(proposal) forgetting death policy

[Dalmationer]

Hiya folks!
I've started playing SS13 again after a (very) long time on hiatus, and I wanted to make a rules suggestion!
So, I've been playing under the assumption for a while that when your character dies, you don't remember the circumstances of your death, similar to heretic sacrifices. I remember this being the case some years ago when I played, and it's been the case on a couple downstreams I've dabbled in over the years. I was surprised to learn that this isn't actually policy!

I'd like to suggest a very rough policy of revived character having a foggy memory of their death. This could be done as a popup on revival, similar to when a heretic sacrifices someone. I haven't seen many players ignore the heretic sacrifice forgetfulness, so I can't imagine there'd be too much in the way of metagaming.

I believe this'd achieve a couple things:

• Less pressure on antags who are trying to be stealthy to round remove people they kill, knowing that they won't necessarily be ratted out immediately. This helps to emphasise the social deduction parts of the game and gives antagonists, especially ones like traitor or changeling, a little more control over when they get to go loud.
• It allows plays who are killed to cover up a crime to get back in the game sooner-- antags may feel less pressure to strip & closet the body.
• It slightly reduces validhunting-- If a player is told 'Knifes Man killed you', hunting them down is one thing, but if they're killed and 'don't know' who did it, then there's no reason to hunt down the antag if they haven't gone loud yet.

I'd love to hear what people think about this and how it could be implemented. As it's a fairly fuzzy policy, I think I'd err on the side of 'good faith'- knowing you were with someone before you died or knowing you had a conversation/being suspicious is one thing, but immediately being revived and shouting 'knifes man is a tot' over radio is probably too far.

[Drag]

I've always had the option this should be an inclusion on MRP, something like this however would not be great for LRP.

[Dalmationer]

I've always had the option this should be an inclusion on MRP, something like this however would not be great for LRP.

I agree greatly. On LRP you don't really wanna have to dance around stuff and I feel like it'd be frustrating for everyone involved on there.

[dendydoom]

i like this - it's how i've always played it on manuel. it only felt right to return the favour when an antag leaves your body in a normal place where it's actually found. snitching on them the nanosecond it's possible seems like an excellent way to teach that player to never be kind as an antag again.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I do not like this change. Feigning lack of knowledge has always been one of those infinite fuzzy areas of enforcement that we should keep to the absolute hard line of “you dont remember anything while you’re dead” for anything short of space magic or hastily-patched-murderbone-antag-trying-not-to-be-removed-from-rotation situations.

There is in fact a simple and easy way to not get called out after a kill target is revived: Put on a god damn mask. The station is LITTERED with spare uniforms, face hiding masks, uniform-hiding outerwear, and more. Those arent just for clown gimmicks or bar rpers playing dressup, you know.

Put a gasmask on, wear a puffer jacket from the wrong department and put your id in your pocket before you kick in the door and blow the guy who annoyed you away.

[Jacquerel]

This was (still is?) true for a while for Heretics and was so ineffectual in terms of people actually doing it and being able to prove that they weren't that the godwaful phobia got added as an enforcement metric instead (we really need to replace that with something else), I don't particularly expect that it'll go better for any other antagonist.

[massa]

This was (still is?) true for a while for Heretics and was so ineffectual in terms of people actually doing it and being able to prove that they weren't that the godwaful phobia got added as an enforcement metric instead (we really need to replace that with something else), I don't particularly expect that it'll go better for any other antagonist.

Maybe if being kidnapped and ritually sacrificed by someone whose job is to play with organs and corpses actually killed you and didn't just send you to heck to get tickled for a minute just to go back with nothing but some strongly worded flavor text I didn't even see, notice or read the first 3 times, one wouldn't have an issue to resolve.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

I do not like this change. Feigning lack of knowledge has always been one of those infinite fuzzy areas of enforcement that we should keep to the absolute hard line of “you dont remember anything while you’re dead” for anything short of space magic or hastily-patched-murderbone-antag-trying-not-to-be-removed-from-rotation situations.

There is in fact a simple and easy way to not get called out after a kill target is revived: Put on a god damn mask. The station is LITTERED with spare uniforms, face hiding masks, uniform-hiding outerwear, and more. Those arent just for clown gimmicks or bar rpers playing dressup, you know.

Put a gasmask on, wear a puffer jacket from the wrong department and put your id in your pocket before you kick in the door and blow the guy who annoyed you away.

Yeah but they nerfed gas masks to restrict your vision to a cone. So, no.

[Higgin]

I'd like to suggest a very rough policy of revived character having a foggy memory of their death. This could be done as a popup on revival, similar to when a heretic sacrifices someone. I haven't seen many players ignore the heretic sacrifice forgetfulness, so I can't imagine there'd be too much in the way of metagaming.

I believe this'd achieve a couple things:

• Less pressure on antags who are trying to be stealthy to round remove people they kill, knowing that they won't necessarily be ratted out immediately. This helps to emphasise the social deduction parts of the game and gives antagonists, especially ones like traitor or changeling, a little more control over when they get to go loud.
• It allows plays who are killed to cover up a crime to get back in the game sooner-- antags may feel less pressure to strip & closet the body.
• It slightly reduces validhunting-- If a player is told 'Knifes Man killed you', hunting them down is one thing, but if they're killed and 'don't know' who did it, then there's no reason to hunt down the antag if they haven't gone loud yet.

I personally hate metaprotections and consider them a frustrating crutch for unresolved design issues. Heretic both 1. requiring that you not say who killed you and 2. including a trauma that basically makes you unable to engage with the heretics (or any magical presence in the round, or somebody saying "God" on the radio) fucking sucks.

The idea that it makes them less prone to RR or getting RR'd doesn't shake out on its own either. There's no requirement that the Rust or Ash heretic who sundered/burnt your suit off as they sacrificed you has to say where you get dumped if or if you don't survive the DDR minigame. You can entirely end up RR'd, and there's presently no good reason, even with the metaprotection in place, for a heretic to help the crew get some folks back.

This is in part an issue with progression antags and the scaling nature of them - but even for antags more fundamentally,* the fact that they have no stopping rule, no requirement of tit-for-tat good faith, and no real guarantee against doing RR themselves pushes crew to RR them and treat them harshly.

As well they should until those facts change. If somebody's merciful when they don't have to be, right now, it is in genuine mutual good faith to not spin around and out them or punish them for it when revived.

If it was a fucking struggle, or your body got left in a locker after a murder and only found by bare chance after twenty minutes, it's dogshit and frustrating to be asked to treat the guy who didn't space you like he was doing you a favor.


RR does suck. The direction of flight in tg design over time has been to address this through midrounds and ghostroles. The problem - probably more felt on MRP than LRP - is that the stakes and intensity of play in a world with RR damn people who want to stay in their characters, drag it out, and do lower-stakes/narrative* antagonism that might get clocked alongside the regular game antagonism to brutal treatment and behavior.

However policies are implemented to try to respond to those preferences, they need to be equally-applied to both sides.

That means more fundamentally drawing into question what antags are, what they can do, and if you even want them for what you're trying to foster and protect.

I don't have an answer to that, but in the short run and where Manuel is now, I'd strongly oppose this.

worth mentioning that if you put up a prohibition on antags RRing, it sucks for them to basically have a congaline of diebacking crew after them and to constanrly feel like they've got a hand tied behind their back against people who will, in no uncertain terms, end their round

[Misdoubtful]

I've had the same gripe with this for like forever: its insanely difficult to moderate and have people hold each other accountable about. Its the same as aliens and heretics.

TG is just super super busy and not everyone is going to be on the same wavelength of roleplay expectations out of each other on our servers, and slower servers just have the ability to do this better.

As Jac said a phobia did more for TG in the space of this than anything else.

[DaydreamIQ]

This would be a really nice way to make autopsies more useful. As it stands there's literally zero reason to do an autopsy on a person with a soul because you can literally just ask them what they were killed by

[Dalmationer]

This would be a really nice way to make autopsies more useful. As it stands there's literally zero reason to do an autopsy on a person with a soul because you can literally just ask them what they were killed by

I do like giving detectives more reason to exist yeah. They're so cool but it can be hard to solve a crime.

[Dalmationer]

I'd like to suggest a very rough policy of revived character having a foggy memory of their death. This could be done as a popup on revival, similar to when a heretic sacrifices someone. I haven't seen many players ignore the heretic sacrifice forgetfulness, so I can't imagine there'd be too much in the way of metagaming.

I believe this'd achieve a couple things:

• Less pressure on antags who are trying to be stealthy to round remove people they kill, knowing that they won't necessarily be ratted out immediately. This helps to emphasise the social deduction parts of the game and gives antagonists, especially ones like traitor or changeling, a little more control over when they get to go loud.
• It allows plays who are killed to cover up a crime to get back in the game sooner-- antags may feel less pressure to strip & closet the body.
• It slightly reduces validhunting-- If a player is told 'Knifes Man killed you', hunting them down is one thing, but if they're killed and 'don't know' who did it, then there's no reason to hunt down the antag if they haven't gone loud yet.

I personally hate metaprotections and consider them a frustrating crutch for unresolved design issues. Heretic both 1. requiring that you not say who killed you and 2. including a trauma that basically makes you unable to engage with the heretics (or any magical presence in the round, or somebody saying "God" on the radio) fucking sucks.

The idea that it makes them less prone to RR or getting RR'd doesn't shake out on its own either. There's no requirement that the Rust or Ash heretic who sundered/burnt your suit off as they sacrificed you has to say where you get dumped if or if you don't survive the DDR minigame. You can entirely end up RR'd, and there's presently no good reason, even with the metaprotection in place, for a heretic to help the crew get some folks back.

This is in part an issue with progression antags and the scaling nature of them - but even for antags more fundamentally,* the fact that they have no stopping rule, no requirement of tit-for-tat good faith, and no real guarantee against doing RR themselves pushes crew to RR them and treat them harshly.

As well they should until those facts change. If somebody's merciful when they don't have to be, right now, it is in genuine mutual good faith to not spin around and out them or punish them for it when revived.

If it was a fucking struggle, or your body got left in a locker after a murder and only found by bare chance after twenty minutes, it's dogshit and frustrating to be asked to treat the guy who didn't space you like he was doing you a favor.


RR does suck. The direction of flight in tg design over time has been to address this through midrounds and ghostroles. The problem - probably more felt on MRP than LRP - is that the stakes and intensity of play in a world with RR damn people who want to stay in their characters, drag it out, and do lower-stakes/narrative* antagonism that might get clocked alongside the regular game antagonism to brutal treatment and behavior.

However policies are implemented to try to respond to those preferences, they need to be equally-applied to both sides.

That means more fundamentally drawing into question what antags are, what they can do, and if you even want them for what you're trying to foster and protect.

I don't have an answer to that, but in the short run and where Manuel is now, I'd strongly oppose this.

worth mentioning that if you put up a prohibition on antags RRing, it sucks for them to basically have a congaline of diebacking crew after them and to constanrly feel like they've got a hand tied behind their back against people who will, in no uncertain terms, end their round

I can see what you mean, but my thought is like, for one there probably shouldn't be restrictions on antags RRing-- they can if they like, and for some objectives it's necessary. What this would (hopefully) do is let them make the conscious choice not to without forcing them into a specific type of gameplay. My HOPE would be that mandating that from one side would foster a bit of playing along from the other a little should they choose to extend it.
That said it does rely on admins enforcing it to some degree, or at least not 'playing to win' on crew's side... but that's something imo that MRP should be trying to foster anyway.

(sorry for the double post i just realised you wrote a lot and i didnt want you to feel ignored haha!)

[Higgin]

[snap]

[slim jim]

I can see what you mean, but my thought is like, for one there probably shouldn't be restrictions on antags RRing-- they can if they like, and for some objectives it's necessary. What this would (hopefully) do is let them make the conscious choice not to without forcing them into a specific type of gameplay. My HOPE would be that mandating that from one side would foster a bit of playing along from the other a little should they choose to extend it.
That said it does rely on admins enforcing it to some degree, or at least not 'playing to win' on crew's side... but that's something imo that MRP should be trying to foster anyway.

(sorry for the double post i just realised you wrote a lot and i didnt want you to feel ignored haha!)

My experience with thousands of hours of SR, Bay, Bay-derivative, SR-derivative servers has been this:

It's a paltry and difficult-to-enforce protection to say "they won't remember you so you can take it easy." The post-cloning peptalk was almost always in part "x killed you btw" leading right back into the chase.

If that protection is weak, but RR is allowed on the antag side, crew are still going to play as hard as ever - if not harder, because they anticipate and rankle at the bind they'll be put in if dead. Player psychology rankles at being told to play dumb and suck it up against a stacked deck.

If RR is not allowed on the antag side with this, it sucks for antags dealing with the extent to which the crew can say "but I'm NOT RRing you!" as they take all the antag's shit, track them, or - as we used to hit'em with on Skyrat - put them in for an hour+ for hitting a sec checkpoint, emagging the locker, running off with glasses, and toolboxing an officer once or twice when trying to escape. That's to say that if RR is off the table, it creates situations where both sides will prefer the next best thing.

Crucially, like you said, that is all if people are "playing to win" - but that goes both ways. Antag objectives and the present rules - including the ones you propose leaving RR in the province of antags - are a license to compete.

As long as that is the fundamental game around antags, and it is largely built around them even on MRP, giving one side or another extra protections and telling the other "don't hit back though, that would be p2w (because I favor this antag/the crew over you)" is a recipe for frustration and unfair enforcement.

The people who practice good faith or do stuff outside the antag dynamic right now stand out in our hearts and memories exactly because they're good sports against the backdrop of a game which by-in-large doesn't require it -

If you want to change the game people are playing, I think it either comes from culture and personal relationships (which has its own problems) or from major design change to totally preclude the game you don't want them playing.

[britgrenadier1]

This would be a really nice way to make autopsies more useful. As it stands there's literally zero reason to do an autopsy on a person with a soul because you can literally just ask them what they were killed by

autopsies do not tell you who or even how (What type of specific damage) killed someone. It just tells you "This guy died of brute damage." Yeah no shit, I examined him. Even in a world where you don't know what killed you, you don't get any additional information from autopsies.

[iwishforducks]

im cashing out my good faith money that i’ve gained through posting in good faith all these years (im too tired to give this a serious response, and folks with personal experience with this policy have already chipped in. more knowledge than i could ever give):

fucking god please no. please headmins do not consider this in any way. please. PLEASE.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I disagree
I you have correctly identified the problem that stealth antags get their stealth broken as soon as someone they kill is brought back to life.

There are a few solutions to this in game at the moment:

Solution 1: Disguise yourself.
Changeling's shapeshift, and the agent ID, chameleon kit, and mulligan toxin all make this pretty fool proof, but you can full off a disguise even without any traitor items.
The Drawback: It takes time to micromanage your disguise, and there is always a chance you slip up. Disguising traditionally also requires you give up use of your ID, which restricts your movements unless you are using someone else. This also isn't as effective if you need your target to stay dead.

Solution 2: Mutilate your target until they are no longer revivable.
This usually involves removing the brain and destroying it, gibing, dusting, or disabling suit sensors and tossing them into space. You can usually get away with lesser measures if the station has already fallen into chaos, such as just decapitation. Even changelings have to worry about this, although the bodies they make are unable to be unhusked, MD's can still crack open the skull and give the brain a new body, not that it matters to much if a changeling is called out.
The Drawback: This takes time to do effectively, and often leaves a mess and provides more opportunities to be discovered.

Solution 3: Disable Medbay.
This usually involves bombing Medbay, or wiping out all the jobbies in there, but there are more creative ways to do it. Stealing defibs, hypnotizing doctors, being a medical professional yourself can help you squirrel away bodies directly to the morgue (you can make the morgue say the bodies are soulless with a emag)
The Drawback: this usually takes alot of time and effort, and if you wipe out medbay completely then there will be no doctors left to revive you when you take a dive.

There's a couple other niche things you could do, framing your target so security takes care of them, driving them to suicide, and more that I haven't even come up with yet because this is a sandbox game with emergent solutions to problems.

The point I'm trying to make here, is traitors have a lot of options when it comes to how they want to maintain anonymity. This policy would not give more options, or strengthen some of the tools in the traitors toolbelt, instead it give the stealth antag the permission to say "Fuck it" kill whoever they want with disregard and then if any one comes back they can tell on them to an admin. It seems to me that this policy would not make gameplay more fun, but would instead limit the scope of the traitor-crew dynamic.

[Higgin]

The point I'm trying to make here, is traitors have a lot of options when it comes to how they want to maintain anonymity. This policy would not give more options, or strengthen some of the tools in the traitors toolbelt, instead it give the stealth antag the permission to say "Fuck it" kill whoever they want with disregard and then if any one comes back they can tell on them to an admin. It seems to me that this policy would not make gameplay more fun, but would instead limit the scope of the traitor-crew dynamic.

I think Dalm's angle is more about making things gentler for antags who feel like they have a lot of validhunting pressure on them because of how things work but want to do something slower, more chill, or narrative that might expose them to getting outed as they have dramatic scenes or negotiations - not people who have genuine skill issues and want a freer lunch stealth antagonizing.

Unfortunately they'd still benefit massively from this.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I think Dalm's angle is more about making things gentler for antags who feel like they have a lot of validhunting pressure on them because of how things work but want to do something slower, more chill, or narrative that might expose them to getting outed as they have dramatic scenes or negotiations.

I don't understand why wanting to do something "slower, more chill, or narrative" excuses sloppy traitoring. But I might be misunderstanding your point, could you give a little more context to what you mean?

[Higgin]

I think Dalm's angle is more about making things gentler for antags who feel like they have a lot of validhunting pressure on them because of how things work but want to do something slower, more chill, or narrative that might expose them to getting outed as they have dramatic scenes or negotiations.

I don't understand why wanting to do something "slower, more chill, or narrative" excuses sloppy traitoring. But I might be misunderstanding your point, could you give a little more context to what you mean?

I hope I don't misrepresent this if it's not exactly your case @Dalm and please smack me if I do, but the argument I'm speaking to is,

1. if people remember who you are after you kill them, for any reason, it's much riskier to leave them recoverable if not alive
2. even if they might not want to out you, the fact that they can creates the expectation that they will (sometimes most aggressively from other teammates or crew)
3. because of this, if they happen upon you in a vulnerable position, as an antag, they will expect that you will behave according to #1, leading them to be more reflexively violent and competitive to avoid getting RR'd (just like they think you will - this might not be intentional!)
4. doing gimmicks and bits, slowing down to talk to people, or otherwise behaving in ways that increase tension over time involves, if you're doing it on purpose, choosing to make yourself vulnerable
5. being protected when you fuck up and reflexively shoot the person who walks into the room at a bad moment from that escalating into a high-stakes hunt-and-chase, while still letting them get revived and everyone keep playing, reduces your felt need to shoot on reflex in the future
6. so hopefully deescalating sec and others' need to shoot/baton on reflex, deescalating the stakes in a way more permissive of people not playing at a hard, competitive level all the time


There's been a similar argument around stuff like making being cuffed)stunned stop radio use.

It doesn't make excuses for people who are sloppy or poor in their antagonism (i.e. not using emps, a radio jammer) - but it does, supposedly, provide protection to those for whom the competitive antagonism game isn't as important.

The problem is, it also provides a very felt degree of unfair protection for people like the dumbdumb stealth antags who leave all their tools on the table, rely on the policy on its face (or only bring it up when they lose,) and behave in a way that still makes you want to baton the dude you see wearing a camo kit on-sight even if he was doing a totally unrelated bit.

tl;dr this is a policy not meant to protect stock antags, necessarily, but it does.

The stated goal of

Less pressure on antags who are trying to be stealthy to round remove people they kill, knowing that they won't necessarily be ratted out immediately. This helps to emphasise the social deduction parts of the game and gives antagonists, especially ones like traitor or changeling, a little more control over when they get to go loud.

just doesn't work out well in practice. The most charitable argument is towards an entirely different game, or changing balance around stealth items instead of policy.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I think Dalm's angle is more about making things gentler for antags who feel like they have a lot of validhunting pressure on them because of how things work but want to do something slower, more chill, or narrative that might expose them to getting outed as they have dramatic scenes or negotiations.

I don't understand why wanting to do something "slower, more chill, or narrative" excuses sloppy traitoring. But I might be misunderstanding your point, could you give a little more context to what you mean?

1. if people remember who you are after you kill them, for any reason, it's much riskier to leave them recoverable if not alive
2. even if they might not want to out you, the fact that they can creates the expectation that they will (sometimes most aggressively from other teammates or crew)
3. because of this, if they happen upon you in a vulnerable position, as an antag, they will expect that you will behave according to #1, leading them to be more reflexively violent and competitive to avoid getting RR'd (just like they think you will - this might not be intentional!)
4. doing gimmicks and bits, slowing down to talk to people, or otherwise behaving in ways that increase tension over time involves, if you're doing it on purpose, choosing to make yourself vulnerable
5. being protected when you fuck up and reflexively shoot the person who walks into the room at a bad moment from that escalating into a high-stakes hunt-and-chase, while still letting them get revived and everyone keep playing, reduces your felt need to shoot on reflex in the future
6. so hopefully deescalating sec and others' need to shoot/baton on reflex, deescalating the stakes in a way more permissive of people not playing at a hard, competitive level all the time

I understand, but I don't mind the crew and antagonists being hostile to each other by default. I don't think that if a crew member walks in on an antagonist they should necessarily attack each other on sight, but I do think it is a reasonable outcome defending on the circumstance. I've seen the same scenario play out a bunch of ways. Maybe the crew member runs off and snitches to sec, maybe the antag kidnaps them, maybe the antag bribes them or threatens them, and I have participated in many scenarios like these on both sides. The scenario you are implying is happening makes sense in character.

The syndicate agent plans secretly in a secluded room in maintance, setting up a suite of subverted machinery.
The assistant stumbling through maintance in search of an air tank opens the door to the traitor's hovel, no idea on what lies beyond.
As the door opens the traitor and the assistant lock eyes, and the assistant sees the emag in the traitors hand.
The traitor instantly realized the assistant has seen to much, and can't be allowed to speak of what he saw.
The assistant, cowering, also realized he has seen to much, and regrets ever opening the door in the first place.
What happens next? Will the traitor slay the assistant and dispose of the body? Will the assistant escape? Maybe this accident may turn into a deal that can be beneficial for both parties.

That seems suitably dramatic to me, with this policy, and given how easy it is to revive someone, killing the assistant and throwing their body out basically makes it like the situation never even happened. There were no stakes, no results, and no story was pushed forward. Round removal is dramatic and speaks volumes about a traitor's villainousness, other outcomes can hot great story telling potential. Killing without consequences feels like a cheap cop-out.

[EmpressMaia]

This would be wonderful. Would allow antagss to just kill someone and then dump their body in a hall

[Dalmationer]

I hope I don't misrepresent this if it's not exactly your case @Dalm and please smack me if I do, but the argument I'm speaking to is,

1. if people remember who you are after you kill them, for any reason, it's much riskier to leave them recoverable if not alive
2. even if they might not want to out you, the fact that they can creates the expectation that they will (sometimes most aggressively from other teammates or crew)
3. because of this, if they happen upon you in a vulnerable position, as an antag, they will expect that you will behave according to #1, leading them to be more reflexively violent and competitive to avoid getting RR'd (just like they think you will - this might not be intentional!)
4. doing gimmicks and bits, slowing down to talk to people, or otherwise behaving in ways that increase tension over time involves, if you're doing it on purpose, choosing to make yourself vulnerable
5. being protected when you fuck up and reflexively shoot the person who walks into the room at a bad moment from that escalating into a high-stakes hunt-and-chase, while still letting them get revived and everyone keep playing, reduces your felt need to shoot on reflex in the future
6. so hopefully deescalating sec and others' need to shoot/baton on reflex, deescalating the stakes in a way more permissive of people not playing at a hard, competitive level all the time

Yeah this is quite accurate to the train of thought I was thinkin with the suggestion!

[Vekter]

I like this idea, but as Misdoubtful points out, it's kind of a bitch to moderate. We already have plenty of trouble with people not understanding "Don't tell people who the Heretic that sacrificed you is", so I'm not sure our players could handle this.

Do and always have liked it though. It makes things a lot more interesting and removes focus on having to round remove people that aren't your target since they could come back and blow your cover.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

I disagree
I you have correctly identified the problem that stealth antags get their stealth broken as soon as someone they kill is brought back to life.

There are a few solutions to this in game at the moment:

Solution 1: Disguise yourself.
Changeling's shapeshift, and the agent ID, chameleon kit, and mulligan toxin all make this pretty fool proof, but you can full off a disguise even without any traitor items.
The Drawback: It takes time to micromanage your disguise, and there is always a chance you slip up. Disguising traditionally also requires you give up use of your ID, which restricts your movements unless you are using someone else. This also isn't as effective if you need your target to stay dead.

Solution 2: Mutilate your target until they are no longer revivable.
This usually involves removing the brain and destroying it, gibing, dusting, or disabling suit sensors and tossing them into space. You can usually get away with lesser measures if the station has already fallen into chaos, such as just decapitation. Even changelings have to worry about this, although the bodies they make are unable to be unhusked, MD's can still crack open the skull and give the brain a new body, not that it matters to much if a changeling is called out.
The Drawback: This takes time to do effectively, and often leaves a mess and provides more opportunities to be discovered.

Solution 3: Disable Medbay.
This usually involves bombing Medbay, or wiping out all the jobbies in there, but there are more creative ways to do it. Stealing defibs, hypnotizing doctors, being a medical professional yourself can help you squirrel away bodies directly to the morgue (you can make the morgue say the bodies are soulless with a emag)
The Drawback: this usually takes alot of time and effort, and if you wipe out medbay completely then there will be no doctors left to revive you when you take a dive.

There's a couple other niche things you could do, framing your target so security takes care of them, driving them to suicide, and more that I haven't even come up with yet because this is a sandbox game with emergent solutions to problems.

The point I'm trying to make here, is traitors have a lot of options when it comes to how they want to maintain anonymity. This policy would not give more options, or strengthen some of the tools in the traitors toolbelt, instead it give the stealth antag the permission to say "Fuck it" kill whoever they want with disregard and then if any one comes back they can tell on them to an admin. It seems to me that this policy would not make gameplay more fun, but would instead limit the scope of the traitor-crew dynamic.

Bombing medbay might get you in trouble with the MRP admins, be careful.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Bombing medbay might get you in trouble with the MRP admins, be careful.

The rules have pretty clear protections for this kind of thing

Restricted Antag Death and Destruction:

Antagonist objectives are the core of what antagonists are allowed to directly do with no or limited roleplay reasoning. Actions taken to directly accomplish an objective do not have to be proportionate.

Causing death and destruction to help with indirectly accomplishing objectives must have an in-character roleplay reason. If questioned about a chain of events involving indirect actions, the antagonist should be able to clearly explain what events in the current shift led them to their course of action without resorting to hypotheticals.

If you need to assassinate your target, bombing medical would be a valid way to ensure your objective is completed. There is also precedent that bombing your target is a completely valid way to kill your target despite casualties.
But if an MRP admin blew all of that off and handed out a rule one ban or whatever, it wouldn't really surprise me given some of the appeals I've seen.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Bombing medbay might get you in trouble with the MRP admins, be careful.

Also

Without Objectives
Mass station sabotage that is likely to kill people is allowed so long as the antagonist does not take any direct and specific personal actions to maximise the bodycount beyond what the sabotage itself causes. Examples of mass station sabotage include plasma flooding, causing a supermatter delamination and spacing the station.

[wesoda25]

I like the idea but hugs and dorsi both make good points. If it's difficult to moderate and the bar to disguise yourself isn't that high, then why bother? That being said, I'm curious how this would work as a sort of opt in preference system, similar to how the yes/no erp thing works on skyrat I imagine. It'd be informative for antag targets so that they know who they have "creative freedom" with, and this way only those interested in playing along actually have to.

[iwishforducks]

I like the idea but hugs and dorsi both make good points. If it's difficult to moderate and the bar to disguise yourself isn't that high, then why bother? That being said, I'm curious how this would work as a sort of opt in preference system, similar to how the yes/no erp thing works on skyrat I imagine. It'd be informative for antag targets so that they know who they have "creative freedom" with, and this way only those interested in playing along actually have to.

i think at that point it'd just become a dog-whistle for willing sacrifices/targets. it's not about "creative freedom" but rather looking for who the easiest targets are for a quick TC/point injection. methinks a culture would probably spawn around yelling at people who have this set to "yes" fighting back.

even then, "forgetting" your death is more-or-less arbitrary. Do you remember the chase that goes on for 5 minutes? Do you remember the guy looking at you funny 10 minutes prior and suspect them as your killer? Would you be griefing if you told security it was the guy that was looking at you funny, even if you knew from meta information that it wasn't said guy? If you opt-in, and give ANY information whatsoever, no matter how "distant" the information was to your death, you would be breaking the seal of conduct. Even if there was a set bar of time, the human mind is impossible to measure time in stressful situations. The chase could have felt like 10 minutes when it was actually 2. The guy looking at you funny was actually only 3 minutes ago when it felt like 15, etc etc.

[wesoda25]

yeah thats fair, prob not a good idea. personally i dont mind wearing a "kick me" sign tho

[Itseasytosee2me]

As an avid rule 10 follower, I usually DNR.

[jastindeep]

I think also a big part of this is not RR'ing crew cause being RR'd is super unfun. I don't want to get some sentient creature midround antag, I want to return to ore mining but i cant becuz i was a target of some tot and I didn't expect him to kill me in 3 nanoseconds and space me. You could say "just wait until another round bro" but as someone with a life (impossible) i have time to play like a singular round before I have to go and do shit and it's incredibly unfun to anticipate relaxed ore mining ASMR all day and then start playing it and get dunked on for reasons out of my control.

Main point is: all sides should have fun first and foremost.

[NecromancerAnne]

I've had the same gripe with this for like forever: its insanely difficult to moderate and have people hold each other accountable about. Its the same as aliens and heretics.

TG is just super super busy and not everyone is going to be on the same wavelength of roleplay expectations out of each other on our servers, and slower servers just have the ability to do this better.

As Jac said a phobia did more for TG in the space of this than anything else.

I'm not convinced this isn't possible to moderate. We should be expecting people to hold others accountable, because we aren't omniscient and we rely a lot on people telling us when someone breaks the rules as is. This would be one of those instances Just because we have rules doesn't mean people don't break them and we certainly have some people get away with things they shouldn't only because someone didn't report the issue to us. We can't be aware of every single situation that occurs in a round that would be against the rules.

Remembering things from death is not a tall ask, and there are observable signs of this behaviour that cane tracked; say logs, attack logs, various other logs will make apparent whether or not someone is acting on knowledge on death. If we can moderate people acting on information from previous lives and deadchat, we can moderate people acting on knowledge from death. If we couldn't, why do we have rules against it as is? They are functionally similar. Good faith rules on the part of the player to control their behaviour despite having deeper knowledge.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I've had the same gripe with this for like forever: its insanely difficult to moderate and have people hold each other accountable about. Its the same as aliens and heretics.

TG is just super super busy and not everyone is going to be on the same wavelength of roleplay expectations out of each other on our servers, and slower servers just have the ability to do this better.

As Jac said a phobia did more for TG in the space of this than anything else.

I'm not convinced this isn't possible to moderate. We should be expecting people to hold others accountable, because we aren't omniscient and we rely a lot on people telling us when someone breaks the rules as is. This would be one of those instances Just because we have rules doesn't mean people don't break them and we certainly have some people get away with things they shouldn't only because someone didn't report the issue to us. We can't be aware of every single situation that occurs in a round that would be against the rules.

Remembering things from death is not a tall ask, and there are observable signs of this behaviour that cane tracked; say logs, attack logs, various other logs will make apparent whether or not someone is acting on knowledge on death. If we can moderate people acting on information from previous lives and deadchat, we can moderate people acting on knowledge from death. If we couldn't, why do we have rules against it as is? They are functionally similar. Good faith rules on the part of the player to control their behaviour despite having deeper knowledge.

Yeah the problem is more that previous life info, dead chat info, those are super clearly defined with hard barriers and clear terms. "You dont remember how you died" is so much vaguer and fuzzier to define IMO. So you dont know John Grayshirt killed you. But he killed you after successfully chasing you down a minute or two after he botched the first attempt, right. So can you snitch on him for that first attempt that didnt kill you? What about Jane Changeling who you saw working with him as he emagged open the door while you tried to type a radio callout? She didnt kill you, or really even help, but you only saw her a few seconds before your death. Can you call her out for being buddys with your "mystery murderer"? What if you've known Joe is bad for ages because you spotted him flashing a 357 earlier in the round but didnt call him out for the OOC reason (that we heavily encourage!!!) that it was 5 minutes into the shift and the 200-man sec team would have instantly GG'd him if you called him out. Do you have to retroactively pretend you never knew he was bad? These are just the complications that came to mind within a few seconds, let alone complex situations where you have ongoing violent rivalry or borging or whatever.

[Higgin]

.

If we couldn't, why do we have rules against it as is? They are functionally similar. Good faith rules on the part of the player to control their behaviour despite having deeper knowledge.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should - the problem with putting a rule like this in place now is that there is no requirement of good faith from the other side, there is no reciprocity in the way this plays between antags and nonantags, and situations where it's nonantags on (plausibly) nonantags are already covered by escalation policy.

Requiring people to forget that Shootem Upton killed them is only a reasonable ask if there are more set limits and guarantees around how and when Shootem Upton can kill and who he can kill lastingly. Nothing is gained except frustration and extra ahelps after he gets taken down by saying "you must forget the guy who wordlessly EMP'd, three-tapped you, and looted you before continuing his run through maints."

Why? For what? So he has less reason to throw me into space but a claim to thinking I broke this rule when I manage to get him later, having been revived, but with no guarantee I couldn't still be dead in that tunnel/locker/med is dead or bad/etc.?

Not even a terrible trade - it's not a trade, it's a straight-up concession to people playing a game where good faith as you're imagining it does not matter.

It would even be better to do what Cit did, readd cloning, and separate blackout policy between getting revived by cloning (you forget) and regularly (you remember.)


(even this has the major problems Dorsi brought up above btw. if we wanted to seriously address this stuff, dsay and observing would make you DNR and hard ineligible for any regular ghost roles.)

[NecromancerAnne]

These are just the complications that came to mind within a few seconds, let alone complex situations where you have ongoing violent rivalry or borging or whatever.

Fine, if you think any arbitrary timeframe is going to be too dysfunctional, why not go all out? Why not forgetting everything from the shift? Back to square one.

We don't have to be overly pedantic about, say, someone going back to their little projects in the round. That's kind of shitty, and we can hand wave that as 'you planned that prior to the shift' or some shit, I don't give a fuck about the particulars, we just shouldn't have any rule be anti-fun. But any of the events that happened, treat it as though you've entered the shift the moment you're revived. Someone acting very confidently on events that happened in a round is a lot more observable than just the particulars of a given murder. That way, it's not too different to entering the round as a ghost role. If still that isn't enforceable, then I'll absolutely question the ability to enforce ghost role/dchat abuse as well.

Let's throw in borging into this too, because that'd make it ACTUALLY a convenient method for soft player removal.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should - the problem with putting a rule like this in place now is that there is no requirement of good faith from the other side, there is no reciprocity in the way this plays between antags and nonantags, and situations where it's nonantags on (plausibly) nonantags are already covered by escalation policy.

I'm having trouble interpreting your point here that doesn't come across poorly. Do you mean when antagonists kill you is a bad faith act on their part?

I'll be honest, I don't know how you've come to that conclusion. They won the roulette and were chosen to be the bad guy. Sometimes that leaves you drawing the shortest straw and ending up horizontal as a result. It would be acting in bad faith if they didn't make the most of their role in whatever way they saw fit to create these interactions. Let's not paint antagonists killing people as bad faith behavior, please. That's just nonsense.

And I played on Cit for a good while and was friends with a few of the admins. The Cit cloning memory loss was almost completely unenforced, and I wouldn't call it a good example if only because it never even had a good opportunity to prove itself. Their administration, mostly due to extreme burnout + low admin numbers and oversight + extremely unwieldy rules in general that resulted in a lot of hip shooting, couldn't really keep that stuff in-line consistently. Even general administration was difficult towards the end of the server's life. It took players acting in good faith to make that work, and the efforts of what few admins stayed on the server to help. I can't really confidently say whether it was functional simply because Citadel was in a less than functional state when it was introduced. I don't even think it was that different to the proposal, either. It was just particular to cloning revivals.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I think it's relevant to point out the spirt of rule 1 and 4.

Rule 1:
Don't seriously negatively impact the round of others without good IC justification.

Rule 4:
Being an antagonist counts as good IC justification to negatively impact the round of others in however way you please. Someone being an antagonist counts as good IC justification to negatively impact their round.

I feel like we have kinda lost sight of the core dynamic.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Fine, if you think any arbitrary timeframe is going to be too dysfunctional, why not go all out? Why not forgetting everything from the shift? Back to square one.
...
Let's throw in borging into this too, because that'd make it ACTUALLY a convenient method for soft player removal.

Ungodly based actually. I support this entirely.

[Higgin]

They won the roulette and were chosen to be the bad guy. Sometimes that leaves you drawing the shortest straw and ending up horizontal as a result. It would be acting in bad faith if they didn't make the most of their role in whatever way they saw fit to create these interactions. Let's not paint antagonists killing people as bad faith behavior, please. That's just nonsense.

If this is going to be a strictly competitive game, I agree with you. It's worth saying that I can create a lot of interactions by sabotaging atmos, hitting all the head offices/armory for their best gear, and going on a rampage. I can hit every department and engage every system pretty quick.

It's also worth saying that nothing in the rules currently oblige me to do so, even on LRP; but if we were playing a competitive game, I'd agree with you, failing to do so would be bad faith.

If this is going to be a strictly comp game, enforcing one side playing softball with the other through policy telling them to keep their hands tied behind their back while the other side gets a free pass to RR - even if it might make it less appealing for those who don't - is a terrible philosophy and approach.

The whole point of antags killing people cannot be to make fun for everyone else. That is not a sustainable model.

If it's going to be fun for the people who end up horizontal, you have to admit of fair competition, at least not make the imbalance self-imposed, or make the 'ending up horizontal' part of some larger cooperative fun within the round. Not everybody has multiple rounds to come back and hope they haven't been picked for 'smear the [...]' by Dynamic or the caprice of an antag with a plausible-enough reason under relaxed escalation.

Nothing about antagonism at present requires that the fun be cooperative within the round.
This policy, if implemented without some sort of check on how antags behave too, would weaken the extent to which crew would be able to fairly compete with antags on natural terms of the game without any sort of promise that playing softer with them would pay off.

If somebody fucking grimes you out of nowhere and you're as good as RR'd, you should not be asked to come back into the fictional world pretending they didn't or might not again.



Citadel's policy at the end at least was cloning made you forget and you lost memory anyway after a certain number of minutes dead if you got revived from your body. I can remember it coming up a few times - it was mostly self-enforced, but it was also largely redundant, because if Hizu or Moff or somebody was off on a run, it wasn't gonna be a secret by the time you got revived. I said it'd be better, but I don't think it'd be good either.

We just can't have these hand-offs to antagonism as it currently plays without some sort of payoff on the other side. Asymmetry within the game is fine, being told that you're the designated loser is not.

edit because I hope it doesn't come off like this: I don't think antags killing people is at all in bad faith. It's just that assuming it in as 'the game,' where killing people and causing chaos are justified goals, both means limiting the other things people can have justified expectations of being able to do and not asking crew to take it on the chin for the sake of a payoff they aren't getting. Blackout policy without some no-RR (*or escalation, or stricter 'legitimate targets') policy just does not meet that test (e2: and a lot of perfectly good-faith players, crew and antagonist, who regularly wipe the station and make people horizontal would not want to see us try!)

[Higgin]

I feel like we have kinda lost sight of the core dynamic.

which is exactly why we shouldn't be giving one side self-enforced slippers and the other side a free pass to use steel-toe boots when it comes to teeth-kicking - if you're gonna deviate from this dynamic, it has to be in a way that's fair to both sides

[Constellado]

I am unsure on this proposal.
To me, it doesn't make sense on why a person would forget how they died. Would make for a weird thing, not knowing how you died every time you did die. Imagine a world where characters don't remember how they died when they did a mistake such as forgetting to put on internals in a spaced area. There were times I died in similar ways and people asked me who killed me once i get revived. I end up telling them it was a mistake. Imagine a world where you cannot remember how you died, and we end up having players thinking I ended up being murdered when it was a simple workplace accident?


Also, dying to a heretic, them failing to sac you, and then being revived later should have you be allowed to say who killed you in my opinion. The heretic failed at the sacrifice, so they gotta pay the price for it.

[iwishforducks]

These are just the complications that came to mind within a few seconds, let alone complex situations where you have ongoing violent rivalry or borging or whatever.

Fine, if you think any arbitrary timeframe is going to be too dysfunctional, why not go all out? Why not forgetting everything from the shift? Back to square one.

We don't have to be overly pedantic about, say, someone going back to their little projects in the round. That's kind of shitty, and we can hand wave that as 'you planned that prior to the shift' or some shit, I don't give a fuck about the particulars, we just shouldn't have any rule be anti-fun. But any of the events that happened, treat it as though you've entered the shift the moment you're revived. Someone acting very confidently on events that happened in a round is a lot more observable than just the particulars of a given murder. That way, it's not too different to entering the round as a ghost role. If still that isn't enforceable, then I'll absolutely question the ability to enforce ghost role/dchat abuse as well.

so... what happens when someone dies on a medical bed and then is instantly revived? what happens if they get shot by someone, receive a bullet wound, walk over to medical, and keel over minutes and minutes later due to blood loss, but still end up getting revived within the minute?

the former has happened so many times we're going to need to invent new numbers to count it, the other i can confidently say has happened no less than three times to me. no death is an outlier in the game of ss13.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I feel like we have kinda lost sight of the core dynamic.

which is exactly why we shouldn't be giving one side self-enforced slippers and the other side a free pass to use steel-toe boots when it comes to teeth-kicking - if you're gonna deviate from this dynamic, it has to be in a way that's fair to both sides

It isn't a two way street. Antagonists maim, murder, torture, grief the crew. The crew get to main, murder, "interrogate", and grief the antagonist. That's rule 4.

[Higgin]

I feel like we have kinda lost sight of the core dynamic.

which is exactly why we shouldn't be giving one side self-enforced slippers and the other side a free pass to use steel-toe boots when it comes to teeth-kicking - if you're gonna deviate from this dynamic, it has to be in a way that's fair to both sides

It isn't a two way street. Antagonists maim, murder, torture, grief the crew. The crew get to main, murder, "interrogate", and grief the antagonist. That's rule 4.

One (the antag) gets the license to move first and doesn't have to worry about collateral damage/harming non-antags.

The crew reacts and do have to worry about their consequences towards others.

Beyond that, antag-crew interaction looks a lot more like a two-way street to me in the wording of rule 4 - and like that is the core balance of gameplay between sec and antagonists in the main ruleset. Is that mistaken?

[Itseasytosee2me]

It isn't a two way street. Antagonists maim, murder, torture, grief the crew. The crew get to main, murder, "interrogate", and grief the antagonist. That's rule 4.

One (the antag) gets the license to move first and doesn't have to worry about collateral damage/harming non-antags.

The crew reacts and do have to worry about their consequences towards others.

Beyond that, antag-crew interaction looks a lot more like a two-way street to me in the wording of rule 4 - and like that is the core balance of gameplay between sec and antagonists in the main ruleset. Is that mistaken?

Failure of metaphor on my behalf, I meant it is a two way street.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Let's throw in borging into this too, because that'd make it ACTUALLY a convenient method for soft player removal.

straying vaguely off-topic but i do actually think cyborgs should not remember the round at all. I like that idea. Immediately cuts the knot of needing to OOCLy bar forcibly-borged prisoners from reacting to the fact they were just murdered by sec and screaming about human harm, too.

[NecromancerAnne]

so... what happens when someone dies on a medical bed and then is instantly revived? what happens if they get shot by someone, receive a bullet wound, walk over to medical, and keel over minutes and minutes later due to blood loss, but still end up getting revived within the minute?

the former has happened so many times we're going to need to invent new numbers to count it, the other i can confidently say has happened no less than three times to me. no death is an outlier in the game of ss13.

Let's say 'if you revived in less than a minute, you're probably fine to not forget'. How's about that? Might help with some features which do revive you from death.

I know we are looking to resolve any disputes here by applying retrograde amnesia for the whole round, but if you technically died and were revived in less time than it takes you to type a message in dchat, you're probably not obligated to forget everything and helps stop situations where medical malpractice is more punishing than it needs to be. That too is logged and a little easier to rule of thumb, because it will come up far less often than most other deaths and there really aren't any stakes attached to have to worry about.

[sinfulbliss]

This would need to be accompanied by a code change giving a big fat flavortext to have any impact (unless the goal is to ban people until they get the idea).

I would not want this on LRP personally at all. It doesn’t really make sense for my character to forgot who killed him, even from a roleplay perspective. Suppose I’m in a long fight with someone that spans 5 minutes, and by the end they kill me. To require that now my character just “forgot” all this, and goes back to a normal life as if he was flashed by the Men in Black or got part of his brain removed doesn’t make any sense to me.

Even if there’s accompanying flavortext added, just like there is in heretic, people are liable to miss it. Other issues that were brought up like someone dying and then getting revived 30 seconds later are also problematic.

At the end of the day I think it’s a personal RP decision, and the more freedom to RP in the way you like the better IMO, but that’s of course because I’m used to LRP. Maybe MRP players would prefer if this were mandated. Still, it doesn’t make much sense to me even from a roleplay standpoint.

[warbluke]

I do not like this proposal. It puts a lot of pressure on someone who was likely just doing their job to try and remember what they should and shouldn't know in game, where I think that the pressure should be on the perpetrator in question to cover their tracks. Killing someone and remaining anonymous doesn't even require hiding the body, it just requires the bare minimum effort needed to disguise yourself, or using an indirect method like setting a trap. Removing the need to do so makes the mechanics of planning something like that much less involved and in my eyes much less fun.

I already don't like the way heretic handles this, and I think extending the concept would prove both unfun and an administrative nightmare with all the line toeing that could occur.

[Constellado]

huh, borged players are allowed to remember their past life?

Interesting I thought that was the other way around. (I havnt been borged in over a year I think)

I do think it is okay to make it so borged players cannot remember their past life, that seems fair to me.