Traitor RP Improvements

Suggestions
1

Here’s my design proposal for improving traitor RP. Suggest whatever in the comments.

Traitor RP Improvements

Traitors as they are are not very conducive to roleplay. This is because the gameplay heavily encourages focusing solely on obejctives, winning, and greentexting.

There is a dissonance between what the player thinks the game wants them to do, and what they want to do - and what roleplay standards and making the round fun for everyone else expects.

A player who is a “perfect” gameplay antagonist will have made the round horrible for everyone else. So we should insted aim to align the player’s goals with making things fun for everyone, not just themselves.

This proposal hopes to not only make being a roleplaying traitor align with what the player wants to do, but make it easier to be a fun traitor for everyone else.

Proposals

Character-specific antagonist preferences

Some players do not want specific characters to be an antagonist, and allowing them to disable it per-character would make this much easier to accomplish.

Antagonist backstory prompts

Why?

As is, a player is only given objectives upon rolling traitor. It is entirely up to the player to decide how this fits into their character, which can present a problem, as not everyone is very good at coming up with backstories even if they do have a character in mind.

How?

Giving players a pre-generated backstory would allow players who may not have complete “antagonist” characters to have something to work with. Maybe their kill target was someone that their significant other cheated on them with. Maybe a close family member was imprisoned by Nanotrasen.

Players could choose to ignore or write their own reasoning, per-objectives, in an updated IC->Notes menu. Prompts would be provided of possible common situations.

Potential Backstories

  • You were blackmailed by the Syndicate into doing something for them
    • They have a family member hostage
    • They irrefutable found evidence of your malpractice
    • They stole a large sum of money from you
  • Nanotrasen has crossed you, and you want revenge, so you decided to work for the Syndicate.
    • Imprisoned/dead family
    • Bad working conditions
    • Sent to SS13 after expecting a promotion
  • You’re a member of the Syndicate who got hired by Nanotrasen
    • You want a promotion at the Syndicate, and you know this is the only way
    • They offered you a large sum of money to do the job, enough so you can live comfortably the rest of your life, and you’re okay with doing anything for yourself and your loved ones
    • You think you’re helping free the crew from tyranny, your targets are too loyal and must be stopped
    • The Syndicate lied or exaggerated to you about NT, telling you of awful things they did and how they’re responsible for wrongdoing. You’ve got to put a stop to it, but you’re slowly discovering things aren’t what you thought.
      • They told you that NT killed your family, but it was actually a Syndicate op.
      • They told you NT kills workers after leaving the station, to prevent information from leaking, your targets going to die anyway, and they’ve been brainwashed into doing said killing.
  • You are just straight up evil and psychopathic, and the Syndicate liked that about you
    • You have antisocial and psychotic tendencies, you really aren’t all there and you want the world to burn
    • You really like fire, you’re a pyromaniac

Removing Greentexts for Traitors

This would only apply to traitors.

This would encourage players to also do gimmick objectives and try to make fun, rather than win. The greentext is a key motivator to “game”, and removing it does not devalue the gameplay whatsoever, but rather tells players we want them to focus on roleplay.

9 Likes
2

I think our Antag Preference system is cobbled together poorly as is, and it needs to be polished off a little. I still think its weird that in order to roll fugitives as a midround, you have to have traitors on. Fugitives are not traitors. I totally understand why the same idea applies to Nukies and Solo Ops. Its the same antag. Fugitives has drastically different gameplay from traitors, to the point of not even necessarily being detrimental to the station. There are plenty of options on there that are out of rotation, some of which have been that way for a really long time. I understand on some level the value in keeping some of them. But why would devils even be something on there anymore? Its pretty clear that Devils is probably never coming back, even during a round where crew selects a gamemode. Not to mention its Dynamic now. Devils would need a full rework and a large effort from the playerbase to make function. So just cut it out of the preferences for now. And then do that with anything else that is impossible to roll, and will probably remain that way.

Plus you have shit like mid round notifications which ARENT antag preferences but also they are. Not only are they in THEIR OWN MENU, its also a completely different style menu than the normal pref menu.

That’s all I really care about. I don’t play Traitor when I’m not observing, but the preferences menu(s) are really annoying and not good.

3

Please god yes if only so I can actually reliably be a round start borg without getting yoinked into antag

6 Likes
4

I can play my security characters without things getting weird by a sudden antag round.

2 Likes
5

Sounds like you got PTSD from it all.

6

Only when I play HoP

7

Adding a suggestion I have been mulling over for a bit, it has the same goal in mind as the post:

Change the SoP for Wizards and Dragons from “Kill On Sight” to “Be Very Suspicious, allowed to fast track to execution if their actions warrant it”

I think this would give more leway for these roles to RP instead of encouraging straight up murderbone.

RP Wise, Uneasy truce between Wizards and NT. Warning, most wizards may not agree with it. And Dragons. What do they want? NT needs to know more, but not at the cost of a station and it’s crew.

5 Likes
8

I think you mean Escalation Policy, not SoP

9

I actualy realy like the base idea here
not sure how impact full it’d be

there might be some issues with the people that throw hissyfits when their character are fucked with in any way - they wouldnt want to be forced into a backstory

Which is a valid concern realy

but i think it’d be an improvement, if perhaps a marignal one (since people still have to actualy act on the background and not just game)

10

That is it. Found the wiki entry: Escalation Policy - BeeStation Wiki

11

I always imagine my own backstory when a traitor, so a opportunity to toggle this would be appreciated!

12

I would like to re-iterate this. It’s entirely optional.

2 Likes
13

Very good!! I like this!!

14

The main thing of substance here I would ask you all to contribute, if you have ideas for backgrounds, especially relating to objectives.

What would motivate a realistic SS13 character to have said objectives?

For example, someone who is typically nonviolent, what would drive them to kill and steal? Perhaps they believe it is for some type of greater good, what is that reason?

Why would someone need the nuclear authentication disk? Why would someone want the blackbox? What significance does the CE’s magboots have? What is the overarching plan?

Really tying objectives into the story makes it more believable and motivated, and even adds secondary objectives that are implied.

15

So like tg?
They do have a bunch of this.

16

Well I think I would be able to give a hand on this, but I do need a list of all the objectives in order to start working on it.

Because I’m very much NOT tech savy I would like for the list to be a simple link to click on, a screenshot or a word file.

I would love to lend a hand for this!

1 Like
17

All possible traitor objectives:

  • Hijack the emergency shuttle by overriding the navigation protocols using the shuttle computer.
  • Die a glorious death.
  • Escape on the shuttle or an escape pod alive and without being in custody.
  • Destroy [target.name], the experimental AI.
  • Prevent [target.name], the [target.assigned_role], from escaping alive.
  • Assassinate [target.name], the [target.assigned_role].
  • Download [target_amount] research nodes.
  • Steal [targetinfo.name]
    • Functional AI
    • Blueprints
    • Blackbox
    • Slime core
    • Plasma tank
    • Supermatter sliver
    • Nuke core
    • Secret documents
    • Reactive teleport armor
    • Reflective vest
    • Nuke disk
    • Hypospray
    • medal of captaincy
    • CE magboots
    • captain’s jetpack
    • hand tele
    • HoS’ gun
    • captain’s gun
3 Likes
18

They can just… turn off all antagonists in their preferences.

This honestly does sound pretty good. Better than just completely removing objectives (Which we have seen does not work). Sometimes people need that little bit of creative help which is completely understandable and fine.

1 Like
19

That’s a pain in the ass when you want difference preferences for different characters. I gave a really good example above:

I have a character slot dedicated to playing cyborg. When I select that character, I want to play cyborg. Unfortunately cyborgs can’t be antagonists (directly at least), so if I get an antagonist roll while trying to start as a cyborg I am instead foisted into a random job somewhere on the station, in a body I didn’t even want to play as. My compromise has been not to start as a cyborg and instead pray that there is a roboticist.

Apply that same logic to people who have dedicated characters that only play specific roles that are not eligible for antagonists. You queue up wanting to play your warden character, only to get antagonist and foisted into some random role with a character that is known only as a warden. Metagaming rules prevent people from acting directly, but everyone who recognizes you definitely knows (This happened with Nancy Druid, a primarily security character a lot)

It would be much better to have a simple toggle switch for each character than to have to manually comb over all antag preferences every time you swap between characters. “Roll for antagonists at roundstart?” It would also solve at least part of the issue of people not readying up at roundstart, because one the handful of the motivators for that is “I don’t feel like rolling for antag this round so I’m going to wait”

3 Likes
20

I absolutely agree with this. Having a global “antag” toggle would be amazing.

But to come back to your examples above. You won’t role traitor as a cyborg if you do not have traitor enabled. The same goes for other antagonists. I see the issue with the global toggle and how you want to switch characters and might not want them to be a specific type of antagonist. I had that issue myself as well. But just generally, if you do not want to roll an antagonist then just turn off antagonist in your preferences.

2 Likes