[Poll] What does "Role Play" mean to you

Role play means
  • Fulfilling your assigned role on the station.
  • Acting out what your character would reasonably do if they were real.

0 voters

I have nothing to put here, but I do want to remind folks to be civil based on responses.

4 Likes

Roleplaying means putting a set of imaginary ideas infront of you and seeing how those impact your basic tasks

Example: omega religious round. Roll traitor. Have to execute someone. Instead of beating them to death prepare a euthonasia mix to put them to sleep non painfully. Spend about 10 minutes getting the uniform of a doctor to convince him to take his meds. Still murder. Bad. Go to chaplain into the one tile room where you confess and stuff. Confess to doing very bad business but not specify murder. Chaplain says that i have to give in, i give in. Because i dont wanna die i steal a gun and charge myself in. Get let out. Chap congratulates me. I tell him: ā€œholy father may you offer me a service?ā€. He shows his enthusiasm though he doesnt know what im talking about. Bring the body and call chaplain only to show him an unspecified corpse which i put in a coffin with a flower. ā€œBury himā€. Chap does a little process but not without a few shocked remarks.
Time passes
Secman walks up. ā€œDont moveā€. I stand still in a room he doesnt have access to. A whole squad of reinforcements walk by. I get gunned down. Chap cremates me. Leaves a little flower on the main table and lights a candle afterwards. No words.

Roleplay

4 Likes

Why can I not vote bothā€¦

3 Likes

Define reasonably.

I mean, what is the overarching lore? Is your character meant to be new to the station, or have they seen their coworkers gored right in front of them on a daily basis?

Because a reasonable person in these incredibly unreasonable situations would curl up into a ball in the showers and cry for 2 hours, not make an even vague attempt at fighting back. These arenā€™t trained military veterans, theyā€™re just regular assholes doing a 9 to 5 in a research facility.

The lore being discussed as established so far is that all experiences happening within the current round are new and extremely unusual. Youā€™re not new to NT stations, but your previous assignments have all been at least relatively peaceful. Ssethstation is not the norm for NT facilities.

Heads of staff and security are described currently as being combat trained, while the rest of the crew are not, so your description isnā€™t that far off from what we would expect as HRP. I expect non-combat players to avoid combat when they can and only resort to self-defense as necessary, but Iā€™m not going to force them to go cry in showers and such.

I do however expect players not to be well versed in the arts of tider warfare and immediately take to making spears, flamethrowers and shit when blue alert sounds. I also expect players that arenā€™t antagonists not to be picking fights and acting like general buffoons 24/7 - they should be acting as if theyā€™re allies to the station and their co-workers.

The grey area between HRP and LRP is massive and no matter where you draw the line it will be arbitrary.

If youā€™re genuinely trying to find out where the majority of the community rests on the spectrum the poll should have more options.

2 Likes

Agreeing with Michiru here, a lot more poll options are required.

Gotta agree, both answers donā€™t quite work. Iā€™d define Roleplay as just whatā€™s on the tin: Putting yourself in a role of your own creation and playing as that role. The first answer restricts that role only to the job you roll at roundstart, and the second with the ā€œIf they were realā€ thing heavily restricts the roles you can choose to play, because there is simply no way that anyone, even the most HRP of people, plays a character that would seem realistic if they were real.

SS13 is a metalic deathtrap mascarading as a space station where traitors bloodily slaughtering coworkers, cults worshipping old forgotten gods with the desire to turn all to their side with horrifying sorcery, violent uprisings, syndicate kill-squads, angry alien life forms, and AIs on the fritz are a common enough occurence to appear on the roundstart report, and if the players played as normal people they would be too busy spending their entire round shitting themselves in fear to do anything meaningful.

If we were to play characters as if they were real, Mining would simply not exist because no one sane would willingly touch down on a planet with megafauna. Security would have no staff because that would mean being on the frontlines when the many antags i mentioned before show up. No one would trust a sillicon enough to ask them for anything.

SS13 is a roleplaying game, with an emphasis on game. Yes, it is meant to be played while getting in character, but it clearly not meant to be played by roleplaying a normal person

1 Like

@Ruko neither actually, roleplay for me means building a character that isn`t disruptive to others and having some goofy fun, like a chef that only cooks poptarts.

1 Like

Keep it civil, donā€™t antagonize each other.

Banana :flushed:

2020202020

Having the time to build a Leatherface style meat fridge and roleplay as Sawyer family member. :cut_of_meat:

PS:The clown wanted to be turned into sandwiches, I swear

your name and pfp makes this x5 times funnier

ā€œIs your character a person who can stay calm in any situation, regularly ignores orders, doesnā€™t have a problem with bashing in someoneā€™s skull with a toolbox if needed, never even feels slightly sick at the sight of gore, can take ridiculous amounts of pain without flinching, and is only mildly afraid of death? If some or all of these points apply to your character chances are you havenā€™t been roleplaying.ā€

4 Likes

Roleplaying as regular everyday Joe is boring tho, characters needs some spice. If someone wants to RP as a characters from the idk firefly family and act like Captain Spaulding, a complete fucking lunatic, and keep it fun, why care.

1 Like

While this is definitely true, playing a fearless, insubordinate, murderous sociopath is also pretty boring and bland. Itā€™s not engaging or fun for the round or other players when folks start looking for any excuse they can to toolbox you the moment they think youā€™re suspicious.

Play along a little.

Just greytiding is boring, which is true, but I meant seeing crazy scientists trying to reanimate the dead or the hobo deptor telling stories about space nam as RP is what keeps me going. If you want some realistic Rp thereā€™s gonna be normal characters and then ā€˜the othersā€™ which is fine, as long as they donā€™t bash their heads in each other 24/7.

1 Like

Thereā€™s a difference in playing as your favourite character, who could be off the rails a bit and just click on spaceman with toolbox until horizontal. I, for example, just started to main cook nowadays, RP a bit as Sawyer family and now Iā€™m the licensed cannibal on the server.

I donā€™t mind eccentric at all personally. Weā€™re medium rather than high role play. What I mind is using eccentric as an excuse, or only for the benefits and not the downsides.

  • Pretending youā€™re a cave man on a space station to justify smashing equipment for no other particular reason is a good example of a bad eccentric.
  • Being a drug addict and breaking into chem to make/get high on drugs is a good example
  • Doing the drug addict spiel explicitly for meth while also making mannitol and never overdosing is just using an eccentricity as an excuse for powergaming, not actually being a drug addict.
  • Mad scientist abuses nanites to make a harmless brainwashing task that forces the station to praise him is hilarious and harmless, but heā€™ll still probably face some consequences at the hands of those that werenā€™t brainwashed within the round.

Thereā€™s lots of great ways to make a character interesting that brings the spark of life into the game and makes every round unique, even as non-antags. Thereā€™s lots of ways to pretend youā€™re role-playing when you just want an excuse to grief and powergame too though, and finding the distinction between the two is important.

But above all, no I donā€™t want everyone to be a boring suit and tie. Thatā€™s awful

1 Like

Right, ever since I started my whole cannibalism schtick for example, people suspect me first whenever morgue gets looted or check my meat room more often for corpses, which I can live with. I donā€™t even mind getting lynched as non-antag by someone for serving them their old, brainless colleague. Itā€™s a good RP reaction for some folk and I like that. Makes the game feel more realistic without taking the chaos away :cut_of_meat: