Shenaanigans

I'll always support options for gender neutral pronouns just for the purpose of character freedome, so I'm definitely behind this. The only suggestion I'd have is, if this were to be implemented, to just have it as an option for all species, because a case could be made for any of them looking androgynous based on how that species handles gender presentation.

Yes another for the Kingdom. Aside from the fact that I'm always pleased to see more bodies for the North, this seems like a great app overall! I enjoy the concept of a character who wanted to break and fight in the warring on Adhomai but couldn't because of their circumstances, and Rhal's following involvement in the House of Hamiyeh seems like it could motivate some interesting dark spots in his past. From a player perspective I've seen great RP from you as Ryzsyk so I have no issue leaving a hot and fresh +1

In my mind it was always more of unspoken rule ICly. Like NanoTrasen doesn't ever come out and say "we only hire Skrell and Humans to the highest levels of our company" but if you look at who they employ that's very obviously what they're doing. So no, it wouldn't be against regulations in that case to have a xeno acting Captain because there isn't an actual law in place. If that character tried to pursue a permanent Captain position, however, they'd probably find themselves dismissed or surreptitiously overlooked in favor of Humans and Skrell. That's just how I'd reasoned through it, though.

I really like zombie events, but I do have to agree that zombies need some major tweaks to mechanics before they can even be something to be voted for. They're ridiculously durable, pretty much guaranteed to infect you if they get more than one bite in, are not at all deterred by full body suits, and have no restrictions on mechanical skills beyond good faith RP. Still, I would love to see them overhauled and become an addition to the secret rotation! As the mode stands now it pretty much ensures a complete decimation of the station and 90% of people becoming zombies. That would get old very fast, even if it was a vote only mode like malf.

My only critique is to echo what's already been said about the white tiles, but I know there are already plans to make those easier on the eyes. In general I love this facelift! The new dark tiles and walls look greatly, much sleeker and more sophisticated looking than what we had, and my favorite part of this is all the little details in the vents, request consoles, scrubbers, and air alarms. They look so good and the animations are fantastic. Thank you for the work you guys put in on this.

I'm definitely behind this. Having a sedative around is nice, non-lethal option to have for dealing with antags but I know from experience that being put unconscious for long periods is no fun. The person should still be able to at least see and hear what's going on around them, and speaking would also be good for facilitating RP while keeping the person immobile.

I've played command alongside Dead as Mazer a few times now and throughout all of them I had a good experience with them as HoS. They communicate regularly, give updates on antag nonsense as it progresses, and aren't the type to bullrush lethals or shut down gimmicks without giving antags a fighting chance first-- which are all very important things in a HoS. +1

Thank you! Could I request that the start date be moved to Monday, March 16th though? I'm going to be a bit too busy this weekend to really put in the time to starting a trial.

I'm particularly interested in your allusion to how this character personally believes that the divisions between the Tajaran sub-races are real and justified while still being a supporter of the PRA. It's a very unique take that I've yet to really see in a character! Other than that you seem like a perfectly capable RPer from the times I've witnessed Val Xiram in game and, as far as my knowledge of Tajara lore goes, this is a very cohesive app. +1!

Fair enough! I'm satisfied with your answers and am happy to give my stamp of approval on this; welcome to lizard town. Your whitelist should kick in in-game by the end of the day.

Hey there! I'm always thrilled to see new interest in Unathi and your answers outlining their differences from humans as well as your general character concept all check out, so nice job. I just had some questions to pick your brain on a few more details of Donsun's early life and motivations. What was his childhood like? Did any of it contribute to why he so totally devotes himself to the Church? The Contact War is a huge piece of Unathi history, as you mentioned, so what was Donsun's experience with it? Did he lose anyone to the war? Have any strong opinions toward the Hegemony/Traditionalists who basically scourged Moghes with their fighting? Was there any particular reason he chose to come to the Aurora, specifically?

Thank you as always for the kind words. ❤️ Now scenario time. I would be very firm and clear with security that these visitors are NOT to be treated with hostility and to keep all weapons stowed unless expressly instructed otherwise, because the last thing we need is to have a friendly, communicative group of people turned into enemies solely because someone couldn't keep their pistol in its holster. That said, I would also do my best to try and negotiate a bit with the newcomers, seeing if I could persuade them to leave all but one smaller firearm per person behind on their ship and likewise keep them stowed. For the sake of the rest of the crew's peace of mind. I would do my best to have their need for fuel and rest seen to, treating them politely yet with a watchful eye, and step in to discourage any aggression or blocking of interaction with the rest of the crew on security's part. Keeping creative gimmicks from being forced into becoming combat based or limited only to interacting with security is something very important to me that I want to make a point of pursuing if I get to play command. React with plentiful skepticism, that's for sure. The fact that it's in their records means that I can't just straight up deny them as I would some rando asking for space drugs, but I can exercise my common sense enough to question the person a bit as to why they have been prescribed these things. That's a potent depressant AND stimulant being taken at the same time which, realistically speaking, makes very little sense. If there's no reason given at all or it's obviously fabricated I would apologize, deny it, and suggest that they have an explanation put into their records in the future, but if they have something reasonable to say I would likely give them just one of the drugs and, again, ask that they see whatever doctor it is that prescribed this to re-evaluate how safe that is for them. Whew, well the character I played during THAT particular scenario reacted very differently than Aisha would, as she is someone who does not have a rabid hate of IPCs and values ethics quite highly. This said, my first response would be to explore other, non-invasive possibilities for discovering these hidden shells (scans, blood tests, reaction to EMPs) with my medical staff and robotics. I would also refuse to carry out the exploratory surgeries without express permission from each crew member and make it clear to both the rest of command and medical that I'm assuming full responsibility for disobeying Central's order, likewise telling the rest of the crew so they don't have to worry about being dragged in for surgery. This would only change if I were a loyalist, since then my responsibility to progress the round as an antag takes precedent and would lead me to tweak my response to react with more paranoia and willingness to operate. If I were a revolutionary, instead of taking all responsibility and potential punishment on myself I could instead rile up the crew to stand with me on my refusal. Indeed Aisha does. She is not a psychiatrist, meaning she cannot effectively deal with mentally disturbed crew or produce medication for mental disorders, nor is she a virologist capable of dealing with outbreaks. She's a surgeon by trade with enough training to produce the essentials in chemistry, so if a shift happens to be lacking an actual Chemist and Psychiatrist there will be gaps in our capabilities as a medical department to deal with things. Which is okay! I plan to stick to my guns on not making Aisha into a medical juggernaut capable of anything and everything, because that's just not realistic, and if I have to explain that IC or OOC I will. That said, given she is a Surgeon capable of making basic medicines and possesses a medical degree, I should be plenty able to make patients stable and, if no one is around fully heal them, we'll just have to get them to the transfer shuttle so they can get the help they need on the ODIN. First and foremost, tell security to cut that shit out. It's obvious that I'm missing some information on the situation and, with a HoS who just got back and is ALSO probably out of the loop, it's time to get everyone to settle down and explain what's going on. What did they steal? Who witnessed this? Are the intruders giving out any demands? Have they hurt or threatened anyone? At the very least we do have trespassers, but there are plenty of other variables that determine just how serious this situation is and whether or not busting in guns blazing is actually necessary. Talking should ALWAYS come first. I would mostly default to the HoS on making the final decision on this, since dealing with protection of the station is their job first and foremost, but if there's any room for negotiation and de-escalation I would prefer that and make my opinion known. My two command characters would likely react differently to this, since they have very different temperaments and morals, but I know in both cases my decision is very much not going to be "bust on in and whatever happens happens". Security might be plenty capable of steamrolling this, with their weapons and armor, but the presence of hostages means that recklessly diving in is going to endanger innocent crew which is, well, the exact opposite of what security is meant for. It just takes one well placed bomb and you're beyond what medical can do unless you fancy having your brain shoved in a MMI. Aisha, bleeding heart that she is, would go for securing them the money without hesitation and make good on her promise to deliver it in exchange for the crew and the merc's departure, demanding that security stand down all the while. Valeriya, on the other hand, would likely employ a hefty dose of intimidation to make it clear that security CAN decimate them if she so much as gives them the go-ahead, so they'd best let the hostages go and cut their losses while they can. The presence of just a bound worker hostage would also be interesting, since Aisha is extremely uncomfortable with Vaurca and Valeriya knows enough about them to recognize that they're barely a person, more like a tool. In that case, I think letting security flex their muscles would be allowable so long as they have some sort of plan and have come with EVA protection in case of explosive breaching. I'd just back up and make sure medical is ready to roll.

BYOND Key: Shenaanigans Character Names: (ranked in rough order from most to least played) - Valeriya Samsara (Quartermaster) - Lusula Kazhkz (Nurse) - Halkikijr Zaydan (Cook) - Sreznai Guwan (Shaft Miner) - Sloane Goldhirsch (Security Officer) - Nasrin Knezevic (Gardener) - Tae Su-Yeongseon (Engineering Apprentice) - Eveleen Pawgi (Janitor) How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Forum account was created October 14th, so almost 5 months! Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: I want to get a command whitelist primarily because I see it as the sort of "next step" in becoming more involved in the Aurora server, this time from an in-game stance rather than the out of game one becoming a lore deputy allowed me. I've spent the last few months slowly branching out into different departments, getting to know some of the playerbase, and generally becoming more and more comfortable with SS13 mechanics as a whole-- now I feel I've reached the point where I'm both experienced and knowledgeable enough to take that leap up to command. I think playing as command will really do wonders for helping me to expand my knowledge into the niches I've missed so far, such as what it's like to deal with antags up close and personal and coordinating how the station responds, which will only improve my abilities as a player. It's for personal improvement, and also because I love becoming involved in the coordination aspect of a hobby when I enjoy it as much as I do SS13. Why did you come to Aurora?: I was coerced gently persuaded to by my lovely girlfriend Doxxmedearly. I'd never even heard of SS13 until being introduced to it by her, and it took a few months of watching rounds over her shoulder before I finally decided to try it out and attempt to satisfy my craving for a consistent, engaging RP platform. In my time here I've had little to no interest in branching out to other servers because the Aurora fits my wants pretty much perfectly, as filled with creative players creating engaging character as it is. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Multiple times! Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they?: To my knowledge I don't have any notes, warnings, or bans to speak of. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is, and should be about: I've found that the simplest way I can describe roleplay is to call it "collaborative storytelling". Like writing a book with many authors simultaneously, each one bringing their characters and stories into the world to interact with each other and create the whole together. It's an extremely social and cooperative hobby, functioning only when the people participating are willing to both work with each other and value each other's enjoyment equally, which means that no one person is ever more important than another and it can easily grind to a halt if there's a breakdown in that communication between players. Roleplaying may not generate as neat or cohesive a story as you might find in a novel all written by one person, but I've come across the most fascinating plots and engaging character interactions IN roleplay. It can be massive amounts of fun, bringing stories to life that no one person could have created alone, yet without participants who are open minded, flexible, and considerate of each other's fun it's never going to get very far. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: A Head of Staff is, first and foremost, meant to be a role model and source of information for new players to look to. When someone joins a department as a learning role, their first inclination is going to be to look to the head of their department for advice on where to start and the experience they have in engaging with their Head can quite easily color both their entire experience as well as whether or not they are going to bother continuing to learn. Are they welcoming? Patient? Clear in their explanations? If not, a new player can easily grow discouraged and, in the worst case, bad behavior from a Head runs the likelihood of rubbing off onto other players who see this and internalize that the behavior is okay. In addition to guiding newbies, a Head of Staff coordinates large portions of the entire station's response to antags, meaning that they can often easily shift the tone of a round one way or the other and run the risk of harming other players' fun if they react poorly or try to self-spotlight instead of engaging others. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: Similarly to what I said above, I think that the biggest responsibility of a whitelisted player is to be a good role model and source of information for other players. They have been given a special privilege in holding a command whitelist and should always be showing, both in their play and interactions OOC, what sort of positive, rule-abiding behavior you have to have in order to be recognized and rewarded in that way and that it also does not give you the right to break rules or flaunt your power over them. Following the rules and being a positive presence among the community is something I naturally strive for, so I would only hold myself to those principles even more strictly if I was given a whitelist. I would also make a point of going out of my way to guide players who seem new or confused, answering questions and guiding them to the resources the server has to help, so that I can do my part in fostering a welcoming environment for people to learn in. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau ceti and how it affected your character and their career?: Tau Ceti has been at the center of much of the Orion Spur's most severe changes since its secession from the Sol Alliance, and in present day this trend is far from faded. The darkest truths of the Jargon Federation recently surfaced when criminals, sought after for their use of an AI in one of the skrell's most important technological events, fled to Tau Ceti space and one in particular hid their creation aboard the NSS Aurora, prompting squads of TUP enforcers to descend and begin a vigorous search. Whole departments were turned over, employees were strong-armed, and gradually the true depths that the Federation would go to to both control its populace and ensure compliance came out in shocking relief. Right on the heels of this bold action by the Federation, shifts in the Unathi and Tajara political scene alike happened in rapid succession with the Rebellion of the False Heir and the Shastar Armistice, respectively. Sharp divisions are obviously still drawn within both of these races, despite the fact that all fighting has now cooled, and the potential for peace to once again shatter in favor of bloody, violent war looms at all times-- reflected in new distrust forged between Skrell and those harmed in the investigations, as well as the ongoing, behind the scenes struggle of the Tajara governments for power. My focus for how all this has affected my character is on Valeriya: staunch supporter of the New Kingdom of Adhomai, survivor of both Rebellions, sole remainder of her family line, and bitter enemy to all who align with the Republic. Nursing a deep, burning hatred toward the Hadii, it goes without saying that a cease fire was not nearly enough to quell her anger or stop her from seeking ways to make the Kingdom come out on top in the ongoing power struggle. She outright refuses to coexist in a friendly manner with supporters of either of the other two governments and, in addition to continuing to serve the Crown while off Adhomai, she holds her own keen ambition to rise up the ranks within NanoTrasen to gain the power and influence she one day needs to reclaim a suitable domain for her family's lineage back on her home planet. To her, the recent developments within Tau Ceti have simply been opportunities, allowing her to gain the tools and allies she needs to make her goals reality. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted?: Head of Personnel and Chief Medical Officer, primarily. Maaaaybe I'll eventually try Captain or, long after that, Head of Security as well, but right now my interests are solely in HoP and CMO. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking: - Valeriya Samsara (currently Quartermaster): Head of Personnel - Aisha Viswan (new character): Chief Medical Officer How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I've been bumping this up by 0.5 each time I make a whitelist application, so I suppose it's time to say 8/10. I am much more comfortable with SS13 now than I was months ago and that's allowed me to really lean into my characters, fleshing them out into living, breathing entities that are both distinct from each other and complex enough to seem real. Or at least I hope they do. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action?: Absolutely. Have you familiarize yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles?: Yes! Extra notes: Valeriya will be my primary focus during a trial, as I'm still not so sure how much I'm going to enjoy Aisha, but I plan to play both. I would also request that a trial (if given to me) starts no earlier than March 16th.

Sounds good to me. The ICU barely ever gets used just because you're not going to go extra distance into the medbay when you have a critical patient, it should be closer than the low-priority area GTR.

Skyglazer is always a wonderful RPer who takes the time and effort to flesh out believable characters that are fun to interact with, and the app seems kosher with my baby's basic knowledge of skrell lore so. +1

Apologies for the slight delay on a response here, but Geeves and I are in wholehearted agreement that this application displays both a working knowledge of Unathi lore and pitches an interesting character concept. Congratulations on the whitelist and welcome to lizard town. Your in-game permissions will be updated by the end of today!

It's definitely an odd thing to be acclimating to, but I'll tentatively make my stance that it has been good for facilitating more interactions between security and the other departments so far. Departments that would only ever really see an officer in passing in the hall, or when the whole complement of security is busting in to deal with an antag, now have more casual RP going on with the one stationed in their space. Which I like. The only gripe I have to air is one that's already been mentioned-- large amounts of access. I'm of the opinion that security should really only have access to as much as janitors in their respective departments (GTR in medical, main halls of science, lobby of cargo, etc.) so they're not stepping on toes in the more specialized areas nor breathing down antag's necks at all times. Cargo officers also seem to have full access to the cargo control program??? Which is... weird to say the least. Officers shouldn't have the access to do the job of the department they're stationed in. Also yeah, their offices could stand to be smaller so they're a bit less intrusive.

I very much enjoy seeing a non-Njarir character that's staunchly loyal to the NKA and believes in a "natural order" among Tajara, which you seem to have a good handle on based on this application. It's something I've rarely seen and think could be a fun foil to the more rebellious types that work aboard the Aurora! I'm only idly curious about a few things. What religion, if any, does Rijiikirr follow? How does he intend to spread this pro-nobility message to other Tajara? And what job(s) do you intend to play with him?

Let me run around with the Captain's spare unsupervised +1 But in all seriousness I've had good experiences with both Index and Alice in round and think that they're both RPd well. You seem to shine a bit more in the Representative role, as you're very proactive with actually going around, engaging with crew, and giving quotas to meet, with my only real suggestion just being to keep up a constant stream of communication when you play Captain.

I appreciate the buff to non-KA mining tools, as I do think it'll help them be not so neglected in favor of space gun anymore, and I can get behind the concept of nerfing the credits you can get for just shipping the shit that appears in the cargo bay randomly each round-- but the drastic decrease of phoron worth does not make sense to me. Yes it is technically possible that you have an outstanding miner or two who are dropping multiple stacks of phoron and platinum in a round for you to sell and fill up the account, but honestly that does not happen often. As of the past few rounds that I've played my QM I've maybe sold a stack of each per round, since plenty of miners do one haul and then go off to the bar for RP (which is fine!) or spend the shift investigating a derelict (also fine!), so we've very much not been sitting on an overflowing account. Not nearly enough to outfit a whole cargonia militia. It also just doesn't make a lot of in character sense to nerf phoron prices into the ground like that. Isn't phoron the primary reason the Aurora even exists? Mine phoron, do research-- everyone else is supplementary. Reducing a whole 50 stack of the magic crystal that NanoTrasen's built its empire on to being worth a measly 1500 credits is very jarring to me.

Oh damn. Either of those would be fantastic.

I didn't know that it was as simple as a button press on the admin side of things, so that is extra information that I'm glad to have now! I also do follow the line of thinking that probing for antags would introduce potential metagaming, as I mentioned in my initial post, but it just seems to me like rounds will overall suffer more from unprepared people having antag dropped in their lap than it would from a few people now knowing that there are vamps/lings/cultists/etc. about. If it would introduce too much extra housekeeping on the admin's side of things to be reasonable, than I can only acquiesce. I'm (obviously) not an admin and have no idea what it's like to be managing all of this behind the scenes. It only seemed to me like a generally easier tactic than randomly dispersing the roles and then having to deal with people immediately wanting them removed.

I do realize that flicking all preferences off on any round I don't feel like antagging would fix the problem, but that's a lot of extra work to go in and out every round turning them on and off based on the chance that, despite late joining to specifically avoid it, I got picked as a supplementary antag. I know I'd forget to do it between rounds. Autotraitor is definitely the exception here because it's meant to draft people over time, so I have it off on all my characters as a result. I just wish that the solution of delaying joining by a minute or two actually ensured that I wouldn't get antag randomly because, sometimes, I really don't feel like it or particularly have any good ideas.

So when a round gets through its first 10 minutes or so of run time, the manifest naturally grows a bit more from the selection of people who were readied up and, to balance things a bit better, admins pick from users who have a given antag preference enabled to join the ranks of those who are tasked with spicing up our round. Reasonable? Outwardly, yes, but I've now run into the issue a few times where I decide to delay joining a round by a minute or two for the explicit purpose of not rolling antag, only to get it unexpectedly dropped on me some minutes later. I realize that ahelping with a "hey I don't want this" is a viable option that many use, and I could theoretically turn on and off antag types each round depending on what I would feasibly be okay with playing even if I late join just to dodge the biggest chance of rolling one.......... but I feel like there's an overall more effective approach here. I'd like to propose a general policy where, in the event that an admin feels that special/antag roles are needed to keep a round interesting, they use the OOC announcements instead of wordlessly bestowing antag status on people. Just a quick "if you're interested in antagging for this round, ahelp". This would bring out the people who actually want to do so, but just didn't roll it this round, rather than casting the dice and possibly giving the roles to people who were either uninterested or uninspired and now have antagging responsibilities laid in their lap. The latter just seems like a recipe for bad rounds in my eyes, hurting the enjoyment of both the people who were chosen and the rest of the players. I am aware that this would effectively broadcast to everyone that this is Definitely Not Extended, but it's really not difficult to sleuth out a round type if you care to and it seems like a fair trade off to me for the sake of getting people who want to antag in those positions. A big part of me making this thread was to probe for other people's opinions on this as well, though, so if you disagree or have other propositions for how the current method could be approved feel free to toss them in.

First off, thank you! I'm very fond of Dominia as a faction, despite its shortcomings, so I'm glad that my ideas resonate with the people who are actually digging into that beast of a task. The Grim Compact is other group whose concept I enjoy (though you'll probably notice I say that about all Unathi factions.............. since it's true), because who doesn't like space pirates. I haven't been struck by much in the way of ideas for them, though, beyond some work that I think could be done on possibly introducing more methods for a character to have a background in the Compact yet still feasibly end up working on the Aurora. There's not a ton of ways that someone whose a part of what's basically organized space crime can end up with a 9-5 on a research station and that makes the Compact a bit hard to engage with as an Unathi character. The faction just sort of exists without having much bearing on your existence. I would possibly propose some practice within the Compact that sends members out to integrate with other groups, maybe as a sort of intelligence network or means of paying for breaking the Star Code, OR further interaction between NanoTrasen and the Compact that leads to NT actually tolerating their presence. Thus making it more realistic for a literal pirate to be hanging around. I also noticed that the "Relationship with Dominia" section has yet to be filled out for them........... winkwink. I personally think the two wouldn't get along well, since Dominia literally has an Unathi dominated house who specializes in piracy maintaining the Empire's navy. Do they ever clash? Seems like something that merits further exploration. Most anyone in a staff-like position for a role play is probably going to agree that disciplinary/rule enforcing responsibilities are the least pleasant part of the job. It's not fun. Not for the enforcer nor the person having their whitelist revoked. BUT as un-fun as the role is it is still very much necessary for keeping things running smoothly, so I do accept that it's potentially something I would be tasked with doing and would try, to the best of my ability, to be clear and reasonable about. The person should know exactly what the cause of this punishment is as well as how they can improve in the future to ideally regain their whitelist.