Curator rework ideas/thread

Suggestions
1

Hey there, curator is currently a rather boring role that only becomes fun when you do not actually tend to your curations.

So I decided to think about how the curator role could get changed.

First of: What are the current issues with the curator role?

* No one reads books
* You barely get visited
* Absolutely no relevance for current game mechanics, unlike similar roles 
 (chaplain interacting with wizard and cultists for example)
* All the gadgets are designed around you leaving your library.
* Curator has nothing to give to the crew except RP.
* The current equipment in library is not being used

Now for the actual rework ideas:

THE LITERATURE REWORK:

Implement new types of books that give actual benefits.

  • Reading a book about mining increases your mining speed with a pickaxe

  • Have books that upon reading them give you abilities after a delay equivalent to the time it takes to read the book
    (to stop people from just clicking on every book once without reading it)
    These books have to be crafted by the curator or are very rarely in your library on round start,the potency level of these crafted books depends on the research level and the materials being used
    (connection with botany, chapel, science and mining)

  • Implement books with riddles in them. Solving the riddle enchants the user or an item he has in some way.
    These enchantments can be both good or bad. To decurse yourself you have to do something, solve a quiz, visit chaplain or get the curse deciphered by Curators current devil tools.

Book ratings are only visible to the curator and are the following:

  • Common books are the books we currently have. Nothing special about them. These can be made by everyone. The amount of stories and quality of the books could be pumped up by taking royalty free novels from the internet.

  • Rare books would be books that increase an ingame skill of your character or give you a boost in some way. Can be crafted by curators
    and spawn in the library sometimes.
    Examples: Increase in mining skill, 20% faster cuff time, 10% brute healing modifier from chems, 50% easier time to get good mood…

(the reader can only guess based on the book type, there is no actual ingame notification to encourage experimenting and discovering)

  • Epic books spawn very rarely in the library or can be crafted by curator very late into the round due to the requirements for them.
    Epic books can be of any book type and have pretty useful effects, similar to genetic mutations or science shenanigans.
    Epic books can not be removed from the library and either turn into dust upon leaving the library tiles or curse the holder.

  • Legendary books are mostly admin memery. These books have a chance of less than 1 in 1000 to spawn naturally and their effects are basically mini events.
    Legendary books can not be removed from the library tiles and always uniquely curse the person using them. It is forbidden knowledge and almost always admin memery.

How to circumvent players from min-maxing books:

  • Players can only guess from the title what the effect may be
  • Some effects only occur after reading z book for x amount of time, similar to how much it would take to actually read the book.
  • Powerful effects are gated behind chance, research levels and materials on top of the things above.
  • Using several different titles for the same book prevents people from just learning which book does what
  • Players have to interact with the curator to even learn the category of literature they are trying to read
  • You can only have a limited amount of positive permanent effects on you, similar to genetics.
  • Books can only be read after renting them via the Curator console system, similar to how HOP works.

Another idea I had was letting books stay over round end, similar to whetstone messages to incentivize book production, BUT:

  • epic or above books always decay on round end and do not persist.
  • rare books decay with a rate of around 60-80%, using a search tree algorithm (for example by using the individual book id as a key) and only taking x% amount of books.

THE CURATION REWORK:

  • Library does not spawn with items inside of the show panels. Instead , Curator may get optional objectives to have certain items in it.
  • Some of these may have effects when gathered, for example a temporary boost on mood for all crew members that inspect these items.
  • Having certain sets of items on display may change the library in some way, for example having a skull, a necronomicon and a voice of god may give library the shadowshroom effect.

PAINTINGS:
Disclaimer: Paintings would not change in the foreseeable future due to the amount of work all of this is already. But interesting ideas would be:

  • Paintings would work similarly to books but in a toned down manner. Some might be cursed and be harmful to look at, some might bless you, some might just give you a mood boost and most might just not do anything.
  • Cursed paintings might give the xth person that inspect them ( to stop people from trying to metagame antag status) the obsessed role, a random objective or make them ill.
11 Likes
2

Feedback and additions, critique et cetera are obviously welcome. Let’s try and turn Curator into something more enjoyable.

3

i mean, technically curator does stuff during devil rounds, but they never happen

also, you completely forgot his role as newspaper guy :pensive:

1 Like
4

I actually had a different plan/idea for that (spoiler: goon/gta radio station role)

I will post that suggestion at a later date, I want to have more time to think about how it could be implemented to be fun and not easily griefable

5

The only thing curator does during devil rounds is giving the codex to sec. Also Devil is no longer in rotation.

6

only curator can read codex tho, if others try the get the wrong information (and iirc brain damage)

7

Which is part of the problem. Curator used to have an important niche, now after the devil removal it is obsolete. That is why I thought Curator should get his gimmicks recycled for the new purpose of decursing.

8

this rework idea sounds really cool, its like matrial arts scrolls and another place to interact with people

9

a radio-man would me swag, maybe 2 even

3 Likes
10

Had an idea for this

Quest system:
The big new thing, gives each curator kit including the new ones objectives to fill for beecoins or some other reward
Objectives will be elaborated on with each kit
Revamps to old kits:
The four old kits will need new objective based items.
Explorer: no change, the current curator experience. Objective is to have items of total X value on display in your cases at shift end

Braveheart: has a box of kilts now. Objective is to start a culture revolution, and have x people in kilts by the time the shift ends

Space explorer: starts with a flag now, and has an objective to plant that flag off the station z level and optionally not on lavaland. No you cannot just space it, planting is a manual action.

Spector inspector: someone suggested just giving him an item that makes holographic phasmophobia ghosts for him to fight, and have the objective be containing those, and I like that idea, so i’m gonna steal it

New kits: four new kits, one dependant on a port of Tactical Game Cards from TG

Syndicate cosplayer kit
Contains a replica blood red hardsuit, a tacticool turtleneck, boxes of syndicate bullet casings, and a donksoft LMG with non riot bullets. Objective is to die a stupid death (no, it’s not a murderbone pass).

Gambler kit:
Contains a book on dice fudging (adds a toggleable ability that always means you roll high when throwing dice), a cool outfit, some dice sets, and probably either some sunglasses or cool cards. Objective is to scam as many people out of their money as possible and have X money in your account by the end of the shift.

Reporter kit: contains the detectives camera (for that sweet double capacity) an outfit, a mobile newscaster capable of uploading pictures, and a unique PDA cart with both send-to-all and remote newscaster access. Objectives are to have x amount of stories on the newscaster by shift end.

This is the one that needs /TG/C to be ported, the Master Duelist kit: comes with a duel disk thingy (goes on glove, holds cards), 3 booster packs of TGC and a yu-gi-oh outfit complete with wig.
Objective is to reduce people’s life points to zero (this one doesn’t have to be tracked, if someone picks the kit they’ll do the objective)

This next bit is a bad idea but

Subverted kits
Makes a subverted version of the heroic beacon (villainous beacon) available from the uplink. It changes the kits to have more real, dangerous items but is costly.

Explorer gets a better whip, either a reskinned ling tentacle or just capable of delimbing.

Braveheart can get either a better sword and armoured kilt or hypnoflash to start an actual revolution with, or both.

Space explorer gets a reskinned NASA voidsuit with the shield of a shielded syndicate hardsuit but the stats of an elite one

Spector Inspector can just get the old goggles that let them see all observers back

Reporter kit gets… idk, syndicate pAI? Rewind camera? I really don’t know here

Gambler kit can get another book that makes dice deal damage and embed, and his decks of cards can be syndicate.

The cosplayer is pretty easy, just make his stuff real, including a real C-20r and suit

Then for the yu-gi-oh kit you can give them a reskinned eye of god as the millennium eye and some not-soulstones themed as blank cards

6 Likes
11

The traitor Yu Gi Oh set automatically soulstoning the enemy User sounds funny.
It would be even better if the actual card game could be implemented and the loser gets sent to the shadowrealm (getting souldstoned) but that is of course wayyyyy too much work for a gimmick.
Also Copyright.

12

I feel like special traitor gear is something that has a lot of potential for curator but for that to happen the actual role would have to be reworked first.
While new Outfits are great, curators having no purpose inside their own library is in my opinion the main issue.

1 Like
13

I threw this out there in the role complaints thread, but having the curator have bounties for Lavaland loot and there being a museum mechanic could be really cool. You could have different criteria for what makes a display, like a stuffed Goliath needs volcanic rock and bones to be considered a real Goliath display. Make the curator’s role less booky and more Indiana Jones for money. Give him some cool adventurer kit and stuff too.

14

But that is kind of the opposite of what my idea was. The issue with curator is that his own (usually pretty big) department is virtually empty because it has nothing inside it that he could work with. Sending him Lavaland as a pseudo-miner feels more like a bandaid fix instead of making a Curator actually… curate goods in his library.

The reason why he got more and more adventure kits is BECAUSE his library can not really be used in a meaningful way. To give the job something at all to work with.

1 Like
15

Nix the library and make him wacky museum man though. Having magic books seems kinda forced. Seems like curator means books so we had to give him a powerful book thing.

16

The idea behind it was occult/magic library curator, as that is his current design philosophy (his personal backroom has an occult skull desk and other occult items)

The main thing that I am for is making books and curations viable. The desk playstyle basically. How that is achieved does not matter that much to me but the currently completely wasted items and all of the wasted potential annoy me.

17

I’ve always thought that a lot of the things xenobiologists make could be right at home with a curator. Stuff like camera obscuras and magic armors don’t make a ton of sense in the hands of a scientist in charge of monkey eating goop monsters.

All my favorite jobs on the station have a nice flow of going outside the department to get something or do a task and then coming back to refuel though, my museum thing is mostly preference on my part. I was always destined to hate curator, by its very nature.

1 Like
18

Books suck.

Add painting.
Add a dnd kit to every library.

1 Like
19

Why not both? The most common maps have a second room for DnD et cetera. And paintings are in every library.

The only issue being what the main focus should be on. Books and dnd/paintings are not mutually exclusive.

20

I mean tg painting. They have a whole system and last time i checkee we dont.

Books are meeeeh… They just turn curator into another powergame job

1 Like