/tg/Station 13

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.

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.

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.

dendydoom wrote: ↑Wed Jul 26, 2023 1:35 pm 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.

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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.

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.

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.

Lacran wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 12:20 pm
LRP is competitive, it's fast paced and it's more frivolous.

just like real life

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: Antagging? Stories over multiple rounds
The manuel discord 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Cobby wrote: ↑Sun Aug 06, 2023 5:08 am 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

Not-Dorsidarf wrote: ↑Mon Aug 07, 2023 2:15 pm 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.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote: ↑Mon Aug 07, 2023 2:15 pm 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.

Cobby wrote: ↑Tue Aug 08, 2023 2:04 pm 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!

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.

Longestarmlonglaw wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 9:21 am 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.

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

Longestarmlonglaw wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 8:56 pm 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.

Longestarmlonglaw wrote: ↑Wed Aug 09, 2023 8:56 pm 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.

CPTANT wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 9:33 am 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.