[MRP] What actually is the identity of manuel and what does it try to do?

[NikoTheGuyDude]

In my times discussing stuff in manuel or on the manuel discord, it's become increasingly obvious that every single person on manuel has a different idea of what manuel IS/ISN'T, and what manuel SHOULD/SHOULDN'T be. So many spats are based on personal ideas of what manuel is, people telling eachother "Manuel is not the place for you" without actually knowing that manuel really is the place for. I'm personally affected by this and I've recently realized and kinda backed off - I shouldn't be really pushing for x or y change if I don't actually know what the real POINT of manuel is.

The basic premise is simple - a safer place to play (no murderbone/insane validhunting), with a expanded environment to roleplay. It can also easily be assumed that manuel is supposed to promote more good faith between players via the whole "no murderbone, no validhunting, sec must treat antags fairly, antags must not needlessly RR people". But, specifics of how it achieves this is important for determining what changes to push.

Examples: How MUCH trust is manuel trying to cultivate, and how much "catch'n'release" gameplay is manuel trying to create? Why is it trying to create this, how does it tie into the overall objective of manuel? Where is the threshold in which an antag can RR someone - same for sec on an antag - and why is it set there? Another common center of dispute in manuel is the "gamer-ness" of the antags - is manuel "not the place" for wordless pursuit of progress that crushes everything in its way? What is the actual "ideal" level of "roleplay" manuel is aiming for? What is the overall "chaos" level of manuel in comparison to the other servers?

^ Those are all just examples, not actual questions I'm asking. They're just common points of contention that usually revolve around ones personal view of what manuel is specifically.
I just want a authority to actually specify what manuel is actually trying to achieve, going down to the specific level, because the specific level is where a lot of the arguing is happening (shit like round-removal is a really touchy one). I, personally, am curious, because I'm really curious to see how things like progtot fit into the identity of manuel if it ends up being close to MY idea - which it probably doesn't.

I suppose you can use this thread to debate what manuel should be and why, but this is mainly a clarification thread, from me to the leadership.
Sorry if this is a weird thread, I kinda suck at writing these.

[Sightld2]

I wouldn't want any authority to specify what Manuel is actually trying to achieve beyond what's already written in the RP rules. We want interesting and funny situations. It is melting pot of different play-styles and personalities, and that is what makes it fun. Seeing Waltertruck riding on a pony with a clown, panning over 7 tiles to a lizard romance soap opera. Catch n release is a valid way of playing. Others are too. There is no ideal level of roleplay. Its up to you. Roleplay to your own standards.

[dendydoom]

mrp is lrp with more rules around conflict to try and give more players breathing room to explore situations that involve conflict before jumping to mechanics. death is the end of a story, so we try to encourage more lenience when it can be given so that the story can continue to develop when killing isn't proportionately justified. we want fights to happen regularly, but the general consensus is that fights are better when there are appropriate narrative stakes surrounding them to give them context. those stakes need time to set up, and cannot be set up if someone is killed immediately the moment they're ~valid~. the same level of rp happens in lrp, but in mrp it is codified in our extended ruleset. that's it. that's the difference. a lot of mrp rules you could still theoretically enforce through rule 1 (and some you cannot through rule 4,) but in mrp there are more examples to justify a certain mindset when participating.

the identity is the people that play there and the culture they perpetuate. without players, the game is just an empty space station. we are the ones that breathe life into it. an identity can't be "forced" or designed by committee, it is a naturally emergent thing from the collective input of all its participants.

ultimately my hope with manuel is to nudge people gently into a more "storytelling inside a tabletop roleplaying game with heavily codified mechanics" mindset than "playing a very complex sandbox video game that you can win."

as sight said, one of the main things i like about manuel is the absolutely all-encompassing tapestry of players you can find participating in one spot. it is nice to see people dropping paragraph RP while playing the quirks of their characters and others yelling at each other as they bash each other in the skull with toolboxes on the same server coexisting, and both of those playstyles are recognized and allowed. the reason i choose to play there in particular is because it is the right balance of dynamic, freeform improvisation as well as a good safety net of extended rules that allow more indepth situations to propagate more often. it suits how i want to play the game down to the ground, and is quite similar to how i used to play it back in the literal stone ages of pre-2010.

manuel is just manuel. it doesn't *need* to be anything other than that.

EDIT: roundend chat on the manuel discord is also just an extension of dchat. it's honestly godawful to listen to "advice" that gets dropped in there about the "state of manuel" after a round, and encompasses the burnt out vocal minority of a much larger playerbase.

[conrad]

mrp is lrp with more rules around conflict to try and give more players breathing room to explore situations that involve conflict before jumping to mechanics.

</thread>

[Lacran]

It's best to start with what LRP is I think.

LRP is competitive, it's fast paced and it's more frivolous.

Manual aims to be more co-operative, steady and immersive while still trying to maintain it's roots in frivolous fun.

Manuel largely lacks an identity because it's a balancing act. The majority of Manuel players don't represent what Manuel is or should be, it's the act of them all coming together and compromising in good faith that makes Manuel the server it is.

[Vekter]

I literally only play on MRP because greytiding isn't allowed there. That's how sick I got of people breaking in to my department for no reason.

If I had my way, we'd be stricter about RP requirements on EVERY server. LRP feels like NRP and MRP feels like LRP.

[Misdoubtful]

It was realized a long time ago that it was better to just let Manuel decide what it wants to be and its done exactly that. Its gone through more than a few different phases as well.

It was/is done for the exact reason you stated: Everyone has a different opinion of what they want it to be, and some people are very obviously going to have their agendas for it. Those agendas aren't really something taken into much consideration to be honest, and conflict about it happens.

The community can make its own course corrections for the trajectory it wants to go in.

I appreciate the idea that the community as a whole can emulate the kind of behavior they in turn want to see.

If someone is bitching that it isn't what they want it to be they may be in a minority situation, or aren't being loud enough where it counts, or whatever else could be stifling their vibe. Maybe they just got caught in the shifting tides. I know I sure did when it came to Manuel doing its own thing.

[MooCow12]

LRP is competitive, it's fast paced and it's more frivolous.

just like real life

[Constellado]

I am going to explain what I think MRP for TG is. This will be from the perspective of a player that loves RP (I will explain my definiton later) and thinks Manuel is in a good spot. (whaa? a lot of people think its not!)
I have not played LRP in a very long time. So I don't know what an LRP environment looks like. If you want, you can take my takes with a dump of salt. I am just a player that plays far too much in Manuel!


essay inbound!!!!

The RP:

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RP for me is simple and straight forward. RP happens when there are two characters interacting with eachother, and is saying words and doing actions that fits in the wacky world of a space station.
One simple example of what RP is for me:

• Somebody is healing you.

• You say: "ow. it hurts" (this is RP. you are not actually feeling pain IRL but you are saying things as if your character is in pain)

• The doctor says "This will only take a moment." (Acting like a professional doctor or whatnot. RP)

Small exchanges like this is the lifeblood of SS13. This is probably common in LRP servers as well.
The longer and more complex this exchange is, the better the RP is. This does not just apply to spoken text too. Things such as throwing an object at somebody you are mad at also counts as RP. It is not RP in my opinion if its random unprovoked throwing, though. Random shoves annoy me. Breaking into a department unprovoked annoys me.
Any speech that is something a character wouldn't actually say such as copy and pasting chat logs is not RP and is also cringe to me. Say it in your own words atleast.

I have a lot of fun when the RP similar to a monty python skit. For example a clown making a funny machine in the hallway. Goofy, and fun!
I also have fun when it is super serious as well. for example; a detective interrogating an antag.

The RP level changes depending on the round. It changes based on the antags that are in the round, how interactive the admins are, and how tired all the players are. I still manage to get RP based on my definition most of the time.

Antagging?

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The most obvious thing is that Manuel has is a different rule set. This means less tiding (yay!) and less getting killed for no reason(yay!). RP is only happening in my opinion if whatever your spaceman is doing makes sense for whatever antag you are going for. Being corrupted by a forgotten god (ascended heretic) or needing to steal the CE's boots is a good example of that. If you get round removed for somebody having an actual traitor objective against you, it is MRP. If you get RR for no reason at all, it is LRP and gets noted. That is how the server is being admined currently from what I can tell and seen recently.

CAVEAT!
Manuel is not supposed to be a safe space, but players do act that way. Sometimes players get too scared of killing others and don't kill the CE for the boots and instead they bribe the CE for it (which is fair and good to me if you are not confident in your abilities!). I have also seen people get annoyed in deadchat after being round removed by an antag, and even hold grudges(yikes!). That means there is some disconnect between the server culture, and the rule set from what I see. Which is interesting! A big chunk of that is because they see a few deaths and think the antag is murder boning, or they think the antag's player is being a dick. They may just hate dying. This issue gets exasperated in low pop. If an antag kills people in low pop, dead chat will have somebody saying "that is cringe to do in low pop!!". To be honest though, dead chat will always have salt. forever. that will never be fixed.

Personally, I don't mind dying, but if I get zero RP moments in a round before that, it makes me sad. You end up getting more RP moments in the case where players do not want to kill eachother. This is because you have to interact for a longer time if you want to complete your objective via talking.

The best moments I have had when I was a victim of an antag are when they kidnap me. (I even put a couple as YT videos. tagged with (RP)) It is best in my opinion when they are toying with their food. I get interactions with antags like that quite often in manuel! Which is good. I havnt played anough LRP to know whether that happens often there or not.

Stories over multiple rounds

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This is not something that is common in manuel for most people. This kind of thing can happen very rarely. This is definitely not something the average player in Manuel experiences!

Sometimes you can get multiple round stories between specific sets of players. For example, right now my character is being hunted by some kind of Bluespace cult. This happened unprovoked after a psych session from what I can tell. This is probably being done by one or two players, I am unsure. This is a very fun experience! (Keep at it whoever it is if you are reading this!)

There has been admin events over multiple rounds. That was great!

But I will reiterate, this is NOT the norm in manuel, and might be a good thing? who knows. I definitely am a fan of having non-codebase based threats for myself over multiple rounds.

The manuel discord

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This place is a curse, and a boon at the same time. To me it is a net positive.
We have character lore threads! A bug chunk of the active statics have them, and they are great for seeing the backstory and general concept of the static characters that you see around the station. It really raises the RP potential.
We also have the round end chatter. This is basically dead chat but forever. The server would not work without it, but it can cause a lot of issues when there are salty players. It tends to get moderated if it gets too bad, thank goodness.

The discord helps foster a kind of community, but can also make the server look super cliquey.

Again, this is all how I see manuel and roleplay. Others may see it entirely differently. I like to go with the flow of things, and try to maintain a character at all times. I am a big fan of the variety of players and situations that Manuel gives overall, and have been having a great time here.

[HometownFunky]

I've played Manuel a bit and want to share what I think about it:
I personally joined it when it was created because I was really tired of the [Round Starts -> Antag goes loud -> Antag gets killed/Kills the station -> Shuttle gets called -> Repeat] gameplay loop, and wanted a bit more focus on the space station roleplaying aspects of this game. Manny seemed more accessible than other places because of its somewhat relaxed rules.
And that's how I always saw it. An accessible Space Station Roleplay oriented server. No 50 page essays on how to roleplay your charcater's species, goofy scenarios and whatnot.
Manuel also always struck me as folks' "First dip into RP" before they decide what they want from SS13 as a whole. The RP is there but it's not extremely in depth. But I think that's fine.
I think Manny is fine the way it is: a server that carters to a lot of playstyles without focussing too much on any one. The server's 'identity' also shifts a bit every ~6-8 months, because that's usually when new folks join/old folks leave, with new ideas on what they want from the server, which in turn shapes the server.
But it's always somewhere between a 'slow paced character roleplaying job sim' and 'Station wipe any% (no stims, no chems)', and in my opinion it should keep being this way.
Sometimes it leans too much in one direction for a few days and people who last played 2 years ago make angry discord posts on how Manuel is dead. Or salt in dchat like I do.

[Misdoubtful]

The reality is here that, for many of the reasons that others have posted, Manuel doesn't have an official identity. It probably never will.

The best thing that we could point you towards is rule 1 in the MRP rules:

1. The roleplay servers have a higher expectation of roleplay.
The purpose of the roleplay servers is to provide a higher quality environment for roleplay. The roleplay rules are intended to promote more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen. They are not exhaustive, and admins have a very broad discretion to intervene where behaviours or actions could, if left ignored, contribute to a lower roleplay environment.

Its open ended and vague intentionally. Its very hard for us to give you an actually clarification on things, and people will always be debating these things unless Manuel had a written down vision and mission statement that left no room for interpretation.

I'll leave this open in case anyone has anything else to add but plan on shuffling it away during the weekend.

[nukularpower]

Just the way I feel about it but my honest hot take is that imo manuel would be vastly improved if it was REQUIRED that all players and especially admemes play at least 20 hours on paradise station or similar without getting banned. Having to cope with an environment where not following the RP/validhunting/murder/escalation rules means you will absolutely get bwoinked would imo provide a new appreciation for the freedom that manuel offers while also helping understand what MRP (should) actually means

..but something tells me that a fair few "MRP" TG people would not pass the test

[Cobby]

manuel was created because LRP was literally a cockmeasuring contest of who found the latest meta strategy to wipe the station and admins did not want to ban people treating it like TDM, perhaps because some found that to be the most fun, so they made a server with new rules instead. The problem was they were laissez faire in that too so then we had to have the LRP headmins reel in the MRP admins who wanted to take it to the other extreme, I assume to try to overcorrect for the offenders on the normal server.

What it tried to do was to crowdplease, let people who had no interest in playing the RP side of the game stay on LRP and let people who did go on MRP.

Thats not to say LRP wasnt fun, but when you dont drive the community away from doing things like literally eating crayons to make your sprite harder to see in combat it wasnt a surprise people wanted a place that was still the TG community but not the overt gamers.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

manuel was created because LRP was literally a cockmeasuring contest of who found the latest meta strategy to wipe the station and admins did not want to ban people treating it like TDM, perhaps because some found that to be the most fun, so they made a server with new rules instead. The problem was they were laissez faire in that too so then we had to have the LRP headmins reel in the MRP admins who wanted to take it to the other extreme, I assume to try to overcorrect for the offenders on the normal server.

What it tried to do was to crowdplease, let people who had no interest in playing the RP side of the game stay on LRP and let people who did go on MRP.

Thats not to say LRP wasnt fun, but when you dont drive the community away from doing things like literally eating crayons to make your sprite harder to see in combat it wasnt a surprise people wanted a place that was still the TG community but not the overt gamers.

I think this is pretty mis-representative of why manuel was created tbh, Manuel was more "Trying to 'capture the feel of earlier tgstation' because people were giving up on ever returning the main servers to a more roleplay-y environment without adding a bunch of harsh roleplay rules, and those werent popular enough to go on the main server. the LRP/MRP dickmeasuring is definitely a post-manuel launch thing

[Vekter]

I think this is pretty mis-representative of why manuel was created tbh, Manuel was more "Trying to 'capture the feel of earlier tgstation' because people were giving up on ever returning the main servers to a more roleplay-y environment without adding a bunch of harsh roleplay rules, and those werent popular enough to go on the main server. the LRP/MRP dickmeasuring is definitely a post-manuel launch thing

This is correct. Manuel was originally created to try and "reset" things closer to how /tg/ used to play, and it does succeed at that - Manuel feels the closest to how Sybil used to play on when I started my first stint as admin.

[Cobby]

I think this is pretty mis-representative of why manuel was created tbh, Manuel was more "Trying to 'capture the feel of earlier tgstation' because people were giving up on ever returning the main servers to a more roleplay-y environment without adding a bunch of harsh roleplay rules, and those werent popular enough to go on the main server. the LRP/MRP dickmeasuring is definitely a post-manuel launch thing

when I say LRP dick measuring I mean the same group of people who were all pro-"L"RP tried to outdo the other in wiping the station with as little counterplay as possible, not some down-the-nose view of people who played on LRP but wanted more RP (although Im sure that happened too).

I feel like you hit the nose on what I was trying to get at, people wanted the comradery of old-tg or the gentleman's agreement when we had people who did every possible meta-strat to win at every turn (versus just being robust when put into an encounter their character wouldnt expect). Rather than try to fix the server on "main", they decided to explicitly set out rules in a MRP environment and just say go to MRP if you don't want the bafoonery happening on LRP.

Going to reiterate that this was the point in time where people played the game like a pvp arena so much they were eating crayons to make their sprite harder to see every round.

The reality of the situation is MRP would have never had to be created if people didn't feel like the RP, or at least player etiquette, they wanted (and I'd argue received) initially when they played TG was different than what was occurring on the server at that current point. People werent giving up simply because there werent extra rules on the server, people were giving up because the leet gamer playstyle was not being curbed despite it displacing everyone else who wanted to play the game. The proof is in the pudding, why did it take literal years for LRP to get a "stop being a PoS by gaming every round" rule when it was basically built into manuels rulelist from launch?

I refuse to believe people were satisfied with the game and just said "dang wouldnt it be nice if we had more rules?". The change wasnt made just on a whim, it was due to player behavior no one wanted to put the foot down on.

[Vekter]

when I say LRP dick measuring I mean the same group of people who were all pro-"L"RP tried to outdo the other in wiping the station with as little counterplay as possible, not some down-the-nose view of people who played on LRP but wanted more RP (although Im sure that happened too).

I feel like you hit the nose on what I was trying to get at, people wanted the comradery of old-tg or the gentleman's agreement when we had people who did every possible meta-strat to win at every turn (versus just being robust when put into an encounter their character wouldnt expect). Rather than try to fix the server on "main", they decided to explicitly set out rules in a MRP environment and just say go to MRP if you don't want the bafoonery happening on LRP.

Going to reiterate that this was the point in time where people played the game like a pvp arena so much they were eating crayons to make their sprite harder to see every round.

The reality of the situation is MRP would have never had to be created if people didn't feel like the RP, or at least player etiquette, they wanted (and I'd argue received) initially when they played TG was different than what was occurring on the server at that current point. People werent giving up simply because there werent extra rules on the server, people were giving up because the leet gamer playstyle was not being curbed despite it displacing everyone else who wanted to play the game. The proof is in the pudding, why did it take literal years for LRP to get a "stop being a PoS by gaming every round" rule when it was basically built into manuels rulelist from launch?

I refuse to believe people were satisfied with the game and just said "dang wouldnt it be nice if we had more rules?". The change wasnt made just on a whim, it was due to player behavior no one wanted to put the foot down on.

Again, as someone who was around for Manuel's conception, I'm just going to gesture widely at this. I'd frame it if I could. The most correct Cobby has ever been.

The personal reason I pushed for its creation was because I got fed up with people breaking into my department every round to help themselves to all my shit. There was no effective way to deal with it so I figured a server that promised to be a return to what we had before the greytiding got so bad it wasn't containable was a great idea. And it was!

Off Topic

Furthermore, any dick-waving on either side about either server being better or the players being worse or admins on either server being incapable of administrating the others is inane noise and can be safely ignored. "Server culture" is bullshit. It's what players who break the rules on Terry or Sybil try to use to justify their breaking of the rules and what people with a superiority complex try to use to look down their nose at people they consider undesirable. It's never been a valid argument.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

Vekter hates tiding? Didn't know they hated non-antagonists causing conflict? Whenever i play on manuel, there is almost no conflict whatsoever, nothing happens. Antags are too afraid to antag or else they'll get metagrudged.

[Vekter]

Vekter hates tiding? Didn't know they hated non-antagonists causing conflict? Whenever i play on manuel, there is almost no conflict whatsoever, nothing happens. Antags are too afraid to antag or else they'll get metagrudged.

It's possible to create conflict via RP. You don't have to just randomly act like a dick to people for no reason.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

Why cant tiders on lrp be smacked under rule 1: dont be a dick?

[CPTANT]

Why cant tiders on lrp be smacked under rule 1: dont be a dick?

Because there is a difference between dickery and being a dick. Tide is good and creates content.

[Vekter]

Why cant tiders on lrp be smacked under rule 1: dont be a dick?

They can be, actually. Rule 1, precedent 4:

Unprovoked grief (occasionally known as greytiding), repeated cases of minor unprovoked grief, and unprovoked grief targeted towards specific players or groups (i.e. metagrudging) fall under rule 1. Admins may follow up on grief with allowing the affected parties to ignore normal escalation policy or measures such as warnings or bans.

Because there is a difference between dickery and being a dick. Tide is good and creates content.

That difference is a really thin line. There's also a difference between just generally messing with someone to generate conflict and actually griefing, but most of what's considered "greytiding" (randomly shoving someone to start a fight, breaking into someone's department, tabling random people) is just griefing at a very low level.