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Revert Garnascus' ruling on roundstart borer hosts.


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Posted

I've read the rest of the thread and am somewhat understanding after further clarifications to the ruling (and the PR allowing opt-out), but for the sake of clarifying my own argument so far to both establish the point I was trying to make and for record's sake.

5 hours ago, Skull132 said:

For the n-th time, have a think about conversion game modes for a moment, and count the generic situations where you actually have a choice in. Not doing something while under threat of violence will generally get you bwoinked. You have some freedom in how you respond, but you will be bwoinked for trying to rambo (or for trying to escape, depending on circumstance). Again, when we view cultists or the rev's posing the question of "Hey, wanna rev it up?" the proper application of violence can engineer a situation where your character is forced to comply, and failure to do so will violate our roleplay guidelines (your character valuing their life).

To argue against this; there is a choice, often the other answer is death, but the choice remains (and I view death as a valid out if a player no longer wishes to participate, as it presents a punishment that locks them out of changing their mind or further impacting the round). The ruling presented is what was primarily argued against, because even if forced to join revs, there's no reason one can't at the next chance take the opportunity to dip and report it to Security/Command (or simply defect later). If you're held at gunpoint, you still have the opportunity to take the situation slowly and plan out your escape and how you'll get out of it safely.

What Garn's (initially strict, and reinforced by his initial arguments) ruling wanted was to deny people those thoughts, plans and actions. To where a character whom might be a truly independent sort, or a character whom might be averse to mind control, or a character whom might be extremely wary of a voice in their head; has to pretend it's fine and go along with whatever this person who won a dice roll says. In which case, the argument against the '5 minute/50 minutes/etc' is that, in having it at roundstart, it generates a feeling of "the game was rigged from very start" to where instead of you getting a chance to play, by a dice roll someone else has your body. Has your role. Has your two hours and fifteen minutes. In a completely unavoidable fashion that you aren't allowed to protest against, plot against or otherwise act against. You, as a character, may as well unironically kill yourself and just let the borer puppet your corpse around instead. You may as well be playing a stage 4 victim of Black K'ois.

5 hours ago, Skull132 said:

While the point of "Not forcing people to do what they don't want" seems noble. It has a shortcoming. See, beyond being subjected to antagonists, this game has many components that an individual might not want have happen to their character. Why would I want to participate in a scene where my character dies? Why would I want to participate in a scene where my character loses? Why would I want to participate in a scene where my character is forced to kill his best friend? All of these are possible scenarios for IC interaction, played through many times. Following the credo of "Let's let the players choose what they want have happen to their character" would remove the entire game from here.

Per the aforementioned (initially strict version of the) ruling, you wouldn't be your character, you'd be the equivalent of a puppet not allowed to act how your character would. Equivalent to the notion of a changeling killing (or in this, having killed) you, and you controlling the body when they switch to your appearance. There is no participation in something decided by an uncontrollable roll of the dice.

In a tabletop, I can make a roll against the actions of the fellow players. I can make my own plots against them. I can act per my character's design. In this case, it's handing in a character sheet and the DM goes and passes it to the guy next to you, then gives you a blank one labeled 'slave of the guy next to you' whilst handcuffing you to the chair.

Posted
Quote

Currently thanks to the efforts of mattattlas and geeves we now have a round dedicated to cortical borers equipped with some fancy new abilities. The borers spawn inside the brain of a player. While you are still an individual that is free to act and think your actions should generally not endanger the borer inside your head. You should generally seek to obey them and roll with whatever plan they have going on. Immediately resisting for pretty much any reason is extremely bad faith. You're encouraged to utilize looc or AOOC if hosts have access to it to get a working plan together. Any questions/comments or concerns feel free to ahelp in game or shoot me a mention. Cortical borers are a little like brain snails and both are trusted friends

I have updated the wording for this. I have heard the opinions of people in this thread. Unfortunately this is the part where i say that i am not budging. 

Posted

Why not make it so instead of being forced to do what the Borer says, you could add some lore in the initial text saying you've had it for a long enough time to the point you don't even know anything is wrong with you, that you are more coerced into doing what it says, sort of like Vampire charm aura thingie. You're not bound to it, but it's like a trusted voiced in your head. Feels more fitting then being tied to following without character choice. Just an idea. When I was first a borer thrall I just pretended it was my own thoughts and subtly went along with things until it started forcing me to do things my character wouldn't normally do. When it took over and started zombie walking at armed officers all horde like I fought it so I could run away. There RP from both this little fucker inside my head and myself that was really enjoyable by doing it that way. There's a lot of RP you can get when someone is literally tied to you and you both have different objectives and mindsets.

Posted
On 11/01/2020 at 17:02, Hendricks said:

Why not make it so instead of being forced to do what the Borer says, you could add some lore in the initial text saying you've had it for a long enough time to the point you don't even know anything is wrong with you, that you are more coerced into doing what it says, sort of like Vampire charm aura thingie. You're not bound to it, but it's like a trusted voiced in your head. Feels more fitting then being tied to following without character choice. Just an idea. When I was first a borer thrall I just pretended it was my own thoughts and subtly went along with things until it started forcing me to do things my character wouldn't normally do. When it took over and started zombie walking at armed officers all horde like I fought it so I could run away. There RP from both this little fucker inside my head and myself that was really enjoyable by doing it that way. There's a lot of RP you can get when someone is literally tied to you and you both have different objectives and mindsets.

Roundstart is the most vulnerable part of every antag's game, they need some sort of control, or they will be hampered for a large part of the round.

Guest Marlon Phoenix
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, ordinal said:

I will respond disproportionately to any antag that interferes with me on any given shift.

Why is your rp on the server more important and sacrosanct than the antags? This is the same mindset i find issue with in the OP; borers are part of the rp and you cant really opt out of interacting with them when you play anything not extended 

Edited by Marlon Phoenix
Posted
6 hours ago, ordinal said:

The way this topic has gone is exactly why I latejoin every round that isn't extended, avoid bughunt completely, and attempt to votesway to secret or extended when people start voting bughunt - I hate borers, I don't want to be an antag's primary target, and I will respond disproportionately to any antag that interferes with me on any given shift. The antag of the shift that just ended was a malf who called for a "mandatory morale meeting" in the chapel, and my character, an avowed atheist, went only because it was literally mandatory according to the AI. The malf revealed that it was religious in nature and not actually mandatory, so I decided to leave. The door was bolted, so I started breaking the chapel window because fuck this crazy AI. The AI then unbolted the door but failed to unshock it, so I was downed and my direct superior was nearly killed. At that point, I was more-or-less willing to annihilate any borg I saw and cut the power to the AI to starve it to death. We didn't succeed - what are two cargo employees supposed to do against a malf - but I had fun *roleplaying the attempt*.

When it comes to borer, I'd rather be wordlessly parapenned, dragged into maint, and then have my face shot in, and I certainly wouldn't want one in my head. Further, I would 100% go to cryo if I discovered the round was borer and I make zero apologies for it, just like I would if the antagonist converted people by vomiting on them, and just like I would go SSD if an antag started torturing me. Those are not types of roleplaying that I consent to. In fact, all three of those types of "roleplaying" are detrimental to my mental health. I simply won't play them out, end of. A couple of times in this thread, staff have presented the removal of borer as the only reasonable alternative to the dissenters getting what they want but I don't think it's a bad idea - remove borer. Rounds that exclude players because of psychological issues relating to the subject matter are not good roundtypes.

This is gonna sound incredibly rude, but.

Your issues are your issues. If you can't take something, don't play it. Just because you have issues with it, doesn't mean others do. So, simply do as you already do. Cryo or just avoid those roundtypes if you can't deal with them.

Posted

As I explained, the main reason that this was set in place was due to someone at round start screeching about borers in their head, which is lame and bad faith. This is already being solved by the pr that makes sure that the borer host also has borer selected as preference. And people can cryo/leave if they don't want, but screwing over people because you don't like something is the issue here, which is what was meant to avoid with this.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

I've just read through three pages about skull and Garn repeating the same points about how people playing on this server need to suck it up and stop being self-entitled to free ignore the antag cards.

Honestly I absolutely agree with both of them, and this is a long-standing frustration I've had with this server community. I don't know where this mentality that for 'heavy roleplay' to exist you have to be allowed to do what you want with your character and everyone else can go fuck themself if there an antag trying to mess with that pure and sacred freedom, but it is the most toxic and obnoxious mentality that could ever have developed on the server where we regularly have rounds with secret bad guys that can influence and control your actions.

For a long time I actually thought that this problem developed because the staff and development team was unable to commit to a hard-line stance on the division between extended only players and people who want antagonists, and as a result the people who complain the loudest (i.e. the sort of people who originally made this thread) generally get what they want, well those of us who like being or interacting with a round and character controlling antagonist just get to eat shit and deal with the compromises made for the vocal anti-antag populace.

So I just want to express my joy and happiness that garn skull aren't budging on this matter, beyond maybe suggesting some round start preferences towards antag enabled sorts. Truly you are doing God's work here, and if this keeps up maybe we can eventually train this server population to accept that bad things can happen to their character and then they need to roll with it instead of rage quitting.

I also wanted to post this here because I don't think there's enough people that are espousing a different viewpoint, that is perfectly fine to be forcibly antagged at round start by a surprise brain slug instead of sitting down for 2 hours of riveting chair roleplay, and honestly might even be more exciting.

Sure, maybe they'll be a terrible idiot who doesn't know what they're doing and ruined your round. But they could also be a very interesting person and you could both have fun time with them being your resident brain slug. You owe them the chance to prove their own competency or incompetency instead of being an elitist jerk who just shut down their round because you can't trust strangers being pressed upon you in a position of power, or somehow think that somehow think thatthat you're too good and important to have a brain slug without giving your express permission first.

Edited by Kaed
Posted
7 minutes ago, Kaed said:

Truly you are doing God's work here, and if this keeps up maybe we can eventually train this server population to accept that bad things can happen to their character and then they need to roll with it instead of rage quitting.

Truly, then this mindset of yours should extend towards certain antagonist players with a habit of cryoing upon capture/brigging.

Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, Carver said:

Truly, then this mindset of yours should extend towards certain antagonist players with a habit of cryoing upon capture/brigging.

Absolutely. Please do enforce that on both ends. I would joyfully support antags not being allowed to cryo the moment they're captured, including myself, if non antagonist were also held to the same standard of not instantly noping out of the game because an antag got them.

Did you think you were going to embarrass me with an accusation of hypocrisy? You've just finally managed to grasp my frustration with the one-sided standard of non antag entitlements. If everyone is expected to play by the same rules I have no problem following them. But if people can't be arsed to stay in the round after I thrall or convert them (or they get brain slugged), I and everybody else have absolutely no incentive to not cryo as soon as we're captured by security.

(For the record though I've done that exactly twice and that was months ago, and they were largely the result of particularly frustrating rounds where I spent the entire time constantly fleeing security unable to do anything. So this doesn't even qualify as a habitual thing.)

Edited by Kaed
Posted
2 minutes ago, Kaed said:

Absolutely. Please do enforce that on both ends. I would joyfully support antags not being allowed to cryo the moment they're captured, including myself, if non antagonist were also held to the same standard of not instantly noping out of the game because an antag got them.

Did you think you were going to embarrass me with an accusation of hypocrisy? You've just finally managed to grasp my frustration with the one-sided standard of non antag entitlements. If everyone is expected to play by the same rules I have no problem following them. But if people can't be arsed to stay in the round after I thrall or convert them (or they get brain slugged), I and everybody else have absolutely no incentive to not cryo as soon as I'm captured by security.

It's valuable that we see each other's opinions on this, at least. Though I stand by that death is always a valid option for someone who doesn't wish to stay in-round, due to the fair permanence of it. Cryoing on the other hand tends to just leave a fairly sour taste as it's far more obvious of a rage quit compared to someone putting some amount of effort into exiting the round.

Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, Carver said:

It's valuable that we see each other's opinions on this, at least. Though I stand by that death is always a valid option for someone who doesn't wish to stay in-round, due to the fair permanence of it. Cryoing on the other hand tends to just leave a fairly sour taste as it's far more obvious of a rage quit compared to someone putting some amount of effort into exiting the round.

Suicide isn't always a viable option, especially if you're in a position where your character is being supernaturally or through ... Brain slug chemistry nonsense... Forced to do something that isn't committing suicide.

Which means either we commit to telling people to suck it up and roll with it, or no one has to commit anything and can cryo the moment they don't like it.

Edited by Kaed
Posted
2 minutes ago, Kaed said:

Suicide isn't always a viable option, especially if you're in a position where your character is being supernaturally or through ... Brain slug chemistry nonsense... Forced to do something that isn't committing suicide.

Which means either we commit to telling people to suck it up and roll with it, or no one has to commit anything and can cryo the moment they don't like it.

What is rarely understood is that rolling with it does not prevent someone from taking a series of passive choices and decisions that steadily steer themself towards dying. In a similar but less apparent vein to the pre-resist 'cultists that went out of their way to show something is wrong with them'. The best example being that I can make an express point of purposely fucking up in combat in such a way that I'll be killed, whilst merely making it look like I suck ass at the game's systems.

Posted
11 hours ago, Carver said:

What is rarely understood is that rolling with it does not prevent someone from taking a series of passive choices and decisions that steadily steer themself towards dying. In a similar but less apparent vein to the pre-resist 'cultists that went out of their way to show something is wrong with them'. The best example being that I can make an express point of purposely fucking up in combat in such a way that I'll be killed, whilst merely making it look like I suck ass at the game's systems.

Honestly I can't see much of a problem with that. Skill in combat is absolutely a role-playing situation, so as long as you're making an effort to create a story where you fail and die instead of immediately murdering yourself or running to cryo I don't have an issue.

Posted
12 hours ago, Kaed said:

Absolutely. Please do enforce that on both ends. I would joyfully support antags not being allowed to cryo the moment they're captured, including myself, if non antagonist were also held to the same standard of not instantly noping out of the game because an antag got them.

While I'm not up to scratch enough on de facto enforcement recently, it used to be very common for admins to handle ahelps about antags insta-ghosting when getting caught or mirked by security. Aaand the same for sec doing it. So ye, it should still be enforced like this.

Posted (edited)
17 minutes ago, Skull132 said:

While I'm not up to scratch enough on de facto enforcement recently, it used to be very common for admins to handle ahelps about antags insta-ghosting when getting caught or mirked by security. Aaand the same for sec doing it. So ye, it should still be enforced like this.

The specific issue here is that shoving yourself into cryo before you ghost is considered a specific exception to the behavior, because you're basically removing yourself from the round rather than just quitting and letting your body lie there - staff members will just kind of shrug and put their hands up saying 'well I can't force them to play'. 

I can recall several times where I thralled or converted a certain popular CMO character, who then immediately made a beeline for cryo, citing that he didn't feel that it was done to his satisfaction.

Edited by Kaed
Posted

this problem is the mindset

 

"I don't want misfortune to befall my character." is cancerous. 

 

Your character's consent is not required for bad things to happen to them, nor can you as a player prevent bad things from happening to them.

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Butterrobber202 said:

this problem is the mindset

 

"I don't want misfortune to befall my character." is cancerous. 

 

Your character's consent is not required for bad things to happen to them, nor can you as a player prevent bad things from happening to them.

No it isn't.

 

The issue is this prevailing attitude that just because someone doesn't want to be an antag's bitch directly at roundstart with little payoff, it means that it's just "I don't want misfortune to befall my character." Consider that players don't want to be a part of a potentially bad gimmick in a gamemode they may or may not like. Like it's a toxic attitude that people are supposed to be forced into roles that they don't want to be in. This isn't about dying or "losing", this is literally roundstart "you're part of the antag and you can't do anything about it."

Do you want to know a secret? Right now Aurorastation has a playercount of 47. Right now on the manifest there are only 23 on the manifest. I don't know the current gamemode is, but Aurora is absolutely fucking infamous for having an extremely low manifest to playercount ratio, ESPECIALLY when compared to other servers, and I've checked other servers. Hestia has a very high ratio. Baystation had a very high ratio when it had population . TGMC had a very high ratio when it had population.  Citadel has a very high ratio last time I checked.

Do you want to know why Aurora has this extremely low manifest to playercount ratio? It's because the gamemodes on Aurorastation are so phenomenally shit, people rather observe the round (either waiting for the next one or waiting to see what gamemode it is) than to risk playing at roundstart. I've literally made a habit of joining at the hour mark in Aurorastation and my enjoyment of the server has improved since then compared when I joined a new round. Things actually start to happen at the hour mark, which means that you can get a very accurate read of the round and determine if it's actually worth sticking around for. Decisions like these legitimately validate my strategy of playing the game and I think more people will do this because of this bad borer feature.

Do you want to know why people don't like this borer feature?

It's because the feature conflicts with the rules. There is 0 escalation, rp, or anything when you are instantly forced to be a borer's slave for the round.  If a cultist came up to you and stunned you instantly at minute 0, and tried to convert you, you'd probably be annoyed and that break rules. Borer is actually worse than that because the powers you recieve are earned and not given by the borer, and you can have some pretty shit tier borer players.

Edited by BurgerBB
Posted
8 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

Snipped

have we considered the small possibility that being forced into a scenario you were not expecting could maybe create unique role play.

 

isnt a part of roleplay being in the character's shoes, regardless of the scenario? I very much believe that you should have enough grasp on your character that you should be able to roll with the punches instead of instantly locking up because you didn’t get what you excepted.

 

Have we even for a moment thought “well the Borer doesn’t have to be a slave master”. It would also be perfectly fine if the bored just improved its hosts survival chances. The interaction between a host and an Antag could be just as friendly and cordial as the Diona Pacifist wizard that is determined to make you love him.

Posted
1 hour ago, Butterrobber202 said:

have we considered the small possibility that being forced into a scenario you were not expecting could maybe create unique role play.

 

isnt a part of roleplay being in the character's shoes, regardless of the scenario? I very much believe that you should have enough grasp on your character that you should be able to roll with the punches instead of instantly locking up because you didn’t get what you excepted.

 

Have we even for a moment thought “well the Borer doesn’t have to be a slave master”. It would also be perfectly fine if the bored just improved its hosts survival chances. The interaction between a host and an Antag could be just as friendly and cordial as the Diona Pacifist wizard that is determined to make you love him.

It can, but it's rare. Rare to the point where you can understand why people don't want to be involved in this.

 

Your optimism is really on par with when an AI, without even saying a word or anything, starts to do a network hack into the system.


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