In-game report:
Multiple CKEYs Player Report = All other command players aside the HOS that round
CKEY : DimitriSTK88
Your Discord : DimitriSTK88/Sirio Zajcev
Offender’s CKEY : Unknown, multiple
Offender’s In-Game Name : Unknown, multiple
Server (Sage or Acacia) : Sage
Date (MM-DD-YYYY) : 03/24/2023
Round Number : Unknown, I wasn’t planning on doing a report yesterday.
It was the only round I played yesterday, around the 11:00 PM CET (Central European Time)
Rules Broken :
1.2 You must roleplay
Incident Description :
Hello people, let me preface this report by saying that I hope that no action will be taken by the adminning team, originating from this report. I’m just filing it in order to spark some awareness on how I think we can improve our roleplay, specifically as command.
I was the captain that round.
I was trying my best to direct our crew in solving our power shortage issue, caused by the delamination of our SM. Trying to make everyone feel part of this evermoving entity we call the station. Avoiding solving everything by myself and actively encouraging engineering and cargo to collaborate.
While I was doing that or very shortly after, an heretic rune was discovered and called on comms.
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CMO Jackson goes rune = heretic
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Command says blue
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I say no, it’s just a rune, paint on a floor. Nothing alarming here. We did not had any report of any violent activity or anything else, aside the discovery of this rune
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Command protests. The RD says it’s clearly an heretical rune, the rest of command still insists on blue(aside the HOS I think). The AI asks if I veto the alert raise and I do
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I insist that’s just a paint job and so what we all have is a case of vandalism on our hands, nothing more
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Hop Butterbur personally come into bridge to threaten with some kind of mutiny, I pay no attention to the threat and I do still insist that we should avoid spreading unwarranted panic
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Command players are adamant about knowing what that rune means and imply and they law 2 Raincaller, our valiant AI, to raise the alert
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Some violent action finally becomes reported and so the alert becomes, very shakily and flismly, justified
You see, what I did not like about this whole ordeal is that the immediate reaction by the entirety of command, aside the HOS I believe, was to immediately try to force a blue alert. And to do it in the end.
I tried to make the rest of command realize that all we had on our hands was a case of vandalism. A bad taste paintjob on our floor. I was instead met with blunt gamerlike opposition, by some very decent and good players.
And that’s the problem here.
I do think , from the chaotic interaction we had, that I was spoken by, and was talking to, the players and not their characters. I clearly know what an heretic rune is, as a player. As all the others do. But what I was trying to accomplish accusing the rest of command of being too paranoid about their space vr dramas fueled paranoia, was to make their players realize they weren’t in character at all.
The RD clearly said to me “I’m command!” referring on his knowledge, while I was saying to him that as a man of science he should have been the first to not buy into that nonsense. The HOP threatening to organize some sort of mutiny on the basis of having discovered a dubious rune painted on the floor, while no violent actions were reported at all.
And even if they were, as they later were, it could have just still be the usual maniac reduced to a blood-thirsty lunatic by space dementia.
The thing that finally convinced me to make this report was comparing this round to another, specifically the last round we had hiveminds before they were removed. During that wonderful round, after the input of the hos of that round, the entirety of command had a meeting. In which we all discussed the emergency presented by this new, pink glowing bioform, with no one metagaming aside the CE(Bad Clark!), that was promptly silenced.
It felt true, it felt organic and it was a wonderful rp display.
And medbay staff and security staff of that round were correctly instructed on how to behave after we discussed how to face this new emergency during our meeting.
Now, I’m not saying that each single round should be conducted having a command in-person meeting or be roleplayed as every head being completely oblivious to any menace or slow-moving regarding those threats. But if, on average, on 100 shifts we get 0 command meetings, then I would daresay we have a problem.
Not a gameplay or game mechanics problem, but a playerbase’s mentality and attitude problem. That has already been addressed in our rules.
I found utterly shocking being even faced with the possibility of a mutiny for… just being in-character and completely within the boundaries of my job. Trying to not raise the alert of a frontier space research station, to an alert that covers station-wide rioting for a single green rune on a floor.
Hop Butterbur could have roleplayed by just saying “hey, I feel that if we raise the alert and nothing happens, then we will have covered our ass from any critique. The crew out there is particularly histeric, what if they come to know we stayed idle while we knew something was boiling under the apparent calm? Then we’ll truly face an explosive situation!”.
The RD could have said that, if that rune was indeed true and some zealout magical user was truly on station ready to wreck havoc, than it would have been a wonderful occasion to experiment on his physiology to try to discover any physical cause for it. Potentially discovering a way to fabricate battle wizards on command by science! Surely earning a space nobel for him and a merit commendation for me, easing my way up in the corporate ladder. And raising the alert would make our officers act and react faster, hastening the hypothetical magic man apprehension.
Some players are frustrated that science and robotics are never asked to do anything cool during their shift. Well if each single shift is just reduced to the fastest way allowed by the rules to deal with le valid, then I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
I want to conclude this by saying that I have interacted in the past with all the players involved, (aside maybe the RD?) and I have found all of them excellent. Probably they were tired(as I was) considering the late hour and the routine of playing just kicked in. So they didn’t notice their argumentation being… very gamerlike. And 0 RP inducing.
As I think admin Haliris once said in another report, just forget about the whole wiki. Assume it’s a normal shift and act as it is, indeed, one.
Then we’ll have the pleasure of hosting many command meetings, seeing the departments being truly involved in the station’s life and we’ll give everyone their chance to shine.
Additional Information :
The RD of this round, a mothie named Separata(I think?), said to have found a way(an exploit) to give himself AA using only other department’s budget card. Without using the hop’s console.
He showed me he had my same clearance, accessing my captain’s quarters.
He didn’t explain to me exactly how he managed to do it but he, instead, asked to never talk of this again.