Require non-canon events to abide by the roleplay standards set forth by the server.

[Kintsugi]

I'll make this brief: We have a problem with non-canon events. Now, there was a blissful period of time when practically none were being conducted: Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Within recent memory there's been a significant uptick in non-canon events, and as always it seems like there is no regard for actually generating interesting roleplay - for the most part, these end up being either what are essentially antagonist rounds but with staff backing for the bad guys, or non-sensical LRP rounds. While I respect the staff who run the events, as they just want to entertain the playerbase - I do not consider the events themselves as being a net benefit to the server.

 

Part of the problem is that non-canon events are entirely detrimental to one of the goals of Aurora - to generate meaningful roleplay. They are inherently non-canon, and they engulf the entire round. Unlike antagonist rounds, where you can pick and choose things to keep canon - the non-canon events touch everything. Oftentimes the sillier events encourage people to break character - just recently during a non-canon event, I saw people breaking character to reference OOC memes. During a normal round, this would not fly - but because Santa Claus was granting wishes such as destroying the entire Solarian Alliance, people lose focus on what Aurora actually is.

 

What I propose is that administrators who wish to run non-canon events need to be more specific as to what the event is going to be - a lot of the time I see votes that are just "add spice???". I also propose that administrators need to approach non-canon events with a serious tone in mind. The objective is not to run wild with your admin abilities - it is to create a situation that could not exist during a normal round, without compromising server atmosphere.

 

I know I'm a total stick in the mud, but I play Aurorastation for the roleplay. If I wanted to goof off and abandon actual characterization, I'd be on /tg/ or goonstation right now - or still on Baystation, for that matter. Closing statement? Most non-canon events are dissonant with the tone of the server, and encourage behavior that is dissonant with the rules, all while encouraging staff to forego rule enforcement in order to support their events.

Edited December 19, 2020 by DanseMacabre

[Aticius]

If I wanted wild and zany happenings, i'd go call up Goonstation and go kill tommy wiseau for the tommy gun and force people to run for 20+ minutes to avoid death by crusher.

 

Unfortunately, I, too, want to preserve server atmosphere.

[MoondancerPony]

For those who believe this is just Danse going "no fun allowed", keep in mind that this doesn't mean we can't have fun events. We've had a number of very, very fun non-canon events in the past, with plenty of quality roleplay generated. I believe that everyone on this server finds roleplay fun (that's why we're here, after all), so there should be no issue with having non-canon events that are both fun and don't involve LRP.

I also agree that there needs to be a bit more transparency with event votes. There have been a number of times where people have voted yes to "add spice" and then complained that the "spice" ruined their round, or wasn't what they expected, etc. If you want a non-canon event to have secrecy involved, it should ideally be pre-scheduled with a description like "non-canon horror event involving Tajara lore" or something; heck, you could even put that as a vote!

If you still want a low-RP/goofing-off event, it should be pre-scheduled a la Ass Day on Goon so people can choose to opt out. No one's plans for a fun round of roleplay should be derailed that heavily by a rogue "add spice????" vote.

[Cnaym]

37 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

We have a problem with non-canon events.

Not all of us, funny stuff is fun.

37 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

Part of the problem is that non-canon events are entirely detrimental to one of the goals of Aurora - to generate meaningful roleplay.

Under these ideals we would also need to scrap a lot of canon events.

38 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

I also propose that administrators need to approach non-canon events with a serious tone in mind. The objective is not to run wild with your admin abilities - it is to create a situation that could not exist during a normal round, without compromising server atmosphere.

The admins just throw in the carrot, what the crew decides to do with it is the issue from what I have seen and experienced myself.

 

28 minutes ago, MoondancerPony said:

No one's plans for a fun round of roleplay should be derailed that heavily by a rogue "add spice????" vote.

Absolutely should be! Not only voted the playerbase for said event, they even enjoyed it as seen by the feedback vote.

I absolutely get that certain events, roundtypes, command members, whatevers can ruin your round. In that case I take a step back and play something else for an hour or two. If the rest enjoys it who am I to stop it from happening. How serious you take the spin is up to you, people still provide great roleplay even on zombie rounds, but if you decide to stick around for the action part you cannot claim to be thrown in without warning. Add spice is a good meme, it means the round will be different, can be good, can be bad, the vote just suggests different. Funny enough that the rules still apply though, from my time I remember it not only being more work to make such stuff happen, but also keep the people in check who meme around with it. So in all honesty, I am rather grateful that server staff is willing to put up with it to provide something special.

Thanks to whoever hosted Santa.

[Kintsugi]

Just now, Cnaym said:

Absolutely should be! Not only voted the playerbase for said event, they even enjoyed it as seen by the feedback vote.

Let me just point out that people who don't enjoy things don't often stick around to vote "I didn't like it". It's not a good metric for actually gauging how good an event was.

[MoondancerPony]

2 minutes ago, Cnaym said:

Under these ideals we would also need to scrap a lot of canon events.

Could you provide an example of LRP canon events? "Meaningful roleplay", to me, doesn't mean it has to be the centrepiece of the round, just that if it doesn't generate roleplay, then it doesn't actively impede it either.

[Cnaym]

2 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

Let me just point out that people who don't enjoy things don't often stick around to vote "I didn't like it". It's not a good metric for actually gauging how good an event was.

Fair, but we got this nice feedback thread now, which replaces the usual staff complaints that pop up after events. Don't get me wrong, this is a massive improvement. But the overall feedback seems to be rather positive.

2 minutes ago, MoondancerPony said:

Could you provide an example of LRP canon events? "Meaningful roleplay", to me, doesn't mean it has to be the centrepiece of the round, just that if it doesn't generate roleplay, then it doesn't actively impede it either.

My most impeded round probably had three tanks in the hallways in it, does not mean I did not enjoy it or would consider it LRP, just that it influenced a rather large portion of "my" round. It's hard to call an event LRP when the rules clearly aim to make any round HRP, we even fought Satan on station and it went down with more roleplay than the average round. It's not the gimmik that decides how the round turns out on the roleplay scale but a mixture of player behavior and staff response. As such Santa giving out presents is not more or less RP than the average wiz or ninja round, it's just different.

Overall it generated a lot more roleplay than it impeded so I find it rather rude to call it LRP.

The requirement to fulfill certain standards is given by the rules, not the round or event type.

Ahelping and / or staff complaints are the playerbases method to challenge rulings handled by ingame staff, calling the entire idea of non-cannon events LRP is a bit on the extreme side of things and as hinted at in my early post, rather ungrateful towards the people trying to provide us with free entertainment.

[MoondancerPony]

1 minute ago, Cnaym said:

As such Santa giving out presents is not more or less RP than the average wiz or ninja round, it's just different.

This complaint isn't against silly round premises, it's against events that encourage people to break character, as stated in the topic post. There is a difference between "funny stuff" and, as Danse said in the topic post, "breaking character to reference OOC memes."

[Cnaym]

Yeah that is clearly against the rules though, you should ahelp such things.

[Garnascus]

Can you detail a recent non-canon event that you had problems with? What specific traits do these rounds have?

[niennab]

What I fear from this sentiment is that we’ll likely just see a decease of events all together. There was a halloween event last year that, although silly, left me with a memory and something that broke up the general monotony of traitors stealing the spare and mercenaries taking hostages but offering no demands.

Perhaps it’d be worth giving players a sort’ve concept of what to expect (ie. silliness, seriousness etc) but beyond that, I don’t know.

[Coalf]

I think "LRP" rounds are a net benefit to the server IF done sparingly. As a player I've enjoyed going gung-ho with friends, acquintances and people I frequently talk with, as an admin it's helped alleviate stress and event experiment with some of the "wilder" verbs we have. It makes the server more of an all around experience for those people who don't enjoy the kinds of people that hang out on servers like /tg/ /vg/ /goon/ /bee/ etc. but still want to have a bit of mindless fun.

But to re-iterate

These events should be done sparingly, no, 3 times a monht is not sparingly. They should be an exception, not a semi-round-type.
These events should be CLEARLY OUTLINED, I agree 100% that the whole "want to make the round more fun?" is an extremely shitty way to vote-sway by being vague. Since "more fun" ranges from spawning one more antag to the round (Completely acceptable on a more frequent basis) to having a clown climb up my ass and explode violently while going "HMM CHUNGUS MOMENT"

tl;dr I agree with Danse that the events are too frequent and not clearly outlined. I disagree with Danse that they don't add anything or that breaking the atmosphere is fundamentally bad (again, if done sparingly).

 

[geeves]

i agree with coalf

[Zundy]

I agree with coalf and thus basically with Danse in that LRP events are a good palate cleanser when done sparingly like adding pepper to a stew. However, vote outcome should be clear, not just "want some fun ;)". I feel like we had a ruling for that before to say we should just use vague statements to vote on.

[Camellia]

Yeah, I'm with Coalf on this one, it was a pretty deep character moment when Tavarr got his powers from The Monolith (to unite Adhomai.)

Edited December 19, 2020 by Cylean

[Bear]

6 hours ago, niennab said:

What I fear from this sentiment is that we’ll likely just see a decease of events all together. There was a halloween event last year that, although silly, left me with a memory and something that broke up the general monotony of traitors stealing the spare and mercenaries taking hostages but offering no demands.

Perhaps it’d be worth giving players a sort’ve concept of what to expect (ie. silliness, seriousness etc) but beyond that, I don’t know.

I honestly can't write this better. I understand the frustration of perhaps the want of a normal round and maybe that's your only round for the day. But honestly? The round that even sparked this wasn't straight LRP. Was it wacky? Was it funny? Yes. Was it a nice break from the monotony of another lowpop wizard round? (which by the way this round started with a dead manifest so the admin in question took it upon themselves to do something with the otherwise post-apocalyptic CyberPunk manifests.

IDK chief, Santa as a wishgranter wasn't a bad round gimmick for Admin Spice if I'm being honest or out of line with the server rules. It was different sure, but not bad. As nienna said, I feel like the sentiment above will just kill and potential Admin's drive to host events. And in reality these events were generating roleplay for many people to begin with. The clearer outline isn't perhaps a bad idea despite myself not personally thinking it's needed, but I'm not sure what else would really come from this.

[Haydizzle]

I agree in the sense that non-canon events need some tweaking. I don't think the number of events that are ran in this way are problematic, but just ensuring 1) there are no votes after the round has started and 2) votes are more descriptive of what people are voting for would help I feel. Nienna's words of silly/serious, or other descriptors like drama/spooky/what have you is a good suggestion.

10 hours ago, DanseMacabre said:

I know I'm a total stick in the mud, but I play Aurorastation for the roleplay. If I wanted to goof off and abandon actual characterization, I'd be on /tg/ or goonstation right now - or still on Baystation, for that matter.

It is important to say this is a bit... misleading I think? A lot of people here are also here for the community and staff in addition to the server atmosphere. To say that "well you should go play Bay if you want goofy RP" is not applicable to people who don't go to Bay because they don't enjoy the people there or similar. That and, just because some people want super serious RP all the time, does not mean others do not either. Some people do enjoy the break in monotony for a more light-hearted round every now and then, especially one with things and events that don't usually happen.

10 hours ago, DanseMacabre said:

Part of the problem is that non-canon events are entirely detrimental to one of the goals of Aurora - to generate meaningful roleplay.

"Meaningful roleplay" is subjective. What you may not find meaningful, other people do; in fact, there were three different people in my DMs gushing about the last noncanon event to take place, so I'd say overall it was meaningful to them and how their characters behaved.

6 hours ago, Coalf said:

These events should be done sparingly, no, 3 times a monht is not sparingly. They should be an exception, not a semi-round-type.

I find this also to be subjective. Three times a month means that, even if you played two rounds every day for the entire month, you still only have a like 10% chance of playing in one of those anyway. Besides, tower defense has only happened three times total, so if you don't want it to be a semi-round type it'll never come up at that rate.

[Kintsugi]

7 hours ago, Haydizzle said:

"well you should go play Bay if you want goofy RP”

Allow me to just point out that I did not say anything like this, and that I never would tell somebody else in this community to play elsewhere for whatever reason. I made a statement regarding my own personal tastes, nothing more

[Kintsugi]

I would like to additionally point out that this thread was not made in regards to any specific event recently - it is not designed to throw shade at any administrator. In any case, I feel like it might be a better idea for me to retract this suggestion - there are a lot of toes to step on, and I don't really want to get further into this than I already have.

Edited December 20, 2020 by DanseMacabre

[Cnaym]

21 hours ago, DanseMacabre said:

In any case, I feel like it might be a better idea for me to retract this suggestion - there are a lot of toes to step on, and I don't really want to get further into this than I already have.

Nothing worthwhile comes without backlash. I'd be more than happy if none canon events would be announced on the discord so that people who want to play it can join and the rest can dodge it (this was not done for the last one for example. That's an option to every admin to make it clear even shor term that some sort of event is happening).

For all the subjective reasoning, like when is it too much or not, we still should make it clear to people about to join that something may be different than their usual experience.