- I suggest referencing antag knowledge as one of the examples for Rule 1’s " * Any references to information acquired outside of your character’s scope of knowledge.".
This was discussed briefly on discord and there were some questions about the final wording, but I think any reference to restrictions on antag knowledge would be good. Mainly because other roleplay servers have their own policies on antag knowledge restrictions and this could help prevent confusion for new players of this server. - I think rule 15 should also reference which antag roles needs to ahelp before leaving the game. From my knowledge, it is required and should be present along with command and AI.
- On a similar note, I believe the escalation page could benefit from an update of factions and elaboration. Blob, fugitives, hunters, and survivalists are all absent and may raise confusion on how they should act or be acted towards. Especially survivalists who are absent from the wiki but are antags.
- What tactics spiders, xeno, or blobbernauts can use could also be elaborated on in the escalation policy. It was stated to me that spiders breaking apcs or plasma canisters may be considered too metagaming, but xenos (who have the same escalation note as spiders) are encouraged to break apcs on their wikipage, although I dont know how legit that encouragement is.
All of these suggestions are definitely possible, changes to the rule and escalation were made a few months ago. For instance, Spider Escalation was added in October. Some suggestions may be more valid than others, but I think all should be considered.
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- What tactics spiders, xeno, or blobbernauts can use could also be elaborated on in the escalation policy. It was stated to me that spiders breaking apcs or plasma canisters may be considered too metagaming, but xenos (who have the same escalation note as spiders) are encouraged to break apcs on their wikipage, although I dont know how legit that encouragement is.
All of these suggestions are definitely possible, changes to the rule and escalation were made a few months ago. For instance, Spider Escalation was added in October. Some suggestions may be more valid than others, but I think all should be considered.
Whenever i’m a Queen or Hunter, usually my justification to destroy t-comms(and that’s after a while, not an immediate rush) is because the xenomorph ‘‘detects’’ the weird noise/wave lenghts that interfer with their hivemind communication, hence why they know they should destroy it to get rid of it, that’s only because Xenomorphs are highly intelligent and adaptable creatures, one of the apexs of alien species and are capable of such thinking, as for Spiders… i do believe that’s acting on pure OOC Knowledge, the only reason i would destroy t-comms or even the oresilo as a spider would be because i plan to have my nest there(dumb idea but it can happen i guess) and you need to somehow make space, same applies to Blobs and their Blobbernaught, it’s quite common for a blobbernaught player to rush an APC and destroy a few stuff to encumber the crew trying to fight back, same with the mighty blob just advancing to specific areas, it’s up to debate how ‘‘smart’’ a Blob is, the only reference to go is the original source material and whatever the admins decide
For the other stuff i could add a few but those are some interesting points to bring out to debate and others would be a good QoL (like escaltion page for survivalist, fugitives and hunters)
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Not frequentating other servers I’m curious to know them!
Can you share some links/past experiences you had?
I’m one for simplicity, each single time we can have it.
As Tiago Forte in his book Building a Second Brain said, at pag. 220/221
“A perfect system that you don’t use ISN’T perfect”.
I fear our numerous pages of rules do tend to fall into this category. And this is not a critique to our beloved server but more a critique to the general approach any SS13 server has ever taken, pushed by its obtruse, but very creative, mechanics. I’m sure all of us have read all the rules at least once. But how many of us did re-read them? Especially when in doubt? It’s far better to use a shortcut and try to ahelp and, if no admins online… farewell gimmick!
We could avoid not all, but quite a lot of grey areas, thanks to simplicity. Because even overcorrecting in the other direction, as we and all the other servers did, do not erase grey areas at all. And no amount of rules can! (I live in Italy and… believe me people out there, our legal system is one of most volominous on earth and, infact, is one of the most ineffective/confusing on earth!).
So I would suggest that ALL antags need to ahelp before leaving the game, like all the command players are prompted to do so once they approach the cryotubes.
Easy peasy and valid for everyone.
On this I would reject the approach suggested by @Fronsis, and not because it lacks sense on its own, but because it’s once again a case by case scenario. Spiders, at least broodmothers, have the ability to communicate across any distance. Exactly like xenos(and I hope common spiders get the same treatment soon!). So for spiders too one can say that a broodmother sense some interferences, despise the mechanical and constant innatural humming of it, and decide to direct its progeny to destroy it.
But I wouldn’t frankly suggest it.
I would simply divide this approach into 2 way of thinking.
Antags who do use tech and know what is is
Human-like figures like nightmares, pirates, traitors, wizards and the likes.
They all know what a cigarette is, what space travel is and what have you.
They should be allowed to perform any mechnical sabotage activity, within reason.
And antag who doesn’t
Animals, blobs, morphs, xenos, spiders and what have you.
Sentient lifeforms like dragons or space carps too that simply do not use such tools because their own physiology has never pushed their evolution towards that direction.
After all technology isn’t an abstract force. Technology is a field born to answer our needs. And because our phisiology isn’t capable by itself to let us travel space, illuminate the darkness of the nights and so on, we adopted technology.
Why would a morph, a biological creature that sure, can eat anything, but being biological is far more reasonable to suppose it would prefer the taste and smoothness of something organic, always goes for tcomms or the armory? How can a disabler be more inviting than the kitchen or any living thing?
Sure we don’t have morphs in real life.
But sure, we know that animals, like us, do have preferences toward strong smells and tastes. Smell is of paramount importance in the animal kingdom and even water has a smell. But our current, overly, overly complicated ruleset won’t block any morph player to rush into the armory or the vault or tcomms to simply be the strongest nuisance it can be.
So to this kind of antags, I would forbid any direct damage of any kind of tech. Apcs, tcomms, vault and suchs. Doors? Walls? There are walls in nature even without tech and there are doors in the form of terrain obtrusions too. Canisters? One can argue that like sharks do bite at us for curiosity and usually spits us immediately after, canisters can represent the same thing.
So to not block completely any mechanical interaction this kind of animalistic antag would have, I would just let them damage directly non complicated tech like doors, walls and canisters. Then if a canister blows up tcomms or damage the power source of the station or what have you, as long as the antag didn’t carry a canister there exactly for this purpose, it’s allowed to have collaterals.
With the notable exception of Swarmers
What bothers me and the rest of the playerbase, aside the incredible environmental nuisance these things cause, without offering any interesting rp occasion, is the fact that they don’t make sense.
If they are preparing the stations for the arrival of their masters, it’s fair to say that like the borg of Star Trek, they don’t see any sense in our own peculiar way of separating the spaces and so they would eat any wall.
But why they would eat the vault?
It’s like terraforming a planet after having stripped it of any valuable minerals. No advanced sentient race would ever do that.
So I would treat swarmers as antags that doesn’t use tech.
Pillars of game design
To whoever would correctly point out that what suggested above is just a draft, and quite some point of it are debatable, I would say yes. You’re correct. Because what I just wrote can be categorised or under something that comes even before a game design document, the specification of the pillars of your game design. Or something that comes directly at the top of a game design document, its pillars.
At least if you use pillars in your game design at all.
One could argue that nightmares aren’t very tech oriented and yeah, I would agree. But they have a prehensile hand and are born in the places exactly where light doesn’t exist. So their existence is some sort of anti-light-tech based.
But they can use guns and such.
It’s quite easy to imagine an entire civilation made up of dark beings with a blade for an arm, that simply uses shadow alternatives of what we use. And mechanically they already function the same.
The other animalistic antags? They don’t.
Anyway, I hope I was able to stay somewhat on point and to have offered an interesting reading!
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Rules - /tg/station 13 Wiki (tgstation13.org)
Paradise Station Rules
Official:Guide to Roleplay - Yogstation-13
Rules - Space Station 13 Wiki (ss13.co)
Yeah, so I believe TG and Paradise take antag knowledge for granted in their rule 2. Yogstation and Goon have restrictions like this server on antag knowledge. In any case, all of them at least reference antag knowledge, which our rules don’t at the moment.
Now I also agree that the rules and its branches shouldn’t be bloated. In the end, it’s the RAI(rule as intended) that matters. However, if players don’t know that antag knowledge is restricted, even the RAI is hindered. I think any brief reference to restrictions on antag knowledge is sufficient.
Same goes for ahelping when leaving as an antag, any reference in rule 15 about leaving as an antag is absent at the moment. Now I don’t know about ahelping when leaving as ANY antag, like even lavaland syndicate, but I think any action in this direction would be good and up to the relevant staff to decide.
Now on the tactics of antags. Again, I think any reference would be better than what we have at the moment. I think the general rule of thumb you proposed could be condensed and made a good note for rules.
Now, it’s important to note that this isn’t about changing the rules, it’s about updating them to better reflect what’s already being enforced. I’d appreciate if the relevant staff would consider how they currently enforce what’s being discussed and better clarify them on the rules and whatnot.
This sounds a lot easier than it actually is. The real issue with “metaknowledge” is that ss13 is a huge and complex game, and writing down every single example of what is or isn’t metaknowledge is completely unfeasible.
Don’t forget that said page would then also have to be updated every time something code wise changes.
And if we manage to get all of this to work, we’d require players to read through pages upon pages of rulings for every single situation. Not a great idea.
Antag knowledge is in a bit of a weird place because it’s not only a rules issue either.
The crew has to know what nukies are, what a blob is, xenos. Otherwise they literally all die.
It feels terrible for a player to just get themselves killed because they aren’t allowed to do anything but the game pretty much requires them to do so.
This results in how antag knowledge is handled currently, and that is on a case by case basis.
- Normal crew has mostly heard rumors and basic evacuation procedure regarding antagonists.
- Security/captain/heads and to a certain extent the AI; have more knowledge than the regular crew. (Mainly how to fight them).
But no role actually knows something akin to “The changelings blade ability costs X amount of chems thus he only has XY left”, that would be OOC knowledge.
On the other hand it’s absolutely fine for security to know that a changeling can revive+has an armblade.
As long as you don’t go out of your way with metaknowledge you’ll be fine.
Isn’t that an ingame thing? Like if you cryo you get a prompt to ahelp first. Same goes for heads.
Oh lol you’re right. Why is blob not on there and why did nobody notice this. 
Fixed it, thanks!!
I feel like the wizard survivalist is rare enough to not really be worth adding to the page though. The flavor text should be enough. The less “restrictions” and more natural IC roleplay the better anyways.
Similar issue like with your first suggestion. The scope is out of this world. Ss13 is a game that has been in development for the past 20 years.
There’s so so many different interactions and possible situations.
Our rules are already too long as is. I don’t want players to feel forced to read through 3 pages of special rulings for each antagonist. And if they miss a single line they get noted and banned? Awful.
Our rules are already too long as it stands.
And imagine having to go through all the different pages of specific antag rulings every time a small feature ingame gets changed to adjust it.
And then you miss something, and suddenly it’s conflicting and so forth.
It’s a nightmare.
Right so, the main issue is just that this current position is not properly stated in the rules. I understand the concern of not over bloating it, but because antag knowledge isn’t elaborated on, people may likely miss/misinterpret the line on scope of knowledge and get noted. I didn’t know if I should bring it up, but I got noted once because I called out a heretic rune on radio. I took it for granted based on another familiar server’s rules on antag metaknowledge. I think there is a proper way that this suggestion can be achieved, Goon also doesn’t have a hard line on what players can or can’t know and I think that can be a good framework to work on/compact. Ultimately, I don’t think the lack of elaboration insinuates that it’s a case-by-case scenario, it hinders the RAI on metaknowledge, and any addition that addresses antag knowledge is better then what we have now, no matter how brief.
I uh…I’d like to know that too. Nonetheless, there’s also antags who don’t have access to cryo. I think the current stance on this should be reviewed and clarified.
I didn’t even know there was a wizard survivalist, I was thinking about the hostile targets that would spawn for exploration team to kill. Nevertheless, the flavor text for these survivalists was very vague, the first time I played them, I did not know if I was an antag, I shoved when I was threatened by explorers and died violently. I can see your point on less restrictions maybe leading to more roleplay, perhaps there could be a way to better state your an antag? IDK, it was stated to me that survivalists are antags who should just focus on surviving, that shouldn’t harm rp that bad right?
Again, completely reasonable concern. I understand not wanting players to become overwhelmed by rules. I presume it’s a case-by-case basis like knowledge against antags? Perhaps it can be briefly referenced together and generally support the RAI on metagaming/knowledge as well.
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Considering every single ticket is being handled on a case by case basis, there really isn’t a point in saying that we also do so for tickets regarding metaknowledge.
Misinterpreting is always going to happen. Doesn’t matter how explicitely stated it is.
The only way to avoid any misinterpretation is to clearly elaborate every single situation.
In the example you brought up you were noted for calling out a heretic rune on radio. And that’s perfectly fine.
You did it, and admin told you that it wasn’t alright and he wrote it down that you were warned for it. That’s it.
There’s no punishment there. As long as you don’t do the exact same thing again.
Admins don’t ban first. They note and remind people of what they should do. Bans are reserved for repeated offenders in nearly all cases.
I think what we currently have is enough. Again, bringing up situation examples is always going to result in a huge amount of overhead, confusion for the players among other things.
They all get a prompt when cryoing but not when ghosting. Clarified, thank you.
In general if you don’t really know what to do as an antagonist, and don’t have the time or can’t find what to do on the wiki, then follow the ingame flavor text.
We try to keep the ingame flavor texts in line with the rules.
Hm, I suppose that’s all I have to say. Thanks for considering my suggestions.
Actually, few more things, even lavaland syndicate gotta ahelp to leave?
And are you sure the flavor text for survivalist is currently good enough? I was informed later of the antag status through an ahelp. Because yeah, they currently dont exist anywhere on the wiki and having a vague flavor text to go on might cause issues.
I’ve been thinking deeply about this. I understand the position on this suggestion has been made clear to me. But I think something could still be made of it.
Instead of my initial suggestion, perhaps we can add onto Rule 14 like this. I understand that misinterpretation will always exist and only elaborating extensively may avoid it completely, but I think this could be enough to avoid a few headaches atleast. I understand not wanting to bring up examples and cause overhead/confusion, that’s why I think this new suggestion is better as it merely builds on the RAI regarding metagaming. I really think future players could miss out on a few headaches if something this was implemented.
Nightmares can’t use guns
Oh, I could swear I saw some nightmares using guns. At least in golden bee times!
Maybe it was years ago and it was patched out?
If that’s the mechanical direction that the antag has taken then one could say that yeah, it’s sentient but its technology understanding has been left back in the medieval times, maybe less. After all with regeneration the need for both armorers and physicians would be slimmer and with the armblade the need for a weaponsmith would be none. At the same time the capability for teleportation through darkness would make the development of any travel technology completely useless. After all space is mostly dark and so the nighmare civilization can easily roam between planets and galaxies just avoiding bright stars.
Interesting to know, I will keep that in mind when I happen to roleplay as one!
It seems what was wanted to be said has been said. I’ll think about closing this soon if there’s no further discussion.
I think this was fairly successful, thanks to everyone for considering my suggestions and implementing some of them 