/tg/Station 13

Manuel players argue up and down against families for a verity of reasons and nothing ever seems to get done. I have some things that I feel are constantly contested or spark arguments I'd like the headmins to weigh in on.


Players hunting down command or security for performing lawful damage control or securing a strongly justified shuttle call are not valid. They are valid if their actions are not lawful or if the shuttle call is poorly justified.

It is punishable from an admin standpoint if a player uses force in any way to convert or retaliate at someone for not willingly converting to their gang.

During the families rounds where subverting the ai is the focus the admins are encouraged to apply discouraging measures when a maint upload war starts.

If a gang member is arrested lawfully the rest of the gang cannot respond with lethal force. If the gang member was arrested illegally normal escilation rules apply.

Gang members are heavily discouraged from round removing other players, and are heavily discouraged from creating body pile ups that medical cannot keep up with.

If the round is revealed to be families players are allowed to use the suicide verb like they are allowed to when the round is revealed to be war ops. Command and security are discouraged from doing so and ahelping in advance would be preferable.

From an in character standpoint it reflects poorly on central to lose a station to gang warfare. Admins are encouraged to utalize erts and Centcom officials to counteract any uncontained chaos.


Please do not let this thread devolve into arguing over why families is bad or why families isnt fun or blah blah blah these are things I want the HEAD ADMINS to confirm.

Family members are fine to fight security and command if it's in line with their objectives to the point of getting them off their backs. If a gang has an objective to deal drugs, and security start arresting gang members, it would be fine to break those gang members out, it would not be fine to maxcap security and bridge. Your focus is the gang's objective and the roleplay that comes of it, not the antagonist status, and proportional force should be used always.

It's definitely not okay to hurt people for choosing not to join a gang. The design of the game mode is that it's voluntary, and this is what separates it from a conversion game mode. You cannot force someone to take an antagonist status.

Admins are already free to, but not obligated to, intervene in case of upload wars. Uploads are marked on GPS, if jannies aren't doing anything, go break the other one, admins do not need to do everything for players and this puts us in the awkward position of choosing which side we break the stalemate in favour of.

Gangs do not follow or respect the law, I'm not sure why there would be a distinction here. A gang member being arrested doesn't justify excessive force to get them out, but *only* because it should be kept proportional. C4 a wall in the prison, sure. Maxcap, no. Space law does not come into this.

Gangs are antags and follow antag policy. As long as someone gives a gang a reason to harm them, they are free to do it, up to and including round removal. All antags are already discouraged from creating massive body counts under the murderbone policy, the issue here is that gangs are a large number of antags subject to the same rules as traitors. Ten people killing one guy each for fair reasons feels to the player like murderbone even though there is no murderboner.

Don't suicide because you don't like the game mode. Especially if you're a critical role.

Again, admins are free to intervene if the situation needs it, but do not have to. This should not be changed, if an ERT is not called, then it's not necessary.

Don't suicide because you don't like the game mode. Especially if you're a critical role.

Asking Socratically, do you believe this way about war ops? If so, what makes families different?

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Sat Jan 08, 2022 11:22 am

Don't suicide because you don't like the game mode. Especially if you're a critical role.

Asking Socratically, do you believe this way about war ops? If so, what makes families different?

Yep, the act of randomly committing suicide IC in a roleplay environment because you don't enjoy the OOC roundtype is terrible and that it's allowed at all is surprising.

Sylphet wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 6:36 am

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Sat Jan 08, 2022 11:22 am

Don't suicide because you don't like the game mode. Especially if you're a critical role.

Asking Socratically, do you believe this way about war ops? If so, what makes families different?

Yep, the act of randomly committing suicide IC in a roleplay environment because you don't enjoy the OOC roundtype is terrible and that it's allowed at all is surprising.

We can't force players to play the game, if we ban them for suiciding they will press the big red X in the corner instead which accomplishes the same end result (not playing in the round)

iamgoofball wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 6:45 am We can't force players to play the game, if we ban them for suiciding they will press the big red X in the corner instead which accomplishes the same end result (not playing in the round)

Of course, this is why we should have an IC method of leaving the round gracefully, but that's outside the scope of the thread.

iamgoofball wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 6:45 am

Sylphet wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 6:36 am

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Sat Jan 08, 2022 11:22 am

Don't suicide because you don't like the game mode. Especially if you're a critical role.

Asking Socratically, do you believe this way about war ops? If so, what makes families different?

Yep, the act of randomly committing suicide IC in a roleplay environment because you don't enjoy the OOC roundtype is terrible and that it's allowed at all is surprising.

We can't force players to play the game, if we ban them for suiciding they will press the big red X in the corner instead which accomplishes the same end result (not playing in the round)

Yeah but then they can't go "OOH NUKIE REINFORCEMENTS" to basically just antag roll the War Ops.

Tangentially, I've always preferred families over revs as it's got more role play stems for people to build off of.

I think that basic escalation rules are fine enough. If they're getting your boiz, then you can get them back, but don't go off the deep end and start round removing/mass incarcerating for one bad actor unless it's spiraling into a station-ending threat.

I think the bigger issue is that sec has no reason to try diplomacy with the gangs. There's several gangs that have objectives that allies them with sec either directly or indirectly, which means that it's basically two factions vs. one.

Suiciding is bad faith play, but sometimes you gotta go or do something or whatever. Of course, heads suiciding is always a no-no. For the rp to be good, there needs to be some degree of conflict. If you don't want to participate, just don't get signed into a gang.

The only real policy thing I see with gangs is threatening people to join, which I personally think is fine as long as you aren't killing/round removing/GBJing people who refuse. They're antags. They don't need to be nice about it. Then again, I don't play sec or command, so there may be something I'm missing here.

Bumping this because Families could see a return before the term is over and we need to talk about this.

All of our rules and policies are written on the assumption that you did not voluntarily get converted. Voluntary conversion is ordinarily against the rules.

Familes are voluntary conversion antags. They need a policy that takes into account the fact that players can voluntarily convert into them.

Whatever policy is formulated should probably be generic to voluntary conversion antags in general, with side notes of familty specific policy to take into account the unique nature of this game mode.

Thinking along the lines of what you'd want to see from a voluntary conversion antag is probably the key to success, perhaps flavoured a little with some of Families more unique eccentricities.

Despite that, it may well be that no satisfactory overarching policy can be created and any family-specific policy is so big that we just don't expect players to read it. Still, I think shifting the approach to "how to make voluntary antag policy work in general" is going to be the best step forward.

Why would we allow suiciding to avoid a roundtype you don't like if we don't allow suiciding to antag roll. This encourages a rigidity and entitlement I'm not a fan of. In the former instances it's entitlement to a specific environment to roleplay at the expense of mechanics and in the latter it's entitlememt to a specific mechanical environment at the expense of roleplay. If we demand tg classic players play non antag rounds they may not want to, why do we not demand the same of MRP players?

Stickymayhem wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:07 am Why would we allow suiciding to avoid a roundtype you don't like if we don't allow suiciding to antag roll. This encourages a rigidity and entitlement I'm not a fan of. In the former instances it's entitlement to a specific environment to roleplay at the expense of mechanics and in the latter it's entitlememt to a specific mechanical environment at the expense of roleplay. If we demand tg classic players play non antag rounds they may not want to, why do we not demand the same of MRP players?

In my opinion: It's because playing non-antag is important for the servers to thrive. Whether or not people suicide on family rounds will not impact the servers as a whole, and if it does, that says more about families than anything else.

Stickymayhem wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:07 am Why would we allow suiciding to avoid a roundtype you don't like if we don't allow suiciding to antag roll. This encourages a rigidity and entitlement I'm not a fan of. In the former instances it's entitlement to a specific environment to roleplay at the expense of mechanics and in the latter it's entitlememt to a specific mechanical environment at the expense of roleplay. If we demand tg classic players play non antag rounds they may not want to, why do we not demand the same of MRP players?

the thing is, you can't force people to play a video game they don't enjoy

rolling for antag is technically "trying to get the game i want", but it's easier to ban that for being an intentional subversion of the mechanics we have set up to ensure players get to be antag roughly equally than it is to ban people for acting on an intentional subversion of...the round type?

if someone wants to be antag and doesn't get it, they still have an entire game to play if they choose to stay; they can still tide, or look for organic conflict, or do dumb gimmicks. if someone doesnt want to play families, or nuke ops, or extended, they dont really have the choice to stay since the entire round is invariably going to revolve around that game state

In the discussion of these issues we've decided to make a ruling about voluntary conversion antags (Families or otherwise)

Voluntary conversion antags are not full antags. They must follow their objectives like other partial antags and follow similar restrictions and escalation. Voluntary conversion antags should be enticing new recruits rather than coercing membership.

Drag wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 7:25 am

1. Players hunting down command or security for performing lawful damage control or securing a strongly justified shuttle call are not valid. They are valid if their actions are not lawful or if the shuttle call is poorly justified.
2. It is punishable from an admin standpoint if a player uses force in any way to convert or retaliate at someone for not willingly converting to their gang.
3. During the families rounds where subverting the ai is the focus the admins are encouraged to apply discouraging measures when a maint upload war starts.
4. If a gang member is arrested lawfully the rest of the gang cannot respond with lethal force. If the gang member was arrested illegally normal escilation rules apply.
5. Gang members are heavily discouraged from round removing other players, and are heavily discouraged from creating body pile ups that medical cannot keep up with.
6. If the round is revealed to be families players are allowed to use the suicide verb like they are allowed to when the round is revealed to be war ops. Command and security are discouraged from doing so and ahelping in advance would be preferable.
7. From an in character standpoint it reflects poorly on central to lose a station to gang warfare. Admins are encouraged to utalize erts and Centcom officials to counteract any uncontained chaos.

1. Players should be focused on achieving the goals of their gang
2. Yes, voluntary conversions should be enticed rather than coerced
3. This is being changed in favor of something that won't cause upload wars.
4. Yes, although an "illegal arrest" might be a bit difficult to prove
5. Yes, in-line with their status as partial antags.
6. Yes, this is in-line with suicide policy and should change with it rather than being defined here
7. In-line with new rule 12, admins are allowed to respond to station and antag chaos via ERTs at their own discretion

Headmin Votes:
RaveRadbury: Agree
Dragomagol: Agree
NamelessFairy: Agree