There are several problems with both servers that I’m sure many of you are aware of. On MRP, the roleplay elements are respected more than the gameplay elements, which results in bannings for carrying even basic items for self-defense, bans for killing people who act like antags, and bans for mentioning game mechanics, which make it impossible to teach new players. Meanwhile, on LRP, tiding is allowed, and socially encouraged, and while the rules allow anyone, not just Sec or Command to take down griefers and tiders, social pressure means that nobody does, and the chaos of people breaking in and doing what they want makes it difficult to teach anyone new.
I propose a solution: Bee GRP, meaning General Roleplay, that mixes things from both servers to allow for more freedom, while still making sure that the game is a controlled environment. This will give the people opportunity to pretend and enjoy being the job they want, while letting people less interested in that the ability to defend themselves and enjoy the gameplay side of things as well.
Problem number one:
You can’t carry ANYTHING to defend yourself on MRP, or take even simple measures to protect your workplace/the station, unless the station has already been destroyed, or the antags have already killed a lot of people, which sucks if you’re one of the dead ones.
(TL;DR, “Powergaming” is too restrictive and limits gameplay too much)
SOLUTION:
Adds “Soft Powergaming”. You can carry a small weapon or tool of self defense with you, as long as it doesn’t do a high amount of damage or otherwise kill/incap people easily, and things like syringe guns or fire axes are right out. If there’s a commonly attacked weak point at your work place, AND it is simple to fix, you can fix it. (For example easily uncyncing the borgs from the AI is fine but replacing all of atmos is not.) Heads are exempt from this and can carry around as much self-defense shit as they want, because they are both important to the round’s function on a higher level and expected to know a fair amount more than the average player, and it’s not good to lose that knowledge base every round. Additionally, as the head of a department, you have complete authority to change it how you want, and the understanding to know how it would be/will be attacked, so this will prevent noobs from messing things up that they don’t understand, and it makes sense from a gameplay and in-universe perspective.
(TL;DR, soft/common sense powergaming)
Problem Number 1.1:
On LRP everyone is absolutely armed to the teeth, making it hard to tell who is and isn’t an antag. Additionally, it’s difficult to stop people like that if you’ve been doing your job instead of roaming around picking items like a collectathon speedrunner.
SOLUTION:
See the above rule on how to stop walking armory syndrome, but basically unless you’re a head you shouldn’t be carrying around deadly acids or guns or whatever to protect yourself. Council rulings will need to be made to determine whether or not certain things like flashes or sunglasses are powergaming. My personal opinion is that having flash protection would be ok, but not an actual flash, as that is more of an offensive item, unless you’re using it to build robots or whatever. In addition, if your job tends to get items that are powergamey, like miner, or xenobio, or roboticist, you can totally have fun with those items, and you can give those items away, you can’t just build/make them yourself if you aren’t that job. (This ties into something I’m going to cover later on about job responsibilites, and has exceptions which are covered there too.)
Problem Number 2: On LRP, escalation is structured such that as long as you don’t directly attack someone first, even if you’ve broken into their workplace and stolen everything they’ve been doing, they can get banned for stopping you, and if you’re in a high-security area, such as the armory or the cap’s office, you get to kill anyone who attacks you first, which is bullshit.
(TL;DR: Hard Escalation on LRP is too abuseable)
SOLUTION:
Ports the common sense, soft escalation from MRP. You can defend reasonably in high risk areas or from dangerous looking people, but your goal should never be to “make spessman horizontal”, instead you should focus on stopping the threat and attempt to save them if you are able. However, if it’s obviously a confirmed antag, like a ling or something feel free to beat the shit out of them, just make sure you were right about their antag status, and if you were wrong, make a strong attempt to save them and get them back into the game.
(TL;DR: Common sense escalation from MRP with caveats for antags, as well as self antags/no sec which I cover below)
Problem 3:
Various rules on MRP make it impossible to deal with problem players on your own, requiring you to rely on inconsistent security, or escalate to an Ahelp, which is frustrating, especially if there are no admins or it gets marked as an IC issue. LRP does not have this issue, besides having no RP requirements against stopping the bad guy to begin with, makes shitters, spammers, griefers, and self-antags all self-valid, meaning they can be killed by anyone with the strength to do so, which tends to make for a less angry, less frustrated, and less toxic community than on MRP.
(TL;DR, you cannot deal with shitters on MRP and you absolutely have to ahelp it or eat a ban)
SOLUTION:
Ports self-validity from LRP, but a bit softer. Act like a shitter, break shit, steal lots of shit or grief as non-antag, or act like an antag, and you can reasonably be stopped if you’re harassing someone or trying to mess up their round. However, this is not a liscence to kill, only a license to crit, and if you feel like you were unjustly attacked you can ahelp it and get told whether you really should’ve fucked off that time or not. Banbaiting by doing this is bannable however, as is trying to use “they were annoying” as an excuse to make spaceman horizontal. Once you’ve crit the self-antagger/griefer, you must alert security, and make sure the person gets treatment, either by taking them to medbay or cuffing them and applying a patch yourself. However, if you’re a doctor, you aren’t necessarily obliged to heal them so they keep attacking you, or waste healing chems on the guy who tried to murder you. That’s up to your (and the admins’) descretion.
In addition, if there are no sec, feel free to instill wasteland justice within your own department, as long as the punishments are reasonable to what the perpetrator did.
(TL:DR, if someone is griefing or self-antagging, you can crit them, but you must make sure they can recover, if you genuinely think someone is an antag you can kill them, but you must make sure and revive them if you’re wrong, and if there are no sec you can punish crimes against you/your department yourself, as long as the punishments are reasonable.)
Problem 4:
If anyone is able to do any job regardless of what they started as, it creates situations where the janitor is acting as the doctor, or where people can’t do their jobs because someone is already doing it for them. Likewise, if only people who started as a job were allowed to do it, it would create situations where there’s nobody who knows how to fix the SM or the plasmaflood, and it doesn’t let you easily teach newer players.
(TL;DR: Job responsibility)
SOLUTION:
Players/ player characters should only know the duties and mechanics of their given job, and only a basic understanding of other jobs UNLESS they’re using that info to save people, to help people, or to teach. For example, a botanist shouldn’t know how to build a mech, but they can ask to have one made for them, but if you’re the last person alive and/or don’t think anyone else is alive who knows how to do it, you can build a mech if it helps fight the blob or save the station or whatever. If nobody in medbay knows surgery but you as janitor do, it’s fine to save whoever it is’ life or give medical advice on how to revive someone. However, you can’t know things your job wouldn’t know if you’re trying to use that knowledge to get things for yourself, or to attack others as non-antag.
Obviously however there are some things anyone knows after several hours of playing SS13 which it would be hadicapping to pretend you don’t understand due to IC reasons, and there are also certain game mechanics (namely hacking) which there would need to be a council ruling on to determine if it could be considered “common knowledge” or not.
A little bit more explanation: if someone shouts over radio to “please research advanced sanitation”, you shouldn’t break into sci to research things unless you are actually sci, but if someone aks “hey can somebody help me figure out how to research stuff” you can go help them, and take some goodies for yourself, within reason, as payment, long as it isn’t disruptive and you’re trying to be helpful.
Why this “solution” to a problem that may not exist? People play the jobs they selected for a reason, and forcing players to respect the structure of the station makes everyone feel a bit more useful, rather than having someone break in to do it themselves, and lets people learn more about the job they’re playing. But I also don’t want to restrict players from helping others out in times of need or crises, or from teaching other, and that’s the balance I came up between the two. It goes with the idea of “promote roleplay but not at the expense of common sense gameplay” that I have had while writing these rules.
(TL:DR: You/your spaceman should only know your job/do only your job, unless knowing/doing someone else’s job saves lives or helps the station or is used to help teach.)
Problem 5:
Tiding. It’s a problem on LRP. Whereas MRP has too many restrictions on what you can have and do, LRP has too few, and it disrupts the round. When everyone has AA, and anyone can tide into your department and steal all the supplies or points or materials, it means you can’t rely on certain things being certain places, and nowhere is secure. If someone is just going to rush in and spend all the research points, why bother playing scientist except to do xenobio? How can you save lives as med, if some greyshirt can rush in and steal all the brute packs just to die in maint?
(TL;DR: Tiding Destroys the round)
SOLUTION:
Tiding is not allowed, neither is AA sharing, except during serious emergencies, like nukies, or blob, or some other major stationwide threat that specifically threatens everyone on board. If you really want to play “anarchy gang simulator 2020”, LRP still exists and that’s not going to change. For the rest of us, during those sanctioned AA/Tiding times where serious shit is going down, if you tide into someone’s workplace you should have a reason, and need to explain that to whoever’s workplace you’ve broken into. The days of silently tresspassing and stealing all the healing chems/research points are over.
(TL;DR: Tiding and AA sharing are no longer allowed except in extreme circumstances like nukies or blob, and even then you must explain what you’re doing to the people you affect)
Problem 6:
Nobody on LRP likes to get murderboned, and waiting while whatever antag it is takes his sweet time killing everyone on board is boring as shit, but everyone loves being able to kill freely as antag when they get it. I don’t think outright disallowing it is the right solution, but there absolutely needs to be a balance to it. On medium or High-Pop that balance is found in the sheer amount of players, but on low-pop it is extremely skewed, meaning a new system needs to be implemented if it is to be kept.
(TL;DR: Murderboning Antag problems on LRP)
SOLUTION:
When 25% of the crew are dead, set the station to blue alert if it is not on Red Alert, and send out a warning that the “Automatic system has detected decreased life signs” or something. At 50% set it to red alert, and send out an “Extreme loss of life detected on Station” Warning or something. At just 25% of the station pop left alive, force an un-recallable shuttle call. The exact thresholds should probably be adjusted, but you get the idea. The idea is to give people a warning, while also forcing a time limit onto antags who want to murderbone, while also discouraging mass murder as a viable option for certain antags. It lets antags have a time limit to work against (which can be fun) and it gives a definitive end point for people who are dead. I chose the thresholds and responses I did because there needs definitely needs to be more awareness for the crew as a whole that things are afoot, but at the same time I don’t want to be too aggressive/lenient with the shuttle call.
(TL;DR: tiered automated response based on % of crew dead, ending in a forced shuttle callat 25% left)
Now I don’t propose to replace LRP Golden or MRP Sage with GRP Auburn but I think that both MRP and LRP (to an extent) function better at medium to low pops. These new rules should help bring in the people who want more structure than LRP, but dislike the ruleset of MRP. It puts power back in the hands of the MRP-ers to solve things themselves instead of escalating to admins or the forums, and it brings structure while retaining some of the gameplay oriented features of LRP that MRP doesn’t and will never have. I get that I wrote a whole fricken novel here, but I really wanted to address the problems as I see them. If you have any questions about specifics, or even generalities, ask me in the comments.
And, based on the poll I started when I started writing this, I think many of you will agree with me. I set out to come up with a server that would act as a true mix of fun gameplay and fun, light hearted roleplay, and I think I’ve achieved it. Thanks for reading.
