human Valk's Human Lore Dev Application

[Valkrae]

Ckey/BYOND Username: Valkrae
Position Being Applied For: Human Lore Developer
Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page? Yes, I have.
Past Experiences/Knowledge:
- Played on Aurora from 2014-2016(2017)
- Ran a series of sci-fi government simulations on Discord known as Discord Plays Stellaris, which was a massive cooperative worldbuilding politics sim. 
- Years of cooperative worldbuilding experience, as well as Community Management as a result of DPS.



Examples of Past Work:
Discord Plays Stellaris: 
- The initial Reddit advertisement that was posted on r/Stellaris.

- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Roleplay/DiscordPlaysStellaris - The TVTropes page that was created by someone in the community.


Additional Comments:

THREE THINGS I LIKE:
- The Tau Ceti Free Trade Zone: Capitalism is very based.
- Human Diaspora: Humans everywhere, millions of lightyears from home. Manifest Destiny, but WITHIN THE STARS!
- Liberal Democracy Intervenes in Everything: The Sol Alliance & NanoTrasen are a liberal democracy that likes to put its nose into everything, just like the GREAT UNITED STATES.

THREE THINGS I DON'T LIKE:
- Lack of player/political interaction: It'd be cool if there were some form of Congress/Senate that players could participate in that would have an effect on the Lore.
- Dominia is weird, and I don't understand it. I get the lore behind it, but it's the specifics of it that I just can't seem to grasp. Maybe I'm just dumb.
- More migrant-type factions, that don't have a set home? I'm not sure if that exists, but I can't seem to find it in the wiki. I like nomadic factions, since spaceborne humans are cool.

MY MAIN GOAL:

- Create a structured way of internal politics RP for some of the major nations, so that people who are interested in that nation can directly influence, and change their preferred faction. This will utilize what I've learned while running DPS.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Valkrae

[Scheveningen]

I can verify at least half of these credentials. Valkrae, when he puts his mind to something, will git'erdun. Sorry that I don't have a massive paragraph of praise to throw onto the OP, though, this'll kinda have to do.

[Carpe Venenum]

ATLAS was a big political force with a lot of community input, but was (and still is) generally really disliked. In your opinion, what were the pitfalls of ATLAS and how would you avoid them in the lore you write?

[Valkrae]

44 minutes ago, Carpe Venenum said:

ATLAS was a big political force with a lot of community input, but was (and still is) generally really disliked. In your opinion, what were the pitfalls of ATLAS and how would you avoid them in the lore you write?

I should preface this by saying that I never really interacted with ATLAS, and my only real knowledge of them was occasionally interacting with someone with minor IAC affiliation back in (c) 2015.

So, to ask what the pitfalls were? I don't really know. From glancing at their wiki, and it's skeletal state one could easily assume that it was a harmless, fringe party that only had mild success in the government. However, in my experience of running political sims, there are always going to be parties that people don't agree with. I imagine that funding a paramilitary organization, while running as a xenophobic Human supremacist party definitely drew parallels that weren't exactly popular. I've asked around on the Lore Discord, and from the small amount of information I have gathered, it seems as if the faction was simply handled wrong.

I wouldn't avoid adding things like this in Human lore, but I would approach it with a bit more balance and thought given the nature of SolGov. At the end of the day, avoiding xenophobia in a sci-fi setting isn't the right way to go about it, but attempting to make it overly powerful with no real political build-up isn't the right way to go. ATLAS seems like it could've been an interesting political force in SolGov, and the fiction at large. 

To put my thoughts into words; Make it more nuanced, instead of 'ALIENS BAD, HUMANS GOOD'. Maybe try and push more human welfare movements in disparaged areas, while secretly lobbying against Xeno welfare laws and policies in the SolGov, as well as lobbying other Human-centric governments to pass Human-centric policies. With the idea for an actual government simulation behind this, I think it would be neat to see people's logic and reasoning behind their xenophobic ideals, as well as making sure that it's handled correctly and respectfully.

I hope my thoughts weren't too scatter brained. As I said before, I'm not super familiar with ATLAS as a faction, aside from the wiki and what I learned on the Lore Discord.

[Zundy]

11 hours ago, Valkrae said:

THREE THINGS I DON'T LIKE:
- Lack of player/political interaction: It'd be cool if there were some form of Congress/Senate that players could participate in that would have an effect on the Lore.
- Dominia is weird, and I don't understand it. I get the lore behind it, but it's the specifics of it that I just can't seem to grasp. Maybe I'm just dumb.
- More migrant-type factions, that don't have a set home? I'm not sure if that exists, but I can't seem to find it in the wiki. I like nomadic factions, since spaceborne humans are cool.

In brief, what would you do, change and create for these three things?

[Valkrae]

9 hours ago, Zundy said:

In brief, what would you do, change and create for these three things?

1. POLITICS
Create a vector for people to RP as politicians, and get stuck into the political machinations of a nation they're interested in. While someone might not give a single shit about Tau Ceti, people might be really into Dominian politics and want to do some inter-house RP that isn't station-bound. This also goes for the Coalition, and SolGov.

2. KEESER IS DEAD, AND NO HEIR IS EMINENT
Create some internal strife for Dominia, allowing some of the Dominia players to have some internal stress to worry about.

3. The Fleet with No Port
A fleet of scrapped together ships, stations with engines strapped to them, and whatever else could potentially fly in space. 

--

These are a bit barebones, and they're not the only ideas I have, just an example of what I'd be interested in trying.

[The7thLain]

2 hours ago, Valkrae said:

3. The Fleet with No Port
A fleet of scrapped together ships, stations with engines strapped to them, and whatever else could potentially fly in space. 

The Scarab Fleet and to a degree, Techno-Conglomerate fleet both already use this sort of mentality and practice, especially the Scarabs as they style themselves as off-worlder space nomads complete with spiritualism and superstition. How would any planned additions to the universe remain diverse from these already existing factions and not step on their toes?

Edited August 4, 2020 by TheBurninSherman

[Valkrae]

23 minutes ago, TheBurninSherman said:

The Scarab Fleet and to a degree, Techno-Conglomerate fleet both already use this sort of mentality and practice, especially the Scarabs as they style themselves as off-worlder space nomads complete with spiritualism and superstition. How would any planned additions to the universe remain diverse from these already existing factions and not step on their toes?

Somehow, I completely forgot the Scarabs existed. So, I guess I'd just focus on fleshing out the Scarabs a bit more. I'd like to run some events around them, and things like that. 

My mistake, Let me.. come up with a different idea for that third one. 

[Valkrae]

In all actuality, I'd probably focus on fleshing out some of the Minor Planets present in the major Human players. Smaller, less populated planets that could give someone an interesting bit of character background if they didn't want to come from one of the big boss planets. I'd need some time to think this through, of course, and this might be subject to change upon discussion with the Lore Team, Administration, and Community at large.
 

Edited August 5, 2020 by Valkrae

[Faris]

Your name is familiar as a member of this server. I'll post some more specific questions at a later date, though I have a concern that I'll post today.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall you would show up somewhat irregularly, play for a bit and disappear. This itself is not an issue, we all have our obligations and interests. The issue here is you seemed to have returned recently and applying for one of the more important roles on staff, the section of lore that governs the largest portion of our player base. So I have little to base on whether or not you would stick for long.

An issue lore has in terms of its writing is best explained with the "too many cooks in a kitchen" idiom which coupled with your proposal of a political roleplay system that will require supervision and administration to properly function and that I have little to base on in terms of your consistent activity has me concerned. There's the potential that you enact the above and then leave not long after, needing a replacement who may need to axe what you have done and then add another "cook to the kitchen".

In general, staff has seldom accepted new players or players recently returned into staff positions, especially one of the more important ones. 

[Valkrae]

3 hours ago, Aboshedab said:

Your name is familiar as a member of this server. I'll post some more specific questions at a later date, though I have a concern that I'll post today.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall you would show up somewhat irregularly, play for a bit and disappear. This itself is not an issue, we all have our obligations and interests. The issue here is you seemed to have returned recently and applying for one of the more important roles on staff, the section of lore that governs the largest portion of our player base. So I have little to base on whether or not you would stick for long.

An issue lore has in terms of its writing is best explained with the "too many cooks in a kitchen" idiom which coupled with your proposal of a political roleplay system that will require supervision and administration to properly function and that I have little to base on in terms of your consistent activity has me concerned. There's the potential that you enact the above and then leave not long after, needing a replacement who may need to axe what you have done and then add another "cook to the kitchen".

In general, staff has seldom accepted new players or players recently returned into staff positions, especially one of the more important ones. 

That's a fair concern, that I have no real answer for. 

The main reason that I stop playing every now and again is simple; Sometimes I don't find SS13 fun to play. There wasn't really any off-server RP/interaction from when I would go into long stretches of inactivity back when I initially was playing. With the political RP 'system' (I hesitate to call it a system, and more like off-server events), I had hoped to contain it to solely Discord, so that even if I, personally, don't feel like playing SS13, I can still be around to manage/run it. 

If I'm not selected, and someone else is, then so be it. I won't be entirely surprised. I mostly just made the application as a suggestion of a new idea/vector to take with Human Lore that I thought would be interesting. 

I hope I answered your concerns, and if I didn't, slap me with some specific follow-ups and I'll try and answer 'em.

[Mofo1995]

Hello!

Thanks for your interest in the position, but I have decided to accept another applicant. Be sure to check out if any more applications open up in the future!