/tg/Station 13

From Roleplay Rules, Restricted Antag Death and Destruction, Without objectives.

They have no obligation to treat their victims but escalating over minor issues should not result in the antagonist taking steps to permanently round-remove the other player unless escalation policy would otherwise permit it.

The section regarding round removal here has always struck me as odd. Obviously, it is actively detrimental to an antagonist who is attempting to retain anonymity (as most are) to allow a witness. Given how relatively cheap revival is, there is in practice zero difference between a witness who is in hard crit, and one that is dead. Death on its own is not really even a significant state of being, and in terms of actions taken by the victim, and thus the story of the round, is indistinguishable from being in hard crit. There is no permanent mark, or punishment for dying, except for the longer time that you have to wait to be revived.

This is also very vague, and I have little idea as to how it is supposed to be enforced. What constitutes "steps to permanently round-remove the other player?" Would dragging the body of a man you just killed into maint to get them out of the public eye count? Are you just obligated to leave the body where it lies? If you want some time with the body to loot or what have you, surely you must be able to take it some place private, but are you able to disable suit sensors? You are practically begging a paramedic to show up and witness your crime if you don't, if they do take of the suit sensors, are you obligated to put them back on, lest we remove someone from the round permanently.
What about decapitation? If you leave a body, who's to say they have been permanently removed from the round when any old botanist with some time could make a pod person clone of them. A human can be revived from a single mangled brain left somewhere in maintenance. In fact, the only true methods of round removal is total body destruction and insurance they have no blood, or transferring their consciousness into a mob that can be butchered or otherwise permanently killed, like a wraith.

All of this seems very antithetical to roleplay.

When wanting to cause death and destruction not related to objectives, restricted antagonists may instead rely on extremely relaxed escalation.

They may escalate lethally sooner and with less justification, may use more lethal methods to escalate and may rely on antagonistic reasons for escalating. Such reasons may include escalating against people who are excessively polite or helpful as well as being mean or rude, escalating against groups of people who exclude them or escalating against people who ignore or avoid attempts to communicate entirely.

They have no obligation to treat their victims but escalating over minor issues should not result in the antagonist taking steps to permanently round-remove the other player unless escalation policy would otherwise permit it.

The purpose of this addition to the roleplay rules was to allow antagonistic escalation; i.e. starting fights for dumb, petty or backwards reasons simply because you're an antag, and being able to jump to lethals far quicker and with far less reason. One of the examples includes escalating against players being polite and/or helpful, to really colour what antagonistic escalation is. But it's still escalation, just very relaxed.

It was not intended to be a pass for MRP antags to hide/round remove bodies for no or poor reason unless they have objectives for that. An antag will have to weigh up the pros and cons of attacking and killing another player for minor issues knowing they're not breaking the rules, but also that they can't use that to forcibly round remove someone unless normal escalation policy would otherwise allow it.

What a minor issue/reason is can't be defined, it can only be intuited from common sense and the context of any given IC scenario. RP server antagonists should be allowed the freedom to actually antagonise without the admin team backseat gaming them, but the RP rules draw a clear line that restricted antags cannot just do a classic department-to-department or hallway exterminatus.

If it wasn't a minor issue/reason, then it's perfectly fine to round removal (as the clause states) regardless.

Steps taken to permanently round-remove other players retains its ordinary English meaning. Did the player do something beyond the mere act of killing them and leaving the body where it fell to make them harder to find or revive? Then they've probably done this.

Timberpoes wrote: If it wasn't a minor issue/reason, then it's perfectly fine to round removal (as the clause states) regardless.

This makes sense — so for instance, if someone witnesses you killing a target, and you kill the witness, round removal would be acceptable since that’s not a minor issue and you’re more justified for it. But if someone’s being overly nice and you decide to kill them for that, round removal is too far there.

Is that the long and short of it?

Yeah I'm pretty into "Kill someone because they took the toolbelt you wanted but don't RR them" but if someone's a witness, well, sorry mate but now you know too much and we don't have death amnesia rules.

All that makes sense, but is it not true they are a witness to their own death?
I understand the significance of this rule, but I think it is flawed as is.

This line was from the wider context of antagonistic escalation. The goal was to bind antags to a looser form of escalation. Exempt them from the need to revive people they kill, let them go lethal faster and let them use "evil" reasons to escalate because they're the baddies.

But it's still escalation. Under escalation, permission to kill is not always the same as permission to end that player's shift. There are situations in which escalation rules permit it, and this is also something more loosely applied to restricted MRP antags.

Above all else, antagonists should be able to sensibly antagonise on MRP. So we expect admins to also approach issues like this sensibly on MRP, looking at the context of what happened and what was reasonable.

In general it's expected that simply stashing a body somewhere on the station is fine and generally common-sense to allow universally when an antag validly kills a player, even under the super loose antag escalation rules.

A couple of examples where a line may be crossed are genuinely making the player more difficult to revive (debraining and hiding the brain, husking the body) or setting up a situation in which the body will never realistically be found (turning off suit sensors, stripping jumpsuits, spacing).

But it needs an admin looking at the context and reasons to decide when a player's actions are unreasonable. Some of the above may be allowed if the RP situation that led to the kill would make sense for this to happen. So there's no checklist. Just good old sensible administration.

It is also not the same as these things happening by coincidence. Stashing a body when the player never turned their suit sensors on/turned them off themselves is a them skill issue. Fighting in space and the dead player's body floating away is a them skill issue. The player getting set on fire by coincidence and having their jumpsuit burned off is an SS13 moment.

Timberpoes: Wrote it
Kieth4: Read it
Misdoubtful: Went on holiday and never got to see it