Devil Gamemode

[BurgerBB]

tl;dr copying /tg/'s devil gamemode into Aurorastation HRP and making tweaks and additions to fit more in HRP

There will be one antag: The devil. The devil is assigned to a random crewmember with a devil antag role set. Their objective is to buy the souls of crewmembers using contracts.

There will be 7 different contracts:

Lust - Gives the contract wielder a love potion. Drinking a love potion will cause you to fall in love with the nearest crewmember.

Gluttony - The contract holder will never go hungry, however they can eat as much as they want. They will forever have the fat disability/status.

Greed - Gives the contract holder a winning 1 million credit lottery ticket.

Sloth - Gives the contract welder a slave that does anything for them, if a slave is available (ghost roll.)

Wrath - Gives the contract welder a random weapon.

Envy - Gives the contract welder an all access Captain's ID.

Pride - Makes the contract welder a direct second-in-command for the devil. They share almost all the same powers as the devil.

The devil has some rules that they must follow, these are mostly mechanically enforced. Firstly, the devil cannot directly attack, injure, or kill anyone. This will be directly enforced by giving it pacifism, and hopefully enforced by server moderators if they find a way around it. The devil is encouraged to let those under his contract to do the dirty work, if necessary. Secondly, the devil cannot deal with someone carrying religious items, such as a bible or a cross. They cannot enter areas that have been blessed by holy water or otherwise. Thirdly, the devil's power is limited by how many souls they collect. Once they have enough souls (I'd say about 10-15 depending on server count.) they will pretty much win the game. Thirdly, while not a rule, it is encouraged that the devil actually doesn't do things that their subjects can't. If the devil wants to steal an item, they're encouraged to let their followers steal it for them.

Their abilities include:

- Immortality, unlocked at start. Devils will be immortal to all weapons, unless they've been blessed by holy water, or are it's roundstart "death" item.

- Phase-shifting, unlocked at 1 soul. Devils can teleport anywhere on the screen, as long as it's dark. 30 second cooldown.

- Shape-shifting, unlocked at 2 souls. Devils can shape-shift into any mortal being they've encountered. A devil can only shape shift once every 5 minutes, but they can shapeshift back into their original form at any time.

- Teleportation, unlocked at 4 souls. Devils can draw runes on the floor and teleport back to them at will, with a 5 minute cooldown. If there is no rune on the station, they will teleport to a random location on the station with a 10 minute cooldown penalty instead.

- Corrupt, unlocked at 6 souls. Devils can corrupt an object, removing all holy related buffs/debuffs on the object. It is entirely possible to corrupt a priest, so that they may give into a contract. 30 second cooldown.

- True form, unlocked at [number_of_crew/2 + 1] souls. Devil now into a true devil. All those under devil's contract will also turn into demons, and the devil is immune to absolutely everything except for one thing...

True form isn't an excuse to slaughter every single living being. The devil's #1 goal is to collect all the souls on the station, but if it is acceptable according to the rules, then it would be fine. As for the thing I mentioned... there should be some way to kill the devil. Perhaps through honorable combat using a sword, I'm not sure.

I don't like the RNG Devil conditions as you're forced to roleplay a certain devil. I want to make it incredibly open ended as to what the devil can or cannot be.

[Saudus]

When I first read this I defaulted into "-1 please no", but I've found myself being cautiously optimistic.

I generally dislike solo antags, but this isn't entirely a solo antag? I'm not sure exactly if and how the devil can sway people who's souls they've bought, what does that actually do to a crew member? Can they do vampire style dominate? Can they cause them pain like wizards? Is it entirely word RP persuasion?

From how I understand it to work it certainly would be fun to at least trial it. But I wouldn't be too surprised if it doesn't get through a trial in the end.

[BurgerBB]

When I first read this I defaulted into "-1 please no", but I've found myself being cautiously optimistic.

I generally dislike solo antags, but this isn't entirely a solo antag? I'm not sure exactly if and how the devil can sway people who's souls they've bought, what does that actually do to a crew member? Can they do vampire style dominate? Can they cause them pain like wizards? Is it entirely word RP persuasion?

From how I understand it to work it certainly would be fun to at least trial it. But I wouldn't be too surprised if it doesn't get through a trial in the end.

 

There is literally no reason why this wouldn't pass a trial unless people are willing to admit that they should also remove wizard, rev, cult, and ninja given how this is a very similar gamemode but entirely better than all of them.

[Coalf]

I wrote a long post about why this wouldn't work but let me put it more streamlined so it's easier to process compared to a long rant.

CONTRACTS

Lust: I like it, the issue is it's extremely limited and I don't think a lot of people are going to risk it, not when it has that, for the lack of a better term "rapey" vibe going on. Maybe use those syndie drugs instead that turn other people traitor? Or perhaps "pheromones" like the vampire has with his suggestion or whatever that ability is.

Gluttony: Why would I pick this when I can get food? Turning fat to never eat again sounds like a curse not a blessing. Tell you what, instead make them get an ability that gives them the power to turn nutrients into hyperzine.

Greed: Thematic, nice, can't lose much with it, I'd say this would be one of the most picked. Maybe increase the amount just so it DOES seem ridiculous.

Sloth: Here is the crux of the issue, the ghost aspect because if that happens I basically bought a dud and even if I DO get a slave how the hell is everyone going to react? This would make the devil and his follower extremely obvious. Would benefit if you could recall your slave like a pokeyman. Maybe "smart" and "Dumb" mode, dumb mode is basically a simple mob but much stronger while smart mode would be a human mob and ghost.

Wrath: Seriously nobody is going to use this outside of maybe a few validhunters and they're immediatly going to give out your position as soon as they go rootin' and tootin' and shootin'. Instead it should provide a natural increase in strenght, maybe similar to hulk without actually hulking like putting a forceglove modifier on their hands.

Envy: Same as above, a single person finds out and your whole operation is kaput.

Pride: Why pick anything else? The devil gets more souls, you get more powers this is a self-feeding system. No idea how to fix this one.

POWERS

The other problem are powers as I implied previously, they're weak.

First you get dark-jump, sure thematic and not too overpowered, except the reason this works so well in the vampire kit is that a vampire can shreak and shutter every light in the vicinity, a devil can't do that. Useful but lacks utility, a normal teleport, blink or vampire jaunt would work.

Shapeshifting, thematic again, this one is actually good except you'd probably need to put this one first as the devil would have to blend into the crowd first and foremost since it's pretty clear he'd be found out as soon as someone wishes for a gun because people who wish for guns can't keep it hidden. Yeah just move this one to a single soul.

Teleportation, just the whole thing, it takes two minutes to take off cuffs and this takes TWO times that? And FIVES times that when I don't use a proper mark rune? Useless. What he would seriously need is something to escape containment with, like even permanent, maybe make it possible for him to create a "body double" which he can stash away and switch conciousness, maybe make it eat up a soul.

Corrupt, seriously? If you haven't told someone to kill the chaplain yet you probably deserve to be blessed otherwise this is the least played role and the devil gamemode isn't going to make it any more played just because it's going to make chaplain the validest of salids. If you want effective corruption make it possible for him to corrupt items or crewmembers to turn them into different things (temporarily)

True Form, this honestly looks like a massive excuse to become a "hero" character and I can already see people kicking and screaming over each other for a HONOBRU DUERRR!!!!

At this point I think the devil SHOULD be a literal unstoppable force, maybe keep chaplain completely untouchable and instead the devil can use this time to keep summoning his demon armies and eating human souls while crewmembers get to evacuate.

CLOSURE

This is like the lovechild of peace-antag.

It has the contracts of wizard with the binding power of cult but also the magical power of me being able to say "no thanks" and all of the powers are shittier than what the wizard can offer me no matter what I pick.

It has the rev ability of literally doing a 360 and moonwalking away, it require the antag to co-operate and act like the nicest guy to the crew since a single insult could mean an entire departments starts to shun you.

It has a weird mixture of useless and useful contracts, some of which would reveal you IMMEDIATLY as the game begins.

This would just become 2 hours of nothing as like 2-3 people get a gun and then the devil gets arrested or just blunders around maint.

I cannot support this, we don't need more "If one person is shit say goodbye to the entire round" gamemode like ninja or wizard, those are WAY more powerful and already suffer from it.

[Saudus]

There is literally no reason why this wouldn't pass a trial unless people are willing to admit that they should also remove wizard, rev, cult, and ninja given how this is a very similar gamemode but entirely better than all of them.

 

I just assume ppl's reasoning will be "better the devil you know than the devil you don't".

[BurgerBB]

wew lad

 

The feedback is fine on the abilities, and contracts, but I despise your closing statement.

If you think that, for some reason, despite LITERALLY being the devil, that it's going to evolve into peaceantag then I don't know what to say. Literally every single gamemode in existence can be dismissed with "peace antag :(". It's not a valid complaint, and I hope you don't expect me to limit freedom and introduce murderbone objectives or something. The most I can do is force the station time to be 22:30, and at the 1:30 roundtime mark, it will be midnight and the devil will take it's true form regardless of souls collected, however they will be susceptible to mortal wounds if they don't have enough souls. That way you can have your 30 minutes of mindless, forced action for people who still think this is an MRP server.

The devil can be a dick if they wanted. They could force people to sign contracts given how they're the fucking devil and can do anything as long as they have followers. Hell, if you're concerned about it, have your second in command murder those who refuse your contracts.

And the near-immediate reveal is intentional. The only way a devil would get discovered is if they're bad, or if the person accepting the contract is a no-fun allowed type loser, but in that case they'll get fucking shunned and laughed at if they screamed over comms "HALP, THE DEVIL IS OFFERING ME WEALTH, HALP." If you genuinely think it's an issue, I can make it so that the devil can obtain the change form ability at 0 souls so they can keep their real identity a secret.

As for the prisoner meme, the devil is immortal. They cannot be stunned, however it is likely that some devils will be fucking unrobust as shit and somehow get caught despite all their abilities. They'll have the ability to break cuffs.

Your main critique of this gamemode isn't because the fact that the concept is bad, but because the antags have the potential to be really bad. I really don't like this critique.

[Coalf]

It's why I gave all the previous suggestions. The closing statement is simply what I think it MIGHT end up as.

The main reason why I'm so pessimistic is because that I searched and I believe that the devil gamemode has been disabled on just about every server that has it with only being able to activate via. admin powers.

Plus I think we seriously need a biological antag to replace ling instead of a new mystical antag as it's much harder to interact with magic rather than technology or aliens.

Also the last part isn't a critique, it's my opinion, take everything before that as critique of the gamemode.

[zyymurgy]

While I agree with Coalf's criticisms, I do really like the idea's bones. I feel like this concept has room to grow still, and needs more work, so I do not give my plus just yet. But I would love to see this come to fruition; I feel like the server needs a little bit more variety, and I do not feel that the mixed gamemodes fill this need.

If this were coded and added as-is though, I would still probably like it, despite the potential for shittery outlined by Coalf.

[Ornias]

There is literally no reason why this wouldn't pass a trial unless people are willing to admit that they should also remove wizard, rev, cult, and ninja given how this is a very similar gamemode but entirely better than all of them.

bit optimistic there. wizard is hyper-variable, rev can choose what they're rioting about, cult and ninja are considered two of the worse game-modes and even they have a degree of customization in their presentation and gameplay (especially ninja with recent additions).

i love the devil gamemode a stupid amount because i love the theme, but i wouldn't support having it in HRP (except as an admin-spawn event) one bit. coalf makes a pretty good description of why, mechanically, it's not particularly the best, but i'll add a few more reasons why.

• Antags are canon. We'd need to acknowledge that, in-universe, the devil exists.
• It's the least freeform antagonist we'd have, with the exception perhaps of the Cult. Even changelings have freedom to choose their backstory, even cultists have developed histories that could explain how they found their powers. Other antags have even more freedom. Yet Devils have only one reason for being here, one goal, and one backstory: they're the devil here to steal you soul. This would be fun, but after three rounds, you've seen it all, ESPECIALLY with their incredibly brief set of powers.
  
• Speaking of their powers, the fact they're weak is not half as bad as the fact they're linear and boring. Giving a wider degree of powers, in addition to limitations and boons, would be fascinating. Bear in mind that, on /tg/, he main thing to catch the devil is to look up it's name and to find it's weakness, which greatly varies. The only way to make sure the devil stays dead is to meet these requirements, or to keep killing it until it burns all it's souls. That's awesome, and the thing that makes devils so interesting, which is a shame that's not copied over in the suggestion. The randomized limitations and restrictions create an interesting, variable antagonist that you genuinely need to mix up fighting each time. With this, it's exactly the same. Use holy. If they win, use sword. Imagine if Wizards were restricted to only one spell loadout, or syndicate operatives to e-sword, e-bow, and e-mag.
  
• The inability to be stunned or to fight back will create no end of annoyance, both ICly and OOCly, especially when everyone knows who the devil is but can't do shit. It would just lead to security arresting anyone who talks to the devil and needing to just walk around him telling everyone to fuck off.

 

Basically, fuck if they're balanced or not: they're not variable, and thus, not interesting as anything other than a very rare gimmick. Bring back randomized limitations and abilities, remove the hard-set weaknesses, give them more options for powers, give room for character customization, and you've got something people might enjoy.

[MO_oNyMan]

the concept itself is fine short for some balance tweaks as stated above

However i worry about the flavour. It's a sci-fi, actual devils seem slightly out of place. Yes, we have wizards and cult but cult has at least some logic to it and wizard i wish was removed completely.

So to fix this one i'd suggest giving it some explanation. You can retain the mysticism and magic stuff but make it logical (good example: you can realise that blood runes have actual power to them. Bad example: you can't realise the robes give wizard powers). So that regular crew could come up with semi scientific explanation to his powers which would work.

I like the pacifist theme of it, but to offset the antaggery you'd have to encourage people to work with the devil and his stuff. Which is currently impossible due to self-antagging rules. You could allow self-antagging once people sign the contract but why would i sign the weird questionable contract with a weird questionable dude. Maybe give him some que (like an ability to give people a message "You feel free from corporate slavery" or something like that). I would also suggest giving him access to all records including exploitable info to be able to leverage people more