Marlon P.

I've always said reworks should come before removal. The syndicates being bad guys may be the big problem. If they were dudes players can agree with, and have objectives that reasonably align with our interests, they'd be fun. That and using them at all. Otherwise i agree. They've always been an unwanted child in terms of development.

Of course you're not having fun. Youre rejecting the premise of the game we set up. If you hate baseball and go to a baseball game of course you're going to hate the entire thing and have a lot to say about what a waste of time it all is. "The pitcher throws the same ball at the same place every single time! The bases NEVER move! The game is the exact same every time. How can people enjoy this?" Its still roleplay. Its just roleplay you don't like. But its roleplay you agree to participate in by playing. Most of your control over your character is surrendered to others as soon as you join a round. Same for them to you.

Related to another recent: Being captured tied down and interrogated is a form of roleplay, not stripping you from having roleplay. The cultural problem really is a rejection of the idea of having no control over one's character and the circumstances they are in. How can this be addressed on an individual and systemic level?

If I only play once a week, what are my chances of getting a high- or moderate- demand job against people with more tokens?

This rewards frequent players and gives them an advantage over casual players. The most impacted will be new players who will have no tokens whereas intermittent players may have at least a few. This problem will longterm lower player retention as new/intermittent players chronically unable to get a high demand job will play their desired job on another server.

Based on entirely anecdotal evidence I base these numbers. More people read them even if they dont comment. I see people sharing newspapers. (Which themselves need a fix - another suggestion coming soon.)

You're right, and I agree. I would also write stories. What would the difference be between a trusted editor and an editor? And would these be staff?

A great question. Any player given the Editor role, or a staff member, can post a rejection of a submitted story in the queue. This means that if a story is found to be sus, it only takes 1 person to notice and have it paused until its given a review by a staff member. Even stories that go live can be removed ICly or via a staff member.

Thats right. What stories exist: 1) are on the forum. 2) get wiped every round. 3) are auto-generated and have practically, though not literally, zero impact on a round. A story may average 10 - 20 readers per round if we assume half a highpop staff reads it. That story only lasts 2 - 4 hours. Lore news made by the crew for the crew thats up and visible for a week or two at a time will have more interest and engagement. Players who write the stories will no doubt talk about them IC and get people reading them. What do YOU think would draw attention and interest if players were given the power to write news stories for the crew on the newscasters?

A good roleplayer and a good command player. Always tries to get people going in little activities or gimmicks as captain. A little disruption isnt a bad thing if its for a good round. +1

Fantasic idea. Job sharing will improve overall engagement. I remember giving up on the detective role, my favorite role, because i would get it maybe once every other week. or nonstop 4 times in a row on days off, which isn't fair for others who were in my same position. Does this "expire"? When do i go to the front again?

A good idea. Medical obligated ic and ooc borging would be a soft ban on unathi being in the surgeon role.

A very good roleplayer and commander +1

1. What is the difference between HRP and MRP? 2. Is Aurora more HRP than the other HRP servers? 3. What are the consequences of just calling ourselves a Role-playing Server? On the discord people were insisting the answers to these questions were, 1. Pain rp makes us more immersive, or unsure. 2. Yes. 3. People will join and not follow our community standards. The first two answers are unsatisfactory, or have a clubhouse mindset. The third implies that our staff cant enforce server guidelines, and that we should avoid encouraging people to join who arent good enough for us.

For as long as anyone can remember SS13 RP'ers have divided servers into LRP, MRP, and HRP. Whenever I look into the reasons people consider MRP and HRP different, the answers are either unsatisfying or the answers come up short entirely. MRP often have more rules than HRP servers regarding things like escalation and combat. LRP servers don't usually advertise themselves as such or make it part of their identity how they don't roleplay. The terms are archaic labels from an older era, and only serve to form a sense of exclusionary club membership. Our roleplay is not inherently heavier than another servers simply because of a label. It is my suggestion that we remove the term HRP from Aurora and simply call ourselves a Roleplaying Server.

This is not a vaguepost. While I've held all the positions in this thread for a long time, this OP addresses a philosophy of Roleplay from another thread that I vehemently disagree with. This other philosophy, which is objectively wrong, and also damaging to the community, is that roleplay and death exist on opposite ends on a spectrum. The foundation of Aurora's entire gameplay and philosophy of gameplay is that you are not in charge of what ultimately happens to your character. By joining a round you agree that forces will act upon this character up to and including death, and that you agree to respond to these circumstances as in-character as you can. This is the same rule in Dungeons and Dragons and any TTRPG with a game-master or an emphasis on collaborative story-telling. Once you enter into a group project you surrender part of your autonomy in your character to other individuals in the group. That is why in games like DnD your character can die without you having any control over it. Sometimes people who play TTRPG's have to have it explained to them that they aren't in charge of what happens to their character. Sometimes they die and that's that. RP is not just dialogue. Roleplaying is only playing a role through the character you're spawned in as. If you died in a way you feel is "without RP", that does not mean that you died without dialogue. Dying without RP removed your ability to play your character's role in the situation. However, if that situation involves your character dying suddenly, and the methods by which you died followed escalation, then you died with roleplay. The most damaging source of dialogue being considered the ideal of roleplay in which any encroachment is seen as a negative is due to the labels of Heavy vs Low-RP. For almost a decade now the server's own acceptance of the label has allowed the damaging idea of dialogue trumping other elements of RP to proliferate. Pushback from the feds has always been that "Murder tells a story". While true, it does not address the root cause of the issue of people defining roleplay exclusively through dialogue. Even if from a personal perspective a character dies without any RP or escalation - because we do not have control of our characters - the story takes preeminence over his character. Escalation does not exist as a meter that must individually be filled for every single character. It only requires that the antagonists or protagonists, in the service of the story, have a reason that an outside observer - staff - can consider reasonable. These build to the argument that combat, murder, and RP do not exist on separate ends of an axis. They are the same thing. Combat, being murdered, being mirked, being suddenly airlocked, messaging a friend about the station's bad smell lately, being strangled 40 minutes after being spawned, sitting in a room talking about plans after work, getting current dialogue interrupted by a bomb, are all equally roleplay.

Ok, you convinced me human style sprinting would be a good alternative. Swapping the sprint style and using the right amount of resources. And no more hip snapping or permanent pain

To clarify, what i mean by this is I believe we should have to alt-tab as little as possible to use all elements of the game. The same, someone who never installs discord should be able to engage with in-character things we put behind the NTrelay and other discords. The forum falls under alt-tabbing.

Using the sprint at all is a punishment. You cannot sprint the same distance as a unathi without penalty. You are penalized for using it. It is a direct downgrade. Running the same number lf tiles as a unathi gave me permanent pain. It shatters my pelvis if used any more. All sprints in our game are resource management mechanics. Having a different in resource used is fine. Draining nutrition still carries a very large penalty. There has to be some upgrade to existing sprinting or the implant is harmful, redundant, and better off removed to save UI space. The current grueling nature of autakh implants are a product of myself and the then-autakhs main writer seeking to compromise with critics about their existence, and in the process overcorrecting. Unathi are ambush predators. When i set the sprint design philosophies it was meant to reinforce this playstyle.

I apologize, that part got mixed up in my head when going through the replies. All my questions are answered.

If i wanted to organize a small event corporate morale booster like a costume contest, a mandatory pool party, or a talent show, would that fall under HoP or the service manager? It seems a highly niche question. The current HoP duties being so light than when service didnt need me, the hop, i had so much free time to coordinate these things. The unfortunate reality is without a Heads backing these things can die in a PDA message due to access perms, id changes, or even just mandating attendance. So having the X/O at least have oversight of the service manager can help coordinate service and entertainment.

Great questions. 1. Any staff member can evaluate a story, and any community member with an editor role. This is more oversight than the relay. How do you answer this same concern about the relay? Right now i could go on the relay and write whatever i want. What stops me or corrects me? 2. If a story is written about the Upsilon and then it explodes, then new articles will have to be written talking about it, and saying any scheduled events around it were cancelled. This already happens a lot irl with covid. 3. I dont want to just use the relay. Major elements should have some station presence. We already have newscasters. This has more oversight than any normal story an onstation journalist would write.

Thank you for your post. I want to make sure I understand your criticisms. Any player, at any time, can submit an article to be considered. They could even write one entirely in the Web Interface. Are you saying that this would only be used by journalists, who themselves are rare?

This suggestion borrows elements from our Library system with elements of the journalist role. It addresses these conditions: Currently the newscasters' real stories are lore articles. While important, the newscasters formatting means they are - at least for me - difficult to navigate, textually dense in the small screenspace, and very old news. Journalists who write stories have their stories wiped at the end of the round, with only their own efforts to save and post their content elsewhere. Lore writers don't have the time or inclination to write slice of life articles on a regular basis. Our players have a lot of collective free time, imagination, and desire to contribute. Being a cosmic equivilant of a "small town" a newspaper dedicated to the aurora population will have the same small-town newspaper justification for focusing on trivial stuff that's still important to players. These are five parts of the human condition that can be addressed by providing access to small scale living lore to trusted players. The Lower Decks Gazette will be a newscaster channel that is accessed via regular in-game means or the Aurora WI with a new tab underneath the library tab. Articles are submitted, reviewed, accepted or rejected, and then posted. The full process is: Articles can be written by any player. They must choose a journalist name to be their alias. This can be changed but locks in after some time and follows the same rules as changing your name in-game. Submitted articles are reviewed by any staff member or players with the forum role Volunteer Editor. A submitted article must receive 2 positive reviews from a Volunteer Editor and/or staff members to be uploaded. Either role can also edit the submission, which is meant for spellchecking, minor fixes, etc. Changes are noted like a wiki page's changes would be. A single rejection locks the submission from being uploaded. The reason for the rejection must be chosen from a list of options. The original draft is still available to the player in the WI. Rejection comments would be "Involves antagonists" "Violates established lore" "Violates rules" "etc" and then an "Other, please explain" field. A rejection can be overridden only by a member of moderation or administration. If the rejection is confirmed then the story is removed completely from the queue. An article with 2 positive reviews will be uploaded to the Lower Decks Gazette newscaster channel. This should ping its own special channel in the discord similar to #Lore_Diary. Comments can be left from a newscaster as normal. So say I want to write an article about a costume contest I or a friend will be hosting in 5 days time. I write an article about the upcoming contest in 6 days time and submit it. Within 12 hours, 2 Trusted Editors find no problem with it and give it positive reviews. The article goes live on the newscaster. People leave comments, and all this engagement carries over rounds. The event comes. Someone writes a story about how it went. This story receives 2 positive reviews, and . . . . The guidelines for posting will be that the story's scope must be contained to the NBT Aurora itself. The goal isn't to compete with the grand narratives written by lore developers, but to create smaller scale drama or comedy for the ship itself. The LDG is a local newspaper with minor social media elements, not CNN or Al-Jazeera. Stories on a Captain who recently crashed the ship into an asteroid, stories about an off-screen party to celebrate someone's birthday, the canon obituaries, wedding announcements, interviews with crew, biting editorials about some subject or another, announcement of impending cooking contests... With these tools players will have a great ability to run their own little media eco-system. After 20 days stories are archived, no longer visible on the in-game newscaster but accessible via the Aurora-WI in an archive. Thank you for reading my suggestion.

I must sound like the most pedantic man in the world, and i dont want to use a lot of posts over the one job suggestion. A pilot would have the same responsibilities as a bridgecrewman. Pilot would be an alt title or the main title. Think of it like the Warden. No matter how many jobs they have outside the brig its so engrained that they'll be pestered with "why arent you in the brig?" A ship pilot doesn't have that baggage of expectation.