Your CKEY (Including any alts you have): Squk
Your Discord Name (Including any alts you have): Marshall #7089
How often are you online to help? (Timezone):
I login to Bee Station daily, for an average of two hours a day. My time zone is Pacific Standard, and I usually login at about 8:00 pm PST
What changes, if any, would you bring?: I would like to help make low-pop hours the height of Bee Station roleplay. I want community members to say “But you should try lowpop, everyone roleplays during those hours”
How old are you?: I turn 29 this month.
Why do you want to be a moderator?: I don’t want to be a moderator. I want to see this server succeed in its goal of being an RP server. I love Bee Station and I think it’s high time I offer my assistance to the fine folk who run this server. Basically I want to pay it forward any way I can. It’s not a desire, it’s a compulsion.
How long have you been playing SS13?:
I had a brief stint in 2019 where me and a buddy played Chemist and shittered around. He quit because he got bwoinked for 0rp and I took a hiatus until I returned at the start of this year. I started going hard to the paint learning the game properly, and I love it!
How long have you been playing BeeStation?:
Bee Station is the only server I have ever played, and likely the only one I will ever play. I am a loyalist when it comes to game servers. I don’t like to jump around a lot.
On a scale of 1-10, how skilled are you in SS13?:
I would place myself at a 7. I think I am way more adept at role play and story telling than I am at utilizing the mechanics of the game. I am sort of terrible at combat, and I would say my game knowledge is pretty average for someone with my play time. (Just over 700 hours last I looked). My biggest knowledge gap is to do with engineering. The part of the game I know best is science.
On a scale of 1-10, how skilled are you as an administrator? (this can include past games):
I am going to be honest, I don’t know. I don’t have much experience as a game administrator. The most relevant experience that I hold, would be running a guild on Black Desert Online. I started a guild called Lantern, it eventually got renamed to Armada. Built it from the ground up and last I checked it’s still the top listed guild on the North American server. So just to give you a number, I would say a five. I have confidence dealing with people, I have huge amounts of real-world management experience and I have always been very level-headed about how I deal with people who fuck up. At this point it’s like asking me how popular I am in hell; I don’t know, haven’t been there yet.
Have you ever been an admin or moderator on another server? This is not limited to SS13:
I have not been a mod or admin for any game server, SS13 or otherwise. You can be the ones to pop my mod-cherry.
Do you have any alternate accounts on SS13? If so, could you provide their CKEY?:
Zoltarman. I don’t use it at all though.
Your strengths: I am very amiable, mature and able to deal with the worst kinds of people in positive ways. I’ve been through circles of hell that most people can’t even comprehend.
I persist until I succeed. I don’t let myself experience defeat. If I lose it’s a lesson not a loss. If I get beaten down it’s an opportunity to harden myself and get back up. If things don’t go my way, I brush it off, suck it up and forge on.
Your weaknesses: I have limited game knowledge, no experience as an admin and I am prone to being exhausted after work. I can be overly trusting sometimes and it gets me into sticky situations here and there. I am also a prolific stoner. Some might think this is a bonus, some might see it as unacceptable. I am simply trying to disclose anything relevant so that everything pertinent is on the table for review.
Is there anything that gets you really mad, real fast?: not particularly, anger is very rare for me. However, it’s hard for me to calm down if I do get actually angry and I generally have to remove myself from the situation in-question.
Regarding games specifically, when my individual agency is stripped from a situation, I sometimes feel resentful. Example: yesterday I was wordlessly cheesed by a traitor with a holoparasite. I had no actual gameplay options, I was just murdered and it added nothing to the story of the round. It definitely made me resentful and lessened my opinion of the player that killed me. I wasn’t ANGRY but I felt resentment and it took me a good ten minutes to bring my attitude back around.
What do you think is the most important trait for a staff member to have?: Conscientiousness of vision; this means constantly holding in your mind a clear image of what we are working towards together. If we want to push this server closer and closer towards the roleplay ideals that the Bee Team is striving for, we have to constantly envision that future. You can’t paint something if you can’t picture it in your mind.
What makes a staff team good?: I think there are a lot of factors that can make or break a staff team of any venture. Just to narrow it down to one thing, I’ll point towards COHESIVENESS. It’s vital that a staff team operates consistently and cohesively. If a player gets reprimanded for something by one staff member, but is encouraged to do that same thing by another staff member, that is one of the WORST outcomes for staff-optics.
What is a staff team’s purpose?:
To maintain a set standard of roleplay, gameplay and behaviour so that the game experience can be as enjoyable as possible for as many players as possible. To educate players on the rules, and help them find fun ways to roleplay. To remove individuals who only seek their own fun at the expense of roleplay, and at the expense of the fun of others.
What kind of player are you?: Recently I have abandoned the science department in favour of security and command. I am an avid reader and enjoyer of stories-
I like to tell stories, listen to them, and be a part of them. I didn’t actually start playing SS13 with the intention of role playing, but I have slipped very comfortably into the shoes of a role player and that’s my niche now. I just try to build a story around every round. Sometimes I do a better job than other times. The biggest factor is how much energy I have.
How do you think you will change once you become a staff member?: this is the hardest question for me. It’s really hard to say. I don’t think my attitude towards the game will change, but I am concerned about my ability to balance my own gameplay with moderator duties. I play almost exclusively security or command and when reading the staff policy I got sort of hung up on the part that says you must de-admin for rounds in which you play command, sec or antag.
I’m not sure how much of a problem this would be for moderator duty, but I almost solely play those roles. So perhaps I would be nudged back towards science or chaplain. I’m HOPING that as a moderator, I’ll entrench myself deeper in the community and become a better role player because of it. It’s just really hard to predict.
The clown slips the HoS and steals his gun, spacing it right after. What do you do?: I would ask the clown what their IC reason is for stealing the gun. Asking them their IC reason is really just a way to get them to reflect on their actions, and the fact that they were not roleplaying to their fullest. I would tell them they have broke rule 9 (no self-antag) and I would make sure to mention that, even though clowns get more leeway with rules, they still have to roleplay and consider in-character reasons for their actions. If it was a first offence, I would probably job ban them from clown/mime for 3 days and request they read the rules again before returning to the role. If the clown has a long history of notes related to self-antag and/or griefing, or if they are not cooperative during the bwoink, I would escalate the ticket to a possible server ban, and request a more experienced mod/admin suggest a time span. If no one responded, I would at least issue a 3-7 day server ban.
A non-antagonist is sabotaging the Atmospherics loop and pumping plasma into the distro, along with dragging around a canister and releasing it into the atmosphere. Assuming that an admin is cleaning up the after-effects, how do you conduct the ahelp with him?:
I would first mention “Hey! Seeing as how this is a roleplay server, do you think that plasma flooding has roleplay value?” This gives them a chance to reflect on their actions and perhaps even admit fault. It also could go the other way and cause them to show their true colours. Regardless of how they respond I would cite rules 8 & 9, no griefing, no self-antag. I would definitely issue a server ban for this regardless of the response. I don’t think plasma flooding in this matter could be done by accident. It is absolutely griefing and the player in question should be given some time off to consider the rules. If this is repeated behaviour, I would even consider bringing it to a senior admins attention and bring up the possibility of permanent removal. Players that grief in egregious, obvious ways should be removed with expedience. Anything else is less than fair to the good role-players of Bee Station.
A chemist who is working alone accidentally mixes an explosive mixture inside of his chem dispenser, instantly killing himself and destroying the machine, along with exposing Chemistry to space. Nobody else was injured aside from him as a result of his actions. What do you do?: This needs to be a learning experience to prevent repeated mistakes. I would bwoink, ask them what happened and give them a chance to explain. If they seem to understand what went wrong, how to prevent it in the future, and why it’s important to learn from these mistakes, I don’t see any reason to take action. A conversation probably would suffice. If they fail to moderate themselves in the ticket, I would be inclined to make an admin remark and mention that they accidentally blew up the lab as a chemist, so that any similar instances in the future can reference this event. It’s less likely each time an accident occurs that it was truly an accident.
Anyways, I don’t expect this to go one way or another. I am simply putting myself out there, offering my aid and seeing what happens. If I’m not the right fit, that’s great. I’ll keep playing and growing and learning. Then maybe I will try this again in the future. If I do get approved, then I will fulfill the role to the best of my ability and do so happily. I have developed a lot of respect for the regulars of this community and I want to do right by them.
Cheers, Squk (Tuesday Keens)
this has been edited for clarity and to correct some grammar
