Stop Railroading Events

[CampinKiller]

This is going to be a doozy, but as the title says, the lore/event team should stop railroading events.

The vast majority of canon events in the last year have not required the crew of the Aurora to exist. This is because the outcome is pre-determined by the lore team, and enforced with one (if you're lucky) or a squad (normal) of players in admin-spawned, 90% damage resist armor, with guns that will outright kill someone in 2-3 hits. Most of the time the interaction with the crew is minimal, outside of the threat of being gunned down instantly with no chance to resist if you don't do exactly as you are told. This is not a rare occurrence. It happens so often that people should be afraid to work on the Aurora, or security, realistically, should be given military-grade arms. It wouldn't be so bad if you could call an ERT, but these events inevitably have every emergency response tied up at the same time, so the station has absolutely no choice but to get railroaded. In the end, the station will get boarded, have nothing to do but get run over by some nameless squad of kill machines, and then they will leave after 2 hours. Occasionally you might have someone get deleted for trying something stupid, but that's it. The crew is not required to exist on station, because this squad can get whatever they want, and nobody can lift a finger to stop them, or even delay them.

For us to claim to be a high roleplay server and simultaneously have these constantly railroaded events that have absolutely zero player agency is ridiculous. Events like this should just be written into a news article and posted, as opposed to doing what is essentially PK-fishing with deathsquad-level armaments on event characters. They are not enjoyable at all. It would be much better for player agency, and enjoyment, if events could actually be influenced by the players, as opposed to just shoved down the player base's throats. These super-marine events are a detriment to the server, everyone's enjoyment, and to the overall lore of the server.

[Marlon P.]

What are events that you've enjoyed that exemplify what you're looking for?

[Kaizr]

Can't agree more with this, as much as I hate to harp on it, the previous event was a prime example of railroading. Space-marines, security completely helpless, every single response team ever-so-convinientlely busy with something to the point that handling a hostage situation is "not as important" and so on. The crew were given the idea that their actions had influence but that was a falsehood, and majority of command and security players were put in a "get PK'd by the death squad or get PK'd for mutiny" situation. There was no wiggle room for crew involvement and the narrative of "haha gib phoron or die xd" was rammed down the crews throats, it was more akin to watching a movie than an event. The pre-determined nature of canon events has never gone well and is generally not very fun, and everytime the crew makes a move to change something it frequently ends in bloodshed. 

[Boggle08]

1 minute ago, Marlon P. said:

What are events that you've enjoyed that exemplify what you're looking for?

I'm not the OP, but I kind of enjoy events when the entire station is given a stationwide directive, mission, or project that necessitates joint cooperation between departments; they facilitate engagement as much as they provide a narrative. The KOTW event we had where we were thrust onto the phoron asteroid and told to build and prepare was a good example, even if it was rough around the edges and proceeded to crash later on.

I think the reason why the power level in these events gets ridiculous, specifically the ones when potentially hostile elements board the station, is because the event handlers don't want to enable achievement creep or power tripping in characters. The other reason, I think, is to prevent things that are wildly unrealistic or setting/narrative destroying from influencing the arc. The solution to keep things grounded, it seems, is to have elements of the event preordained, or give the event characters uncontestable equipment. 

I think the initial post of this thread is asking for a solution, but isn't specific at all about what that could be. Regarding gamemodes that involve physical, traditional conflict, the best way to address the above concerns whilst reducing player frustration would be to either reduce the wholescale setting consequentiality of the violence, or to have our station operate jointly with event characters in OP power armor to meet the challenge of the OP power armor characters. After hearing people in discord talk about it, this was sort of what the Geist event round was like, where a skyrim werewolf was randomly dropped into the the station and the crew had to survive it until the TCFL executed it.

[Alberyk]

1 hour ago, CampinKiller said:

The vast majority of canon events in the last year have not required the crew of the Aurora to exist. This is because the outcome is pre-determined by the lore team, and enforced with one (if you're lucky) or a squad (normal) of players in admin-spawned, 90% damage resist armor, with guns that will outright kill someone in 2-3 hits. Most of the time the interaction with the crew is minimal, outside of the threat of being gunned down instantly with no chance to resist if you don't do exactly as you are told. This is not a rare occurrence. It happens so often that people should be afraid to work on the Aurora, or security, realistically, should be given military-grade arms.

This is a lot of soapboxing. We probably had one or two events like that in the last year.

1 hour ago, CampinKiller said:

For us to claim to be a high roleplay server and simultaneously have these constantly railroaded events that have absolutely zero player agency is ridiculous.

It is heavy roleplay, not high. And unsure how this has to do with player agency.

[Pratepresidenten]

From my own experience with events where crew is given the reins with an external element, they either dont follow up and the event fizzles out forcing event holders to constantly nudge people to make something happen, or they fuck up the entire premise by imprisoning/killing the target almost right after its introduced, oooor command+security locks the event away, disallowing anyone else to interact with whatever is happening in the name of danger or security concerns. Or worst case scenario, huddles all the crew into one location and forces them to stay there with absolutely nothing to do.

Balancing and running events is not an easy task and there will always be a few people that will cry about how shit the event is, no matter what is done. It is literally impossible to please everyone.

[Cnaym]

My main gripe is having meta comms set up for events.
A clear documentation and goal, maybe some IC intervention would be far better than having the entire space marine squad sit in voice chat.

Not saying this is a frequent thing, but it's not something that happened only once either.

47 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

It is heavy roleplay, not high. And unsure how this has to do with player agency.

People expect to partake in storries, not observe or hide from them. The suggestion to just have such rounds as newspaper articles is not that bad, stuff like elections and such could be held on the Aurora itself to ensure players can contribute more than IRs.

[Marlon P.]

2 hours ago, Cnaym said:

People expect to partake in storries, not observe or hide from them. The suggestion to just have such rounds as newspaper articles is not that bad, stuff like elections and such could be held on the Aurora itself to ensure players can contribute more than IRs

I remember hosting these. Events would have election fundraisers or BBQ/social events. 

I've also been on both sides. Sometimes a dev has a story to tell, and sometimes its an open ended story. 

I don't play anymore what but once every other week but it looks like this conversation is still going on. I'd have to look back to see how it was addressed.  From what i remember sometimes having the most of an event take place off-station and having its consequences "carry over" is a great way to "railroad" without a lot of frustration. See the serial killer arc we had a long time ago, which couldnt be impacted until the halfway mark when an investigative phase began. Or if players do have a lot of agency, having the event revolve around something you cant shoot to death opens up a lot of breathing room.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Marlon P.

[Sparky_hotdog]

One of the main things that attracted me to SS13 in the first place was how many different things you can do, and how many different paths a round can take. Unfortunately events often seem to stifle this, as understandably the admins and staff running the events have an endpoint in mind. However, I wonder if events are necessary for these scenarios. If the follow-up news article regarding the event has near enough been written in advance of the round, why bother? Why not just release the article, and say it happened somewhere else for once, as the Aurora does seem to be a strangely underdefended facility considering the sheer number of national news worthy stories that have taken place there.

However, I do think events are fun, so in an effort to actually have some feedback around holding them, here's my thoughts. I think we often fall into the trap of mixing up interest and excitement. All events should be interesting; If they're not, they've somewhat failed as an event. But that doesn't mean all events have to be exciting; More relaxed, RP or lore heavy events could also be fun, and possibly make non-railroading easier. Having a character arrive on the station and just talk with the crew, maybe giving the crew a chance to alter their mind on a particular decision one way or another, is something that just doesn't seem to happen. Short of maybe Bad Moon episode 2, players rarely get a chance to simply be exposed to the lore, rather than be a means by which is is moved forward. On that note, exciting events don't have to be risk-of-death and/or murder mysteries, not least because that's a terrible way of involving anyone short of security imho. As Boggle mentioned, a station wide project, possibly with a time limit on completion for some external event, can be a good wat of providing excitement for all. This might also make the occasional railroaded event bearable; The current issue is that nearly every event at the very least feels forced.

That all said, I do still hold by the belief that if an event runner doesn't want their major lore character to die, don't send them to the Aurora. Send representatives, don't send anything at all, I don't mind. While the Aurora is a fairly important station, it's not important enough to justify almost every Spur changing event happening onboard, so if something's that critical to happen as planned, don't pretend we have the option to change it.

[CampinKiller]

5 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

What are events that you've enjoyed that exemplify what you're looking for?

Some in the KoTW arc - when the phoron bomb was being made and the crew were actually involved in making it (and then defending it), as well as when the pod crashed. The first big one on that asteroid was good as well. Odin Killer arc was a good one from back in the day, with the investigation being helped along by the crew pretty heavily. The Bad Moon had some good events, though I wasn't around much for that one. I'm not blind to the needs of the lore team to tell the story they have for the arc, but having a kill-squad on station so you can release your pre-written article is pointless, and not enjoyable. Those sorts of events should not continue to occur.

4 hours ago, Alberyk said:

This is a lot of soapboxing. We probably had one or two events like that in the last year.

It's really not, and to have my concerns brushed aside as such is pretty ridiculous. We've had at least two in this arc, with the previous event, as well as the first (I believe) event where the Tup in the same armor and weaponry were kidnapping people. The first KoTW event involving the 35th literally had 7 Marines in deathsquad-equivalent armor going around and goading the crew/security into a firefight by beating the shit out of random crewmembers, and in one case, arbitrarily killing Bear's brand-new EMT.

4 hours ago, Alberyk said:

It is heavy roleplay, not high. And unsure how this has to do with player agency.

That's an incredibly pedantic thing to lead with, first of all. The point about player agency and heavy roleplay is that we expect the roleplay in the round to be driven by the players and their character's actions and choices, not from a singular outside script that forces people into a pre-determined outcome.

[Alberyk]

14 minutes ago, CampinKiller said:

It's really not, and to have my concerns brushed aside as such is pretty ridiculous.

Never said that you don't have a point. You can make a point without blowing stuff out of proportion. You gave three or so examples while we had way more events last year. Saying that most events were railroad is shitting on people that hosted them because they are not. You are also talking about stuff that happened this year. So, no need to create some kind of drama/narrative where there is none.

[Carver]

I'll just leave an opinion: I like when a story has a pre-determined end, it almost guarantees it will be far better written, but the means to that end should be somewhat engaging as it has to involve the station in some reasonably understandable means. Being on a station presently is what often makes these feel odd, given it's a very remote setting that needs a strong excuse to be involved in anything.

I also hold the opinion that people should see far harsher consequences for any remotely stupid actions during events. Let people be more involved, but let them also far more readily lose characters for their acts of 'heroism' and idiocy (and this is including out-of-round means; such as arrests and blackbagging).