New MRP rules discussion

[Not-Dorsidarf]

This is a place to discuss and evaluate the success of our new MRP rules for manuel, available Here

[cybersaber101]

The new rules seem to be based entirely around traitor and to a lesser extent ling while the changed rules regarding team antags(families,revs and cult) is inadequate and vague.

[remanseptim]

I severely doubt this is gonna change anything save for maybe cutting down on friendly antags
instead those antags will just do nothing for fear of getting bwoinked cuz they breathed on someone and they went horizontal.

[Sheodir]

I severely doubt this is gonna change anything save for maybe cutting down on friendly antags
instead those antags will just do nothing for fear of getting bwoinked cuz they breathed on someone and they went horizontal.

Ehn, I feel the murderboning rules adequately explained you can totally kill someone and kill other people as long as you're not silently murdering door-to-door.

My concerns are twofold - one, powergaming rules, which I feel are vague and dangerous. As a Janitor I often make a stunprod if I can because I anticipate no-gooders. Is that powergaming? There's a slippery slope here, specially as to what is considered enough of a situation to arm up.

The second isn't really this, but very related -

This is gonna destroy Manuel. Splitting the pop of people interested in Roleplay in 2 is a bad idea, specially when Manuel is struggling to fill even its limited cap at most times that aren't very peak hours.

[Agux909]

Rules are gucci.

Sheo, janitor having a little something for self-defense isn't powergaming. Sec mindshielding all crewmembers, cargo bringing in guns and arming departments preemtively from roundstart, engies quad dooring+reinforcing all secure places, assistants arming themselves from top to bottom and roaming the entire station in search of valids, crew changing AI laws preemtively for cult, wizard, nukies, etc. Those are examples of powergaming. Noone is gonna bwoink you because you crafted a makeshift defense baton for your jannie. Common sense.

Campbell is good, don't be so dramatic saying it will "destroy" Manuel. There was always an idea for having 2 MRP servers since Manuel's creation. There's 2 major TZs and they will now be covered. We might see a pop split at first but eventually both should rise. Have in mind a lot of people don't play on Manuel or haven't had a good time there because of their ping being better on their TZ-convenient LRP servers.

Time will tell, don't pop the balloon before it starts going up. If it has to fail it will fail and it will have to be dealt with when the time comes.

I severely doubt this is gonna change anything save for maybe cutting down on friendly antags
instead those antags will just do nothing for fear of getting bwoinked cuz they breathed on someone and they went horizontal.

You get that there is a middle ground between murderboning and doing nothing right? These rules are just stating "don't go into a power frenzy and sistematically remove every single member of the crew, jackass, they're people trying to enjoy the game just like you". Of course if that's your gimmick, it's no wonder why you'd argue against it. Just go back to Bagil and keep winnin'.

[Sheodir]

Sheo, janitor having a little something for self-defense isn't powergaming. Sec mindshielding all crewmembers, cargo bringing in guns and arming departments preemtively from roundstart, engies quad dooring+reinforcing all secure places, assistants arming themselves from top to bottom and roaming the entire station in search of valids, crew changing AI laws preemtively for cult, wizard, nukies, etc. Those are examples of powergaming. Noone is gonna bwoink you because you crafted a makeshift defense baton for your jannie. Common sense.

My issue is particularly with how it's worded. Vagueruling isn't good because we have so many admins that it's bound to result in clashing rulings, which isn't a bad thing per say, but rather I just think it could be worded better.

Campbell is good, don't be so dramatic saying it will "destroy" Manuel. There was always an idea for having 2 MRP servers since Manuel's creation. There's 2 major TZs and they will now be covered. We might see a pop split at first but eventually both should rise. Have in mind a lot of people don't play on Manuel or haven't had a good time there because of their ping being better on their TZ-convenient LRP servers.

Time will tell, don't pop the balloon before it starts going up. If it has to fail it will fail and it will have to be dealt with when the time comes.

I was definitely being dramatic there, but I truly feel this is a mistake. I know of myself and plenty of other Manuel players that could be described as 'pop chasers', aka I don't come in unless there is at least 40 people or so, because in a server where sometimes unfortunately nothing happens, a lower pop just makes that more probable. Dividing this even further makes me iffy, to be honest - and I've never thought much of the ping argument, what with being South American. I guess I learned to play on gamer ping.

You're right I should wait and see, I just don't see a good track record doing this in the past - but we'll see. I'll likely connect on both since again ping is my middle name.

You get that there is a middle ground between murderboning and doing nothing right? These rules are just stating "don't go into a power frenzy and sistematically remove every single member of the crew, jackass, they're people trying to enjoy the game just like you". Of course if that's your gimmick, it's no wonder why you'd argue against it. Just go back to Bagil and keep winnin'.

This is true. And whilst the rules don't state it outright, you can easily extrapolate them to 'all bets are off if you're publicly ousted and being manhunted', which is like the one time I've ever gone for murderbonin'.

[Agux909]

My issue is particularly with how it's worded. Vagueruling isn't good because we have so many admins that it's bound to result in clashing rulings, which isn't a bad thing per say, but rather I just think it could be worded better.

Agree with you here. But that's what precedent is for, nothing else can solve this problem. Admins aren't bots and may always have completely different discretion with their actions, all while following the spirit of the rules.

I was definitely being dramatic there, but I truly feel this is a mistake. I know of myself and plenty of other Manuel players that could be described as 'pop chasers', aka I don't come in unless there is at least 40 people or so, because in a server where sometimes unfortunately nothing happens, a lower pop just makes that more probable. Dividing this even further makes me iffy, to be honest - and I've never thought much of the ping argument, what with being South American. I guess I learned to play on gamer ping.

You're right I should wait and see, I just don't see a good track record doing this in the past - but we'll see. I'll likely connect on both since again ping is my middle name.

Same here, I'm from South America too and the ping is always high for me no matter which server I pick, usually oscillating between the 150-300.
Us being forcefully used to it however, doesn't mean other people will be as eager to accept higher pings, mind that.

[trollbreeder]

I demand that Campbell be renamed to Audrey.

Spoiler:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_Towers#Other_regular_characters_and_themes
Audrey is Sybil's lifelong best friend, and is mostly acknowledged during gossipy telephone calls. Talking with her is a refuge for Sybil.

[Space Panda]

I really liked the new rules.

snip

I think it depends on the amount of people who currently play in Manuel who are from EU. If Manuel has an european population of >30%, that might be a problem, yes. But I am also pretty sure whoever made the decision of creating Campbell checked the IPs of the people that play Manuel before.


Also, move Manuel to South America (it even has a latin name).

[BrianBackslide]

Murderbone chart is missing Heretic, and I don't think they can be adequately covered under tator/BB since they have to kill people to get powers and are rewarded for killing as per their design. Otherwise, seems pretty clear-cut.

[remanseptim]

Just go back to Bagil and keep winnin'.

this is always manuel's argument whenever you criticize the way their server functions.
antagonists doing literally nothing is a widespread problem on manuel to the point where a policy thread desiring to ban being a friendly/do-nothing antag racked up over 100 posts.
it's not solely due to the rules (which were more vague before the change) but also due to people being scared to actually try combat, or not wanting to be seen as a dick for killing people.
lots of people treat manuel as a refuge from the chaos that is bagil, sybil etc. and aren't going to do anything to disrupt that refuge, even if they are given the role to do just that.
also it was stated earlier that there very, very few rules for team antagonists. in the past i got yelled at by an admin for summoning nar'sie at 35 minutes in. there was no murderboning involved, but the reason was we didn't 'rp it properly'. a suggestion i received was talking people into joining, but that is literally against the rules. you cannot voluntarily join an antag group. 'speedrunning' cult is not, however, in violation of either tg's normal rules or the specialized roleplay rules.
if you can't play cult even semi-efficiently, use your heretic abilities while being attacked on the shuttle, or even kill an admin-spawned event character that's already harming crewmembers without getting screamed at by an admin (in the latter case, receiving a weeks-long ban from the role you main) why should you try? why play admin chicken, hoping that the ones that are on don't take personal offense to you being active as an antagonist, or fighting said antagonists?

[Agux909]

Let's do something. Since you consider my argument only resumes to that single portion of my post, let's not argue anymore because you made it clear this arguing is pointless. So

I say the rules right now are okay and very clear (aside from heretic not being included yet, as pointed out). This of course doesn't include instances of specific admin mishandling (make an admin complaint for that) nor this speculative perception of yours about the entire playerbase of Manuel behaving with fear of bwoinks (I do antagonize when antag by the way and I assure you I do it without this "fear" you speak of, so I can say you aren't talking in my behalf at least)

Now, what's your counterpoint? Tell us where the rules are vague, add rules or ideas as to how the rules would work better for MRP.

Since you took the effort to post and argue about it, I'm pretty sure you can do it in a constructive way, so you can help the change by giving your perspective about what needs to be changed. Can you do it?

[Ayy Lemoh]

Tell us where the rules are vague, add rules or ideas as to how the rules would work better for MRP.

This isn't really vague since it does clarify what it means however:

Murderboning refers to killing a large portion of the station's population. Though you are allowed to kill people who aren't your objective. Generally, if you're going room to room in a staffed department and openly killing everyone present, you're probably murderboning. A counterexample that would NOT be murderboning is killing someone who has discovered that you're an antagonist, then killing someone who witnessed that killing, and then killing someone who witnessed that killing. Both of the above cases involve a high killcount but in the second case your initial intention was never to kill multiple people.

Yeah, it is clear on what it means however I bet people are still going to get banned for this. Yeah, you can admin complaint it however you still have to hope that anyone who handles the complaint isn't a mentally unstable human being who belongs in the insane asylum. God forbid if they think you're using this as an excuse to murderbone since I can just imagine, like, ONE person going "yeah, all these dudes saw me kill someone. Had to frag 'em"

[Cobby]

There’s no point of posting if the take you’re gonna take is the policy doesn’t matter.

[Coconutwarrior97]

I incorrectly put in an earlier draft of the What IS/ISNT murderboning rule. Rules and forum post have been updated to include it:

Murderboning refers to killing a large portion of the station's population. Generally, if you're going room to room in a staffed department and openly killing everyone present, you're probably murderboning. Killing people who aren’t included in your objectives is not murderboning.
Killing members of a crowd trying to take you down, witnesses to a murder you commited, or crewmembers pursuing you are not qualified as murderboning; though they may end with a high killcount. These actions should be a LAST resort, not something actively sought out to evade restrictions.

[Jack7D1]

I'm happy with these rules.

[cedarbridge]

It does confuse me when players see a rule that says essentially "don't murder everyone on the station with the explicit goal of slowly whittling down the station pop to zero" and takes it to mean "don't touch anyone ever or you will be banned"

[Armhulen]

Tell us where the rules are vague, add rules or ideas as to how the rules would work better for MRP.

This isn't really vague since it does clarify what it means however:

Murderboning refers to killing a large portion of the station's population. Though you are allowed to kill people who aren't your objective. Generally, if you're going room to room in a staffed department and openly killing everyone present, you're probably murderboning. A counterexample that would NOT be murderboning is killing someone who has discovered that you're an antagonist, then killing someone who witnessed that killing, and then killing someone who witnessed that killing. Both of the above cases involve a high killcount but in the second case your initial intention was never to kill multiple people.

Yeah, it is clear on what it means however I bet people are still going to get banned for this. Yeah, you can admin complaint it however you still have to hope that anyone who handles the complaint isn't a mentally unstable human being who belongs in the insane asylum. God forbid if they think you're using this as an excuse to murderbone since I can just imagine, like, ONE person going "yeah, all these dudes saw me kill someone. Had to frag 'em"

You think the head admins are mentally unstable looneys?

[Ayy Lemoh]

It does confuse me when players see a rule that says essentially "don't murder everyone on the station with the explicit goal of slowly whittling down the station pop to zero" and takes it to mean "don't touch anyone ever or you will be banned"

Wasn't that the goal behind the previous rules? Some people also understood those as "don't touch anyone ever or you will be banned"? That perception has to change overtime and can't be healed away with a single rule edit - no matter how good it is.

You think the head admins are mentally unstable looneys?

Since they're the ones who wrote it, that 99% most likely isn't true. I just prefer to be cautious in general based on what I have heard related to this.

[Space Panda]

some people are just dumb

[NoxVS]

It does confuse me when players see a rule that says essentially "don't murder everyone on the station with the explicit goal of slowly whittling down the station pop to zero" and takes it to mean "don't touch anyone ever or you will be banned"

Lots of admins seemed to enforce it that way

[Armhulen]

It does confuse me when players see a rule that says essentially "don't murder everyone on the station with the explicit goal of slowly whittling down the station pop to zero" and takes it to mean "don't touch anyone ever or you will be banned"

Lots of admins seemed to enforce it that way

Contest it

[cybersaber101]

On powergaming: I'm not clear where this stands and cargo for everything that isnt from security or the armory, like lets say buying tons of floorbots/medbots/janitorbots or buying stuff from other departments to make your own, or the tradition of buying engineering gear and insulated gloves every round.

[oranges]

dude can't believe campbell has destroyed manuel literally nobody plays on either right now it's a goddamn travesty

except that didn't happen lmao

[Flatulent]

because people don’t actually need better ping for mrp

[Agux909]

After having some back and forth discussion which prompted me to re-read the MRP rules more carefully, I was able to notice something I think might be a bit vague / contradictory in it's current form, and I'd like some clarification and further discussion for a possible change.

Spoiler:

2. Escalation and roleplay.

Going out of your way to seriously negatively impact or end the round for someone with little to no justification is against the rules. Legitimate conflicts where people get upset do happen; however, these conflicts should escalate properly, and retribution must be proportionate. For example, this means you shouldn’t immediately escalate to murder when someone refuses to leave a certain area or give back something they stole.

Self-defense is allowed to the extent of saving your own life.

Putting someone into critical condition is considered self-defense only if they attempted to severely harm or kill you. Preemptively disabling someone, responding with disproportionate force, or hitting someone while they are already downed is not self-defense. Fistfights and the like are acceptable, assuming that both players have a reasonable justification as to why the fight started. Assault without any warning is almost always unacceptable in most circumstances.

3. Chain of command and security are important.

The head of your department is your boss and they can fire you; security officers can arrest you for stealing or breaking into places. The preference would be that unless they're doing something unreasonable, such as spacing you for spraying graffiti on the walls, you shouldn't freak out over being punished for doing something that would get you fired or arrested in real life. This also means that if you're in the chain of command, and especially if you're in Security, you're expected to put in some effort and do your job.

As highlighted in bold, there's a mention in both rules to the possibility of reasonable minor conflicts such a "stealing" and "breaking into places" existing in a round, without antagonists being involved (as antagonists have a separate and more specific section), and with IC resolutions being encouraged to deal with them.

However:

Spoiler:

9. Play as a coherent, believable character.

Real life realism is not required, and you are encouraged to be a little silly within the context of the SS13 game world. (Clowning around, people spontaneously exploding and creating ridiculously elaborate machinery are all non-serious things but yet a vital part of the game world.) There's a good chance your character still wants to have a job at the end of the day, so you should probably act like it.

10. Stay in your lane.

Stay in your lane. This mean that you should do the job you signed up for and not try and do other people’s jobs for them. If you need something from another player you should attempt to ask them to get it for you instead of just taking it. If there is no one around to do a job or you get permission to help or grab something it is acceptable to stray from your lane.

Given these 2 rules, players are told to behave almost as they would in real situations, as if wanting to keep their job, and to "stay in their lane". These 2 rules go as far as saying that unless it's extremely necessary and/or there's literally no other choice, you should never get into a place you don't belong to get any item, but instead ask for said items or access.

I find this contradictory. In an environment where everyone is expected to follow rule 9 and 10, situations alluded in rule 2 and 3 contradict the former. Such minor conflict from non-antags is theoretically forbidden and extremely improbable, if not impossible, to expect in a round. As a result of this, some players might end up being discouraged to participate or generate said conflicts at all.

While I obviously wouldn't want a non-antag obtaining AA for no reason at any point in the round (maybe with the exception of the clown), or raiding brig with others, I wouldn't have a problem with a non-antag hacking into my place to get something, thus forcing me to start a reasonable conflict with them. If you think about it, scenarios like that shouldn't be so rare in such a setting which is SS13. Getting into a fight, thrown into a cell and having your items confiscated, or being demoted, those are okay IC resolutions in this case. These little conflicts can help keeping the round a bit more alive and engaging, and shouldn't be completely forbidden. We're in MRP and not HRP after all.

Nothing is definitive, and with all that being said I'm really interested on opinions and discussions about this. Ideally I would like the rules modified to be clearer in those aspects and to allow a bit more room for sillyness and controlled fun for non-antags.

[remanseptim]

there should be a system of good faith where, if called for, roleplay takes precedent over rules.
if an actual, roleplayed narrative develops between two people, it should be allowed to get pretty fucking crazy, provided it's actually roleplayed out beyond someone getting robusted for calling the other spaceman cringe.
as a side note, it should be encouraged (not required) for people to put more effort into character interactions. as it stands, a lot of RP i've had on manuel has just been a glorified chatroom that's facetiously in-character. people need to come out of their shell more, and not be scared to play a character with its own personality.

[Sheodir]

dude can't believe campbell has destroyed manuel literally nobody plays on either right now it's a goddamn travesty

except that didn't happen lmao

Yeah that comment didn't age well lmao

Didn't expect the EU crew to just go ehn fuck it Manuel's where the pop's at and stay there. If Manuel ever goes down for a bit then we'll prob see Campbell get a few players.

there should be a system of good faith where, if called for, roleplay takes precedent over rules.
if an actual, roleplayed narrative develops between two people, it should be allowed to get pretty fucking crazy, provided it's actually roleplayed out beyond someone getting robusted for calling the other spaceman cringe.
as a side note, it should be encouraged (not required) for people to put more effort into character interactions. as it stands, a lot of RP i've had on manuel has just been a glorified chatroom that's facetiously in-character. people need to come out of their shell more, and not be scared to play a character with its own personality.

This sounds cool to anyone who's never had to moderate a server in their lives

This will just mean players arguing endlessly they were roleplaying rather than breaking the rules and they did their work pretty promise, this is what vagueruling end up doing. Then again you still think people get bwoinked every five seconds when I can't see that anytime recently in Manuel so y'know.

If you think I'm full of shit, CM did a 'roleplay good faith' thing for a bit and it resulted in someone arguing it was ok for them to 'accidentally' FF, set off grenades in friendlies on purpose and other such things because his character was mentally damaged.

[remanseptim]

This sounds cool to anyone who's never had to moderate a server in their lives

This will just mean players arguing endlessly they were roleplaying rather than breaking the rules and they did their work pretty promise, this is what vagueruling end up doing. Then again you still think people get bwoinked every five seconds when I can't see that anytime recently in Manuel so y'know.

If you think I'm full of shit, CM did a 'roleplay good faith' thing for a bit and it resulted in someone arguing it was ok for them to 'accidentally' FF, set off grenades in friendlies on purpose and other such things because his character was mentally damaged.

i see what you mean there, so it'd probably be valuable if i explained what i meant a little bit more.
in general, when an admin witnesses an altercation, i believe they should stay out of interfering with it unless ahelped first. i'm aware there already are some admins who practice this, but there are others who don't; they actively investigate things that seem to break the rules, even when affected parties don't seem to take issue with it. this is good to an extent: if it's a new player, it's good to let them know where the boundaries ordinarily lie, but there's a time and place for pretty much everything.

i was also referring more to individual conflicts, not somebody setting their department on fire and saying they were trying to light a cigarette.

of course, the 'do not interfere unless you receive a bwoink' thing would have issues. new players getting preyed on is definitely one of them.

in general though, i believe MRP should be more dynamic than LRP, but less chaotic. and also an LOOC option would do wonders for this type of thing, or an OOC PM system to check if somebody is good with proceeding with a situation. those are coding ideas, though.

tl;dr: more bwoinks bad, less bwoinks good.

[saprasam]

if rule 0 was the only rule i think every server would be the best server