Zer0Winds Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 So, I understand the rule in place to avoid metagaming. It just doesn't entirely make sense considering Vampires are an actual thing, and I don't believe they'd just... be forgotten simply because it's the future. I feel like you should be able to acknowledge vampires in-character, especially if you have reason to. I mean, other races or specific factions can reference their mythological entities without issue. Some examples... Tajara. They can yell about their mythological beasts for pretty much anything, not limited to vampires. In fact, they often tend to. It's the same exact situation as yelling "vampire" or "ghosts" or "demons" or whatever, but under a different name. Unathi. Similarly, they can yell about their own entities. A little more vague, such as "Daemons" in Si'akh, but again, same thing, different name. This is less common, unless the Unathi is like a Shaman or whatever, but it's perfectly allowed. Scarabs. Shaitan are almost a perfect fit for vampires. The only thing Vampires do instead is drink blood, but the way Scarabs are, some iterations of Shaitan are likely able to have that part of it. As a result, Scarabs can call out Shaitan instead of vampires... Exact same thing, different name. So, here we have a human. Guy from... Let's say Biesel, as its generic enough. So, we have a person drinking blood, paralyzing people with their eyes, making people their thrall, phasing through walls... And if you call vampire, you have a chance of being bwoinked for metagaming. So they instead go "Huh. How strange. Those are some pretty advanced augments." or "Wow, what a peculiar mutation". I get those excuses being used by a more scientific or less-superstitious person, but what about a guy who would believe in vampires and ghosts still? Why can't they say "Holy shit. It's a vampire." when they are being obviously supernatural? All these other people can, just with a different name. Tell me, is it really metagaming to acknowledge a vampire? Or to believe in them? Why, just because its a gamemode? You have all these other supernatural, mythological beings that exist in lore, that people can, will, and do reference instead of vampires. It has the exact same effect, with a different name. I mean, if someone immediately jumps to vampirism when a patient missing blood comes into medical, without any reason, then that would likely be metagaming. But that can and should be met with a bwoink, for good reason. Established slightly superstitious characters should be allowed to acknowledge vampires without issue. I'm not saying these other entities are the same as a vampire with a different name, either. I am saying that calling a vampire those entities in-character, is the same exact situation as calling a vampire a vampire in-character, but a different name. The only difference is that calling a vampire a vampire might get you bwoinked.
Faye <3 Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 honestly i had no idea you could get bwoinked for this? it reminds me of the trope about how like, everyone in a zombie movie exists in a world without zombie movies. kinda silly imo
Butterrobber202 Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 I didn't think you could get bwionked for calling a creature, who is at the very least very much LIKE a Vampire, a Vampire.
Shenaanigans Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 I wouldn't say that this is currently something that's not allowed? At least, if someone ahelped a person referring to a vampire as a vampire and I took the ticket I would say it's fine, because yeah pop culture exists and vampires are a concept that's been around for hundreds of years already. I won't speak for the entire admin/mod team, though.
jrphoenix303 Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 There's a big grey area there, it seems. I've been chided for talking about Wizards, or acknowledging magic, or w/e about mercs, etc etc. It's a slippery slope between disallowing it altogether, and ending up with people simply calling out what the gamemode is in more or less words. I would think that it would be allowed, after all, a lot, if not all but a few of the antag modes' things (wizard, vampire, shapeshifter-changeling) have existed in our real world long before history split for this lore. That'd make me lean towards this needing to be normalized, honestly. 15 minutes ago, Shenaanigans said: ... because yeah pop culture exists and vampires are a concept that's been around for hundreds of years already. ... This is basically the point I wanted to make in bigger words.
Guest Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 I've actually been bwoinked for this before. It was a long while ago, but one of my characters who has believed vampires were real since before it was a game mode, was telling some people about them. He mentioned their powers, including flight, super strength, hypnotic gaze, and shapeshifting. Now, some of those are in-game, and some of them aren't, but they are also some of the powers that vampires are said to have in pop culture. I got bwoinked for metagaming and "telling people the round type early".  Funny thing was, I didn't even know the round type. I was just talking about vampires and it happened to be a vamp round.
Shenaanigans Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 20 minutes ago, jrphoenix303 said: There's a big grey area there, it seems. I've been chided for talking about Wizards, or acknowledging magic, or w/e about mercs, etc etc. It's a slippery slope between disallowing it altogether, and ending up with people simply calling out what the gamemode is in more or less words. Yeah, the only problem with IC knowledge of the supernatural is when people use it to have a full understanding of how those antags' powers work-- as in just innately "knowing" that a wizard needs their robes to cast or deciding it's "common sense" that you cut off a chaneling's head or stick them in an incinerator to permanently kill them. Being generally familiar with these entities in concept is totally fine on its own. 12 minutes ago, moom241 said: I've actually been bwoinked for this before. . . Which brings me to saying that it's difficult to put a hard, tightly constrained rule in place on this sort of thing. It'll vary case by case and depend heavily on things like situation, character background, character beliefs, and the intention of the player. Obviously someone suddenly becoming very superstitious and open to the idea of the supernatural existing when they're normally a very logical, scientific character is suspicious, but if it fits within RP and isn't taking OOC knowledge of mechanics to get an IC edge over antags then it's generally going to be fine. My only advice is to take care and think on what your character should know.
Alberyk Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 From my experience, in most of the cases people are bwoinked for saying vampire in character is when they yell it after someone used the flashing eyes; something that is far different and does not relate to vampire unlike drinking blood.
Guest Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 What shouldn't a character know about a famous monster? It's like if you met a zombie on the streets, eating people and doing zombie stuff. Of course you know to cut off its head because that's how zombies generally work. This particular character does believe that vampires exist and has knowledge about how the mythological creatures act in general. Â Now, I agree, if one sees an eye flash and immediately calls out the game mode on the radio that's some shit. But the supposed powers of vampires are multitudinous and could be learned from an NTNet search.Â
Faye <3 Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 (edited) I think that it is more of a say,- an occam's razor thing. If for instance, someone has flashing eyes or a screech that can shatter glass, what is more probable? That there is a supernatural presence stalking the station, or that someone may just have advanced augmentation work, a gadget or some other similarly high-tech object in our sci fi setting. That is my take on it, anyways. Edited February 9, 2021 by Faye <3
Kintsugi Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 I think this just shows the biggest problem with vampires as a mode. Instead of being some interesting space monster phenomenon, they're... just vampires? Mythological vampires? It's kinda dumb.
Zer0Winds Posted February 9, 2021 Author Posted February 9, 2021 Honestly if they were made something else, similar to what Danse says, such as some other space monster phenomenon, then you can talk about vampires without issue. Then anyone can put their character's beliefs onto that creature. Shaitan, Vampires, Demons... Or aguments, mutations, et cetera. Superstitious people exist, and will exist into the future. So will people who try to find scientific answers about it.
SinfulBehaviors Posted March 15, 2021 Posted March 15, 2021 I gotta agree with Faye here. If a vamp is flashing folk or veil stepping, those are things that could be explained through science, right? But when that dude suddenly sprouts fangs and starts sucking a person's blood, that's the point when it's time to call a vamp a vamp. It should be on the players to actually be reasonable about it and not just immediately drop the v-word. Changing the vamps to be a space monster would be lame, IMO. Like, we have only a few round types where we get to suspend our disbelief and trend into more fantasy elements. We should keep those as to not just drop everything into hard, serious sci-fi all the time.
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