You can get away with a lot as is if you play it in character and in good faith. The rules are in a good spot already, especially with the recent change. The no self-antag rules rounds are fun, but too chaotic for my tastes. People with criminal dealings should be less common than law-abiding spacemen and should have at least some attempt at secretism from security for it to be fun, I’d wager.
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Ultimately there are some things that sound great but would never actually work. Having to deal with this while we set in stone the final design directions.
These things work at first but long term get ruined by players who abuse them
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Speaking as someone who was here before much of the rules here, I would advocate for its removal.
Even if Taylor and others like Jacob David are two shining examples, I’m afraid that too many are completely paralysed by its own presence.
Griefers will be griefers, no matter what.
But even during the times of the Golden server of Bee, many, as myself, did always their best to keep the ship from falling into chaos. I’d say that we have cultivated such a strong player base that even the removal of the escalation policy would be warranted, because it doesn’t allow anything that isn’t a very strict conflict, following exact steps.
While an infuriated scientists would for sure use all the means at their disposals in a fit of very rightly and warranted rage. Or miners, explorers or doctor or roboticists or particularly botanists.
And is from the golden era of Bee that I don’t witness anything resembling a very fiery altercation, with arrests left and right, minor and major. And exciting conflict all around.
But unluckily I’m too busy living to work instead than working to afford living to partake with all of you the experiences this game only can offer.
I do hope that whatever course Bee embraces, you’ll all have fun, my dear little ones! Without forgetting to dedicate time to build yourself a good life too, while enjoying our shared hobby of playing videogames.
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I think there’s a huge difference between someone blowing things up “because funnee” and a well-developed, story-driven character arc with clear in-character motivation and emotional weight. I echo what Taylor said—if you’re playing in good faith, it’s hard to truly get it “wrong.”
That said, I also understand the concern a lot of players (myself included) have: even with a solid grasp of escalation and self-antag rules, there’s always that anxiety about accidentally crossing a line and getting bwoinked. It feels like one misstep—maybe even a heat-of-the-moment, in-character reaction—could end up violating a rule we didn’t mean to break. For example, if someone insults my character’s race, appearance, or competency, I’d hesitate to have my character punch them in a “you take that back!” moment, even if it makes perfect IC sense.
We should be encouraging characters to have conflict, differing values, and emotional responses to situations. I know that’s technically allowed already, but in practice it rarely goes anywhere beyond someone walking away or ending the scene with a flat “ok.” There’s a general fear that doing anything even slightly antagonistic without being an antag could result in a bwoink or another player getting OOC angry / making a report.
I know it goes without saying for most of us, but removing the self-antag rule wouldn’t mean open season on murderbone. Random or senseless violence would still be clearly against the rules and handled by admins, especially if there’s no build-up, motive, or IC justification. As Dmitri said, “Griefers will be griefers, no matter what.” Rule 0 still applies—admins will always have the final say.
I also agree with Dimitri’s point; most of the current playerbase is more than capable of handling in-round conflict in an engaging and constructive way. Of course, there will always be some players who might not fully understand or enjoy that kind of roleplay, and that’s completely fine. Tools like LOOC are a great way to communicate boundaries and let others know you’re not looking to be involved in a particular story arc.
If the self-antag rule were to be removed, I think it would be important for staff to revisit and reinforce the RP guidelines. Especially around escalation, conflict, and how player-driven narratives should unfold. There should be a strong emphasis on meaningful build-up and storytelling, so that when conflict does reach its peak, it feels natural, earned, and rewarding for everyone involved.
Regardless of whether the self-antag rule is removed or not
I believe the RP guidelines could really benefit from an update to better reflect the kind of roleplay the server wants to encourage. Right now, the rules emphasise that “your character is a grown adult working on a research station for a major company… act like it,” which sets a tone that leans heavily toward corporate professionalism. While that makes sense for immersion, it can also come across as discouraging players from showing genuine emotion, having personal conflicts, or stepping outside of a rigid “model employee” mould—especially when there’s fear of a bwoink or ban for doing so. And to be a bit blunt and throw some shade, I feel as though there are players who treat it more like a sandbox game than a roleplaying experience which, personally, ruins my “immersion”, hence why I’ve decided to stop playing.
If we look at shows like Star Trek, which possibly inspired much of SS13’s tone, the setting is serious and structured, yet character conflict is a core part of the storytelling. Crew members argue, question orders, clash over beliefs—but it all serves to deepen the narrative and explore character dynamics. Those moments enhance immersion rather than break it. I think clearer, more modern RP guidelines could help strike that same balance: encouraging professionalism as a baseline, but making space for in-character conflict, emotional responses, and personal story arcs when they make sense within the round.
P.S. We all love and miss you @DimitriSTK88 hope you’re keeping well 
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Just to add to my wall of text—I personally think bringing back greenshifts and encouraging more non-antag story arcs could do a lot for the server. It gives people more room to create character-driven stories without the pressure of constant chaos. Roles like Security and especially Lawyers (who honestly feel like a bit of a gimmick right now) could actually get involved in meaningful ways—holding trials, handling lawsuits, mediating disputes, that kind of thing. It’s immersive and gives people stuff to do beyond just waiting for the next bomb to go off or ignoring small crimes because they’re waiting for “the big bad”.
When every round is near enough guaranteed to have an antag, it starts feeling like TTT or
(god forbid) Among Us. You’re just kind of sitting around, OOC knowing that something is going to happen eventually. Greenshifts would mix it up and let the RP breathe a bit more.
Bee TTT (HRP), when?
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I remember when I was a VIP who came from space, I was tagging the floors with spray cans and putting a ton of words, spending a lot of time on graffitying a bunch of dumb shit
A janitor comes up, starts cleaning everything - conflict ensues, we start verbally attacking eachother and building tension as they chase after my drawings and stop me from doing more graffiti, for like 15-20 mins of interaction between the two of us
At some point, my character gets tired of it and punches them, punch, the situation then escalating further until I crit them and bring them to med
I think I have a good grasp of escalation policy, and a good understanding of character motivations etc, to have justified this situation escalating this much - it was just character tension building up over a seemingly insignificant matter
Nevertheless, I got bwoinked by an admin for jumping to punching first and not following the EXACT escalation policy step by step (i didn’t start shoving), and that sufficient character motivation (the janitor chasing me and verbally taunting me constantly) does not make them the aggressor and I had no right to escalate at all
Ensues me being completely taken out of the round for 20 mins arguing with the admin before getting noted anyway, for an event the janitor DIDN’T EVEN AHELP, because it was essentially self antag to skip the very first bit of escalation policy and started bare-fist punching
This shit is why players don’t ever try anything or act antagonisingly, having to worry about a 20-30 min long ahelp because you skipped a bit of escalation in a long overarching storyline is genuinely infuriating and doesn’t make you want to try anything ever anymore
I blame the self antag rule entirely as to why Bee rounds got very stale over time
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Thanks for reinforcing my point—being on the receiving end of IC abuse already feels like escalation. I’ve seen (and heard of) people getting punched for far less in real life. You realistically wouldn’t willingly talk shit to someones face and not expect to get your ass kicked for it. Actions have consequences, don’t talk shit if you don’t want hit 
That’s exactly why I mentioned earlier that, regardless of whether the self-antag rule stays or goes, the server could really benefit from revisiting the RP guidelines. They need to better reflect how players are expected to actually engage with each other beyond just playing corporate drones.
Clearer expectations would not only give players more confidence to act in-character without fear of overstepping, but also help staff make more consistent, fair decisions when things do escalate. Right now, a lot comes down to individual interpretation—more defined guidelines would reduce that ambiguity and make expectations clearer for everyone.
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Here are some of my thoughts:
- A lot of posts are advocating for the removal of self-antag because of reasons involving escalation policy. Maybe the escalation policy is the problem.
- Greenshifts give you nothing to RP over. Most players get bored of greenshifts and quit.
- I see 2 major things commonly that appear to make rounds more boring, antagonists doing nothing and non-antagonists refusing to perform any sort of interaction with antagonists.
- A good portion of our strict rule enforcement tends to be players being salty in OOC/dchat and making other players feel uncomfortable for getting something wrong, rather than the rules directly doing that.
My general position is as follows:
- The rules need to exist because there are certain things that we have to limit. Giving freedom is great until the things that you granted freedom to start happening every other round.
- When in doubt, the rules should be on the permissive side and allow something. The escalation policy in the works is a lot like this and has very forgiving stages which make it much harder to over-escalate if you are playing with good faith.
- We need mechanics like objectives and antagonists to jump-start engagements and situations in the game, these just need to be well designed. The next goal for development should be to figure out the actual goal of the station, why the crewmembers want this goal and why the antagonists want to collectively prevent this goal. An actual reason to be an antagonist would go a long way into making more interesting antagonist scenarios that aren’t just ‘kill this guy’.
- Even if objectives are a necessity, they should provide as many ways to approach them as possible. We should be aiming to design mechanics that force players into interesting situations while providing no restrictions on how they resolve those interesting situations. Killing someone is cool and all, but you kill them and that’s it. What if your objective was to collect a certain amount of money from them in a set amount of time OR kill them. That would give you a time limit to encourage acting, it gives you multiple paths through the objective and encourages earlier engagement from the antagonists instead of completing it late in the round (which antagonists do because they don’t want to feel bad about killing their target). We need design rules which promote this type of thinking.
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Killing someone in an interesting, interactive way is quite difficult with the threat of security, a very competent player-base on Bee station and AI helicoptering over you.
I feel like this tends to leave a lot of players feeling like they have to perform quick stealth kills to get away with creating meaningful conflict.
There have been a number of times in the past where I was killed in really interesting ways.
A player who did this quite consistently was Jessica Brown.
They almost always roleplayed something engaging to give context to the kill.
One time they even played on my character’s bloated ego and pretended to be an interviewer from a made up galactic media organization, then slowly started to turn the interview towards a darker and darker line of questioning until they were eventually torturing my character with phyisical violence and mental abuse.
I was quite happy to die, and Jessica’s commitment to their character and the narrative they were creating made it so that Max Anders (the only command/security player at the time) had a lot more to roleplay around than just a random murder.
A lot of the time people limit their own creativity due to fear of being “outplayed” or “robusted” and this creates a cycle of prioritizing winning over acting out an interesting story with players on the opposing side of the narrative.
I don’t have any concrete suggestions for how to encourage more leap-of-faith roleplaying in the game, because I think that it happens regardless of the game code and ruleset when good players are present on both the security and antagonist roles to make it happen.
Here are some examples of players who I see consistently take these leaps of faith:
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ManiacalAnxiety (Erika Parker) - Very roleplay focused player, stays in-character even when doing so is difficult due to stressful round circumstances. Consistently plays security in a way that helps drive a narrative forward rather than shut it down
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CursedKiller (Horologium) - Has tried many different gimmicks, plays antagonist in a way that creates a story that often says something interesting about the character they are playing. Has shown really strong resolve in maintaining their commitment to a bit in the face of pewpew-happy security officers. Also plays security in a really fair way.
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Marshmellow10 (Bombyx Modesta) - I have personally had more fun in back-and-forths with Marshmellow as a security officer than any other player on Bee when I play antagonist. Marsh does a really good job of balancing gameplay with roleplay and often succeeds at matching the energy of the antagonists they’re pursuing.
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JestersBallad (CD7) - Isn’t afraid to try new things, and give their all for a hail mary attempt at a wild gimmick and commit to it. Very impressive player that I know isn’t going to smack me around without IC context being laid out first.
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Hackole (Ward Chromlie) - IMHO Hackole was the GOAT of Bee Station security. Ward Chromlie was a security officer that I saw enrich antagonists’ stories rather than shut them down. He wasn’t 100% consistent, and sometimes got a bit trigger happy after being RR’d in a round in an unfair way etc. but always brought it back to being a security officer who played creatively, played to win, and played for the fun of others all at the same time.
Great players make great interactions and great stories possible. We can write and rewrite the rules and the game code till we’re blue in the face, but without players like these (and many more I haven’t mentioned here) on Bee Station, none of it matters.
Do your best to give others room to tell their story, and make a fearless attempt at telling your own! Best of luck to every one of you.
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To give a personal example of what you’re saying here:
Woe, wall of text upon ye
In a recent round, I was playing as a Janitor when a contractor, Miriam, “hired” me to clean their pod. I thought, “hell yeah, I’ll get paid,” and went along with it. We headed to the committee room where the pod landed, and I jokingly scolded Miriam for the mess and got ready to clean.
Then the Captain and a Security officer showed up—clearly coming from Cargo to the left (forget which map). They looked through the window and said nothing. I was literally about to say, “Hey! Sorry for the mess—Miriam hired me to clean their pod, I’ll tidy it up,” but before I could even get the words out, a mimite attacked. I dealt with it, tried again to say my piece, but the Captain and Sec just stormed in, guns ready, zero words exchanged. Miriam didn’t, as far as I could see, have lethals or really try properly fight back.
They obviously knew Miriam was an antag trying to kidnap me. But I didn’t. I was just playing along with a goofy in-character moment that could’ve been fun for both of us. I ended up falling asleep (possibly due to the mimite or maybe miriam idk), got podded, and when I returned, I kept it going: “Miriam! Sorry, I passed out and woke up in a weird hospital—but I’m back! Need that pod cleaned?”
Later in the round, Miriam was dead, but their modsuit AI (on Asimov) was pleading for help in Medbay while Sec, the Captain, and the AI were blasting it with lethals. Miriam’s guts were on the floor, the AI wasn’t fighting back—it couldn’t hurt humans. It was just screaming for someone to help.
The Roboticist came in and clarified, “Just a heads up, Cap—Miriam didn’t make that AI, I did,” possibly to help clear up confusion. The Captain’s response? “Roboticist, genuinely fuck off.” Which honestly felt more like OOC frustration than anything in-character.
The whole thing just didn’t feel fun—for me, and I doubt for others either.
It constantly feels like the game is boiling down to greentext vs redtext. Robust vs unrobust. There’s barely any meaningful interaction between Security and antags anymore, and that’s killing what used to make the game engaging for me.
This round in particular was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It finally “clicked” for me that I’d been playing less and less because that RP spark—the thing that made every round fun and interactive—is just missing now.
To quote Dwarf Fortress: Losing is fun. It’s part of the game.
TL;DR: Had a recent round where an RP opportunity between Security and an antag was completely skipped in favor of shooting first and ignoring everything else. Security didn’t try to talk, no one reacted IC, and it felt more like a game of deathmatch than a roleplay scenario. This kind of “win-first” mentality is, for me, making the game less engaging and pushing away the meaningful character-driven moments that used to make it fun.
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Which admin was it? That seems like an old staff type of thing.
It’s kinda crazy that every single time such a conversation pops up people keep pointing to the same 3-4 people with a “take example from them!!” as if the fact that it’s always the same people doesn’t indicate a strong issue in either how their case is handled or rules generally
Yeah sure, le great players are great, but you have to remember not everyone is the best person ever and that joe random possibly doesn’t have such great and amazing storytelling
But that doesn’t mean their contribution to a round should be dismissed/stomped down by rules, not everyone has perfect knowledge of the rules or how to bend them, and joe random should get to fuck around with how he interacts with others without fear of getting destroyed because he didn’t actively study the inner workings of “great bee players”
Roleplay standards should not be defined based on the cream of the crop
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I think the real point of contention some people have with the removal of the self antag rule is that, simply put, the standard of RP is near nonexistent. Bee is in a strange spot where it is still advertised as a “beginner friendly learning” server when realistically a lot of players that still hang around fall under none of those catergories, the players who want to learn and have shorter rounds have other servers that have much higher pop places to go play on.
I get the arguement that has been going on for years has been “Bee is just RP!” but save for a few players it really isn’t, Monkestation has way more roleplay happening despite that server more LRP leaning. The whole direction of the rules and approach to what is allowed and disallowed needs an overhaul, IC conflict is good, but there needs to be rules put in place to prevent it from being abused.
Whether this requires a secondary server to be opened up again that is HRP focused, or just making Bee’s main server have that focus, I don’t know, but Bee has been losing players for a bit now. People definitely have been describing stuff that happens in those kind of servers in this very thread as things they want to have (save for TTV shop that is a horrible idea lmao), different server focuses attract different types of players.
The main point of advertising is targeting a demographic, Bee is not targeting the players it wants to have playing.
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Apologies, had to do some cleanup. Please try to keep things on-topic!
The self antag debate is a good one tbh, its great to see you all chatting about how things have progressed or what changes you’d like to see, so keep it up! Who knows what will happen ^-^
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This one vaguely makes me think of an nsfw server I was on. I apparently pissed off the CE or whatever because…??? I dunno exactly??? And they cut off power. Well my character did not take it well, being claustrophobic and nyctophobic, and had a breakdown. The engineer in question had a very stern talking to and returned power after a while.
That being said, reworking self antag to allow more leniency while still preventing the big catastrophes (plasmaflooding, bombing, etc) would be super fun!
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