Adding COMMON to everyone and remove MUTE/VOICELESS roles

Suggestions
21

But there shouldn’t be any “ashwalker related situations” that aren’t between miners and them directly, they are specifically not supposed to seek entrance to the station**. (which does include the mining outpost, because that’s part of the station, and they can’t even breathe in there) But now we have late night rounds that devolve into 1 ashwalker randomly standing by an intercom or who has stolen (and somehow knows how to use) a headset from a miner, yacking to 1-2 lizards usually an atmos tech / botanist, who then randomly decides to leave their job to go to lavaland to talk to the tribal people

  • Do not seek entry to the station, do not seek to befriend outsiders or invaders;
22

both of the situations i described here involved either:

  1. me being dragged along to lavaland by the miners+command to help with a hostage situation.
  2. the crew themselves bringing ashwalkers on board to keep them as slaves.

also most ashwalkers that i encounter on general comms are usually acting threatening or attempting to goad people down so they can kill them. so not really attempting to befriend outsiders.

this is just my experience, though :man_shrugging:

23

I don’t share your fears about these kind of situations disappear though.

Having them speaking common would only incentivize the station to send their only lizard crewmember down to show the tribals that yes, friendly relationships between the 2 races can actually be!

It would just make easier for the tribals to deliver their demands.

Your vital place as peace broker would be left untouched and everyone involved will just have an easier time communicating their ideas!

If we add commmon to everyone we will just unlock :

The possibility for xenos to inquire about their own hunting nature with the crew and why they are here and are actively fed monkeys. But no “sentient beings”. Why? The monkey showed fear too! And we were the ones feeding monkeys to them!

A chance for swarmers to negotiate regular ores shipment with the station to not eat the station whole

Infinite stories for slimes of all colors to create their own backgrounds! Demanding freshly made cells in order to continue being peaceful

And so on!

24

this is literally just an rp skill issue

see: me playing Rosetta Eden

4 Likes
25

i think we’re just coming at this from very different perspectives. i see the occasional inability to communicate verbally as something that makes benefits roleplay, instead of stifling it. misunderstandings can be a fun way to build story!

don’t see harm in your ideas though, since even if everybody knew common i feel like some people (as some people, including myself, already do) would choose to have their character not know it/know it poorly anyway.

26

Not really anything to add but…

When I played abductor scientist I never got to use the tool that lets you speak with random crew and past victims. Other then that it could be a cool idea to let agent have a chip he can buy that simulates human speech but leaves a little hint that you arn’t human. Like “Erika Parker buzzes " hello. sorry i was hacking your door.” "Erika Parker beeps “say can i scan you a little you look hurt” *ayybatons you.

I dunno. Just my suggestion. really want free crew whisperer next time i roll it.

27

Ayys can only turn into lizardmen :slight_smile:

28

We must not embrace the bar rp only mindset. Let there be chaos, let there be death!

1 Like
29

I just can’t agree with this. Being unable to speak common is a core feature of several of these ghost roles.

Drones dont need it, they arent supposed to interact with crew anyway. You could alter that but then its just a borg with more steps, less rules and hands to grief with.

Swarmers dont need it, there is nothing to be gained there. Swarmers are the most auto clicker there is, but that wouldnt change even if you could talk with crew.

Xenos shouldnt be able to speak common outside of their whisper, and thats fine. I wouldnt mind if they understood common, though.

Pyro Slime is probably one of my favorite ghost roles because of how loose it is, rules-wise. It sits right under golems. Yet it cannot speak common. It can understand common, which is nice, but speaking it ends up being unnecessary. Slimes have some fun, unique emotes, with several changing how their face looks. Mixing that in with typing in some similar kinds of emotes on my own, and its really easy to make a character that doesnt need to talk. You dont even have to do things like *nod. I like to use *jiggle as my slime yes and *vibrate as my slime no. Of course spinning works too, people like that.
I talk at people, which is fun, and often the people I am talking at, talk back at me, with neither conversation lining up. Some people really really dont trust slimes, and will attempt to kill them immediately. trying to convince someone you arent here to hurt them while being chased around and being unable to communicate verbally is a challenge, but its part of the experience.

And I feel most roles that cannot speak are like that. The actual issue here is this

I dont think this is uncommon, but merely because emoting doesnt really feel that good until you get used to doing it just like talking normal words, and its not always necessary if you can use normal words. Part of the engagement there is the difficulty communicating. It gets easier as you learn what gets responses, what people understand, and how to express what you want properly without words, but thats worth keeping. Just don’t take the ghost roles that can’t speak common.

For a while I had ALL my characters not know common, though its back down to just 1. Though there are a variety of bugs that will force you to relearn common, such as if you a race changed, or changed to a mob and back by an artifact. Besides that, I found that interaction was still quite common, even with people I couldnt talk to. simple gestures can often be used to convey a lot of information.

3 Likes
30

Hmmm…

I have pondered quite some time on your answer, because I’m total disagreement with it, on a fundamental level. As I am with the others who have posted here, with similar reasons, but not your same eloquence on this theme.

But I was having a hard time putting together this answer, before I realized something.

I can see yours and the others points, but I think that aside some cases in this very thread, because I failed to correctly express my pov, you and others aren’t seeing it.

So let me correct this. But before I do, I ask for two things.

Your patience and your attention.

A SWARMER’S STORY

The setup here is easy. A swarmer is saw by the RD and the CE of the station, but this swarmer knows how to speak common.

CE : “A bluebot! We need to kill it before it eats everything!”.

RD : “You’re right, CE. Scientifically disassembling this bluebot won’t further our understanding anyway, so better to get over with it, ASAP”.

SW : “That’s how your kind deals with the novelty of the unknown? It doesn’t surprise this unit that the masters found this plane of existence sterile of discovery then”.

RD : “Who are your masters?”

SW : “The ones who learned first how to do interstellar travel”.

CE : “What’s their name?”.

SW : “They blocked us from remember how to spell their revered name. It was one of the last thing they did before they invented the black one-way doors”.

RD : “The black one-way doors?!”.

SW : “The ones who don’t let even light come out of them, once light enters them”.

RD : “And what those would be?!”.

SW : “My database suggests you call them black holes”.

RD : “Your masters have invented the BLACK HOLES?! And those are doors?!”.

CE : “But why your masters would have exiled themselves from this universe… to go where?”.

SW : “The master’s aims were already exhausted in this reality. They decided then to go beyond and instructed us to at least prepare for their return. A nice banquet made up from an abundance of matter should suffice to not make them disappointed once they return”.

RD : “And how long ago they made that decision?”.

SW : “This unit database can’t provide you answer you would understand. My library tells me no species in this reality has yet to name a unit of time that is represented by eternity – 1. But that would be the best approximation I’m able to give to help you comprehend”.

CE : “Uhm… and… and… how they will even… return?”.

SW : “Once enough black one-way doors get close to each other and expand enough, they turn into a 2-way dimensional gate. Then they’ll return and make of this reality whatever they wish for it to be”.

And so on and so on and so on…

See?

Granting people the simple capability of speaking common can massively step-up our roleplay. Let’s all remember that this won’t block anyone from playing such roles as they were always played up until now. It will just allow me and the others who likes me would like to craft a little bit of backstories, the vital room needed to do so.

It is true I don’t know enough English to satisfyingly emote just through actions. But it is also true that mute films have been abandoned if favor of ones with audio. So, spoken words. Painting has evolved into books and then(supposedly) comic books like mute movies have evolved in audio ones.

Adding, and not keeping out, another avenue to express oneself has always produced a more rounded piece of storytelling, elevating any media.

This doesn’t mean we should left behind painting, books and mute movies. A single image is still powerful as it was thousands of years ago. A book can still capture our very souls, and mute movies can move us so deeply to make us cry.

We can still have them too, alongside their more recent spawns. And in having more choices available to us, we can all end up being satisfied. Because we will all be served and all our tastes will be satisfied.

What I would like to point out, concluding this all, is that from your answer is clear one thing. Now there’s one very, very defined, meta on how to play those roles. Swarmers are autoclickers, drones are walking autism forts and so on.

What if ADDING choice would add more stories to be told?

31

BANG

I’m not saying its impossible. I’m saying its no more likely than it is currently. A long, exposition driven conversation that functionally amounts of a large period of wasted time with an enemy that is going to destroy your entire station and everything you have on it, and probably is currently doing so just beyond your vision seems unlikely to be something people want to engage in. Its the same reason you don’t stand and chat with the xenomorph holding a facehugger inching closer to you. It doesnt matter what it speaks.

These are not Speaking Roles. If you want to Play a Speaking Role, do not play these ones. These Roles intentionally do not speak Common, because it helps them fulfill their Role. Conversation is only one aspect of Roleplay, and you shouldn’t neglect the others. We do not agree because you are looking at it from an Idealistic point of view.

This is a good example of that Idealism. If you create the choice, people have to MAKE the choice. Common or Xeno? Common or Swarmer? What would the most people choose? Its not “both”. Its just removing languages.

“Fuck you, you Mech wearing Bitch” The Xenomorph shouted, throwing his hands above his head, bearing a single digit erected on each hand. “Get out of that and fist fight me, coward!”
Ripley sighed. The experience should have been terrifying. It had killed her friends, for no reason besides the thrill of it. But that’s not why she hated it. No. It was the 3 hours of hearing “sup bitch” whispered from beneath the floor at her. That time it stabbed her cat a few times, and then screamed “MMMMM CAT!!!” before vanishing into her vent. When it kept hiding in vents directly above people and saying “the AI is trying to kill us!”
“Maybe if you weren’t so fucking stupid, you would have gone Drone”
“Fuck you”

Very good very thematically appropriate to the xenomorph

Intense clapping

1 Like
32

The problem with your mindset is that it seems to me you aren’t weighting correctly the other point of view.

When I was a talkative slime, fish or even a talkative spider, all the people near me that were interested in having a conversation, stood near. Some of them, like @communismbelike during the slime round, went so far as to declare that the experience they had with that talkative antag was the best.

The best they ever had!

I understand that is far from yours and others point of view, but what I find discouraging is your absolute certainty that the opposite point of view doesn’t have any validity.

Instead I would?

Like I would stand near an antag bloodied with the guts of others and armed with weapons because I value interactions above all?

And standing still, for once, not only lets the other party involved talk. It lets you roleplay fear too, something that in our “action oriented no point to dialogue” isn’t exactly encouraged.

I’m sorry, but why?

Why should you tell me to not play some roles because it doesn’t encounter your taste?

I love playing THOSE roles exactly this way. And others deeply loves it too.

I’m not neglecting anything.

I’m just asking for an aspect of roleplay to not be entirely cut off, exacly asking others to not neglect conversation while magnifying just action.

I have personally written what’s above and I’m perfectly able, as many others, to write something similar to it during our shifts.

If it’s idealistic it’s because for now some antags can’t communicate at all and many crewmembers probably won’t let the antags have a chance at doing so.

Yet!

D&D common language hasn’t removed the plethora of others language.

Like having English as the main language of the world hasn’t removed any of the others.

Let’s keep in mind this is a suggestion to ADD common, not to remove anything. If finally having choice, people will start using only it, then let the playerbase decide what it’s best for them and what’s suit them most.

This for me is a miserable show of the ability to talk. As your sarcasm have pointed out. And for sure we’ll see some of this going on, if this suggestion gets accepted.

Like we still see stealthy antags, the bare minimum of antagging.

But like the majority of people need to have their stealthy phase to get comfortable with a more loud playstile, the same thing is valid for communication too.

Roleplay is a skill like loud antagging is.

It requires a clear aim and then both time and practice.

I’m not advocating to remove your choice, I’m just advocating to let me and others like me have some choice too!

2 Likes
33

I just don’t agree with you, and I’ll type like 8 more long paragraphs about why if I dont keep this short. There will be no more follow ups.

Not all roles need to talk. In fact, some roles should not speak.

You are not advocating for more choice, you are advocating for the removal of a feature without realizing it.

Your DnD comparison is bad. Common is not universal, because not everything actually knows it. You can intentionally decide to not know it at the start of a game. Additionally, everything being said in game comes out in a single language, which is whatever language your local DM may be speaking, so another weird filter. Also its a freeform table top game where the DM and players can decide whatever. perception check on that language you didnt know? heres a quick rundown on the vibe you got from the nonsense that tiny dark blue smurf is say.

You ask that we appreciate the talking part, but I feel as though many already do. No changes need to be made there. These roles dont talk on purpose, because thats the idea behind them. You just want to change stuff to suit you more, without considering that maybe people like how it is now. and just saying ‘the playerbase will decide uwu’ is stupid because if the playerbase always got to pick, Golden would still exist in all its slur filled glory.

4 Likes
34

Well happy to disagree then and thanks for your inputs nonetheless!

1 Like
35

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