Friendly antags on MRP, come again?

[Striders13]

MRP rule 5:

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.

And it's precedent:

Actions as an antagonist do not have to be nefarious or evil, but should make an effort to influence the story and meaningfully impact the shift. Explicitly friendly antagonistic play or siding outright with the crew is restricted – players must have good in-character reasoning behind the decision or an antagonistic goal in mind by doing it.

Was supposed to deal with friendly antags. But the only thing it removed was antagonists explicitly cooperating with security to catch other antags. Which is great and all, but there are still people who openly out themselves and do nothing antagonistic.
Security isn't allowed to do much to them as per MRP rule 6:

Deal with the bad guys in proportion to their crime(s).

So it essentially ends up with antag slots taken up by people who drink cocktails in bar wearing full ling armor, or heretics jaunting around to say hi to security. It feels incredibly lame, as it's not exactly believable an enemy of the corporation would be perfectly fine with revealing themselves to authorities. It also feel wrong that security force is perfectly fine with the dangerous hivemind bioweapon cutting bread in station's kitchen with an armblade.
So, what can be done about it? Rule requiring antags to make effort to conceal their antag status? Rule requiring security to perma all confirmed EoCs, even if that's their only crime? Iunno.

[Jackraxxus]

Rule 4 is absolute. Just make people who are openly antagonists but doing nothing antagonistic valid, take away whatever protections the MRP rules afford them and then laugh at them when they complain about "shitcurity kill me when I did nothing???" in deadchat.

Antags who aren't advancing the story of the round shouldn't be afforded any protections under the MRP ruleset, but I also don't think we should be banning people for playing the antag they rolled fair and square how they want to, so long as it's not massively detrimental to the round.

If someone wants to play their stupid fucking snowflake changeling chef or heretic blacksmith gimmick or whatever, I feel like no matter how much I might think that gimmick sucks it'd be unfair to take it away from them and other players who might enjoy that kind of playstyle.

If antags are being boring, just make more antags or send a CC inspection to find out why the visible antags aren't being validded. Admin skill issue.

[vect0r]

What I do when I play sec (not often) is arrest them and give them a choice between perma or education... I try to make sure to not make an effort to take their uplink if it's not hidden, and "whoops" and show them where it's hidden, or if it's like a heretic, not take their pen. Nobody WANTS to be in perma, so they will try and break out, which is more then they have done so far, and normally they will be pissed enough that they start antaging.

[BrianBackslide]

If antags are being boring, just make more antags or send a CC inspection to find out why the visible antags aren't being validded. Admin skill issue.

What's the difference between being boring and waiting out your rep so you can do something fun? Progtots gets a lot of flack for being instant valid detection as it is.
Every round is going to come down to context and the judgment of security or whomever is in charge. While a blatant changeling running around with an armblade out is a bit cringe, even a heretic running an armor shop can be a fun gimmick every once in a while when the context fits.

How would you write a rule that prevents antagonists from siding with the crew while also maintaining their freedoms per rule 4 so as to not pigeonhole them into one specific admin mandated role? How would that rule not step on toes when nukies/revs/blobs get thrown into the mix?

► Show Spoiler

The real answer is to nuke progtots since that's why your antags are being boring.

[Vekter]

We can already handle this? Antags need a valid reason to be friendly on MRP, they can't just do it for funzies.

I'm extremely confused as to why you made this thread, we're explicitly empowered to handle the matter based on a rule you yourself quoted.

Actions as an antagonist do not have to be nefarious or evil, but should make an effort to influence the story and meaningfully impact the shift. Explicitly friendly antagonistic play or siding outright with the crew is restricted – players must have good in-character reasoning behind the decision or an antagonistic goal in mind by doing it.

E: For the record, I'm not talking about bwoinking someone and telling them "Do something interesting or you're banned", I'm talking about antags being explicitly friendly for very little IC reason, like a wizard coming to the station and immediately telling the crew they're not going to hurt them and are just hanging out.

There's obviously an exception for someone being duplicitous, ie acting friendly to get close to a target, but if it's obvious that you're just doing it to be lazy/hunt other antags, you're going to get bonked.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Others have given similar viewpoints, but I think if we destigmatize being actively hostile to out in the open antagonists, friendly antags get diminished.
Kill antags, gather lynch mobs to kill openly operating antags, call them traitorous scum and then cut off their head. You need no further in game justification to do this in my eyes execpt the fact that they can slaughter the crew and cause chaos (and probably will after they get bored of being friendly)

[Vekter]

Others have given similar viewpoints, but I think if we destigmatize being actively hostile to out in the open antagonists, friendly antags get diminished.
Kill antags, gather lynch mobs to kill openly operating antags, call them traitorous scum and then cut off their head. You need no further in game justification to do this in my eyes execpt the fact that they can slaughter the crew and cause chaos (and probably will after they get bored of being friendly)

For what it's worth, the character I've been playing on Manuel recently generally doesn't fuck with antags as long as they don't fuck with him or his department.

[BrianBackslide]

Others have given similar viewpoints, but I think if we destigmatize being actively hostile to out in the open antagonists, friendly antags get diminished.
Kill antags, gather lynch mobs to kill openly operating antags, call them traitorous scum and then cut off their head. You need no further in game justification to do this in my eyes execpt the fact that they can slaughter the crew and cause chaos (and probably will after they get bored of being friendly)

Banned for validhunting.

I don't tend to mess with antags unless it's funny somehow or they're being a threat to me/my workplace/the station as a whole, and even then only when it's convenient and they just happen to be nearby.

[Korusho]

I'll care about the rules against frien-tags when the rounds last more than an hour on average.

[sinfulbliss]

Just make people who are openly antagonists but doing nothing antagonistic valid, take away whatever protections the MRP rules afford them and then laugh at them when they complain about "shitcurity kill me when I did nothing???" in deadchat.

This is probably the best way to actually do something about the issue. The issue though is how will players know when an antag fits under "doing nothing antagonistic" and be able to make use of this?
Suppose you see some guy walking around bar RP'ing in an elite syndie modsuit, or a heretic drawing runes as art or something. They're kinda being friendtags so you figure okay I can valid them since they're doing nothing.

Then after they ahelp and tell the admin you killed them FNR, and that in fact they actually had plans for the round, they were going to do X Y or Z and in fact had killed someone 20 minutes ago and were laying low, etc. etc. etc. It just sounds like a mess.

So I think the real best way to handle it would be: antagonists who openly and intentionally display their status as an antag are valid for the crew. That would solve the most egregious friendtag problem by making them valid, while sparing the progtot that just wants to charge passive rep for 30min, or the guy putting up syndie posters, since that's not intentionally displaying antag status.

I imagine lots of people would get bwoinked for validing antags over this though even if it was codified into policy, since it seems to be a cultural issue which means admins aren't enforcing it.

[Jackraxxus]

How would you write a rule that prevents antagonists from siding with the crew while also maintaining their freedoms per rule 4 so as to not pigeonhole them into one specific admin mandated role? How would that rule not step on toes when nukies/revs/blobs get thrown into the mix?

There shouldn't be a rule that says this. In fact, this sentence in MRP rule 5:

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.

and the related precedent,

Actions as an antagonist do not have to be nefarious or evil, but should make an effort to influence the story and meaningfully impact the shift. Explicitly friendly antagonistic play or siding outright with the crew is restricted – players must have good in-character reasoning behind the decision or an antagonistic goal in mind by doing it.

should be entirely removed from the MRP ruleset for unnecessarily restricting antag freedoms. More antag freedom will lead to more emergent roleplay opportunities. A rule as unfun as this has no business existing. If unpaid janitors absolutely believe someone is "friendtagging" consistently enough to warrant punishment for it they have MRP rule 10 for that. Otherwise, so long as an antag isn't going room to room silently depopulating the station as would be described with the term "murderbone", let them cook.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

I don't think this is a good idea because while there are definitely Some Problems, like the Syndie MODsuit who just vibes in the bar, or what have you, there are cases where it's something interesting.

The antag who got arrested striking a deal with Sec to be let out of perma to help them fight some Major Threat.
The Heretic blacksmith thing can be interesting.
A traitor roboticist who runs an illegal implant shop.
The Sparring Chaplain Traitor who runs a martial arts competition and uses Scarp.

Or any other number of gimmicks that may not be inherently hostile that requires the antag's status to fulfill. The reason we have the rule stopping Sec from just stomping antags for existing who hadn't done anything yet, and that we restrict validhunting, is so that gimmicks like that can exist.

We can deal with our "I'm the Syndicate Captain, and we're now the Syndicate Station because there's only 5 of you and you can't stop me, and it has literally zero impact on you or anyone other than letting me power fantasy", we can deal with our "Greetings, friends! I am from the Wizard Federation and I am here to use my Staff of Healing to ensure that all of you live safely and healthily!" with admin intervention on case by case bases.

It shouldn't come at the cost of killing gimmicks by allowing the worst of us to have an excuse to "VALID DETECTED, UNGA UNGA" someone who wants to try and do something.

[sinfulbliss]

We can deal with our "I'm the Syndicate Captain, and we're now the Syndicate Station because there's only 5 of you and you can't stop me, and it has literally zero impact on you or anyone other than letting me power fantasy", we can deal with our "Greetings, friends! I am from the Wizard Federation and I am here to use my Staff of Healing to ensure that all of you live safely and healthily!" with admin intervention on case by case bases.

If this were dealt with property I can’t imagine why Striders would’ve made the thread. Clearly it’s not so there’s an ask for some policy curbing the behavior since multiple admins and players agree it still happens regardless.

The issue is pretty straightforward. If traitors can only be punished for crimes they commit, then they have an incentive to make as little impact as possible so that they’re protected OOCly from being punished or risking their antag round.

It’s hard to fix because the same rule that protects gimmicks and encourages RP for antag gameplay on MRP also creates the friendtag problem. So you have to somehow fuck the friendtags without fucking gimmicks and antag RP potential. I gave an idea but it wouldn’t work for people running antag shops and other obvious gimmicks. Maybe just chuck in gimmicks under the protected list and leave out friendtags.

[Striders13]

There shouldn't be a rule that says this. In fact, this sentence in MRP rule 5:

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.

and the related precedent,

Actions as an antagonist do not have to be nefarious or evil, but should make an effort to influence the story and meaningfully impact the shift. Explicitly friendly antagonistic play or siding outright with the crew is restricted – players must have good in-character reasoning behind the decision or an antagonistic goal in mind by doing it.

should be entirely removed from the MRP ruleset for unnecessarily restricting antag freedoms. More antag freedom will lead to more emergent roleplay opportunities. A rule as unfun as this has no business existing. If unpaid janitors absolutely believe someone is "friendtagging" consistently enough to warrant punishment for it they have MRP rule 10 for that. Otherwise, so long as an antag isn't going room to room silently depopulating the station as would be described with the term "murderbone", let them cook.

I don't think manuel antags should have the freedom to not antag. It works fine for lrp since any assistant can just decapitate you for existing, but on mrp everyone's hands are tied when dealing with a friendtag. Regular crew got even less options to deal with them than security, and just have to cope with the elite syndi modsuit man running in the hallways.

[Striders13]

And also yeah, that rule was, I believe, put there specifically cause traitors kept handing their uplinks to security roundstart, fucking over every other antag who actually tries to play their assigned role.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

We can deal with our "I'm the Syndicate Captain, and we're now the Syndicate Station because there's only 5 of you and you can't stop me, and it has literally zero impact on you or anyone other than letting me power fantasy", we can deal with our "Greetings, friends! I am from the Wizard Federation and I am here to use my Staff of Healing to ensure that all of you live safely and healthily!" with admin intervention on case by case bases.

If this were dealt with property I can’t imagine why Striders would’ve made the thread. Clearly it’s not so there’s an ask for some policy curbing the behavior since multiple admins and players agree it still happens regardless.

The issue is pretty straightforward. If traitors can only be punished for crimes they commit, then they have an incentive to make as little impact as possible so that they’re protected OOCly from being punished or risking their antag round.

It’s hard to fix because the same rule that protects gimmicks and encourages RP for antag gameplay on MRP also creates the friendtag problem. So you have to somehow fuck the friendtags without fucking gimmicks and antag RP potential. I gave an idea but it wouldn’t work for people running antag shops and other obvious gimmicks. Maybe just chuck in gimmicks under the protected list and leave out friendtags.

Then it's an admin issue, and not a policy one. The policy we have at the moment allows perfectly for admins to do something about the Elite Syndicate MODsuit sitting at the bar, having drinks and gunning down the Heretic that dared to try and actually be an antag in his presence, as long as they don't have a reason for it (creating a good rapport so that people won't believe the claims when someone says you murdered them being one, but is that something that anyone would know in any of these hypothetical "make them valid" solutions? No, they wouldn't), so we don't need to expand on it. We just need to start actually enforcing the rules.

[Jackraxxus]

I don't think manuel antags should have the freedom to not antag. It works fine for lrp since any assistant can just decapitate you for existing, but on mrp everyone's hands are tied when dealing with a friendtag. Regular crew got even less options to deal with them than security, and just have to cope with the elite syndi modsuit man running in the hallways.

Just fucking murder the elite syndie man??
There's no way players should be expected to just ignore a man in a syndie modsuit. It's a big fucking sign saying "LOOK AT ME I'M EVIL", doubly so for the elite variant.
Maybe the regular crew shouldn't be actively hunting them through maints but if syndie man comes anywhere near your workplace, you decap them and hide the body.
There's no way "Help admins he killed me and I did nothing but walk around non-chalantly with a syndicate modsuit!!!" should be met with anything other than IC issue.

And also yeah, that rule was, I believe, put there specifically cause traitors kept handing their uplinks to security roundstart, fucking over every other antag who actually tries to play their assigned role.

Under rule 4 they should be allowed to do this.
Sec should have the option to instantly murder them for it, but they shouldn't be punished administratively for doing it unless it's the same person doing it literally every round they roll traitor.
I watched this happen a few times, back when it was allowed, 50% of the time nothing happened, and in the other 50% it led to a pretty good emergent story.
That's better odds than the garbage that is prog tot.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

Admins should simply spawn more antagonists, loosen up the admin conduct page regarding spawning antagonists in, allowing them to spawn them more freely, without a care

[Striders13]

Just fucking murder the elite syndie man??
There's no way players should be expected to just ignore a man in a syndie modsuit. It's a big fucking sign saying "LOOK AT ME I'M EVIL", doubly so for the elite variant.
Maybe the regular crew shouldn't be actively hunting them through maints but if syndie man comes anywhere near your workplace, you decap them and hide the body.
There's no way "Help admins he killed me and I did nothing but walk around non-chalantly with a syndicate modsuit!!!" should be met with anything other than IC issue.

Except... why would they? He's not antagonizing them by walking around with his silly modsuit, they have zero reason to risk their lives dealing with the guy if he doesn't cause any trouble.

Under rule 4 they should be allowed to do this.
Sec should have the option to instantly murder them for it, but they shouldn't be punished administratively for doing it unless it's the same person doing it literally every round they roll traitor.
I watched this happen a few times, back when it was allowed, 50% of the time nothing happened, and in the other 50% it led to a pretty good emergent story.
That's better odds than the garbage that is prog tot.

Again, why would security want to deal with antagonist when he's actively making their lives easier? And like even if he did for the sake of making an interesting story, it will just get the ghost and ghost's friends to seethe at them for 'validhunting' or some shit. It would probably be easier if rules explicitly permitted killing em.

[Lacran]

The rule already forbids poorly justified friendtagging.

But you seem to think that crew alignment should never be okay, which I don't really understand why.

I think this mindset of valids are always valid totally goes against MRP. Characters should have a reasonable cause to kill a player, and an antag needs a reasonable cause to align with crew


If you were to say we should be stricter on what reasons are valid for crew alignment I'd agree, but you don't seem to be.

[Jackraxxus]

He's not antagonizing them by walking around with his silly modsuit,

lol

It would probably be easier if rules explicitly permitted killing em.

Yes that is what I suggested.

[Vekter]

A good example of this from last night was a wizard that was being explicitly friendly, to the point where the captain was making them an ID and everything.

I talked to them and they told me they'd died while attacking the crew and were revived by a crewmember. I don't see why we should force that player to then turn around and blow up the person who revived them. That doesn't make any sense.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

A good example of this from last night was a wizard that was being explicitly friendly, to the point where the captain was making them an ID and everything.

I talked to them and they told me they'd died while attacking the crew and were revived by a crewmember. I don't see why we should force that player to then turn around and blow up the person who revived them. That doesn't make any sense.

As long as they continue to directly drive and impact the round and dont just become yet another crewman but with a funny hat then sure. It's their role in the round to do so but it doesnt HAVE to be by running through the halls shouting I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL WIZARDO FEAR MY LIZARD BREATH HEE HEE

[Itseasytosee2me]

Admins should simply spawn more antagonists, loosen up the admin conduct page regarding spawning antagonists in, allowing them to spawn them more freely, without a care

We shouldn't have to make half the station antagonists in order to have some actual drama.

[Lacran]

Admins should simply spawn more antagonists, loosen up the admin conduct page regarding spawning antagonists in, allowing them to spawn them more freely, without a care

We shouldn't have to make half the station antagonists in order to have some actually drama.

MRP doesn't require conflict as the only means to add to a round to be fair.

Conflict is the norm, and it's pretty fun but I don't think it's the only option.

[SkeletalElite]

Make the "escalating with people being too nice" rule go both ways.

If people are being too nice the an antag, antag can escalate with them. If antag isn't doing anything other than bar RPing it gives non antags the pass to escalate with them for little reason. Want to steal all their stuff and put it through the recycler? Go ahead.

This does 2 things
1) it acts as a deterrent to being friendly in the first place
2) If someone decides to be friendly regardless, it empowers non antag players to annoy the antag to the point that they may desire to seek revenge thus doing something actually antagonistic instead of bar RPing.

[Striders13]

Make the "escalating with people being too nice" rule go both ways.

I like this

[Turbonerd]

Should not be allowed if they're also fail RPing while being friendly. Friendly changeling sounds like the dumbest possible thing in existence. They're a monster, not a friend. Wizards despise NT, so by default they shouldn't be friendly. Friendly traitor is straight up NRP if they were friendly from roundstart with no reason. Heretics do not give a fuck about their friends (actually they secretly hate them) as they have a much greater goal.

If a friendly antagonist breaks immersion, ahelp it.

[Chadley]

Never quite understood the "I'm an antagonist and you can't do anything against me" propaganda. I'm about to commit a sin, look away overlord.

Being an enemy to Nanotrasen seems to rank highly on the "shit you should not do", if you admit to being a traitor, not just have traitor shit, it should be straight to the slammer with you.

[BrianBackslide]

Being an enemy to Nanotrasen seems to rank highly on the "shit you should not do", if you admit to being a traitor, not just have traitor shit, it should be straight to the slammer with you.

Sounds a lot to me like "Bring back EotC" just maybe without the execution.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

I also feel as if the MRP murderboning rules are to blame, antagonists are encouraged to stick to their objectives, this makes antagonists on mrp less threatening, you aren't afraid of them. The only way to break free from your chains and cause death and destruction as an antagonist is if you ahelp and ask for permission, i purposely avoid mrp due to these heavy restrictions.
This feeds into the opposite end of the spectrum, friendly antagonists. So they don't get banned for doing anything antagonistic due to the misconception of the murderboning rule most people percieve

[Timberpoes]

Treating antagonists in proportion to their crimes only applies to players that are actually intent on antagonising.

Friendly antagonists should have no such protections.

Admins can always intervene in shifts by removing antag status, making more antags, sending inquisitorial teams and more to help drive the shift forwards when existing antags aren't.

RP Rule 5 can still be used to administratively deal with players refusing to use their antag status to actually antagonise.

Roleplay Rule 6 will have the following added to it:

Explicitly friendly antagonists do not have this protection and may be treated as the crew or admin team see fit.

Timberpoes: Wrote it
Misdoubtful: Wanted to make sure admins still have the ability to deal with friendly antags if necessary, so that was baked into the ruling.
Kieth4: Is a large cat in a hat. (And is happy with all of the above.)