head of staff [Accepted] Vulcenus Command App - [Insert Funny Title]

[Vulcenus]

BYOND key: Vulcenus
Character names: Ronald Monday, Donald Hays
How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Since January of 2020
Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: I'm kinda bored of simply being an epic security officer
Why did you come to Aurora?: Got bored from Baystation due to lack of new away maps and intolerable exploration players
Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Kind of skimmed through them
Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? Got warned for going AFK as a Cyborg in 2018 apparently
 

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: According to The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of roleplay (rōl-ˌplā), is to act out the role of something, or to represent them in action. It's more or less true, given it's The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. I think roleplaying is acting out the personality, traits and manners of a specific character, in my case Ronald Monday and Donald Hays, which are self inserts to a degree.

What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: To manage their respective departments, encourage people to work together and create roleplaying opportunities or instances by driving their department members to participate. As well as guiding new players and department members and show them the ropes, I guess.

What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: Well, given they are whitelisted, there's a degree of competency expected from the whitelisted players on an out of character level regarding their behaviour, since supposedly non-whitelisted characters are to look up to them as an example. I don't think there isn't or shouldn't be much of a difference between the responsibilities of a whitelisted and non-whitelisted behaviour and both should be held to a roleplaying standard, but that's just me. My experiences in the game has shown me that there isn't much to look up to, anyway  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau Ceti and how it affected your character and their career? Given all two of my characters and the ones I'm planning to make are Solarian, I'm gonna give this take in a Solarian's perspective. The current happenings in Tau Ceti is revolved around the shortage of Phoron reserves and declining supplies along with the outgoing shipments to the Solarian Alliance faltering in a noticeable fashion, and this is considered a bad move among Solarian circles, since pretty sure all my homies hate shuttlepooling to work to save Phoron. I don't think it affects characters like Monday and Hays in a big way, but the Command characters will most likely be put under the spotlight, especially Gateman, in order to improve and/or maintain relations to NanoTrasen and the Republic of Biesel and see what can be done about the current political climate between Biesel and Solarian Alliance.

What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Mainly Consular Officer and Captain, or so I think. I didn't really plan much
Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking:

Patrick Gateman - Solarian Consular Officer 

Leonard Clausewitz - Head of Security

Thomas Nyswonger - Captain

How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I think rating people's roleplay is stupid
Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action?: Yes
Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles?: Sure
Extra notes: Lava really hurts if you touch it

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by Shadow
formatting so that the app looks longer than it is

[Shenaanigans]

You mad lad you actually posted the application...

Well, if Vulc wants to torture himself experience the wonder of Command then I'm happy to throw my support behind him getting a trial. Despite only ever playing two characters, he's shown an ability to RP out a fleshed out, interesting, and memorable personality-- as anyone who's met Ronald Monday ICly can attest to --and routinely handles the chaos of security as an officer main without defaulting to "unga antag smash" or letting it turn his character into an unfeeling baton dispenser who only goes back to acting like a person once the antags are dead. I think he'd contribute well to providing engaging RP as command and could be trusted to not abuse the privileges that come with the role.

+1 even though ur crungus

[StationCrab]

+1 - I enjoy interacting with Ronald Monday, I see no harm giving this player a trial!

[ryog]

Vulcenus is a cool dude that manages to play two believable, humane characters with an interesting enough and consistent story to showcase his proficiency in convincing roleplay. IC, I have primarily interacted with Ronald Monday, but I have also had the pleasure of running a couple shifts in supply with his QM, Donald Hays. The impression I get from both is that, as a player, he is invested in the welfare of the department he's working in, and I think that's an excellent quality to have when putting yourself in a command position. I'm interested to see the direction he would take for his new characters and the additional responsibility that comes with it. +1 for me on the trial.

note: blobcomfygun

[Wigglesworth Jones]

I haven't had experience with Hays, but I have had a lot of experience with Monday, who I know to be a competent officer and more importantly a good character. They know their shit, and they deserve a trial if nothing else.

+1 real cool gamer

[Scheveningen]

+1, incredibly cool gamer and good roleplayer. Monday is one of the most degenerate officer characters I've ever seen played on a roleplaying server but I love them

[armrha]

+1, Ronald Monday is great and I always feel safe in his arms. Looking forward to seeing how he plays HoS in his trial.

[Yonnimer]

While I agree your RP quality when it comes to non-antag situations is fairly good, your behavior towards antags and their gimmicks has left a lot to be desired. You seem to be overly aggressive to antags and way too quick to jump to shutting down a antag's gimmick, this doesn't' exactly make me comfortable with you being a HoS, or any command role really.

Also, 

Quote

Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Kind of skimmed through them
 

This really does not make me feel good about this app.

Gonna have to give a -1 here chief. 

[Vulcenus]

21 minutes ago, Yonnimer said:

While I agree your RP quality when it comes to non-antag situations is fairly good, your behavior towards antags and their gimmicks has left a lot to be desired. You seem to be overly aggressive to antags and way too quick to jump to shutting down a antag's gimmick, this doesn't' exactly make me comfortable with you being a HoS, or any command role really.

Gonna have to give a -1 here chief. 

I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with your opinion, and if you can give me examples regarding this "overly-aggressive to antags and shutting down an antag's gimmicks" behaviour, I believe I can explain it very well. Still, each to their own, I suppose.

Also, just being truthful there. Given the current holders of Command whitelists, I'm pretty sure more than half of them didn't even bother to skim through it. They are (the wiki pages) acting as guides for the respective roles, and I don't believe I need to study and memorize the entire page to play the roles properly. I'm fairly sure I can carry myself pretty well. Thanks for the input.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Vulcenus
had to edit to respond to an edit

[Scheveningen]

I meaaaaaaan just because you think a portion of the applicants don't read it and say they did read it doesn't necessarily justify you not reading it but being honest about not having read it, really. It's good that you didn't pull an easy fib about it (which shows you have some convictions and character at least), but I think it is still worth addressing that you should know what you're signing up for, no? Head of staff is very stressful to play and oftentimes is more simulated suffering and crisis management than it is fun if you aren't aware of how the shit can hit the fan. It's important to still read those guidelines and how to think on a basic level to do well with the role(s).

[Vulcenus]

1 hour ago, Scheveningen said:

I meaaaaaaan just because you think a portion of the applicants don't read it and say they did read it doesn't necessarily justify you not reading it but being honest about not having read it, really. It's good that you didn't pull an easy fib about it (which shows you have some convictions and character at least), but I think it is still worth addressing that you should know what you're signing up for, no? Head of staff is very stressful to play and oftentimes is more simulated suffering and crisis management than it is fun if you aren't aware of how the shit can hit the fan. It's important to still read those guidelines and how to think on a basic level to do well with the role(s).

Sure, of course, I'm not saying that. I'm also not saying I did not read it. I skimmed through it given the Head of Security section is really nothing but one way of doing things, which I don't really necessarily need, because I disagree with how most things work inside the Security and how it's ran by the majority of the rank-holders. I did read about the Finances section of the Captain page, as well as the Corporate Regulations and Standard Operating Procedure pages that I believe are tied to the job, just not the job page itself. Thus, I'm saying I skimmed over them, because most of the things written in there are common knowledge and/or things that can easily be done with common sense. Don't get me wrong.

I also agree that Command roles are mostly stressful occupations, and Head of Security being the most and the tankiest of stress of all, and I'm pretty sure I can handle the stress given I've ran squads of incompetent explorers and the Exploration department for around two years (again, not to say I know all things Command related, just putting it out there given the circumstances) in Baystation, so I'd say I'm sort of knowledgeable on how to run things under stress and manage crises.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Vulcenus
couple bits

[Shadow]

Hello, I'll be handling your application.

I'll be honest here, 4/5 of your notes are because of validy behaviour. 

I don't think, despite your good RP, allowing you to be HoS is in our best interest.

[Vulcenus]

6 hours ago, Shadow said:

Hello, I'll be handling your application.

I'll be honest here, 4/5 of your notes are because of validy behaviour. 

I don't think, despite your good RP, allowing you to be HoS is in our best interest.

Hello. I didn't know I had that many notes regarding apparently "validy behaviour" which is funny, since I've been accused of not paying attention to antagonists enough (by taking my time to interact with other crew members outside security in a not overtly, if at all hostile situations), previously. I'm fairly certain whenever I got adminhelped by an antagonist or somebody who didn't find my approach "correct" or "called for" I was able to explain myself and my reasoning behind my actions pretty clear and reasonably, and I will gladly repeat myself, if you can give me examples of instances where my actions as a security officer was "validy".

I also don't believe you can measure this sort of thing basing it off of actions done by a security officer without seeing how I do as a command member, and given the amount of frontlining command members already within the ranks, I don't think a 7 day trial will be a doomsday scenario for anyone involved.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Vulcenus
fixed a thing

[armrha]

I hope you guys give him a chance, people do learn and understand the community over time - it's not always a factor of maturity or trolling, just understanding the community and what makes the experience enjoyable for everyone compared to other servers. I did some really ridiculous things in my first couple months here and managed to change my behavior to be more in line with what we're expected of here, I think Vulcenus could do it personally. I was an antag in a round where Vulcenus was the main security officer that confronted us as mercs and he was the more well-reasoned of the two security officers and tried to de-escalate the situation after we had broke in to the bunker. The other one shot me in the face in the middle of the conversation.

[icedcabbage]

Hey Cabbage here, I've RPed with and worked along side Vulcenus's Ronald Monday character a lot and I can say that he is one of the best Security Officers we have, his roleplay is great and I have never seen them engage in any validy behavior, it actually the opposite. They are very level headed and choose to roleplay things out instead of jumping into combat. Big +1

[UnknownMurder]

I'm just curious. I don't know if I have asked you or anyone ever asked you. Why do you not play other roles than Security? Are the other jobs boring or dull? 

I think it's good to have knowledge in other field and putting yourself in other people's shoes.

Edited July 31, 2020 by UnknownMurder
further statement

[Vulcenus]

2 hours ago, UnknownMurder said:

I'm just curious. I don't know if I have asked you or anyone ever asked you. Why do you not play other roles than Security? Are the other jobs boring or dull? 

I think it's good to have knowledge in other field and putting yourself in other people's shoes.

Hey, I actually started out Aurora in Cargo/Mining as Donald Hays, but given the nature of how things work in Aurora, it grew dull. So yes, I'm not playing other jobs because the Security Department is the one department that enables you to interact with everybody and everything going on inside the round.

[Shadow]

After thinking about this forever and three days I decided to give you a trial.

Lasts a week, try to get feedback regarding your command play.

[Guest]

+1   I was one of the security officers that worked under his command (Leonard Clausewitz) today. I can easily say that he is a natural, he was good as any other Heads. He handled the issues effectively and he was communicative enough; no problems, no conflicts. Personally, I also liked how he treated his staff as we received some nice words after dealing with the problems on the station, he genuinely values his staff and other crew members. 

I am already familiar with his Ronald Monday character, which is also good RP. No idea about his other characters. 

[Sky Kid]

+1

Vulc is one of the people I first interacted with back when I first started playing the server (and SS13 in general). He always was and still is a terrific person and a wonderful role-player. I never had any gripes with him OOC'ly, and we always communicated well. His HoS character is a wonderful example of a cohesive and unique character, who is not at all robocop-ish, who is fun to roleplay with and work with.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Sky Kid

[Estoytrucha]

Even before I knew that Vulc was Ronald Monday when I antagged I was always blown away by how far he went out of his way to not kill my antag "beast modes" before they were truly rabid and had to be put down. I used to legitimately test and rate sec on their ability to read situations and Vulc's character was one of the best at actual threat detection. Not always, of course, but a solid majority of the times I played with him. That's a big +1 from me.

Even though I think this might be a mistake because the player will probably not actually like command one he has it.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Estoytrucha
I'm an idiot. This was the wrong post.

[Scheveningen]

It was confusing to hear of alleged validhunting security play of the applicant from the staff here. I wasn't aware Ronald Monday was a vicious fun-hating antag killer under that otherwise interesting character exterior. I'm mostly being facetious of course, but as far as I can recall with recent play and etc, the player cannot really be characterized as that, unless there's something the entirety of staff has only experienced that nobody else has.

My prior impression still hasn't changed, of course, it's clearly someone capable of trying and ultimately executing a plan to the best of their ability. They've done good enough so far.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Scheveningen

[icedcabbage]

I'm leaving this review after just playing with his Head of Security character Leonard Clausewitz on an Extended round.  I had no clue it was him playing the character until the end of the round. His HoS play was very good, he talked to his Officers, he gave us direction and he acted like he knew what he was doing which I imagine he did. The only thing that was iffy to me personally was the jump from Red to Green even though we never caught the true thief. (Although I'm pretty sure it was an admeme messing with us on Secret Extended) I would've jumped to Blue but it doesn't really matter to me.

Big +1

[Vulcenus]

4 minutes ago, icedcabbage said:

I'm leaving this review after just playing with his Head of Security character Leonard Clausewitz on an Extended round.  I had no clue it was him playing the character until the end of the round. His HoS play was very good, he talked to his Officers, he gave us direction and he acted like he knew what he was doing which I imagine he did. The only thing that was iffy to me personally was the jump from Red to Green even though we never caught the true thief. (Although I'm pretty sure it was an admeme messing with us on Secret Extended) I would've jumped to Blue but it doesn't really matter to me.

Big +1

Hey, thanks. The jump from red to green was not my call, and I wasn't alerted beforehand. I think it was the Captain, though I never got confirmation. Only reason that I didn't raise back to blue was because we recovered the equipment and it'd be silly and hard to explain to the crew who were going "Well, that was fast. Good job".

[Waff-AI]

Incredibly solid roleplayer, very good at balancing out the IC responsibilities of the role with the OOC necessity for story development over valids. Played with him in a few rounds and saw his work in a few I was observing before I went off playing other games for a few days. Even his non-command characters during the trial have maintained a solid IC and OOC attitude and I'm sure he'll use the whitelist to its fullest in his years to come. Has my +1.