Mappel6

[mention]TishinaStalker[/mention] One month has passed, I think it's time to either get this pushed through or get slapped in the face, slightly more likely. Idk who else is doing these for sure, but I know this is your domain. I don't have a clever 1 month picture like the others did but I do have this 'motivation' from a friend to share. https://gyazo.com/3d08eb7c211643f94253afaeccaa4d10

Falange. Seriously, though, I've observed Ky'rat. At first (when Masuno could still be and was Biomech) he seemed like he wanted to do everything himself, like he was the only worker there. After observing him, I think that was mainly for either a distrust of humans or general distrust of other people, which to me is a good thing, that was his character and not him being dickish. Since then he seems like a "humanized" Unathi, who keeps the core Unathi beliefs--despite being a Roboticist, Ky'rat is missing an arm and simply refuses to get prosthetics. Once when he lost I think it was a foot mid-round, he refused the prosthetic then too, saying that he "couldn't get it back" and that it wouldn't be the same. Also, he loves to pester other people and make them think they aren't prepared--like he does often with Masuno, when Masuno narrates his work, which started the joke mentioned above. I don't particularly like it when people omit the 'What do you dislike about this character?' question, but I do enjoy this character, it's really simple and has purpose, isn't too snowflakey nor in unbelievable ways, and shows a general understanding of Tajara history gained since the last app. It also seems like the player's specifically chosen the Tajara subspecies known for being at a general disadvantage, and I always like it when people give themselves flaws and stuff like that. +1 for me. Zoom zoom, slow kitter.

Definitely capable of playing multiple different kinds of characters--one of their previous characters, Charlie Reader, was a total cynic most of the time when I stalked them in ghost, very different from Kizzy Jenson. Only problem I have is that they screwed this app up, and posted the first half twice. and that they're getting feedback much faster than I am :c +1 though.

Actually, I was saying that the original Secret system sucked because of that. With this system it would be REALLY easy to, when implemented, add new antags into the pool, or even remove problematic antags or antags in the middle of a rework. With the current Secret system, to be able to play all the possible rounds available here you'd have to tediously put together every single new round type possible with this system. And god forbid someone comes up with a new antag, because then, you'd have to make a bunch of mixed modes for /that/ antag, whereas here you can just put it in the pool, give it a point value, and the system makes itself work. The only real problem I can see is that roundstart lag as it has to do a lot more stuff at roundstart, but I don't think we'll be able to say how MUCH of a problem that is until we get a prototype working. And if it works well? Great, we've got a nice, easily modular system for making unique rounds without having to make new roundtypes individually. Once this is done and working, I can see it being a real quality-of-life thing for the dev team. EDIT: Also, can we just call wizninjavampling something like "Utterly FUBAR?" Because I have a feeling that's what the station will think when they realize they're being besieged by four different threats. XD

Can't really see what the issue is with lowpop. Let's say that the maximum was set to 2 for 15 players. I don't really see the problem with the game then taking a random number 0-2, and basing the antag rolls off of that. The only problem I CAN see is during absolute deadhour when only 4 people are playing, the roll is from 0-1, the game rolls a 1 and picks a wiz or ninja through there. Then you have 2-3 people against a wiz/ninja. That may be troublesome, but at that point it's only 50/50 you'll even get an antag, and at the point that you only have 3-4 people on the server usually extended or autotraitor is just voted in anyways. If you mean it will have to reroll due to not being able to find anyone to be the antags, then that's not a problem either. The game already first checks to see if anyone has the specific antag turned on, and if not, it rolls for everyone who voted, and if nobody's ready that voted, then it just picks randomly out of everyone who is readied. If you mean it'll have to reroll to figure out what gamemode to put on, I don't see how it will--for example, if True Secret only has 2 points to work with, it'd exclude all 3-point antags from the rolls automatically, and roll once between all of the 1 and 2 point antags--if it finds a 1 point, then it rolls another out of the 1 points to fill the second point. How Secret works is it takes all of the gamemodes in the rotation, cuts out all of the ones that the game does not have enough people ready for, and then rolls a random static gamemode out of all of those. Mixed Secret works the same way, which is why it always rolls extended when there's less than 20 ready--the mixed gamemodes that require the least amount of players requires 20, and if there's less than that, then the game thinks "We don't have enough for all of these modes, so we'll cut them out of the roll" and Extended is the only one left to choose from, as that has a minimum of 0. (This is also why Extended is in the Mixed Secret roll in the first place. If it wasn't, then every time Mixed Secret was voted in with less than 20 players, it'd go back to the beginning of lobby time instead.) Ideally, True Secret would not work the same way. Instead of choosing a pool of gamemodes to roll from at round start, it would instead have its own roundstart code, where it sees how many people are ready, chooses a point maximum based on that, rolls to see how many points the game actually gets, and then rolls individual antags to fill up those points. It's a good idea, but I can also see that lagging up roundstart or having another problem. On the other hand, if it worked the same as (Mixed) Secret, then you'd might as well just make new Mixed modes and add them to Mixed Secret, because if we had it work the same then we'd have to individually put together every gamemode anyways instead of creating an easily modular system like the one proposed here.

Actually, it doesn't remove Extended at all. The original idea is that the game would roll a random number between 0 and whatever the maximum is at the time, and randomly choose antags to fill up the number it gets. If the game rolls 0, then no antags can be chosen at all, and therefore, the round becomes Extended instead. I actually really like this, because with top True Secret, that means even with 100 players, choosing True Secret can still viably land you in Traitor/Autotraitor, or Extended, just as easily as it can land you in super-cult-crossfire-doom-hell-match.

Let me just say a few things. 1. I like it. 2. The random number would have to not be true random, it'd have to be based heavily on the amount of people playing, but that said I think most of these gamemodes would be playable with highpop numbers of 30+, which means the random number could be anywhere from 0-5 when we have that many, but as the numbers go down so too should the maximum, but that unfortunately has the side effect of making things a little more predictable. 3. Heist should probably honestly be on the same level as Merc. I see what you're going for here, as this setup makes crossfire still possible, but good heisters can make just as much as, if not more, of an impact than good mercs. That's just from what I've seen, however--but if people want crossfire they can vote in Mixed or Crossfire instead. 4. Traitors/Autotraitors should probably be 1. Yes, with traitors you get more antags than the single non-crew wizard and ninja, but at the same time, if you were going for the 'numbers' argument, generally (though depending on the server pop) there are just as many lings or vamps as there are (non-auto)traitors. Traitors also highly depend on their own access and what-not to get things done, and have limited outside help. 5. That said lings and/or vamps should probably be moved to 2 instead. I'd say more than likely vamps as people like them a bit less and they do have a bit more to work with than lings, but then again, ling rework and horrorlings are also a thing... 6. This also gives the ability for the game to start with an 'antag pool,' spawning all non-crew antags and some crew antags, randomly assigning the other crew antags autotraitor-style throughout the round. This idea would ALSO allow for admin intervention in case of antags leaving/dying early, they can simply inject new antag types into the antag pool and let the game take care of that. 7. I prefer the name Top Secret. Tl;dr: as has been already mentioned the numbers do need a bit of balancing but I like the idea behind it, introducing a way to make rounds absolutely unpredictable and making just about everything be possible. Also: people need to just learn to shut up about extended, it's a thing for a good reason whether they like it or not, the point of SS13 is not the antags, especially here.

Hey there, neutral observer here. During the round that this happened I decided to observe--and am glad I did. I understand that I missed some context, but what I did see is pretty inexcusable. However, I won't say that Alberyk was actually the cause of it. In the game itself, as the skeleton, Alberyk was basically just doing his job... although whether it's realistic that a skeleton minion would pick up a Kinetic Accelerator and start blasting away with it is arguable, I think some suspension of disbelief is in order because, let's face it, magical skeledudes. I'd like to expand this to include the wizard in charge, which is who I suggested the player complaint be made on in dsay following what happened, who was the wizard Urist McWizard played by ckey Hackie Mhan. Alberyk's skeleton's actions can be excused as being orders from the wizard, although I think that should it be found that what essentially devolved into pointless murderbone was unnecessary, not escalated properly, not RPed properly, etc. etc. then Alberyk should have some fault as staff, but not as a player. What I saw from the wizard was, when the whole thing began, an inability/unwillingness to RP properly in the situation. The wizard with his skeleton crew just went around wordlessly killing everybody present in medbay, even some people who were AFK through most or even all of the event as reported by some in dsay. For the longest time I saw nothing but just random murder and killing, and many people complained about it in-game. When the wizard did RP it was short, when they were talked to they didn't answer. Twice, the wizard said in the situation that they did not want to kill... and then proceeded to wordlessly kill and Raise Dead someone right after. Once, he said it directly to the person he killed and raised, and second he called the Emergency Shuttle (having killed most if not all of Sec and Medical, ruining the round for many and basically making it impossible for the survivors to recover), stating in the announcement that he was satisfied, and wouldn't be killing anybody. And then, what happens? He approaches somebody, neckgrabs, chokes, and tries to kill someone. Luckily he Raised Dead early and ended up raising a different nearby body (that of Monique Byrd) but they were actually, definitely still trying to kill despite clearly stating their intentions to stand down, and that, in my opinion, is a simple dick move. Back to Alberyk--I still believe his 'crime' in this whole situation is that he was defending it, despite multiple people saying in dsay that this was inexcusable behavior for a high-RP server and that people have been bwoinked for much less. He stated that the conflict was 'properly escalated,' which to me sounded like what happened was the wizard initially was friendly, grabbed an apprentice who was incidentally played by Alberyk, and then basically had a single run-in with sec. I could understand this leading to a fight between the wizard(s) and sec, but this was the direct event that lead to the massacre in medbay. In my opinion this is not proper escalation. I believe this round ended up ending towards the 1 hour mark... whereas what happened in medbay would definitely be an end-game Hail Mary and a last resort instead of being the first resort on any signs of actual conflict. Finally, Alberyk defended the wizard's indiscriminate Raise Dead usage, saying that nobody is being removed from the round. I'd like to insert a reality check here--and that is, YES, Raise Dead absolutely does remove people from the round and in what's basically an irreversible way, too. For one, if it's used right after the victim dies, they have no chance to Ghost before it's done, and if the person is still in-body when Raise Dead is used, even if they already have Skeleton Minion prefs turned on, they DO NOT get the option to take control of the skeleton. This, at best, is a temporary removal from the round--at worst, it's absolutely permanent. Let me remind you that this is exactly what the wizard was doing most of the time--other times, bodies would sit dead for 5-10 minutes before a Raise Dead attempt was even made near them. Secondly, I'd like to mention something I thought was obvious... and that's if you're randomly murderboned by a wizard without RP, and you are a regular on this server, then chances are you are NOT going to get in that skeleton, and instead will seek a talk with the admins. I do believe many victims did do this, but Alberyk still argued that 'they weren't being removed from the round since Raise Dead was being used.' Regardless... many, many people got removed from the round without RP beforehand and without any chance of being returned into the round. Allow me to restate that I was a neutral, uninvolved observer. I did not take any part in the round. I was on a character that had every single pref turned off. Nobody who was involved in this event was an OOC friend, or anyone I'd consider to be biased towards. When I come to Aurora, I don't come for mechanics, I come for roleplay, as this is one of the few servers that actively promotes actual roleplay being had. I do not expect to come in to see murderbone happening with a bunch of people arguing and complaining and an involved and very likely biased staff member defending the whole thing. That said, I think this should be obvious but I'd definitely like an admin other than Alberyk to be the one taking care of this. This is all I personally have to say about the whole thing. If it comes to it I am willing to open a separate player complaint on Hackie Mhan (although I don't have any screenshots myself--but someone else may have taken some), who was the reason most of this actually happened, but since all of it is intertwined I think what happened with them should be made well known too. My closing statement here is, no matter what decision is made, on multiple counts and multiple occasions, from multiple sources, multiple things could have been done better with this round. This server is and has always had high standards for itself, and ALL of us should be not only willing, but striving to uphold them. In the immortal words of the band Silverstein: "I may not always be perfect, but I'll always try." I'm not saying we can't have some quirky, SS13-style fun, but it should be either brought to that point in a proper way and usually saved until the end, or cleared beforehand through announcements and/or polls. But if people want their regular rounds to be like what happened here, they'll go to Hippie instead.

As this isn't an in-round incident but instead an incident regarding this character's name, I feel like myself posting here and talking about this might skirt the guidelines but I think I can provide some insight onto this. As soon as I saw Kunta Eze's name changed to Kunta X, I ahelped it thinking that Kunta here had decided to become more of a meme than he already was. This was late last night, and I believe it was [mention]CakeIsOssim[/mention] that responded to that ahelp I made? I'm not 100% sure, but basically I asked if Kunta's new name was legit. Cake (again, I believe, but I know it was a mod) responded saying that it was legit, an admin had approved it and changed it for him. It seemed that all staff on at the time had no problem with it. I can definitely see a character that has a lot of cultural influence like Kunta either having a name like that or going for a legal name change to Kunta X. It's definitely not unbelievable, and while Kunta has become somewhat of a meme, it's not like he tries to chucklefuck or mess with people all too often (and I'd say what I have seen from him outside of antag rounds was in good fun). So, with the character and the admin approval, I personally say the name change should be allowed.

In case it isn't obvious I'm a little self-conscious I always like to know how I'm doing, and though I've so far gotten a lot of feedback on Masuno's character in the head of staff app, I've got that looming feeling that something's just wrong. That perhaps I could improve Masuno's character or he's unrealistic in some way other than his age (which as mentioned has already been rectified--thanks to Turtles for going over that with me, soon I'll be actually plotting out a timeline and making sure his backstory is completely coherent and consistent). So I ask that everybody comes here and swarms me with feedback and criticism of the character. I know Masuno's not the worst of characters, we have a lot more memey, unrealistic characters that barely have a place in the RP (even if they're fun to be around) but I also know he's not the best of characters, and I just want to keep on nudging him in that direction and making him better, more likeable, more realistic. So whether your criticism is light roasting or full blast burners, feel free to say what's on your mind when you think of Masuno. Although I'm literally asking for it though, please try to be civil about it and keep things serious. While I always welcome jokes please try to weave them in with legitimate feedback and criticism. Also feel free to ask me a what or why question if you just don't understand something and I'll respond fully here. Thanks in advance, everyone.

Got just one criticism of this. There is no such thing as a 'Medical Docter(sic) PhD,' medical doctorates are called 'MD' instead. That is all. I've seen a good amount of Dawnguard and think he'd do pretty well as RD, seeming pretty capable and in-control as interim during an old-Uprising round where I'd converted some of his department to Loyalists and snuck into that area myself as a safe-zone when the cult's virus was released. The application itself I'm a little iffy on but that's mainly because very little goes in-depth. I personally think Hunter is fairly qualified for the whitelist, as they do seem to understand what RP is at its core and do seem to be pretty capable, at it, and anything bad I've heard about them, as a player, is very old. So old that I can't remember what exactly the problem was, only that there was a problem at some point in time. Think it was some argument in the Discord or something. Few months at least. Anyways. +1 from me. I suggest advertising a bit more, and poking the app in the direction of people who know you well and know how you play and RP.

I'd like to start by saying that out of basically all the Asian languages, Chinese is the closest to English in syntax and structure. That said, I do agree completely that all the languages should just be reworked. If any language came out of combining Mandarin and English, it would be a lot more of Mandarin than English, basically taking what's mostly Mandarin and adding in English grammar conventions, perhaps with some English loan-words due to concepts that may exist in English but not in Chinese. I personally cannot think of any other way it would work like this but what would end up would basically either become a cobbled mess or a new descendant of Chinese, and what English parts there would be would become unimportant. Even given around 450 years, I doubt the sheer amount of languages would be able to meld significantly well. It's enough time that eventually some languages could merge together and create new languages, maybe long enough for a couple of 'generations' of language-melding to happen, but this is all 7-9 languages. I legitimately have fun planning out in my head what the hell Sol Common's supposed to sound like. Given the time, 3-4 mostly similar languages or 2 somewhat different languages may be able to meld, but I highly doubt it would go past that. I personally say take the cop-out method, say either Chinese or English took over Earth and that spread to become the main, common language of the Sol system. Maybe Tau Ceti favored a different language, such as Spanish, German, or the mentioned Chinese/English not taken by Sol, and adopted that as their own common language. Maybe make it to where Gutter evolved from Russian and Thai or something weird like that, and Tradeband can be a mash of Italian and Romanian, two languages (being Romance languages) that I personally think are very polite-sounding, art-y, and beautiful. Can't think of anything to suggest that wouldn't lead to basically ending up reworking every text-based system in the game, so I'll leave it there. As a note these are my personal opinions and experiences, being interested in but not a professional in linguistics.

Some edits have been made (mainly just to his age here, a lot more went/is going into the records) after speaking with an admin on the realism of Masuno's character. There will almost definitely be more going into it further, but as this only calls for a brief summary, some of it may or may not be reflected here. All I can suggest is for everyone to continue RPing with me, I'll probably speak any relevant changes to anyone who is familiar with Masuno and what has changed if I recognize them.

The sidearm is meant as a self-defense weapon, and could easily be like the revolvers detectives used to have with rubber bullets. Ideally, they wouldn't let anyone know they have it and would try to meet with a head of staff in private to inform them of what they know, while using their position as a low-level worker to gossip with other workers and gain more information. Rule one of being an undercover agent is that you don't tell anybody about it unless you absolutely trust them and need to reveal yourself. It's also a 'basic idea' and is easily subject to re(v)work magics as well, but I thought the general idea would be something some people would like to see and might also be something people could work with to pitch other ideas to make the mode better and more balanced. I'd really like to see someone take that and perform some voodoo over it to make it a great idea in general. One thing I remembered in my sleeping is that when in a Mixed gamemode, the Rev is almost always completely overshadowed by the end of the round. Sometimes the Rev and Cult will team up to achieve the Rev's goals, for example, but that usually just ends up in the Rev just becoming Cult and it's just another Cult round with more cultists than normal, but that's the most I've usually seen from rev in a mixed gamemode. On top of these changes, I think that whatever happens to Rev, they should just have more power and opportunities (on both ends--loyalists too, in my opinion, the two sides should be evenly matched) so that they can compare to some of the other, crazier gamemodes they're paired with in Mixed.

Allow me to start by saying that before today, I thought Rev was a perfectly fine gamemode. However, I'm sure you heard of one particularly horrible (in the opinions of some) Rev round that happened today during deadhour--where Joseph Birkin (UnknownMurder), the RD was the only head rev, I (Masuno Kukarumo), as a Visitor, was the only head loyalist, the revs very quickly gained over half the station, and eventually the whole thing devolved into arguable murderbone with a highly 'join or die' outlook. People were complaining about unprovoked deaths and such, but I am pretty sure that somebody else is working on that in another thread, so I won't be bringing it here. Instead, I'd like to discuss how we can make Rev better or possibly take the idea and make it into something new to replace Rev entirely. I'd like to start with complaints that both UnknownMurder and I, as the heads of that round, had about the round and gamemode in general. UnknownMurder suggested (and I highly agree) that Rev be made to fit with what Mutiny used to be--where the revs have some sort of objective or reason to rebel at start. This way, they don't have to go with the generic communist route or spend twenty minutes at start of round discussing (with the head loyalists listening and more than likely trying to convert people). I believe this is a major reason as to why a lot of people are frustrated with Rev rounds nowadays--they just become old, stale, and the same stuff over and over again. I believe some more drastic changes are in order, honestly. As the Head Loyalist, I noticed a few things. One, the Loyalists' first reactions are, generally, to lean on and get a foothold in the Heads of Staff, these being the most trustworthy and relevant crew highly trusted by NanoTrasen and others. However, this is impossible when the only head of staff is also the head rev and any other heads of staff appointed by them are trusted revs. In just about any case that this happens, it's going to be fairly impossible for the loyalists to win--especially if the sole loyalist is a Visitor and every person they could potentially convert was already converted to Rev before that point. (not complaining about the round, UnknownMurder actually played his cards very well, but it did show a fatal flaw in the gamemode.) On top of this, Loyalists generally do not have an IC reason to actively seek and take action until the Revs make themselves public, leading to a heavy disadvantage to the Loyalists whenever the Revs play their cards right. Revs, on the other hand, generally work on the power of numbers over the power of... power, and still have a chance to fight back and win whether or not they have a foothold among the heads of staff at all. With this all said, I'd like to make this into an ongoing discussion on how to change and rework the Rev gamemode to make it better, for the players, game, and the community. I'd like to start with a few suggestions on my own: On top of UnknownMurder's suggestion, I'd like to suggest that a few changes be made to the antags, how they are chosen, and who they are chosen from. Personally, it makes absolutely no sense for a head of staff who has been with NanoTrasen for 10+ years and has made a career out of their life to suddenly want to rebel and destroy just what got them where they are. Very much on the same end, it also makes no sense that a low-level worker or someone who is randomly visiting the station would want to stand up and call for the greatness of NanoTrasen, almost on a whim. Perhaps some people can make it work in some cases, but 9/10 times it doesn't. Because of this, I'd like to say that Heads of Staff should be limited to spawning as Head Loyalist, though non-Loyalist Heads aside from those loyalty implanted should be fully able to join which side they agree with. Likewise, assistants, visitors, and all of the 'intern' roles, as well as MAYBE the lower-level jobs such as Chef, Bartender, Janitor, etc. should be limited to starting as Head Rev, but be able to join which side they want. On top of this, and this is a personal idea that I'm not even 100% sure of, perhaps there could be a third role called the Undercover NanoTrasen Agent, who sides with the Loyalists and is sent from Central under the guise of a low-level worker to investigate unrest in the workforce. I'd like to see this new third role be sent with extra equipment, such as, perhaps, a small sidearm, and an extra ID that has more access than their job normally allows, although this is once again fully up to debate. This would allow the Loyalists to have a little poke in the right direction, having someone with the knowledge that something is going against them on their side. Finally, I'm very tired after staying up until 6 AM, so I'm going to be leaving this up for discussion here. I welcome everybody, those who like Rev and those who do not, those who played this round and those who played other rounds, good or bad, to voice your opinion on the Rev gamemode and give your suggestions on how it can be improved. With enough suggestions and debate, I fully believe we can make Rev into something people will enjoy yet again. For records' sake, the Game ID of the round in question that sparked this was Game ID: bPJ-a9eC. If it is felt to be necessary, perhaps admins can review what exactly happened there and maybe even come up with ideas of their own based on it.

BYOND key: Mappel6 Character names: Alaina Winters, Masuno Kukarumo. I also have the characters Joe Picante, Noelle Thompson, and Alfredo Hughes--I've told people about them (mostly Picante) but they have not yet seen a round, whether due to lack of character development or laziness. How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Well over a year, but I'm unsure of the exact length. Notably, this was very on-and-off, with me playing for a month or so and going away for a while before returning. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: I wish to be on the whitelist to further the story of one of my primary characters, Masuno Kukarumo. He has a tendency to be relatively calm in situations that don't put him in immediate danger, and don't remind him of traumatic events of his past, as well. Overall I've gotten a lot of good feedback on the character and have played a couple of interim rounds, and I think it's time for him to move up. Why did you come to Aurora?: I originally come from the BestRP server, which is also where Masuno originates. Eventually that server shut down and the community moved to Unbound Travels, and when that one shut down, I moved to the next server that promised high RP and had a good amount of players, which was Aurora. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Yes, must be at least 30 years of age with at least 10 years of experience in science-related fields, and at least one PhD but preferably more. I've read it once, I've read it again, and I've read it probably more than I should need to as I had to read it yet again before making this app and yet as soon as I finish this I'll probably need to check it again. 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: At its most simple, roleplay is about building a story. Everyone involved in roleplay is not only a 'player' but a 'writer.' Everybody helps to weave together a story with complex and interesting characters that, in my opinion, can't be done in a book or other story with one or only a few writers. In normal writing a single, rigid story is created, and while it might be interesting, the lore is only as developed as the writer wants it to be. In roleplay, you have a single, ongoing lorebase that's constantly being improved and added on with many individual stories running side-by-side and intertwining to create one, much larger, much more grand story. And, in my opinion, that's exactly what RP should be and that's exactly why I enjoy it so much. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: The OOC purpose of a Head of Staff (as well as, in my opinion, the Quartermaster) is a few things--one, to provide direction and purpose for the individual players in a department or set of departments (in the case of the Captain or HoP), two, to ensure everything goes as planned and remains as realistic to the lore as possible, three, to provide a point for characters new to the game or to RP to join in, and act as a guide for players new and old, four, to control whatever chaos may come, and five (and my favorite of all), to provide a target for said chaos--as in being the general objective of some antags and being something you can take down to tear down what structure there is. In short, they are meant to provide a 'centerpoint' for RP--someone even the most isolated characters will interact with and someone anybody can go to, provoked or not, to further character development. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: The OOC responsibilities of whitelisted players are, no matter what the whitelist is, to become a driving force behind the lore and roleplay of the community. If you are an alien, you should be helping push the roleplay and lore of your species--heads of staff are not much different, as they should be pushing the roleplay of their department and giving people reasons to be playing, communicating, and building a story. A great example of this is one of the RDs, Winoa Summers, who I see constantly asking Robotics for orders such as "two Ripley APLUs and two Firefighter APLUs for Central Command," and one for, I believe, "three Gygaxes to order for the Mendell City Police Force." She will constantly be tasking her department and keeping them busy, and I think this is honestly what many players under the Head of Staff whitelist should be doing. Personally, I will be occasionally doing this at a lower level, and especially coordinating with admins to actually make these actions meaningful--for example, I'd very much like it if the phoron researchers made individual bomb designs, and recorded and wrote the effects and recipes of these designs after days of testing, which I would then store in a 'database' and, later, say that, for example, the Mendell City Firefighters wanted to order X amount of X bomb, and after these are delivered in some way, a payment of some kind is delivered to the Science/station accounts (which means our actions are canonically making money for NanoTrasen). Same for roboticists, RnD's weapons and tools, and hell, maybe even somebody could ask for X amount of X slime cores from Xenobiology. If I could coordinate this and other things with admins, then I feel like I could make what Science does even more meaningful and improve the RP just that much. Please pick one of your characters for this section, and provide well articulated responses to the following questions. Character name: Masuno Kukarumo Character age: 36 Please provide a short biography of this character (approx 2 paragraphs): Ready for a funfest? Warning: This actually goes very much into detail on Masuno's character and backstory, and explains why he does what he does and why he acts the way he does both normally and as an antag. Read at your own risk--if you RP with him enough, you will eventually find out most of this on your own anyways, so if you don't want to spoil yourself then feel free to jump into a round whenever you see me and get my attention. What do you like about this character?: I honestly like how well-developed Masuno is, having developed his story over the course of my stay of the three major servers I was a part of, with elements added in from a couple of other things that happened in servers I played only once or twice. He's a character that has genuinely let the story take him and shape him into who he is nowadays, making him into a realist and very much safety-oriented person, as well as choosing his friends carefully and being somewhat wary of newcomers (though not letting it show, generally). He is somewhat of a loose-cannon though very much controlled in that aspect--generally it only shows when he is an antag, or from the actions of another antag, and personally, given what he's been through, he's very much justified in that aspect. His story adapted well for Aurora and I absolutely enjoy playing him here, though some stuff that made little sense (namely ages of himself and his two ex-wives--which were both played by other SS13 players on the servers I mentioned earlier--and the points of which certain things happen in his story) had to be changed or cut out, but it still worked to create what I think is a great character. However... What do you dislike about this character?: I personally think that, though Masuno's lore was 85% created by IC actions over several servers, he is very much a 'snowflake.' I honestly don't believe that any one person could be so unlucky, and yet still so competent at the end of it all. I've heard from others that Masuno is 'definitely unique, but not too snowflakey or cringey' but honestly I do believe some of the stuff in his backstory should be toned down--or at the very least, he should be developed further to make sure some good stuff actually happened to him and it's not all a tragic anime backstory. What do you think makes this character fit to be a head of staff?: Masuno is smart, capable, and calm in the face of danger (as long as, again, he himself is not in immediate danger). He is definitely willing to push things but, in his interim rounds, he has cared for all of those in his department, and has taken a very much safety-first policy. He keeps up with paperwork and absolutely loves when employees do their paperwork without him having to ask--especially in high-risk cases like Genetics, Xenobiology, or any live specimen testing overall. Anyone who knows his work in Science will also know that he genuinely cares about his research and will do what he can, even taking some controlled risks and going EVA to assess effects of his research personally, to advance his research and understanding. All of this put together, and I, personally, believe you have one highly competent RD. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions. How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I'd honestly rate myself at an 8/10. I personally believe that I could improve highly, but also that I have a lot of experience in roleplay, with roleplay being a major hobby of mine (along with gaming and game development) for about 8 years now. I have a lot of experience with writing and roleplaying, but am far from perfect and acknowledge that I do occasionally slip up and make mistakes. I'd like to add in though, that I'm much better at the actually roleplaying and pushing the story parts than I am with things like character creation. I personally believe that many of my characters tend to be a lot more bland to start and gain a lot of their traits through RP--which is why Masuno here takes a lot of his story from other servers, mainly. So individually, I'd probably put the character creation part at around 6/10 while the actual in-game RP part I'd put closer to 9/10. Extra notes: I don't believe I'm on the bad side of many people on the server, and know myself to be very honest but polite. However, I do understand that I have recently been known to lurk as a ghost instead of actually playing. I've been trying to play Masuno a lot more recently whenever I've been available, and trying to interact with as many people as possible and do what I can to spur some form of RP even when I'm not an antag. Usually this involves Masuno hanging out at the bar but hey, RP is RP.

I personally say we create new Mixed round types, especially those that involve traitors (as I really do enjoy being forced to work with my own access and equipment with a few extra items to help me along the way) and a few more three-Mixed modes (rev+merc+raider anyone? no? just me?), as well as implement that "super secret" idea. Then, on round voting, we can both have more variety in the types of gamemodes that are played and maybe even make it to where some of the gamemodes that are currently played multiple times every day only get to go through every other day or so due to the sheer amount of variety that goes in, as well as get an idea every round whether people want large rounds with lots of antags, smaller rounds with fewer antags, or whether they really don't care and just kinda want to be surprised.

HoP has Ian. Captain has Chauncey. CMO has Bones. HoS has Lt. Columbo. Hell, the Bartender gets Pun Pun. RD/Science gets some sort of weird facehugger that sits in a cage and does nothing. Science needs a real pet, a sort of morale source similar to Ian or Bones, or Lt. Columbo (but less eat-your-face-off-y). I've been informed recently of a round where, from a Xenobiology slime experiment, a pug was created. Science called this pug, "Neumann." My request is to make Neumann the Science Pug, complete with slime backstory, fully canon and spawn in on the ship every round. It could spawn in with the examine text, "A pug, so ugly it's adorable. Some say he came from the slimes..." or some sort of otherwise edited examine text. Pugs are also in the game but can't be seen without admin or Science intervention, so I think it's full well time that the pugs saw the light of day. Every department, as listed above, has a mobile pet aside from Science and Engineering (and technically Cargo now that it's its own thing). Despite Lamarr being completely harmless, I've never seen an RD let him out of his cage, or maybe even know how. Neumann would provide a simple pet with an enjoyable backstory, one that just about everybody in Science would love to have around and might even feed. And with pugs already being in the game, it would more than likely be a very simple addition. I'll let this idea sink in and pass it around some of the people who play in or around Science often to give their feedback. I think some people may honestly underestimate how many people want a pug on the station.

Let me start by saying that I HATE to be THAT GUY, but I feel like THAT GUY has to come forth now. I've been watching Reyn through a good few rounds, especially when they play Security as that's the most relevant to this application. Their security-heavy characters are Cliff Whittier and Bethney Cherry. I've seen a lot more of Bethney Cherry than Cliff Whittier, but what I have seen of Cliff Whittier as well does not help his case. First of all, I constantly see Bethney Cherry and Cliff Whittier, when I see him, as the first one to call for Code Blue/Code Red in all of Security. This usually degrades to Cherry/Whittier (interestingly, Cherry is mainly a Detective, so this makes even less sense) commanding the commanding staff to enter into Code Blue or Red, and commanding the Warden to start giving out weapons. I've seen Cherry told off multiple times for acts like this, including one quote that stands out from a Captain that Bethney Cherry tried to command, "Cherry, you do not give the orders here." But wait, there's more! I often see Cherry do things like perform validhunting behaviors (mainly asking the Warden for weapons and attempting to make arrests alone as Detective), go above SOP and around the chain of command (mentioned earlier as commanding the commanding staff and commanding the Warden to give out weapons, again, as Detective), and in general perform acts and general actions that are unfitting of a character, whether simple employee of NanoTrasen or loyal Security member. This includes Cherry lying directly to an interim Head of Security, saying they have no crimes and a completely clean record on NanoTrasen stations, when they had been arrested and given canon infractions earlier that same day. While we're on the topic of 'canon,' I have seen Reyn's characters twice ask their arresting officer to kill them outright, and imply over LOOC and deadchat shortly after they are arrested or killed respectively that they want to die so their crimes are not made canon. Interestingly, this happened once while Reyn, as Cliff Whittier, was a Head Loyalist, and therefore the crimes were non-canon anyways. Lastly, I'd like to add one more slight comment in. I've interacted with Reyn's character Wendi Bunten as well, this was during the event where the NSS Aurora, then known as NSS Aurora II, was announced to the NSS Exodus's crew. I was playing as Roboticist, Masuno Kukarumo. When the head engineer of NanoTrasen came aboard the ship and began their speech, there was a period of time where a bunch of people were PDAing each other and ringers were going off left and right. Masuno proceeded to shut off his PDA's ringer, keeping the messenger on. Lo and behold, I got a message in the middle of the speech from Wendi Bunten, a simple "heya". I ignored the message until after the speech, when I proceeded to message Wendi Bunten back asking what the message was about. They responded saying that they 'just wanted to hear what their (Wendi's own) ringer sounded like.' I proceeded to try to RP with them, thinking that they were perhaps somebody completely new to the game but got nothing after. I'd like to say 'to be fair, Reyn may well have been new to the game at the time,' but this was less than two weeks ago by my count. In my opinion, somebody who was new to the game then should well be considered to be at least fairly new to the game now. I think I've given enough examples to make a very good case for this. People who know me know I will usually give people who are good in general, or just need some improvement, a +1 on their whitelist apps. However, after seeing Reyn's constant behavior, after looking into their fairly recent actions including a very recent permaban appeal, and seeing this app, which implies that Reyn's wish to play an IPC are primarily for mechanical reasons such as to lessen the amount of what will actually hurt them, I'm giving this a strong -1. I've seen enough of Reyn's behavior to potentially even file a player complaint but I really do not want to go that far, however if an admin feels a need to look into this, I am willing to talk. I would however much rather see Reyn get a simple reality check and placed on the right path when it comes to roleplay, than have actual actions taken against them, because despite the amount of negative I have seen with this one player, I do believe effort can be made to improve their actions and their roleplay ability in general.

I've seen Resilynn's characters George Schmidt and Ellie Shoshanna around, and I've gotta say I do enjoy what I've seen so far. Ellie Shoshanna recently hosted a talent show for the crew, in an attempt to OOCly as well as ICly entertain everyone, and that ended up being a round a lot of people wanted to stay for and wanted to see play out, until the talent show ended that is. My major interaction with Resilynn was as George Schmidt however, while I was playing as Alaina Winters as Bartender. George Schmidt and companion Howard Rich both came in, and near that time the power went out, so I could serve neither of them drinks. Howard Rich went on to insult me, and I was just about ready to pull out the shotgun when they decided to leave. Nonetheless, I found the duo very entertaining OOC and saw Schmidt as very dutiful and willing to please Rich. The roleplay was done very well and honestly wouldn't mind another chance encounter, even if it ends up with Schmidt and Rich on the end of the shotgun again. Other than that I've heard absolutely nothing bad about Resilynn, and being a friend of and being recommended this game by BRAINOS gives another plus to me. Definite +1 here, very much want to see where Resilynn's characters go in the future.

I interact with Sean on a couple of my characters when he is Bartender and occasionally stalk him when I'm observing. He's really good at RP, really good at separating IC from OOC. He's also really good at taking a joke--once while advertising this app, he posted a link for a Popeyes Chicken review instead. Lo and behold, next round... Zelmana: Hello. Typically I play Sean Brianne, warden and sec officer. However, I'd like to take this preround moment to ask you to give a review. If you would please go to PopeyesTM and pickup a Popeyes Cheddar Biscuit Butterfly ShrimpTM, I would appreciate it. You can find a similar review here: That all considered, definitely +1. I haven't interacted with Sean much as Warden but I have seen some of that bleed into his time as Bartender, and otherwise have only heard good things about him.

I'm going to start by saying that I play Alaina Winters. So, since most people probably know of the relationship between DaBurs's character, Hugh Ellrich, and my character, I'm going to say that I will be as unbiased as possible, and will try to point out as many flaws as I can in the time that I have been interacting with DaBurs. Despite this, I will say that I am going to be looking at slightly different things that many here seem to care about. Instead of attempting a full analysis of DaBurs and how they are OOCly, I'm going to focus on the IC portion of things. Saying this, I will start with a very negative OOC point. - DaBurs likes to fuck around a LOT. Now, this is kinda something that melds into both IC and OOC. A good few times, I've seen him (both through the eyes of Alaina and through observation) mess with things in usually minor ways. However, they are mostly things that could be considered minor crimes in character, and some were definitely played off as accidents (even if they OOCly definitely weren't), which I will admit does fit Hugh Ellrich's character. Since this is something that I think might stretch beyond IC to the OOC, however, I will say that this is actually a very strong negative point. Now, I'll cover what I know about one of his characters (since Hugh is actually the ONLY character of DaBurs's that I have RPed with extensively), and then what I think of the character application itself. Hugh Ellrich Don't get me wrong, I find Hugh absolutely HILARIOUS. However, I feel like some parts of his character would have been scrutinized by NanoTrasen further than they are implied to have been. As I stated earlier, Hugh is actually very immature and prone to fucking around. This said, Hugh actually does his job. When he was a Roboticist, I (as Alaina) mostly played as a Cargo Technician, and yes, we got messages from Hugh asking for materials. He'd also state his purpose, and send the request in a professional manner, even when it wasn't required. When he changed his character slightly to be able to move to Scientist as well, he immediately started getting to work there, too, making bombs with a partner almost immediately, and may I add, very efficiently. While I will once again stress the scrutiny I have on the immaturity, I will pass that as character design (seeing a completely different statement having been said about another character) and give a thumbs up at this point. Ka'Akaix'Whateverthehell Unlike some others here, I will say that I actually enjoyed the idea of this character. Yes, he's 'snowflakey,' yes, he's different. But what's the difference between a Vaurca that's come to dislike oppression and want to break the mold, and a human with an incredible sob story that brings pity to everyone's mind? Yes, bad things happen, especially to Vaurca, but I don't think a specific set of bad things should be scrutinized as much as that as long as it's not something like being hit by gamma rays and turning green as a human. The Vaurca's bio was long, yes, but I enjoyed reading it and I enjoyed the idea for the character. Length does not forgo quality, but I will say that from actually reading it instead of tl;dring it, I can say that DaBurs's Vaurca character is well thought out and well done. I don't have many doubts that DaBurs can play this character, and I have no doubt that DaBurs understands the Vaurca race that he's applying for. I'm sure this will get shot down almost immediately by DaBurs's haters as being biased, but I will say that I have been as honest as I could have been in this analysis, and so, I will go ahead and give a +1. But I will say, I don't want to end up regretting this. TL;DR: +1. While I have some scrutinies about DaBurs and one of his existing characters, I'm going to say he's fully capable of RPing the character he's made correctly, and that the character he's made is well thought out.