybe for hacking and doxing

Grazyn wrote:

Armhulen wrote:The worst part about the naming thing right now is that SOME admins might allow your name and SOME might not, that doesn't fix it

This is true for like any server policy ever except maybe for hacking and doxing

You're never gonna find SOME admins who think its ok to maxcap the station for no reason as an antag and SOME who don't.

NikNakFlak wrote:

oranges wrote:I think at this point we can assume safely everyone has very little faith in the credibility of the admins niknak, just look at the mess of a rules page we have now

Please dont play this game, everyone always says that regardless of what state the rules are in. They were 10 times longer, ausops rewrote them and everyone said "yea this is amazing and much better" and then slowly barely anything changes but yet we get to the same place of someone babbling on about "the rules page is a mess". Give it a rest

"Barely anything changes" except the game, constantly. Features and rebalances are added constantly and you expect the same rules to always work?

Name policy should be that any name that's too outwardly silly or doesn't make any attempts to be in universe are discussed with multiple admins. If it was a situation where a certain number of admins had to agree then it would alleviate the "only one admin on the entire team dislikes my name" situation that stops stricter naming policy.

Whether a name should be permitted or not, and where the boundaries lie will always be subjective, probably more subjective than the other policies at the moment.

Gouty wrote:

Alipheese wrote:Aieet mahpoo is finally gonna die

That is a pretty good flyperson name tbh. Plus it doesn't sound a million miles away from legit names from South Asia (e.g. "Ajeet Madhu")

I would like to see the changes outlined in the OP.

Where do we stand on the use of famous/fictional characters as names?

flyperson? no. this shithead is a human

It's also a blatantly racist name because it plays on the "Indians are poo" meme

my issue with honorifics and nicknames is they explicitly are not part of a name, at least mono names are a name themselves.
again though name policy is so inconsequential that beyond explicitly ooc names (Which are already dealt with, to my knowledge) it seems silly to heavily enforce any sort of explicit guidelines

I think the issue here is that some admins have an irrational hatred towards mononames. It doesn't matter if it's a joke name or not, they're gonna hate it anyway as long as it's mono, even if it's just James. It's 2555 ffs, last names have come a long way since the middle age and I don't see what's so unacceptable in a mononame.

Grazyn wrote:I think the issue here is that some admins have an irrational hatred towards mononames. It doesn't matter if it's a joke name or not, they're gonna hate it anyway as long as it's mono, even if it's just James. It's 2555 ffs, last names have come a long way since the middle age and I don't see what's so unacceptable in a mononame.

because admins are specifically chosen to hate fun in all forms

I personally hate it because it feels like it's one of the last things standing between /tg/station and just outright being no rp

like, if everyone has firstname lastname then it feels like people might TRY to recognize the fact that they're a character on a wacky space station, and I don't think it's really in the character of a giant megacorp to allow the rank and file to fuck with the system

this is for sure something that bothers me more out of game than in it, however - I don't know why

Qbopper wrote: I personally hate it because it feels like it's one of the last things standing between /tg/station and just outright being no rp

No. Bad.

note that I said "personally"

in the long run I don't have any effect on policy and I don't bwoink single names because that isn't policy (unless they're excessively bad and OOC, obviously)

Qbopper wrote:

Grazyn wrote:I think the issue here is that some admins have an irrational hatred towards mononames. It doesn't matter if it's a joke name or not, they're gonna hate it anyway as long as it's mono, even if it's just James. It's 2555 ffs, last names have come a long way since the middle age and I don't see what's so unacceptable in a mononame.

because admins are specifically chosen to hate fun in all forms

I personally hate it because it feels like it's one of the last things standing between /tg/station and just outright being no rp

like, if everyone has firstname lastname then it feels like people might TRY to recognize the fact that they're a character on a wacky space station, and I don't think it's really in the character of a giant megacorp to allow the rank and file to fuck with the system

this is for sure something that bothers me more out of game than in it, however - I don't know why

Hate to self quote here but

Grazyn wrote:Yes because enforcing a stricter naming policy will really bring back the RP tg used to have.

Clinging on to such a minor thing for the sake of RP is like not letting a braindead loved one die because their heart is still beating. But they're not alive. It's just a husk of their former self, and they're not coming back. If you want to cling onto something, think of all the happy memories you have of them. They will always live on in your mind. But now it's time to - let go -

As the player of Chongy (who is not a clown), I have a vested interest in protecting mononames.

That having been said, a lot of them are terrible. I understand needing to draw a line in policy about naming conventions.

I care a lot less about mononames, honestly, than I do about things like 'The Best HoS', 'Mr Penis', 'Comrade Bacon,' 'Bucket of Shitcurity', or 'HARM MAN', et al.

But it's hard to consistently and objectively enforce 'no terrible meme names' without providing a reasonably strict template for naming. I might be perfectly fine with you naming yourself 'Sasquatch,' for example, but other admins wouldn't. But most admins will pretty much agree that 'Sasquatch Fucker' is, while entertaining, a bad name.

There are lots of ways to make your name reasonable.

Let's say you want to be Pickle Man. Okay, now you're Pick L. Mann, or Pikkel Mann.

Just use some creativity and adhere to the template and don't be glaringly OOC and there are really a lot of places you can take this.

feem wrote:Just use some creativity and adhere to the template and don't be glaringly OOC and there are really a lot of places you can take this.

this is a far better rule/policy/whatever than explicit guidelines

I mean, when I think of "appearance ban" I think of actual immersion breaking character appearance, like this, but this is allowed. How's that any different than playing Chinky, the asian assistant with a rice hat and white toothbrush mustache for the bucktooth?

Grazyn wrote:

Qbopper wrote:

Grazyn wrote:I think the issue here is that some admins have an irrational hatred towards mononames. It doesn't matter if it's a joke name or not, they're gonna hate it anyway as long as it's mono, even if it's just James. It's 2555 ffs, last names have come a long way since the middle age and I don't see what's so unacceptable in a mononame.

because admins are specifically chosen to hate fun in all forms

I personally hate it because it feels like it's one of the last things standing between /tg/station and just outright being no rp

like, if everyone has firstname lastname then it feels like people might TRY to recognize the fact that they're a character on a wacky space station, and I don't think it's really in the character of a giant megacorp to allow the rank and file to fuck with the system

this is for sure something that bothers me more out of game than in it, however - I don't know why

Hate to self quote here but

Grazyn wrote:Yes because enforcing a stricter naming policy will really bring back the RP tg used to have.

Clinging on to such a minor thing for the sake of RP is like not letting a braindead loved one die because their heart is still beating. But they're not alive. It's just a husk of their former self, and they're not coming back. If you want to cling onto something, think of all the happy memories you have of them. They will always live on in your mind. But now it's time to - let go -

did you not see my post where I clarified that I don't actually use my admin powers to enforce my personal opinion though

like, I dislike it, but that's about it. regardless if you think the reason I dislike it is a meme or not

RP is a fucking buzzword but I find the shitty name gimmicks are just another way people have stopped even trying to respect the concept of playing as a character and acting like that character

but it's not like i'm desperately trying to turn the place into bay by forcing people to use firstname lastname no fun allowed etc

No I understand, I was like you, and believe me when I say that you're just hurting yourself by focusing on these things. Just accept that RP on tg is fucking dead and maybe you will find joy again.

Roleplaying means different things to different people, but at the end of the day it means acceptance of the world you're living in and the rules of that world, and adherence to principles of IC vs. OOC.

In some games, this means a strict delineation between you and the character, up to and including asking yourself questions like 'would my character really do this?' and participating in the game world and world-building. IC vs. OOC in this instance means you cannot know things that your character would not know, and cannot act upon the world in ways that your character would not or could not act. This is 'traditional' roleplaying.

In other games, it means that a world is built around you and you interact with it in a free form fashion, such as the Elder Scrolls games (Oblivion, Skyrim, et al). Ignoring the fact that they're single-player, these are games that present their lore, world, and game systems as 'IC' but do not require strict adherence to your character as an entity independent of yourself.

Games like World of Warcraft also follow this methodology, though there are also RP-enforced (loosely, usually) servers available which cater more to the 'traditional' roleplaying aspects.

The current state of tgstation is largely the latter. You are not limited in your actions except based upon what you are capable of doing in the game world as denoted by systems, server rules, AND very specific IC vs. OOC separations. You can't talk about the real world in-game, you're expected to maintain a semblance of IC communications (you're not reading comms, you're hearing them) and understand that your character is not physically you at the keyboard, and you're expected to put at least a tiny bit of effort into the things you do and represent in the game world, unless you're in a wall-breaking role: wizards, and wizard rounds in general, are given some amount of leeway for memes, and they often violate the dead/living world barrier; clowns are often given some allowances for pushing the boundaries of IC vs. OOC via memes if they're funny about it, and both clowns and mimes can have names that fall outside of the policy being debated in this thread.

Saying things like 'RP is dead on /tg/station' ignores the reality of the situation. While 'traditional' roleplaying may have existed in a more widespread fashion (this is debatable) in the past, the current game has very little distinction between the servers (whereas that distinction used to represent traditional vs. loose rp) and the RP we ask of players is very minimal. You ARE both encouraged and allowed to roleplay more extensively, but we're not going to hold you to anything except those very loose standards.

The reason that those standards exist is less to 'uphold the last vestiges of RP on the servers,' in my opinion. They exist because, as a game of paranoia and intrigue and ridiculousness, being completely OOC about everything violates some of the reasons that a lot of people play the game. It really doesn't make any sense to sit there and be a janitor unless you're _being a janitor_, at least in terms of separating yourself at the keyboard from the icon on the screen. It doesn't make a lot of sense to play a security officer and limit yourself to stun weapons (other than the rules and precedents about same) when lethals are far more effective in terms of 'winning' except that you're playing a role.

This is the trade-off that you, as players, are going to have to accept: if you want game mechanics and game feel to stay 'tgstation' and not 'Halo' or 'Doom' or 'Whatever The Kids Like These Days,' then you have to accept that there is a distinction between you and the character you play: between your handle/ckey and the person you are in-game.

If you throw away these 'last vestiges lol rp is dead,' then a number of game mechanics just go right out the window and may as well be removed. Why have reasons for shuttle calls? Why wait around at all? Why have science? Why have cargo? Why have virology, or the bar, or janitors, or anything other than medbay, command, security, and antags?

I'm not trying to be all slippery slope about things: I'm saying that these 'last vestiges of RP' are super-simple to follow, very minor asks of the playerbase, and exist to maintain the culture and gameplay mechanics of the game itself.

If you have problems with that, go play Factorio or Rimworld. They're pretty great games if you want your autism forts without other players or 'being IC' to worry about.

NikNakFlak wrote:You're basing that entire fact around admins not having good enough judgement when to make a call.
Basically, the no faith in admins route, but how often do we get an admin complaint from someone changing their name and even if we do, we usually just laugh because their name is usually bad enough to change.
That or sparks ANOTHER thread like this.

No I'm not.
Maybe it's hard to tell because I have to huff paint before I post in policy discussion threads, but that's not what I'm talking about at all.

I have faith in admins being able to make judgement calls on names. What I don't have faith in is our ability to stand by those calls, in our current, previous, and proposed future system.
What I'm trying to say is that when an admin makes a call on a name, if that player chooses to disagree they can refuse to change it.
This results in an appearance ban, which results in an appeal, which results in an argument about why the name is or isn't wrong, a demand to see precedent, admins with differing opinions entering the discussion and putting forth those opinions (which muddles things up even more) and ultimately, a lift on the ban and that person likely using the same name they already were.

I have faith in the admins to do simple stuff like this, but I don't have faith in the system to work with them.

I mean really thinking about it, naming policy is always going to be a huge mess that makes people angry no matter what
because you can't meet the requirements for each and every one of these dumb opinions

That's why nobody but three people get to make the final class, it's not really that hard. Making a mountain out of a molehill as usual, just literally ignore the whiners and grow a fucking backbone

I'd love to but that's the problem, you have these dissenting opinions among the admins themselves that results in you being unable to ignore them and results in the decision being overturned

NikNakFlak wrote:

oranges wrote:I think at this point we can assume safely everyone has very little faith in the credibility of the admins niknak, just look at the mess of a rules page we have now

Please dont play this game, everyone always says that regardless of what state the rules are in. They were 10 times longer, ausops rewrote them and everyone said "yea this is amazing and much better" and then slowly barely anything changes but yet we get to the same place of someone babbling on about "the rules page is a mess". Give it a rest

That doesn't make them good just becase Ausops rewrote them and a bunch of randoms though it was good

You literally can't even quantify who liked it, shut the fuck up

There still is rp according to the only correct definition of it, but I wager many are low-key moments noticed or acknowledged by few. I saw some scientists the other day, just chatting about toxins on their channel. Was it rp? I'd say it was, they were playing their characters in a believable way for scientists on a wacky space station. It was also """roleplay""""- a bunch of players cooperating together in a meaningful way beyond just pure combat. Yeah it was trivial, it was just choosing to partake in some radio chatter, but it was still 'rp'' in that sense. Acknowledge, appreciate and hold dear those low-key moments.

As for naming policy, I think I'm going to go with what Feem said with the added request for admins to put any names they don't like in the relevant player's notes. Some already do but for the purposes of consistency at least for an individual player that would be nice.

Armhulen wrote:The worst part about the naming thing right now is that SOME admins might allow your name and SOME might not, that doesn't fix it

Then actual codification is needed.

A button that forces a mob to take on a random name would be handy for admins to have if they dont already have it. Boink them about their name, press the button on then, tell them to knock it off for future rounds.

i'm sorry i turned this into yet another rp policy thread

Dumb names are bad. We're low RP, but for fuck's sake at least put the bare minimum of effort into naming yourself.

NikNakFlak wrote:You literally can't even quantify who liked it, shut the fuck up

angry butthurted post

I like the hard data to back up claims

oranges wrote:

NikNakFlak wrote:

oranges wrote:I think at this point we can assume safely everyone has very little faith in the credibility of the admins niknak, just look at the mess of a rules page we have now

Please dont play this game, everyone always says that regardless of what state the rules are in. They were 10 times longer, ausops rewrote them and everyone said "yea this is amazing and much better" and then slowly barely anything changes but yet we get to the same place of someone babbling on about "the rules page is a mess". Give it a rest

That doesn't make them good just becase Ausops rewrote them and a bunch of randoms though it was good

Ausops is a headmin, he was voted by admins, I assume he rewrote the rules after consulting with other admins and taking into account discussions made in policy, now I understand that headmins are just empty figureheads with little to no power (the tiller is in the steady hands of the usual codermins/maintainers circlejerk) but it would be nice to at least pretend they matter without dismissing them as a "random admin supported by a bunch of randoms".

Just because trump is president doesn't make him good at drafting up laws? I can respect ausops rules and not break them and still criticise them as not being very good and being overly prescriptive?

but trump doesn't even draft laws it's congr-- never mind it's bait

Anyway I think the shitty names problem will get a lot better when summer over and we don't have an ongoing influx of new people likely to name themselves shitty things

bandit wrote:Anyway I think the shitty names problem will get a lot better when summer over and we don't have an ongoing influx of new people likely to name themselves shitty things

let's hope

oranges wrote:Just because trump is president doesn't make him good at drafting up laws? I can respect ausops rules and not break them and still criticise them as not being very good and being overly prescriptive?

Did you participate in the discussion with him and other admins? Because what you wrote makes it seem like ausops rewrote the rules all by himself and other "randoms" just went along with it. I seriously hope this wasn't the case.

Argonian lizard names with random jokes in them are way more immersion shattering than mononames and lizard names always get left out of these discussions somehow

^ Yeah seriously
It's such low-energy garbage

Lizards on a whole have been nothing but a detriment

Grazyn I'd like to bait you by saying the rule rewrite was influenced by Russian hackers but it was in fact new Zealand hackers.

Anyway thanks for the discussion gamer pals