Because where most servers would perma ban those people we just give them 3 days bans then they come back immediately without changing their behavior because getting banned was a medal of honor to them.
Beestation lore is wild.
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To give credit where it’s due - not all or even most of these people were genuinely terrible folks, it’s just the whole thing was entertainment for them. They weren’t about making the game as good as it could be, they were class clowns going for laughs.
The general opinion has just shifted over time, and thankfully the community isn’t a good place for those few genuinely terrible people to blend in and dog whistle each other.
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That’s true, LRP is a legit way to play, no need to call them shitters when they just had different expectations of the game.
The problem, as ever, is expectations differing and feelings of entitlement leading to a sense of “us vs them”. Looks like both sides of the gold/sage schism had that issue, but the difference was that the owner and staff were mostly on the side of MRP (eventually just “RP”) Which ended in gold being closed so the server could focus on one set of expectations.
Bit of a shame that gold didn’t spin out into a new server (maybe it did and I didn’t see?), I do wonder what the options for LRP/NRP SS13 are these days, especially since Aetherstation closed.
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Really this should be the mentality surrounding most servers and styles of play. A lot of people fail to understand that everyone has preferences. As much as I dislike people sticking around when they’re not a good fit, they were rarely actively malicious.
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This also was a somewhat gradual change with two major shocks that rocked the boat substantially: The Ssethtide and slur ban
Before Ssethtide Bee was a small “LRP” community with relatively lax rules, but still a general atmosphere that involved roleplaying - people might be roleplaying James Bond and Spike Spiegel, but they were roleplaying nonetheless. (And there are pre-Sseth bans that prove this if you dig)
Ssethtide brought a massive and uncontrollable flood of players and resulted in a surge of new staff to keep up with the need. I used airquotes around LRP above because this surge redefined what LRP meant to the whole of the SS13 community. Bee was now firmly a non-RP server all about mechanics, and this is what people generally think LRP means now
Six months (give or take some change) pass and then Sage is introduced as a place for people to RP again. The people who are interested in RP are actively mocked by the majority of players and staff alike and RP players and staff are very much in the minority. Rules are still quite lax at this time and people generally just stay in character not unlike pre-Sseth Beestation to the best of my knowledge, complete with certain things still making you valid.
Two and a half months later slurs are banned, leading to something of mass exodus of both staff and players and even DDoS attacks on Golden but for some reason not Sage. Players flooded over to Sage from golden completely destroying the RP atmosphere and unfortunately in more than a handful of cases had existing staff support in doing so. (Xlyana was a head admin at the time of this thread and Rod was Senior. The ban was overruled and ashwalkers were given a free grief pass that lasted for months)
From there the staff situation fairly quickly shifted to being more RP oriented partially because sage was attracting folks that were more RP minded and partially because of the NRP aligned staff gradually leaving.
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God… As an observer I loved the Slur/Mantis exodus… It was so fking dumb. Trying to excuse just blatently wanting to say slurs as some sort of betrayal by admins/crossed for implementing the rule without player input or warning… thinly veiled BS :^)
Spite server into disfunctional management then a merger into another server which they overthrew all the other servers staff and killed the server.
Cesspool from start to miserable end… Sadly means they are no longer contained… likely filtered back in here or elsewhere.
No one ever really went back to golden after the DDOS… Sage became the pop chasing server with a mixed playerbase… and golden became basically LRP acacia. weirdly more tame than sage… with the occasional gamer mentality.
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Thanks for the summary!
Very sad story all round 
Most security don’t focus on roleplay at all. the moment they see their avatar pop up on the screen in security all intentions of roleplay and having character backstories goes out of the window.
Static naming is a detriment to the game. The ultimate path to roleplay is not to make a five page backstory for your characters. but to simply make up a backstory for each round. Random names are the ultimate peak of roleplay.
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not necessarily
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This is the worst take in the thread so far.
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could you please explain why? I don’t see an issue in my take.
The debate between static naming and playing a random each round centers around two things for me.
first, is keeping things fresh, thus allowing new situations to arise out of the improv that is ss13, and static naming sometimes dissuades this by denying new characters to take up a role in their own unique way during any experience that happens in the round.
second, is continuity. While every round of ss13 is new, and no one knows the events of previous rounds, it’s pretty impossible to explore every facet of a character in only one round. Through static naming, people get to really know how a character acts, and thus can make easier interactions or better yet, develop their characters as new obstacles rise until the final fumble that does them in (if you decide to kill them off, that is)
Now, realistically, I don’t think many people here have enough skill to play a new character each round and make effective use of the spontaneity. You have to not only be incredibly creative in only 180 seconds to have a prompt or some idea to go off of in how you will act in the round, you also got to make it different from previous rounds, and in a very noticeable way.
I believe a balance is needed. Going only with statics means sacrificing new experiences for something that inevitably will become bland, and going only with randoms means sacrificing the development between characters in a group for the sake of a variety that will not always be effective and may even cast you out of those new experiences you looked to participate in in your own, rando, unique way, it’s basically throwing anything at a wall and seeing what sticks.
Too much of anything is bad for you. And to put it simply, I don’t think anyone here really makes a five page backstory for a character, it comes more from interactions. Although once set, it’s pretty strange to see it changed. Now, making a backstory for a random each round? Sounds like a pain in the ass for me.
And as for the pvp between sec and antags that was completely unrelated to the static name paragraph…I’d say sec has to do their job, but when they blur between each other as officers, I can say with certainty that such a team has failed. Same with antags. If the way they drive the round blurs with others, then they have failed. Both of these have a job that you can’t replace with just rp, you have to be effective as well for the sake of keeping the dynamic going, and rp is going to be the spice that will make that dynamic unique to the round (heh)
tldr: penultimate paragraph
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This is, in fact, a very hot take- regardless of the fact that I don’t agree.
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Due to the simplicity of each round, and the unlikelyhood of a character’s backstory really coming up too much in during a round, you could very well improvise a decent enough backstory per-round to define the motives behind a character’s primary characteristics.
That would be the hard part, I think - We’re all (or at the very least the majority of us, (who knows) are) hobbyists here, not professional method actors, and ensuring that the randomised character has a different set of emotional range so that each one feels like a unique character, which you would then need to intertwine into their backstory.
Alternatively, you could make the backstory up on the fly as it comes up in conversation. Personally, I think the best approach would be a mix of both, with a loose backstory you can tie to the character’s core beliefs and personality traits and the freedom to improvise additional details on the fly.
What I like to do with my characters is create a solid, albeit somewhat open-ended backstory where additional details can be improvised depending on the job I’ve chosen with a set of pre-defined traits, some beliefs and thier emotional range. This usually tends to mean that every round ends up becoming a different version of that character seperate from any previous round.
One character (sadly retired for now) had a randomised prosthetic limb and phobia, so I had a lot of fun improvising the event that caused her to lose said limb and her strong beliefs towards clowns/turkeys/the entirety of medical and its equipment, alongside how it tailored into the job I’ve chosen for the round, as I had used a formula of it generally being a previous workplace accident of some sort.
The problem I think with static names is that people become too attached to the character they’ve created, and so instead of being an individual character seperate from themselves, they instead become an extension of the player themself, with any response made by that player then becoming the emotional response of the player, without any additional consideration of what their character would do instead.
It can also encourage metaganging - Isn’t kind of odd how a lot of people seem to fully recognise and get along with that new transfer they’ve just met so well?
Switching characters every once in awhile, or creating new ones to keep things fresh wouldn’t hurt I don’t think.
A random-name character with a loosely improvised backstory sounds like a bit of fun though, I'll have to try it. Bonus points if you have random body set, too.
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They are all out on strike. lol
I used to do random name and random character and 99% of all the characters look insanely ugly though. But, I feel like random name and character is more true to the spirit of workin’ on SS13. It is more immersive. You won’t know who your coworker is. They might be a genius or not, most likely not. There is next to no chance for metagaming. When I first played this game on Beestation most of my focus was learning the basics and the antag-non-antag relations. So I would want random names to have people avoid noticing what I am doing. And that has a real genuine reaction in some of my latest rounds. I think Wrill said something along the lines of “You know Markus is an antag when he has made a mining mech for himself and vanished of the face of the station only to show up with three Durands from his mobile mech base.”. It did encourage me to try out other things, but it showed how easy it is to metagame even if you don’t intend to.
I think making a background on the fly is better and more reasonable than dedicating a set backstory for ‘em. It doesn’t need to be any complex either. Others would know my character for I sayin’ “howdy”, speakin’ with a bit of an accent (I tend to do this outside of SS13 by now lol) and enjoyin’ robotics, machinery and helping others. That’s it. You don’t need more to be a unique character. Much like in real life, you being you is unique enough.
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I think some aspects of static naming are beneficial, though I strongly agree that the way it’s used at times strangles roleplay. I think a good way to put my perspective of the upsides and downsides of statics, randoms and middlegrounds are some hypothetical examples
Example 1: John Static, everyone knows him! He has a very detailed backstory (possibly too detailed) and a rough personality. He’s popular and he doesn’t want to lose that, so he never branches out of his style or plays another character. He might also get special treatment for his popularity.
John Static has the upside of being able to make a very detailed backstory, because he is the same person every round, but he is extremely rigid in style and personality because he never plays anything else. He might also attract special treatment (intentional or subconscious), because everyone recognises him.
statics getting meta treatment is a “hot” take but that’s what this thread is for, so…
Example 2: John Semi-static, Jim Mixed and Joe Middle, a handful of characters. Recognizable to some, others might not know all these are the same person behind the screen. They’re a varied bunch that tend to have reasonable backstories but not as developed as John static, while still allowing for a whole bunch of different personalities or styles. They might get treated differently or recognised like John Static, but it’s typically not nearly as likely.
Example 3: Randy Random. Wildcard. Enigma. Nobody knows who this is, because they are completely unrecognizable. They have the most possible variety and freedom. Nothing about them is rigid and when played well these are the best, but they are extremely hard to play well, requiring the most improv skill of any of the 3 examples.
TLDR; True static players who only have a single character, with a 5 page backstory have no fluidity and are way too rigid. Playing a few characters is slightly harder and dampens the downsides of single-character-statics, and random is the hardest and the best.
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I’ve literally never said this. I think I did try tell you that doing the same fucking thing over and over again, expecting shit to change was boring though.
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Maybe it was someone else then, someone told me anyway! lol
But yeah, I kinda stopped doing it. I like shuttles and machinery! It’s fun, though a bit lonely. xP
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Thank you, thank you. I take pride in my work!
I’ve got a method to this. So you get two random generators. One for backstory. one for personality. Roll both each round, and stick to the results. Backstory is best remained simple. like… “Failed clown” or “Cult Escapee”. You can fill in the details in the round. If you want, you could also have a “specialized” random generator for backstories on certain roles. like security or command.
This is the only downside. My advice for mitigating this? Mirrors. and dresser if you happen to not like your characters underwear.
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