New primary/roleplay rules.

[imblyings]

https://tgstation13.org/wiki/User:Imblyings

This is more of a, 'I'm going to do this anyway as long as I can get one of the headmins to change the wiki page, here's a warning', rather than, 'oh I'm going to sit down and slowly discuss how the rules can be changed and then have nothing change'. I honestly don't care if some of you have massive objections to what is being proposed- it's not that I don't care what you have to say, it's that nothing is more important right now than getting rid of the old rules. Change, discussion, input, criticism, etc, will be valued but will come later. What I have done however, is look over the feedback posted during the previous attempt and incorporated what I could.

[Cheimon]

No mention of greytiding. (Old text: "Repeatedly wrecking havoc on other players' experience without otherwise contributing anything of actual value to the game will not be tolerated.") Not certain about that, apparently it wasn't obvious to lots of people before old rule 2 was implemented.

e.g. metagaming should be i.e. or a.k.a.

No mention of random murdering. Rules serve as a tutorial for new players in many ways. Having that mentioned is sensible. (Old text: "Randomly murdering people is generally considered to be ruining someone's fun and poor form in roleplay. If you don't have a solid IC reason for murder, you may be removed. Trying to justify it with 'My character is so random/insane' is not tolerated.").

Old rules say "It is an immediate permanent job ban on all head roles/ai to go afk, go braindead, commit suicide, or otherwise abandon the role as a head of staff or ai without first notifying admins. This includes forgetting you readied up and leaving the game open during lobby with those roles enabled." Is that still the case? If so, maybe it's worth mentioning. It wouldn't have occurred to me that I'd never get to play CE again if I suicided once as them. There's actually no mention of roundstart suicide at all in this ruleset. Is that intentional? I have noticed it says it "requires a minimum amount of effort" but this is vague.

On an entirely general note, your rewritten rules provide very little information about the length and type of bans you can expect from breaking them. The older rules are slightly more clear on this, although still not exactly encyclopaedic. It seems sensible to have an idea of roughly what should happen if you break rules so that you know if your punishment is excessive or vice versa.

No real discussion of murder, you may think this is implied but others may well disagree. Better to spell out when and where it isn't acceptable to kill (as a non-antagonist): saying things "should escalate properly" is incredibly vague, especially for new players who come from games that are much more lethal. Again, rules are a tutorial of sorts.

No mention of shuttle griefing.

No mention of antagonists not being allowed to purposefully work counter to their objectives in certain situations.

Your naming policy is vastly vaguer, that may be okay, but there has been a lot of discussion over it and I can't remember the consensus on how it should be.

No mention of WGW, over the top racism/sexism, signing up as adolf hitler.

No apparent mention of killbaiting.

Now, I'm aware that some of these choices may be deliberate: I'm just trying to summarise and get some reasoning behind them. I think many of the current rules that haven't been put in here are good. A big part of making the rules shorter is that you're ending up implying much more, which isn't necessarily helpful: new players look at the rules as an explanation of how to begin playing as a character, and when things aren't spelt out they may well miss them. I'd really recommend bumping up the precedents section to account for this. Also, good luck with sec and robot policy: please don't fuck them up.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

In response to shuttle griefing: Rule 1
Murder: Rule 1
naming policy: Having a naming policy beyond "No xxMLGPROHUNTERxx for humans while allowing memezards to call themself "Valids-the-Everything" is dumb
WGW is mentioned under spam
Killbaiting is Rule 1, and covered by Admin Discretion

[imblyings]

>No mention of greytiding. (Old text: "Repeatedly wrecking havoc on other players' experience without otherwise contributing anything of actual value to the game will not be tolerated.") Not certain about that, apparently it wasn't obvious to lots of people before old rule 2 was implemented.

Greytiding seems to fall under rule 1 for me but I don't see why the term itself can't be mentioned explicitly.

>e.g. metagaming should be i.e. or a.k.a.

fug

>No mention of random murdering. Rules serve as a tutorial for new players in many ways. Having that mentioned is sensible. (Old text: "Randomly murdering people is generally considered to be ruining someone's fun and poor form in roleplay. If you don't have a solid IC reason for murder, you may be removed. Trying to justify it with 'My character is so random/insane' is not tolerated.").

Like greytiding, murdering someone randomly is negatively impacting someones round for little reason, but I don't see why it can't be explicitly spelled out too. I really don't want to touch the word roleplay, the thing triggers me, I've argued about that term for years

>Old rules say "It is an immediate permanent job ban on all head roles/ai to go afk, go braindead, commit suicide, or otherwise abandon the role as a head of staff or ai without first notifying admins. This includes forgetting you readied up and leaving the game open during lobby with those roles enabled." Is that still the case? If so, maybe it's worth mentioning. It wouldn't have occurred to me that I'd never get to play CE again if I suicided once as them. There's actually no mention of roundstart suicide at all in this ruleset. Is that intentional? I have noticed it says it "requires a minimum amount of effort" but this is vague.

Not really, I'll note, then perma if they have a record of just going for head/silicon/antag roles and going afk soon after. I will clarify the minimum amount of effort but that's a contentious issue by itself, the bare minimum currently seems to be not going afk or being an absolute dickhead straight off the bat but even that might differ by admin. It might be a good time to standardize admin stances on things now too.

>On an entirely general note, your rewritten rules provide very little information about the length and type of bans you can expect from breaking them. The older rules are slightly more clear on this, although still not exactly encyclopaedic. It seems sensible to have an idea of roughly what should happen if you break rules so that you know if your punishment is excessive or vice versa.

Ban lengths can be included yes

>No real discussion of murder, you may think this is implied but others may well disagree. Better to spell out when and where it isn't acceptable to kill (as a non-antagonist): saying things "should escalate properly" is incredibly vague, especially for new players who come from games that are much more lethal. Again, rules are a tutorial of sorts.

A quick overview of what is proper escalation probably should have been put in

>No mention of shuttle griefing.

woops. Like Dorsid said it is covered by rule 1 by I might separate the precedent page into things by rule, with shuttle griff being a rule 1 thing, as well as integrate some sort of expected consequence listing to it.

>No mention of antagonists not being allowed to purposefully work counter to their objectives in certain situations.

The only time where I'd consider ever banning an antag is in team antag modes where somebody works against their team, I think I touched upon that with team antags being allowed to do anything apart from the exploit/icinooc/rape/spawncamping thing. As for long antags, I come from a relatively older period where antag free-for-all licenses was a thing and I don't want to live in a period where that isn't a thing. Of course this is more opinion than rewrite but I see no benefit in restricting antags without far-reaching changes to other policies.

>Your naming policy is vastly vaguer, that may be okay, but there has been a lot of discussion over it and I can't remember the consensus on how it should be.

The current naming policy is based off a recent change proposed by me. What I did was condense it down to it's absolute bare minimum.

>No mention of WGW, over the top racism/sexism, signing up as adolf hitler.
Covered by the spam thing yeah. I might add a clause saying doing deliberately dumb shit will get you fucked up, with examples.

>No apparent mention of killbaiting.
I was unsure about this, I might add a general baiting rule somewhere.

>Now, I'm aware that some of these choices may be deliberate: I'm just trying to summarise and get some reasoning behind them. I think many of the current rules that haven't been put in here are good. A big part of making the rules shorter is that you're ending up implying much more, which isn't necessarily helpful: new players look at the rules as an explanation of how to begin playing as a character, and when things aren't spelt out they may well miss them. I'd really recommend bumping up the precedents section to account for this. Also, good luck with sec and robot policy: please don't fuck them up.

I definitely don't want to imply more than the old rules did, I want players to read a comprehensively informative yet easy to read set of rules and allah/forum/singulo willing, it'll be possible.

>naming policy: Having a naming policy beyond "No xxMLGPROHUNTERxx for humans while allowing memezards to call themself "Valids-the-Everything" is dumb

Then you'd have loved the brief lizard random name generator thread and some of the name suggestions there. I personally don't care about how memey lizard names get but under the new rule, lizard names must make the same amount of effort that a human name does, it's not a race-specific law. So you can't get Fucks-Game-Stop as a lizard name or Fucking Gamestop as a human name either for example.

[Scones]

Team antagonists can do whatever they want as per lone antagonists, as long as it helps their team.

Shouldn't that be "does not harm their team"?

[Atlanta-Ned]

I like the new rules. Succinct, and clear.

If anything, I'd create a second page with examples of things that break the rules, IE: Greytiding and random murder. That way you keep the actual rules page simple and easy to read but still have something to *whap* new players with.

[imblyings]

>Team antagonists can do whatever they want as per lone antagonists, as long as it helps their team.

That's a point of contention. If the server playerbase does not expect players to actively help, only to not get in the way/harm their team, then that will be what is put in the rules.

>If anything, I'd create a second page with examples of things that break the rules, IE: Greytiding and random murder. That way you keep the actual rules page simple and easy to read but still have something to *whap* new players with.

A examples/precedent/exceptions/clarifications list is being written up.

[Scones]

That was the impression I got from the 'Conversion Obligation' thread

[Cheimon]

Happy with your arguments, you seem to know what you're doing. Good stuff! With any luck this will create a better written ruleset (the current ones are slightly messy) that's useful to old and new players alike.

[imblyings]

Slightly redid the main rules. The hope is that a new player reading the main rules should have a sufficient understanding of the rules, enough to orientate himself and successfully play the game. The main rule precedents go into the many little details that the server has picked up over the ages and are divided along with explanations on what happens with bans normally if those rules are broken.

A first draft of the security rules have been put up- this is much more of an opinion than a strict rewrite. Security are now mostly on the same level as other crew members in regards to policy. The only differences are first to give due deference to chain of command within security, so while security can do whatever they want to antags, they should at least make a reasonable attempt at listening to their boss about it. Security not stealing things for no reason was also added because it's a somewhat common ahelp. There is also a specific acknowledgement of incidents where security get griefed- like I said in the 'do the clothes make the man thread', security have no obligation to suffer unprovoked attacks. They should be able to freely prevent further attacks or griefing but must remember to be careful and be relatively proportionate in their actions.

I also didn't bother to add in the part about the armoury and metagaming on purpose, since it's not metagaming, any of the supposedly competent security professionals that players are apparently roleplaying would come to the conclusion that the armoury simply isn't secure. That being said, if the playerbase views it as a shitty enough thing to do that warrants specific rules for it, it'll be added back.

[Scones]

The forums don't support emoji but I assure you I tried to give a thumbs up and some 100s

[Kelenius]

"Team antagonists can do anything they want as long as it doesn't deliberately harm their team" is a better wording.

Thwn again, I don't like these rules, because people can and will do shit that isn't covered by the rules directly, then whine when they get banned for rule 1, then you add precedents to the rules and you're back to square one.

[lumipharon]

You can't really get around that though.
In the ideal world, you'd cover almost everything with a big, fat "Don't be a dick" rule, with something like "if you put yourself in the other guys shoes and looked at your actions, and found they could be shitty or dickish, don't do it".

Of course, in reality that won't cut it sadly.

[kosmos]

What happened to current Rule 3, the "You're not in control of everything, man up and deal with it"-rule? I liked it the most.

[Incomptinence]

It's so much bigger already, little rulesets they grow up so fast.

[imblyings]

>Thwn again, I don't like these rules, because people can and will do shit that isn't covered by the rules directly

I don't think this is ever avoidable. It's essentially why we have rule 0, rule 1, and rules saying not to toe the line etc. The precedent system should make it easier though, with our current rules, you get whacked with an interpretation of the rules made to fit, presumably rule 1 but there's no space or neat and tidy way to add that ruling/precedent to the rules. With the new ones, if it's a serious and unique enough thing, it can be slotted into the rule 1 precedent list or somewhere else.

>What happened to current Rule 3, the "You're not in control of everything, man up and deal with it"-rule? I liked it the most.

Right in rule 1, ' Conflicts where people get upset do happen'. A 'deal with it' can be added I suppose.

[Oldman Robustin]

The rules have been, and will continue to be, a joke for as long as they retain this lazy structure.

It makes me sad how many man-hours have gone into enforcing a shitty arbitrary ruleset when investing even 1% of that time into slightly more useful language would've been great.

It's really, really, really not that hard for you to put all your brains together and come up with a brightline for unprovoked griffing, or at least a few basic factors in determining where rule 1 starts.

You could do 3 categories of behavior: 1) Always bannable 2) Warning/Note behavior, consistent/patterns of this behavior will result in escalating punishments depending on the nature of the problem 3) Generally acceptable behavior

There's so much room for improvement here, yet all these changes ever get are the lowest hanging fruit.

The only reason the current method is passable is precisely because the rules mean nothing. It's just a long-held series of understandings passed from admin to admin, and occasionally one admin is out of the loop or has a biased view on an issue, etc... and they get shitty, but eventually the others enforce the consensus. Still, if the rules only work because they are completely ignored, they really aren't doing their job.

[callanrockslol]

The rules have been, and will continue to be, a joke for as long as they retain this lazy structure.

It makes me sad how many man-hours have gone into enforcing a shitty arbitrary ruleset when investing even 1% of that time into slightly more useful language would've been great.

It's really, really, really not that hard for you to put all your brains together and come up with a brightline for unprovoked griffing, or at least a few basic factors in determining where rule 1 starts.

You could do 3 categories of behavior: 1) Always bannable 2) Warning/Note behavior, consistent/patterns of this behavior will result in escalating punishments depending on the nature of the problem 3) Generally acceptable behavior

There's so much room for improvement here, yet all these changes ever get are the lowest hanging fruit.

The only reason the current method is passable is precisely because the rules mean nothing. It's just a long-held series of understandings passed from admin to admin, and occasionally one admin is out of the loop or has a biased view on an issue, etc... and they get shitty, but eventually the others enforce the consensus. Still, if the rules only work because they are completely ignored, they really aren't doing their job.

[Tornadium]

The rules have been, and will continue to be, a joke for as long as they retain this lazy structure.

It makes me sad how many man-hours have gone into enforcing a shitty arbitrary ruleset when investing even 1% of that time into slightly more useful language would've been great.

It's really, really, really not that hard for you to put all your brains together and come up with a brightline for unprovoked griffing, or at least a few basic factors in determining where rule 1 starts.

You could do 3 categories of behavior: 1) Always bannable 2) Warning/Note behavior, consistent/patterns of this behavior will result in escalating punishments depending on the nature of the problem 3) Generally acceptable behavior

There's so much room for improvement here, yet all these changes ever get are the lowest hanging fruit.

The only reason the current method is passable is precisely because the rules mean nothing. It's just a long-held series of understandings passed from admin to admin, and occasionally one admin is out of the loop or has a biased view on an issue, etc... and they get shitty, but eventually the others enforce the consensus. Still, if the rules only work because they are completely ignored, they really aren't doing their job.

.

[imblyings]

While I'm not defending the current rules,

The rules aren't arbitrary, although given the current rules I can't fault someone for believing parts of it are. What do you mean slightly more useful language?

>come up with a brightline for unprovoked griffing, or at least a few basic factors in determining where rule 1 starts.

No one else yet has tried, I've tried and it's here, "Going out of your way to negatively impact or end someone's round for little reason is not acceptable." That's the brightline.

>You could do 3 categories of behavior: 1) Always bannable 2) Warning/Note behavior, consistent/patterns of this behavior will result in escalating punishments depending on the nature of the problem 3) Generally acceptable behavior

Is already what admins do to an extent, some things like meta/rape are always bannable, other offences take into consideration a lot of factors which is essentially 2, and there's almost no use in categorizing in behaviour for 3. The nature of ahelps means that the only category explicit enough to be usable and actionable constantly is the first one.

>There's so much room for improvement here

where, tell me, you can help if you tell me, I will listen and consider what you've said

>The only reason the current method is passable is precisely because the rules mean nothing. It's just a long-held series of understandings passed from admin to admin, and occasionally one admin is out of the loop or has a biased view on an issue, etc... and they get shitty, but eventually the others enforce the consensus. Still, if the rules only work because they are completely ignored, they really aren't doing their job.

Well, I've been trying to put some of these understandings into writing so players know what these understandings are. Some, obviously, not all, I haven't been busy sitting down with each admin and asking them what they think of the rules. Some of the rules are being ignored or are just poorly written to the extent that there is no point in enforcing them strictly, and that's a problem I've tried to address as well. If you have specific examples of this happening in the current or proposed rules, let me know.

[Oldman Robustin]

While I'm not defending the current rules,

The rules aren't arbitrary, although given the current rules I can't fault someone for believing parts of it are. What do you mean slightly more useful language?

>come up with a brightline for unprovoked griffing, or at least a few basic factors in determining where rule 1 starts.

No one else yet has tried, I've tried and it's here, "Going out of your way to negatively impact or end someone's round for little reason is not acceptable." That's the brightline.

>You could do 3 categories of behavior: 1) Always bannable 2) Warning/Note behavior, consistent/patterns of this behavior will result in escalating punishments depending on the nature of the problem 3) Generally acceptable behavior

Is already what admins do to an extent, some things like meta/rape are always bannable, other offences take into consideration a lot of factors which is essentially 2, and there's almost no use in categorizing in behaviour for 3. The nature of ahelps means that the only category explicit enough to be usable and actionable constantly is the first one.

>There's so much room for improvement here

where, tell me, you can help if you tell me, I will listen and consider what you've said

>The only reason the current method is passable is precisely because the rules mean nothing. It's just a long-held series of understandings passed from admin to admin, and occasionally one admin is out of the loop or has a biased view on an issue, etc... and they get shitty, but eventually the others enforce the consensus. Still, if the rules only work because they are completely ignored, they really aren't doing their job.

Well, I've been trying to put some of these understandings into writing so players know what these understandings are. Some, obviously, not all, I haven't been busy sitting down with each admin and asking them what they think of the rules. Some of the rules are being ignored or are just poorly written to the extent that there is no point in enforcing them strictly, and that's a problem I've tried to address as well. If you have specific examples of this happening in the current or proposed rules, let me know.

Any suggestions I make would be a huge departure from where the rules have been in the past, nobody is going to pull that off without a headmin giving explicit approval.

"Going out of your way to negatively impact or end someone's round for little reason is not acceptable." That's the brightline. .

I hope you were being sarcastic there because that's the opposite of a brightline, and it's patently false too. Janitors and botanists seem to solely exist to negatively impact people's rounds for no reason. You can get away with all kinds of minor fuckery. Back a month or two ago when coders fucked up the SMES and someone had to manually wire the emitters to a PACMAN, some admin-player stole my goddamn CE hardsuit while I was wiring and then gave it away in the bar for absolutely no reason.

Rule #1 is more dependent on the mood and personality of the admin BWOINKING you than any actual language change you're proposing here.

[imblyings]

>Any suggestions I make would be a huge departure from where the rules have been in the past, nobody is going to pull that off without a headmin giving explicit approval.
Well if you never make them it won't happen never ever

>Going out of your way to negatively impact or end someone's round for little reason is not acceptable

That's one of the closest things you'll get to a bright line, the closest thing you will get to a bright line will probably be that or a variation of that, along with a list of precedents on what is ok or not. It's a 2d spessman game with infinite possibilities, science can't impartially measure hurt feelings yet, yes, it's an unavoidable fact that enforcement of rule 1 will slightly differ between admins. It's also not just a language change. A few things have been added, a few things have been removed. Some things have been re-ordered, for logical consistency and for ease of expansion in the future if need be.

Someone on singulo also mentioned taking a step towards IC justifications rather than more OOC terms, rule 1 was amended to take that into account.

"Rule 1 could possibly be amended to say, 'Don't be a dick. Going out of your way to seriously negatively impact or end the round for someone with little IC justification is against the rules. Legitimate conflicts where people get upset do happen however, these conflicts should escalate properly and retribution must be proportionate."

[Amnestik]

Haven't read the thread because reading's hard, but don't we already have this? Aren't players already warned for first-time offences if they genuinely don't know that what they did was wrong?

I'd prefer to keep the list of precedents and policies public so players can actually verify that what they're getting pulled up on is actually there and isn't just an admin making a rule up on the spot for personal reasons.

[imblyings]

bump, OP updated

https://tgstation13.org/wiki/User:Imblyings

It's a warning not an invitation for discussion tbh, not until it replaces the current rules at least.

Regarding silicon rules, they are a mess but they are a functional mess, little of which I can fault or dispute. I'm not going to touch them, not anytime soon at least.

[oranges]

dumb, just give up and end your attempts

[imblyings]

this isn't a ss13 remake

[Tsaricide]

Obviously before we change the rules we need to hold elections for a council of players to oversee this process to make the best decisions possible.

[Stan_Studnick]

Honestly Oldman I do like your suggestion of "this is a list of the things that will get you banned" and so on method of rule organizing but this redone list is pretty good. Covers everything, less reading, and it also lets security do security things without making it an admin thing unless they're really shit and ahelps need to happen.

On that note could we please, please, please make it clear in the security procedure that you need to announce the sentence to the prisoner? So if you're going to gulag somebody it should be 100% clear what the sentence is so somebody isn't going there for repeatedly breaking into sec, honking a horn as they get brigged and later finds out that they have 10,000 points to mine.

[imblyings]

a guidebook on how to properly sec might be a better place for that, only if so people don't ahelp, 'this sec officer didn't tell me my sentence please ban'. And there are probably a hundred different reasons for an officer not to, all the way from being drunk, to being too stressed out, to simply forgetting.

[Stan_Studnick]

a guidebook on how to properly sec might be a better place for that, only if so people don't ahelp, 'this sec officer didn't tell me my sentence please ban'. And there are probably a hundred different reasons for an officer not to, all the way from being drunk, to being too stressed out, to simply forgetting.

Totally understandable, but it should be heavily encouraged IC and OOC for equally as many reasons. Chiefly among them Oldman got banned for activating the bomb inside of him on the gulag shuttle because he thought the sec officer was removing him from the round based on a rumor. (paraphrasing here, but you get the idea)

While I think it was just a big clusterfuck of misunderstanding and lack of communication, it could have easily been avoided.