/tg/Station 13

People complain that features are developed that help powergamers.
What features do you want that would encourage or help RP?

>inb4 this becomes the new shitposting thread

more jobs like lawyer or librarian

If we want more RP, then we need to add a hunter/thirst system that can be solved in various parts of the station. Hunger is obvious already, and would require food to be made easier, and thirst is obviously from the bar or sinks around the station (grab intent on a sink lets you drink I guess).

The reason why this would improve RP is because it would force people to actually interact with each other, something people currently have almost no need to do.

More antagonist items that masquerade as regular station items. The radiation health scanner, AI detector, sleepypen, etc.

Not only does it promote light RP:

Security Officer Suzie says: This isn't a regular health scanner, is it now, Dr Evil?

But it also reduces the instances of protagonists seeing an item that is an immediate meta-flag for the game mode and granting them valids on a player.

I think a fingerprint kit that allowed players to lift fingerprints and place them on items would be magnificent... but it would probably lead to adminhelp hell.

Sewage and sewers, let botony get at the fertiliser.

invisty wrote:More antagonist items that masquerade as regular station items. The radiation health scanner, AI detector, sleepypen, etc.

Not only does it promote light RP:

Security Officer Suzie says: This isn't a regular health scanner, is it now, Dr Evil?

But it also reduces the instances of protagonists seeing an item that is an immediate meta-flag for the game mode and granting them valids on a player.

I think a fingerprint kit that allowed players to lift fingerprints and place them on items would be magnificent... but it would probably lead to adminhelp hell.

This isn't really a secret, but you can do that already if you have sec access.
go to sec records, replace yours and your victims fingerprints. Drop an emag or something with only your prints on it.

Changelings can also do it really easily. I got someone arrested for breaking into secure tech storage by swapping forms and deliberately leaving behind fingerprints

PKPenguin321 wrote:more jobs like lawyer or librarian

"More jobs" means removing content from the pool, not adding. Each job requires something to set it apart from the other jobs, meaning that something gets removed from the pool of things every job has access to. Personally I firmly believe that the REMOVAL of jobs like lawyer, librarian and chaplain, and making the areas completely publicly accessible, would increase the ability for players to roleplay there.

To answer the question, though. I don't think RP is something you can force people to do through game mechanics. I mean sometimes people said the hunger system is meant to promote roleplay, which is just plain idiotic. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that it does not have anything to do to promote roleplay. The only way to promote roleplay is for the community to promote it, not for the mechanics to enforce it. to make something like that happen would however require a lot of dedication from the admin team and player cooperation and a lot of time. A lot of time when the station would be known for enforcing certain types of roleplay and such - Basically Bay12 from a few years ago.

The only thing the game can do to promote roleplay is to offer the tools to roleplay. And these must be available as widely as possible and not silloed away behind locked airlocks, jobs or clunky interfaces.

Hands up if you remember "Say *custom 'plays dead' "

Good thing no one gives a shit about your opinion or we'd spend every round getting murdered by omnicompetent jackanapes with a grab sack of robust loot shitlad

LiamLime wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:more jobs like lawyer or librarian

"More jobs" means removing content from the pool, not adding. Each job requires something to set it apart from the other jobs, meaning that something gets removed from the pool of things every job has access to. Personally I firmly believe that the REMOVAL of jobs like lawyer, librarian and chaplain, and making the areas completely publicly accessible, would increase the ability for players to roleplay there.

To answer the question, though. I don't think RP is something you can force people to do through game mechanics. I mean sometimes people said the hunger system is meant to promote roleplay, which is just plain idiotic. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that it does not have anything to do to promote roleplay. The only way to promote roleplay is for the community to promote it, not for the mechanics to enforce it. to make something like that happen would however require a lot of dedication from the admin team and player cooperation and a lot of time. A lot of time when the station would be known for enforcing certain types of roleplay and such - Basically Bay12 from a few years ago.

The only thing the game can do to promote roleplay is to offer the tools to roleplay. And these must be available as widely as possible and not silloed away behind locked airlocks, jobs or clunky interfaces.

Hands up if you remember "Say *custom 'plays dead' "

There are plenty of features which have been introduced for the purpose of RP.
The clothes vendor, these clothes don't offer any tactical advantage
The newscaster, this doesn't offer any gameplay advantage.
The library at all doesn't offer any gameplay advantage.
Chaplain has gameplay advantages in 1 round, you still regularily see people playing it.

The chaplain has gameplay advantages in every round dog, they're only a *necessity* in one.

TechnoAlchemist wrote:The chaplain has gameplay advantages in every round dog, they're only a *necessity* in one.

Chaplain has access to incinerator, which is useful during Wiz if they are a lich, or if they are a traitor.
Chaplain can consecrate water, which is necessary during cult, and can very minorly help botany. This holy water can be used against Etheral Jaunting Wizards, or revenants
They can heal people with a bible, but it also causes braindamage, which makes them less useful then a medbot.
They are more likely to get their prayers answered, probably.
I'd say it has less gameplay advantages then an assistant

more audio clip buttons please for yells and cries and screams

Goon does it

Even if you're muted, you can still scream

Helpful if you're getting dragged into maint and you're screaming while it happens and someone sees/hears you

Force players (mechanically, I mean) into wanting something that only the service industries can provide, in such a way that they need to interact with the service crewmen to get it (and not just climb over and help themselves). I'm not certain how you'd do this: I posted my own idea a few weeks back, about forcing crew to pick a particular 'vice' and give them some sort of malus for not getting it, but I'm not convinced that's ideal.

I'm entirely in favour of increasing the level of roleplay, but on some level you have to be aware that it can't just be done with features. It does require a certain amount of admin enforcement. This does not, however, mean that "enforced roleplay" is the same as "you can't know that, everything is meta". Especially not while we have the most bare canon ever. Ideally this would take the form of some sort of policy rewarding players for notable and interesting roleplay that made the round more fun, like a well talked through kill or whatever. You can reward people in lots of ways, even just handing out meaningless points might work.

Helios wrote: I'd say it has less gameplay advantages then an assistant

Null rod's pretty good too: it's a 15 damage brute weapon, as good as any one handed non-tator melee weapon. Functionally like a circular saw that also makes you immune to cult magic. And the incinerator is perfect for changelings, since you don't need to upgrade it to kill them fully clothed.

Well we used to have limited resources across the station as a means of encouraging players to interact with each other, particularly for cargo.

Now pretty much every resource-dependent job starts off with enough of its key resources (cryox, metal, glass, medkits, security equipment, yellow gloves, etc etc) such that acquiring more of them (either by asking a department or ordering from cargo) only ever happens in response to events and assistant requests.

The funny thing was, though, that people were more inclined to break into areas to get what they wanted, instead of asking.

Cheimon wrote:Force players (mechanically, I mean) into wanting something that only the service industries can provide, in such a way that they need to interact with the service crewmen to get it (and not just climb over and help themselves). I'm not certain how you'd do this: I posted my own idea a few weeks back, about forcing crew to pick a particular 'vice' and give them some sort of malus for not getting it, but I'm not convinced that's ideal.

You cannot force players into roleplay. Roleplay requires investment and creativity and people who do not like the roleplay aspect of SS13 will not engage in any sort of roleplay. Unless you want mechanical enforcement to the extreme, like where a chef can only mechanically give someone food if the other person has said the line "give me some food, please" first or something retarded like that.

The best hope for roleplay is to have tools and zero restrictions with changing situations to roleplay around. That is not Space Station 13.

People seem to think that interaction with service jobs is the end-all-be-all of roleplay. That's the boring sort of roleplay. The fun roleplay is spontaneous, it happens within departments - engineers roleplaying with each other in engineering, random crew members in the bar, doctors in medbay. Most mechanical restrictions which force you to do something will break roleplay. Hunger, for example, more often stops roleplay than causes it, because someone is in the middle of a roleplay scenario and then has to pause it to go eat.

invisty wrote:The funny thing was, though, that people were more inclined to break into areas to get what they wanted, instead of asking.

As you said, we tried that, it didn't work.

LiamLime wrote:People seem to think that interaction with service jobs is the end-all-be-all of roleplay.

You make some valid points, but don't sully your argument by strawmanning those of other people. I do not believe that anyone in this thread is advocating what you're saying they are.

Yeah, I only mentioned service jobs because they're a really good example of roleplay people are already familiar with and which could be expanded. Encouraging more people to hang out at the bar, for instance.

Generalizing that statement was wrong of me. I misunderstood and apologize. I stand by the remainder of my post though.

Zilenan91 wrote:If we want more RP, then we need to add a hunger/thirst system

When did you last play? There is actually a suprisingly detailed hunger system implemented.

Still the perfect blend of atmosphere and gameplay. If it's anything like what I left, roleplay can cultivate from this.

ShadowDimentio wrote:Goon does it

Even if you're muted, you can still scream

Helpful if you're getting dragged into maint and you're screaming while it happens and someone sees/hears you

It's a lot easier to hear bad shit going down on goon because of the sound system being dynamic. You can literally hear esabers from across the ship on goon.

Farts too.

oranges wrote:

Zilenan91 wrote:If we want more RP, then we need to add a hunger/thirst system

When did you last play? There is actually a suprisingly detailed hunger system implemented.

Can't really tell if this was a joke, but I meant a slightly more severe hunger system so you didn't only have to eat once per round.

What I really want to see is a buddy cop system.

When you are security you are paired with another officer and at round end it greentexts you whether he lives or dies.

Heads of staff could be its own separate pool like Captain <3 AI(ship it).

I guess this could be expanded as a more general 'friend' for other people but you run into problems with antagonists and metagamming.
Maybe let antagonists be selected but if they are it changes to 'arrest'/'put them down' which you will find out only at round end.
In other words if your friend is an antagonist you have to fail them.

If by some chance the system selects both as traitors(its random) then it replaces the keyword stuff and you know automatically.

I wonder how viable it would be to add a dungeonmaster player role. Basically a player who opts into this would have various tools to spice up the round. I know admins are kinda sorta meant to do this, but doing anything gets them in trouble more often than not because someone is guaranteed to complain. Having a player role would make it clear that doing this is intended. I dunno, just an idea. Before anyone tells me about all the problems, I'm aware that there would be a long transition period until the majority of regulars learn how to use such a role properly, which events are fun, which are not, etc. I'm sure it would be complete and utter shit at first, I'm just wondering if it would be something great after a year of being live.

LiamLime wrote:I wonder how viable it would be to add a dungeonmaster player role. Basically a player who opts into this would have various tools to spice up the round. I know admins are kinda sorta meant to do this, but doing anything gets them in trouble more often than not because someone is guaranteed to complain. Having a player role would make it clear that doing this is intended. I dunno, just an idea. Before anyone tells me about all the problems, I'm aware that there would be a long transition period until the majority of regulars learn how to use such a role properly, which events are fun, which are not, etc. I'm sure it would be complete and utter shit at first, I'm just wondering if it would be something great after a year of being live.

There is, it's called being an admin

Yeah, you just want to change the policy, not get players using a system they're entirely unfamiliar with.

It's not really about policy, it's about player expectation. Seeing a DM role would make everyone, including new players, instantly understand that person-run rounds are intended. It's not really instantly clear that a server administrator is expected to regularly hold events.

Additionally, I realize admins can already do this, but there are two problems with this: The first I mentioned in the post, that some people complain after every single event, making it just not worth the bother of holding events. People like to conflate 'admin power', or the abuse thereof, with whatever admins do, which they personally don't like. The second is just general staleness of admin-run events. Having the same group of people run events over and over has lead to the same unoriginal events being run over and over. Having a much larger pool or players to run events would increase event creativity by a lot. You can be as cynical about player creativity as you like, I'm sure it'd be more interesting than the current admin ran events. Also remember that this would be an opt-in role.

Lastly, many admins likely find running events a chore, not a privilege. I'm sure many players would find it a thrill, even if they found the rest of admin duties a chore - meaning they would potentially make good event runners, but poor admins.

Oh and one more note: Admins don't actually have decent tools to run events... Something like this would require new tools to be created.

An admin role that's solely there for events (DMing) would be interesting. Most admins have to handle both administration (ahelps, bans) and !!fun!! (BSA, meteors) at the moment. You probably can't trust normal players with the ability to spawn pulse rifles without them abusing it.

Sanity meter. The more violence (people dying, burning alive etc.) or disturbing shit (talking animals) you see, the more your sanity goes down. Low sanity can trigger panic attacks, that go from shaking and force-shouting to randomly dropping things and gasping (taking oxygen damage), and hallucinations, along with other stuff. Certain jobs come with high sanity resistance, like security or medical doctors. You can regain sanity or increase your resistance with drugs, or just by taking a break with a warm cup of chocolate in the bar. Staying near the chaplain should also help (basically counseling).

TheNightingale wrote:An admin role that's solely there for events (DMing) would be interesting. Most admins have to handle both administration (ahelps, bans) and !!fun!! (BSA, meteors) at the moment. You probably can't trust normal players with the ability to spawn pulse rifles without them abusing it.

Wouldn't it make more sense just to have admins be able to turn on DMing, when there's other admins who can help with administration? Like how they can be players for a round.

TheNightingale wrote:You probably can't trust normal players with the ability to spawn pulse rifles without them abusing it.

Of course you can't, that's why you have... Admins...

Make it so that if Librarians use the newscaster the text from the cast shows up like an announcement with a note to check your PDA to view any attached images.

Add in spambots and chain mail, as well as Syndicate and MImegerian scam messages

So, kinda like Bay has.

That is to say, utterly annoying.

We need a send all feature on PDAs

DemonFiren wrote:So, kinda like Bay has.

That is to say, utterly annoying.

Thanks for the expansive and detailed opinion. You can know tell who gang leaders are just by the random beeping that comes from the gang tools, if there was a chance of random PDA messages coming in it could potentially battle the meta scum that lurk the server.

Helios wrote:We need a send all feature on PDAs

We have that. Lawyers and captain spawn with one.

Zilenan91 wrote:

Helios wrote:We need a send all feature on PDAs

We have that. Lawyers and captain spawn with one.

That was added after I said this

Did not check the date... woops