/tg/Station 13

me and as334 discussed this a whole lot in #coderbus last night. thought i'd make a thread in case any players had any fresh ideas.
the general consensus is it should be some kind of puzzle game. sudoku was evaded since there are solving algorithms for it, even if they probably won't work on byond.

each successful check of the puzzle (whatever is chosen) gives the librarian a research point towards some kind of artifact. these artifacts (i imagined them as the talismans from that Jackie Chan cartoon) give you minor buffs and spells, since the librarian isn't infused with magic. think of it like this:
d&d 3e. a sorcerer class. sorcerers have like L3 spells just known to them, there are usually lower requirements for unlocking the more powerful ones. a mage class. mages don't have L3 spells known to them, they have to study (level up) for it. they have some magical ability, but it will never compare to a true sorcerer.
apply mage to librarian. the librarian will now use like orbs and talismans to create minor magical effects, be it smoke, a blink, creating light, etc.

post your thoughts.

Telescience and Genetics make me wary of puzzle/math based research mechanics, but cult isn't really any better.
I don't really have any solid useful suggestion apart from "make sure you spend a lot of time making sure research isn't a tedious pain in the ass", it should ideally be slightly amusing even without the rewards.

I think that some of the powers should be passive and should transfer through lives just like spells do.
There should be a few passive arcane paths and everypne should be limited to 3 passive spell powers. The chaplain should start with 2 points invested in divination, giving him the powerful tier two invocation power of holy healing and the tier one power of holy blessing. Since there are 3 passive spell slots and each magic path requires investing more points in it to get the more powerful powers, people will have to pick and choose their powers. The chaplain for instance might decide to level their invocation to 3 or they may decide to get a passive spell in a seperate school of magic in addition to their to tiers in invocation.

The passive arcane schools are as follows:
Invocation: Skill at invoking the powers of dieties
Evocation: Skill at provoking arcane abilities in items
Divination: Skill at finding arcane secrets through observation

Invocation powers:
>Holy Blessing -bless water into holy water
>Holy Healing -heal people with books at the price of intelligence
>Divine Protection - 10% brute and burn protection

Evocation Powers:
>Arcane Manipulation -do 3 more points of brute with melee attacks from any object
>Evoke Power - allows users with this power to fire bolts of silence from wands of nothing, recieve passive confusion and lsd immunity from wizard hats, recieve 30% brute and 45% burn resistance from wizard robes, and gain advanced magboot powers when holding brooms. Add more functions to other items if you can think of them.
>Arcane Efficiency- 30% chance not to use a charge when firing a wand or laser

Divination Powers:
>Enhanced Awareness- examining someone gives you a health scanner analysis of them in addition to the regular information
>Nature Sense - allows one to understand monkeys and aliens, also allows one to exam the exact reagants in a living being by examining them
>Sense Dead- allows one to see ghosts but only when they are bellow 25 health

Non-passive powers should also exist, but those should pnly be usable by reading papers or scrolls. Make different schools for non-passive powers.

Can librarian share their research, or give it to someone else? Those divination powers would be great for medical. A ranged scan is cool, passive reagen scan is fucking amazing.

Perhaps the puzzle takes the form of a crossword? Its still searchable, but every answer will need another search, so it still takes time, and thematically fits the librarian reading the newspaper

bad idea
you picked librarian. your job is to stock the library. you don't get dumbass arcane powers, you get books

All the proposed rewards don't really serve any purpose. They're cool for the librarian but it's too insular. Only the librarian cares. Ideally people other than the librarian should care.

So long as "people other than the librarian" caring does not result in a Basil-style race breaking into the Chaplain's office to be the one to get Smoke.

allura wrote:bad idea
you picked chaplain. your job is to talk on the radio and have everyone ignore you. you don't get dumbass anti-cult powers, you get to preach

Every RP job needs something to spice it up.

Loonikus wrote:

allura wrote:bad idea
you picked chaplain. your job is to talk on the radio and have everyone ignore you. you don't get dumbass anti-cult powers, you get to preach

Every RP job needs something to spice it up.

it's an rp job.
to spice it up, stock the library. actually use the tools given to you and be creative. if you need magic to be creative, you're bad

Violaceus wrote:In Forgotten Realms lore, one deity (Milil?) is pursuing a goal of finding the Metatext or Omnitext, ultimate words of universe, and elements of it are found in books, letters, whatever written one element at a time, letter or word or very rarely whole sentence.

Maybe something like that, librarian would search in existing books to find elements of Metatext and once he finds it all... Something happens I think.

MisterPerson wrote:All the proposed rewards don't really serve any purpose. They're cool for the librarian but it's too insular. Only the librarian cares. Ideally people other than the librarian should care.

They arnt just for the librarian, everyone gets up to 3 passive powers and they can hoard other spells in the form of paper runes.

Silly shit aside this would be really cool

Code and merge posthaste.

I prefer the idea that the Librarian has to go looking for the parts to a text and compile them to gain some hilariously minor power.

Cecily wrote:I prefer the idea that the Librarian has to go looking for the parts to a text and compile them to gain some hilariously minor power.

that actually sounds better
like 20 pieces of paper in exchange for
jaunt. works in a 1-tile radius.

420weedscopes wrote:

Cecily wrote:I prefer the idea that the Librarian has to go looking for the parts to a text and compile them to gain some hilariously minor power.

that actually sounds better
like 20 pieces of paper in exchange for
jaunt. works in a 1-tile radius.

Just make the powers only work when activated by paper or with an enchanted object or something.

420weedscopes wrote:

Cecily wrote:I prefer the idea that the Librarian has to go looking for the parts to a text and compile them to gain some hilariously minor power.

that actually sounds better
like 20 pieces of paper in exchange for
jaunt. works in a 1-tile radius.

The funny thing is that I can think of some pretty great uses of that power.

Loonikus wrote:

Violaceus wrote:In Forgotten Realms lore, one deity (Milil?) is pursuing a goal of finding the Metatext or Omnitext, ultimate words of universe, and elements of it are found in books, letters, whatever written one element at a time, letter or word or very rarely whole sentence.

Maybe something like that, librarian would search in existing books to find elements of Metatext and once he finds it all... Something happens I think.

Spoiler:

They get the "Fun" tab for the rest of the round, at the price of only being able to say "CHIM."

Only after successfully giving an insightful summary on the Thirty-Six Lessons.

allura wrote:

Loonikus wrote:

allura wrote:bad idea
you picked chaplain. your job is to talk on the radio and have everyone ignore you. you don't get dumbass anti-cult powers, you get to preach

Every RP job needs something to spice it up.

it's an rp job.
to spice it up, stock the library. actually use the tools given to you and be creative. if you need magic to be creative, you're bad

Except even when stocked no one uses the library. Librarians are greyshirts with laser pointers and a special room.

Omnitext could work. Copy text into a thing (the desk?), it takes the letters and converts to numbers and adds them together, if the number is in a certain range, you get a spellbook to share or use.

Or some other way, that reeks of RNG genetics shit

Cecily wrote:Silly shit aside this would be really cool

Code and merge posthaste.

I prefer the idea that the Librarian has to go looking for the parts to a text and compile them to gain some hilariously minor power.

Maybe wait until the idea is actually completed and ready to be implemented before making demands like "code and merge posthaste"

maybe stop being hostile to people who say a joke that shows up in every single idea thread..?
its not a demand nigga calm down

this thread is for idea discussion, not your personal fantasies

What if we just added paper golem assistants which can only be animated by the librarian, are far more fragile than adamantium ones (like two hits of health fragile), and can help you stock shelves.

What, no paper tiding for the librarian?

More ideas for librarian powers:

Wrath: Makes books into a brute 10 weapon when used on the head. Now you too can biblethump like the chaplian!

Paper space: the librarian can become 2d, capable of hiding within paper bins. If the bin is picked up, they take suffocation damage until they die, getting gibbed at the holder's feet from being unable to properly escape paper space.

Forgery: once per 5-10 minutes, they can fake any stamp on a document if they stay still for a time to complete the forgery.

Summon pet: Calls a random simple creature to the librarian. It might be a rat, a cat, lizard, maybe even Ian. Perhaps calls a ghost to control the animal?

Here is my proposition:
Allow the book making computer to print grimoires.
Grimoires are books that can be upgraded to generate arcane powers. They all start at level 0 and gain levels by being placed beside items of power on the librarian's alter. There are two types of grimoires: passive and active. Active grimoires gain spell pages which can be activated in the casters hand and photocopied to give to others and whatnot. Active powers are used at the cost of some brute damage or something depending on the power. Passive powers are gained by activating a passive power book in the casters hand. The caster gains as many powers as they can from the book. Each person can only have 3 powers at the most. So they will want 3 level 1 tomes if they want a power from each school of passive magic or they may want one level 3 grimoire to master a certain school of passive magic. Check my post about passive magic schools to see the details.
Here are the schools of magic and the items needed to upgrade their grimoires:
passive schools:
Invokation: the grimoire for this is the bible and it is upgraded with null rod, soul shards, or human limbs
Evokation: the grimoire for this is a book called arcane manipulation. It is upgraded with wands and staffs, with bluespace crystals, and with soul shards
Divination: the book of sight. Upgraded via sacrificing human heads, scrying orbs, or 100u of eye healing chem

Active schools:
Conjuration: the school of transforming energy into physical forms. Think smoke screen and ice blast. Book of arcane energy. Upgrade via anomaly cores, wands, and cult items.
Enchantment: the school of charms and hexes. Use this to give buffs debuffs to other players or yourself. Book of alterations. Upgraded via wands, and slime cores.
Translocation: the school of moving matter by arcane means. Book of places. Upgraded via bluespace crystals and bluespace tomatoes only.

Please think of more if you can.

Combining a book with an item to get a power is a brilliant idea, but having a set formula just means the librarian will go on an item hunt and then have nothing to do. The experimentor turns random items into other random items, why not something similar? Items are divided into categories, and a random item in that category will provide a power. It might be something simple like a breath mask, or it might be a hypospray. Promotes experimentation and trading with departments.

Librarian is the only job I support removing, but I wonder what would take the place of the library. I would merge part of the library with the chapel then use the rest for something else.

We actually have hilariously underused spell system
It can make craftable spells but instead only used for relatively hardcoded wiz spells
Maybe make librarian and chaplain (2 most useless jobs apart from cult rounds for chaplain) cooperate to gain some little shit

Snakebutt wrote:More ideas for librarian powers:

Wrath: Makes books into a brute 10 weapon when used on the head. Now you too can biblethump like the chaplian!

Paper space: the librarian can become 2d, capable of hiding within paper bins. If the bin is picked up, they take suffocation damage until they die, getting gibbed at the holder's feet from being unable to properly escape paper space.

Forgery: once per 5-10 minutes, they can fake any stamp on a document if they stay still for a time to complete the forgery.

Summon pet: Calls a random simple creature to the librarian. It might be a rat, a cat, lizard, maybe even Ian. Perhaps calls a ghost to control the animal?

Fuck forging stamps, let them forge signatures.

"Give the Librarian all-access, he will be my successor.

Signed, Dominic Com, Captain."

How about this? There could be a random event called an "Eldritch anomaly" that would spawn a sort of small Cultist shrine thing at some random point on the station along with a tome. The librarian could have a sort of scrying glass thing he could use to identify the tome via a little minister sort of thing. If he does it right the tome can be used to invoke some sort of beneficial properties, such as blessing weapons to deal additional damage to certain mobs and antag, healing people, or turning husks back into clonable bodies.

If the librarian fucks up the minigame he reads the incantation wrong. When that happens either nothing happens or something bad happens. Bad things can include permanently being forced into clown clothes and receiving permanent maximum brain damage, bursting into flames, being struck down by lightning, or conjuring up an army of hostile skeletons. You can also use the tomes in the destructive analyzer to make them reproducible (for high costs) at the risk of summoning cosmic terrors. Research enough of that shit and Nanotrasen might just send the station something nice because let's face it, Nanotrasen would just fucking love to figure out how that cultist shit works

So long as most of the negative effects can be remedied with null rod thwackings bible thumpings holy water.

check this out: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/7498
it's a wizard event that changes the stats (damage, throwforce, etc) of weapons on the station, then gives them suffixes and prefixes which imply if the item is better or worse
what if we let the librarian/chaplain enchant things kinda like this

1) Magic powers are universally evil. Good folks on the station only ever get to sometimes steal these things from antagonists. Turning magic into a resource for the station doesn't fit the themes of the game.

2) Giving anybody the ability to sit in one place all by themselves and do busy work, then emerge with super-powers or boosts of any sort is bad. Every other department has distractions and resources they need to do this. Letting the librarian do it for free all by himself in secret is bad.

3) What allura said. The Librarian is a roleplay job for distributing literature to the station. Suddenly making him some kind of warlock makes as much sense as removing the roboticist and giving all of his responsibilities to the bartender. Ostensibly the Librarian is also setup to be a journalist and reporter for the station. If you don't like doing those things it's not because the Librarian is lacking, you should be playing a different job.

4) IF ANYTHING, the chaplain should be the focus of discussion for this goal. Perhaps deconverting cultists could give him some resource to spend on his own faith based powers to spice up cult rounds. He's the closest the station has to any normal wielder of spiritual powers, not the librarian.

What? Viro and genetics can both 'sit in on place by themselves and emerge with super powers'.
Genetics needs literally nothing,and can unlock all the powers in 10-15 minutes it they're fast/lucky.
Viro is a bit more RNG, but they still can get everything they need without ever leaving their area, or even being seen by literally anyone else.

That said, I do agree that it wouldn't sit well, if the librarian had magic related shit.
While it wouldn't be bad if librarians/lawyers got things to actually 'do', I really see no issue with having pure RP jobs.

I do like the idea of, between them, the chaplain and librarian representing different halves of an occult researching possibility, with the result of having some sort of mild bonus for the station. But what, and how?

Giving anybody the ability to sit in one place all by themselves and do busy work, then emerge with super-powers or boosts of any sort is bad

That was partially the idea behind my suggestion. The librarian would actually have to go search for these tomes one the Eldritch anomaly hits. They wouldn't just magically fall into his lap. The tomes themselves would also be more about helping the rest of the crew instead of giving the librarian himself super powers and buffs. As far as magic being evil goes, let's face it. Nanotrasen is a giant mega corporation. I seriously doubt they'd care about good and evil. The directors on the board would undoubtedly jizz their pants for two weeks straight at the financial possibilities of harnessing magic powers.

lumipharon wrote:What? Viro and genetics can both 'sit in on place by themselves and emerge with super powers'.
Genetics needs literally nothing,and can unlock all the powers in 10-15 minutes it they're fast/lucky.
Viro is a bit more RNG, but they still can get everything they need without ever leaving their area, or even being seen by literally anyone else.

That said, I do agree that it wouldn't sit well, if the librarian had magic related shit.
While it wouldn't be bad if librarians/lawyers got things to actually 'do', I really see no issue with having pure RP jobs.

The virologist is secluded but if she wants to make heavy hitters she needs to go beg chems from the chemists. The CMO also has access to her department. If she wants to skip ahead to the good stuff she needs to get a crate from cargo and get someone else to open it for her. It's also 100% RNG based. You will eventually run out of the stuff and need to go back to the chemist for more, unless you get really lucky and roll the perfect disease with your 6 uses of mutagen at round start.

Most diseases are also incredibly slow to kill, incredibly obvious who caused them, and typically easily cured. Cooking up the thing is only the beginning, figuring out a way to spread it that wont immediately get discovered, cured, and blamed on you is another.

The geneticist is in an incredibly high trafficked area right next to the cloner, is not alone in their department (potentially having a partner and the CMO able to come, go, or camp out) and also mostly RNG based (but less so, if you're skilled). They really can sit in one place (though it's nice to go get some anti-rad stuff to speed up the process) but they're usually far from alone.

Compare this to the librarian's backroom. Which only he, the HoP, and the Captain have access to. Which nobody EVER bothers to go into (even most Librarians don't go in there). Which has no windows. Which would be the perfect spot to sit your ass down and crack open your eldritch tome and start solving puzzles for magic powers and the only reason anyone would ever come by to bother you would be the meta-reason of making sure you're not doing that exact thing.

You know you only need to use 1 unit of mutagen/plasma etc right? and you start with a bottle of every reagent you can use now.
while that isnt enough to get everything, 20 uses of mutagen and plasma will get you most shit.

In my experience, unleashing a plague is far more effective with QUANITY of virus. When I release 20+ viruses, all very hard to stop, and extremely contagious, it's next to impossible to stop. Basically people all have 3 viruses at any given time, but if they cure one, they'll just get infected with another, from some other fuck trying to get cured.

With genetics, you can get all 4 powers without anyone else realising (unless they decide to use the SE you for example labelled monkey SE on themselves), give yourself all powers, then wipe the SE so no one else can get it.

an0n3 the librarian would get shitty terrible spells at best
not endgame ei nath stuff, prob Smoke and other such minor spells
i doubt the librarian would even get a teleport.

lumipharon wrote:What? Viro and genetics can both 'sit in on place by themselves and emerge with super powers'.
Genetics needs literally nothing,and can unlock all the powers in 10-15 minutes it they're fast/lucky.
Viro is a bit more RNG, but they still can get everything they need without ever leaving their area, or even being seen by literally anyone else.

Yes, they're poorly designed as well. Don't copy them.

I was thinking about this, and I thought - why not make it so that, through arcane research, the librarian can make totems which have an effect over an area?

Think of Minecraft for a second. By crafting a pyramid of iron/gold/emerald/diamond blocks with a beacon on top, all players in the vicinity come under a bonus of a sort - slightly faster movespeed, slightly harder hits, jump height, health regeneration etc. The beacon is the essential bit, and requires difficult-to-acquire materials to make, but the pyramid it's based on is essentially modular by levels, and a larger pyramid (up to four levels, IIRC, with the main one directly below the beacon being 3x3, and below that 5x5, then 7x7, and finally 9x9, solid throughout), with more complete pyramids providing first access to more effects and then a smaller, secondary effect or power boost to the primary effect, with more range with each additional base beyond 3x3.

A lot of waffle, you're thinking - how is it relevant? Well, what if the librarian's research could allow them to make area of effect totems (for bonuses such as speed, damage resistance, stun resistance, health regeneration etc.), which could be moved around, upgraded with acquired occult items and materials, and basically make the librarian and library quite useful for any group that foresees bunkering down and defending themselves/a planned raid from a specific direction? The bonuses don't even need to be strong - even the slightest effect, with the required research, would contribute greatly to the station. Imagine setting up one around blob combat zones! Or a cult subverts the librarian and gets them to move their research-baby to their nest!

It'd take a lot of balancing, but I think it could be beautiful.