Discussion of the week: Should we actively prevent bad RP?

[Frances]

Here's something to talk about.

There's been mention of adding/removing both mechanics and lore, in an attempt to "prevent" people from being terrible. Genetic augmentation, for example, is currently not well-developed in our lore, due to the fear that people would create visually insane characters (as has happened before). As another example, a specific mechanic was coded, a few months ago, which scalped people with ridiculously long hairstyles whenever they tried to use heavy machinery (and it was hilarious). And even now, people are beginning to speak of removing certain hairstyles (which are popular), because they look "ridiculous" or snowflakey.

Also, there is actually a rule (which I added when reworking our rules a bit ago), but didn't really expect to strictly enforce, which is:

-Characters must be believable, and well-rounded. No insane or psychotic characters. No Mary Sues.

 

But somehow, the subject's never been actually discussed. It's certainly come up a few times since I was a mod, and has been something I asked myself a lot about. But I really think it's time we discuss it as a community, because I realize I have no idea what people actually want to do about this.

So the question is: To which extent should staff intervene in disciplining/curbing characters that are objectively bad? How would you like to see these characters handled?

[Guest]

To whatever extent the staff member is who is handling the case feels is necessary?

Personally, I think this server fears snowflakes more than balds, which is inherently hilarious and also objectively bad at the same time.

And another thing. A character is not objectively bad because one staff member says so. This is honestly a responsibility of the community as a whole to recognize relatively unbelievable characters and make complaints against them to have them be curbed.

Just because you do not like the character does not mean others do not either. This goes in line with "actively trying to prevent bad RP."

We do not have a predetermined line to decide whether something is bad RP until it comes along and everyone's hating that person for it. Everyone has a different style. Not everyone is going to like everyone.

[Jakers457]

Personally I want the term snowflakey stamped out. It's a lazy term that people use to either falsely reinforce their opinion or because they can't be bothered to place out a well thought out critique.

And I completely agree with Delta/1138. The second a community actively seeks out to prevent what they deem bad RP, they become somewhat elitist without realizing it and it creates an incredibly toxic environment. A roleplay server should welcome people who want to try out roleplay, not pave it's own desired regime of what counts as 'good rp.'

[VoltageHero]

To whatever extent the staff member is who is handling the case feels is necessary?

Personally, I think this server fears snowflakes more than balds, which is inherently hilarious and also objectively bad at the same time.

And another thing. A character is not objectively bad because one staff member says so. This is honestly a responsibility of the community as a whole to recognize relatively unbelievable characters and make complaints against them to have them be curbed.

Just because you do not like the character does not mean others do not either. This goes in line with "actively trying to prevent bad RP."

We do not have a predetermined line to decide whether something is bad RP until it comes along and everyone's hating that person for it. Everyone has a different style. Not everyone is going to like everyone.

 

This, more or less. Bad RP is subjective. If you want to call somebody's RP out, you better be ready to look at your own.

[Vanagandr]

One of the troubles with talk of 'bad' arr-pee- he says, as someone who had never even touched arr-pee before trying SS13 -is that everyone has their own definitions for terms like 'snowflake' and 'bad RP'.

For example, there's several characters who were supposedly raised by members of alien species' for... whatever reasons.

To me, that's snowflake. In fact, it's nearly as speshul as 'her eyes are different colours and glow when she's angry and she's incredibly smart and super beautiful'.

To the people who created them, it's an entirely reasonable background for a character.

Just look at the conflicts around characters like, oh, Phoebe Essel or Winston Carton. The creators have no problem with their arr-pee for obvious reasons, they've got supporters who also have no problems with it and they've got enemies who think their characters are bad and they should feel bad for creating them.

Just... yeah. Define "bad RP" and find a definition that everyone on the server agrees with, and meanwhile I'll take my sieve and I'll bail out the Atlantic.

[Frances]

Personally I want the term snowflakey stamped out. It's a lazy term that people use to either falsely reinforce their opinion or because they can't be bothered to place out a well thought out critique.

It refers to a specific kind of character, though. One that tries its hardest to stand out from the general population, either through Mary Sue-ish characteristics (super pretty, off-colored hair/eyes, super young and intelligent, etc), or through an incredibly dramatic backstory (they are the result of a questionable experiment, an escaped test subject, a highly trained commando in their teenage years, or simply had their entire family murdered for no good reason). Yes, you can go and point out the specific parts of a character which make this an issue, but "snowflake" is a pretty good label in some cases.

As for bad RP being subjective, let me throw a question at you all. An assistant joins the station one day. They are female, 20, and their name is "Sonozaki Ryugu". They have the beehive hairstyle, in pink, and add little bits of japanese expressions to their sentences whenever they can. They also use japanese honorifics when talking to people, call heads "senpai", and so on. Their contribution to every round is otherwise minor, and their personality is remarkably bland (save for being obsessed with "acting kawaii").

As a player, what do you think of this person, and what do you do?

[Jakers457]

I'd interact them. It's better to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them develop their ability opposed to stamping them out.

[Vanagandr]

Wot I think: ew.

Wot I do:

I'm sorry, my headset must have been EMP'd by the singularity; I haven't heard anything you said since you introduced yourself.

[Erik Tiber]

Just my perspective, but no offense, when I was working on the lore team people seemed to be frankly, a bit obsessed with ensuring that nothing 'snowflakey' could occur, using that as the primary motivation for many decisions more than coherence or whether this would make a nice setting. It seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me if you're restricting thing significantly to prevent snowflakes.

Even then though, 'snowflakey' is entirely relative. If neural implants are super common in lore and almost everyone has an MMI, then someone having two thirds of their brain replaced with prosthetics is not a snowflake. They're normal and would not be treated as remarkable. Problems with genetic engineering could be mostly solved by putting up a page listing common genemods and stating what regulations are in place, while explicitly mentioning certain things as just flat out unlikely.

Other things which should be unlikely are common, and to be frank, yeah, I'm one of these people. So many characters have amputated limbs from accidents rather than voluntarily. Lockie, obviously, is an example. Many people also seem to have some manner of disability or other that would, logically, be rather easily solved. Extensive scarring? Plastic surgery. I remember the various mute characters.

Really, we shouldn't try just throwing out so many different things for the sake of banning snowflakes. Just make a coherent aesthetic and just be descriptive. Describe what common cybernetic mods are and all that. Describe common genemods.

Both genemods and cybernetic augmentation offer interesting avenues for roleplay. For example, memory modification. Consider a character who routinely chose to erase their bad memories, because they felt that it was better to be happy and ignorant of all the bad stuff in their life. With genemods. Consider someone modified for increased neuroplasticity. This means they can learn at a notably faster rate (like not super fast obviously, but bear with me), but they also suffer significant personality changes as a result of their increased neuroplasticity. Or consider the corporate executive with a genemod allowing them to regulate their circadian rythm, meaning they only require four hours of sleep a night, or maybe only two. Imagine them working through absurdly long stretches of the day, for longer than most people are awake, like some tireless machine. (Such a character could probably be played as an HoP or IAA or RD). There's many interesting possibilities and ethical questions raised by these. And if they were instituted into the lore they would be semi-common. They would not make someone some bizarre attention-grabbing weirdo on station, they would be an average joe basically, which is antithetical to the purpose of making a 'snowflake' anyway.

Of course, where do you place the limitations? Personally, I'd prefer if there were some limitations based on what is biologically plausible, because I like that sort of fiction. Of course, by happy coincidence this would also ban much of the more outlandish and 'attention-grabbing' things. Make plastic surgery be cheap and affordable. People don't have an excuse to look like some weird freak or experiment. They could just get surgery and get that fixed. Maybe give people the option of giving their prosthetics a sort of pseudo-skin covering so they aren't immediately obvious (something I personally would REALLY like). There. If a character now has weird cat ears or something from an experiment, it would have to be because they want to have cat ears from some reason, and it is entirely by their own choice.

And since that stuff is by choice, really, why wouldn't they be subject to social sanction rather than interest?

Personally I think that we should focus on the, you know, elements of the character that are impacted rather than just their appearance. What makes someone a person. What determines your identity. Questions that are important to who someone is as a character.

EDIT: And of course. If people object to measures which mean that scars are now purely by choice and various other things, how are those all that different from the characteristics often decried as 'snowflakey'? Not as a counterpoint, but just so that we have consistent standards, that we apply consistently, whether those standards are lenient or not.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

For me, a character/rp/action has these two questions judging it:

1) Is it fun and or funny?

2) Is it harmless?

Someone having some unique "snowflake" aspect to them is fine if it's harmless, or a source of enjoyment for people. It's all mostly the fluff things; it can be silly, but it has to be reasonable to a point. We all don't need to be so serious all the time.

"Bad RP" for me are things that detract from enjoying the server, or makes things too ridiculous. It's a really subjective way to base judgement on, but RP "quality" itself is extremely subjective already, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Houssam twerks.

This covers characters as well. They can be as snowflake as you think you can get away with, as long as it's fun, harmless, and reasonably believable.

[Dea Tacita]

I feel iffy on this subject honestly. And to be clear, this is my opinion, not that of the staff as a whole.

Here's the thing, we're a Heavy Roleplaying server. Which means that people NEED to have a decent level of role playing ability to 'fit-in' I suppose.

I'll agree that the quality of role playing is somewhat subjective, but there's a point when 90% of people will agree that Urist Mcbadass, the ex-syndie Space 'Nam hero is terrible at role playing.

The conversation isn't about if Role play is subjective or not, it's about should the staff take active steps to root out people who stand out as particularly bad... my answer....In a way?

We shouldn't hand-out bans left and right, being elitist assholes that want to keep the same 40 people on our server all the time and alienating EVERYONE else who joins. We should be a firm guiding hand of sorts, staff can (and will) help players seeking to improve their role play, and have-before given out suggestion, tips and hints towards those who stand out as abnormally bad at role playing.

99.99% of people have the capability of role playing. Role playing is a skill that is built up overtime to improve steadily, and I firmly believe that the vast majority of people who click "Join" can role play to a high enough quality to settle in perfectly fine, or can be helped to reach that quality. I think that the guiding principle of the server's populace just needs to be "Don't be a dick" and "Help each other". Doing that, we can integrate almost anyone into Aurora so that they might enjoy the great RP that I love here.

There's always gonna be that 00.001% of people who just don't give a fuck though.

[Guest]

I suppose I should go ahead and put an opinion warning on this.

Bad RP is almost entirely subjective.

An attempt to actively put a stop to all the bad RP would mean that a small group of people who share the same opinion on what constitutes bad RP will have to force their vision of good roleplay on everyone else, because all of us taken together have different, conflicting ideas of what bad RP is.

If we want to prevent "bad RP" we have to collectively decide what we view as unacceptable RP first, and even then I feel that core players who have been here a long time will be given a free pass to make or keep snowflakes, and only newbies who migrate from other servers with softer RP policies will be the ones to suffer under such a regime.

Expanding on that, there's already a lot of special snowflakes on the server, who have been here for a long time (Hell, I play one). Grabbing pitchforks and torches and going on a snowflake hunt while enjoying our own snowflakes would be immensely hypocritical.

So, in my opinion we should not actively take measures against snowflakes unless they cross over the invisible poorly defined border of RP which is too awful to be allowed to continue. And I believe that certain line should remain invisible and poorly defined.

At the risk of driving the thread off topic, what do you think seperates a good snowflake from a bad snowflake?

[Frances]

As much as I'd like to reply to everything, I can't without making a horribly spammy post. So I'll stick to a thing or two.

 

Just my perspective, but no offense, when I was working on the lore team people seemed to be frankly, a bit obsessed with ensuring that nothing 'snowflakey' could occur, using that as the primary motivation for many decisions more than coherence or whether this would make a nice setting. It seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me if you're restricting thing significantly to prevent snowflakes.

This is true. This is an area where we shouldn't apply a patch through the lore, but rather get to the source of the problem, and if we are to prevent people from doing certain things, outright tell them that it's because they're bad, not because they're not lore-compliant.

 

Other things which should be unlikely are common, and to be frank, yeah, I'm one of these people. So many characters have amputated limbs from accidents rather than voluntarily. Lockie, obviously, is an example. Many people also seem to have some manner of disability or other that would, logically, be rather easily solved. Extensive scarring? Plastic surgery. I remember the various mute characters.

This also is true. And

Really' date=' we shouldn't try just throwing out so many different things for the sake of banning snowflakes.[/quote']honestly makes me believe that there are different kinds of special. Execution is a wholly different concept from certain base attributes that are not inherently good or bad. And while there is an obvious stigma that comes with "he has mysterious, color-changing eyes"-type characters, we should ask ourselves if the problem comes from the eyes, or the way they are presented. (Well, yes, in this case, it's the eyes. Cause these are really fucking awful. But you get my point.)

 

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At the risk of driving the thread off topic, what do you think seperates a good snowflake from a bad snowflake?

There's no such thing as an unanimous decision. But there have been some situations before where the majority of the community has put a foot down, and outed certain behaviors as unacceptable.

The way I personally see it (more and more strongly as I continue to read the comments in this thread) is that there is a basic level of awful (Bozo the farting clown assistant) that will always get curbed automatically by staff and players alike, but that besides that, there are all sorts of level of specialness and uniqueness, that are mostly well-intended attempts at creating something cool, and can fall on all levels of the good-awful spectrum. These cases are hard to judge, and it might be best to leave it to the community to judge them organically. The thing which irks me is that I sometimes see little of this judgement being done (people doing ridiculous things canonically every shift and still being allowed to work on station), but that might simply be the Duty Officers system not being fully implemented yet.

I don't know. How do you think the community should react, to judge/influence/help/work with these attempts at special/unusual characters, snowflake or not?

[Guest]

-- Hostile snowflake, inbound.

- Copy that, actual. What's our briefing?

-- Actual to operator, hostile snowflake is armed with seven different types of flavor text and nineteen degrees in combat sciences at the age of 19. Be advised, they sexually identify as an attack helicopter.

- Operator to actual, noted. Advising lethal force, over.

-- Actual to operator, you're cleared for lethal force. Weapons free. Out.

- Operator to unit, we've a hostile snowflake armed with seven different types of flavor text and nineteen degrees in combat. We've been given the clear to go hunting. Weapons free, shoot anything that looks like an attack helicopter.

~ Uhh, noted, SL.

In case you didn't get the analogy, I'm not saying lynch the really bad snowflakes. I mean, we could. But I'm saying we should probably get more than one to three opinions at a time on a character just because you don't really like them. Stick to a procedure, approach the issue with caution.

[Skull132]

Back in January, the staff side of this was a hot topic. Note that I'm going to be speaking very directly for the Administration & Moderation Staff. For now, I'll leave the lore related answer up to whoever, Jackboot, as that is not my jurisdiction.

First off, what the crud do Admins and Mods actively prevent/look out for/enforce?

Long list short, objectively and very bluntly unfeasible characters. Unfeasible being defined as a character whose backstory is nonsensical and lacks any grounding in reality. Examples of this are: x-engineered/enhanced characters whose qualities lend themselves to unfeasible (even by future standards) ability, completely impossible age-to-knowledge ratio (see: 19 year old Captains), insane characters, characters with metagaming knowledge. Any character spotted or reported and later found as being like that is subject to administrative action. This also includes terrible flavour-text, mind you.

All of those items are, essentially, backed by the rules without any further material needed. This means that Moderators & Administrators should not rely on any other documentation in that respect.

Beyond that, Moderators & Administrators also run minor support for lore. Namely, they're the larger brother when needed. When is it needed? Most notably, when lore on the subject exists, is solidified and publically available. This means that, if we see someone who has a backstory about Earth being destroyed, where as our Earth isn't destroyed, we'll give them a tap on the shoulder. But if it's something feasible that is not clarified in our lore (example being a character from a far off colony, or a small space ship, or whatever), then obviously, we will not do anything, provided that the character and backstory is feasible. Ergo, you aren't from a planet of rainbow amazons or something like that.

Now, this takes care of the largest group, as it were. What about the gray areas?

Hoh boy. Whereas above we were discussing very clear cut and ridiculous situations, here we're going to start looking at semantics. "Could he have bribed his way in?" "The character creates friction to have RP!" Arguments like that. Until they violate the rules, like with self-antagging, which is somewhat common for a specific subset, the Moderators & Administrators, normally, will not pursue the matter actively, until needed. Mostly because doing so requires too much active tracking, so we have another mechanic in place. Another two, actually. Or even three.

First off, what can you do about a character that's tiptoeing around the gray areas of badRP? Well, if it's legitimately bad, consistent and just groan-worthy, then you should either offer feedback (player reaction varying) or file a complaint. Yes, we are inclined to not take action upon an initial complaint, instead we wish the issues to be aired, reviewed and place faith in the player to correct their behaviour. If this does not happen, then either we'll note it ourselves, or we hope to receive a follow-on complaint. This indicates that the problem is persistent, and frees us for further, potentially more invasive action with intent to guide and correct. Obviously, assessments being conducted at each step.

Secondly, me and YeahChris, with whom I developed the majority of my personal MO on admin issues, usually did not mind people falling into that area for one specific reason. Nine times out of ten, those characters will stigmatize themselves, and will fall victim to that stigma. If there is no redeeming factor to a character of poor quality, then he will be avoided through RP and other actions. Or even lashed back at. Eventually, the player will get tired and either figure out how to fix himself, or just leave. This is best characterized by Vanagandr posting this:

Wot I think: ew.

Wot I do:

I'm sorry, my headset must have been EMP'd by the singularity; I haven't heard anything you said since you introduced yourself.

 

The third mechanic are the DOs. Depending on how they're moved from here on out, they have the capacity to start managing the grey area characters with more involvement and back-and-forth. But I'll leave this as a question between the community, the DOs and Hartburry.

 

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But now, let me address something from a personal viewpoint. It's about lore and character feasibility. Note that this is all personal opinion and encouragement, so for the sake of being brief, I've confined it to a massive spoiler.

 

To preface this, let me retrieve a list of my characters and give a short description for each:

• Allyn Adema - A 50 year old syndicate operative who was used as a cloneable soldier, completely aware of the fact that he was being constantly cloned, managed to, with the help of crew and a partner, destroy his handler's operation and find an alternative identity to hide under. If Allyn is ever killed in a canon fashion, I will remove him from the game (one reason is to honour a pact me and YeahChris had, another is the fun of IC consequences).
• Rosemary Davies - A 34 year old chemist with the knowledge equivalent of 2 doctorates (pharmaceutical chemistry and surgical practices) attained through participating in a medical experiment for a private corporation with government interests. Mind you, the side effects were retrograde amnesia and an association between failure and physical pain (no, not because of abusive tests, but because failure meant further mental imprinting which caused her pain).
  
• Erec Bellard - Started as a young mechatronic engineer with a Masters of Mechanical Science degree, served as a combat engineer/recovery operator, lost his arm in a mechbay accident. Worked his way up to Research Director ever since then.

 

All three utilize lore which does not really exist. All three can be considered snowflakes at face value. But I would wager that all of them are feasible, and that for each of them, I possess a reasonable explanation for everything that has happened to them. Basically, I consider them all feasible within the universe, without being too "out there." And I welcome people to pick the characters apart, and should shortcomings be raised, I am not opposed to retconning and modifying (both Allyn and Erec have undergone retroactive modification with this goal in mind, actually).

Oh, and personally, a snowflake is an implausible character. Not an "out there" type of character.

The point that I'm trying to make with this example is: it's okay to have interesting and fun concepts. But, just keep in mind that things have consequences. You cannot successfully argue that your character underwent cybernetic augmentation and is a supersoldier after a week, no. But you can argue a similar concept in an alternate fashion. So, be creative, and if there's no lore about things, just use some logical thinking and go at it!

Just remain open to criticism!

[Skull132]

Double-posting because I'm an ass. But, I urge people to consider one more thing, specially as they read my conjecture about DOs.

IC consequences need to exist for a valid story to be told. That means, if your character is one to consistently get in trouble in a horrible fashion, where he is unable to protect himself to any degree, he should probably find his position deteriorating. Why? Because that is how the story moves forward. That is progression, storytelling. This gives the players, everyone involved, a chance to develop the characters in play. If a character is being targeted by an IC investigation, he can start finding scapegoats. Maybe make a few deals and have folks lie for him. Maybe someone will sell him out, and he'll end up in further trouble. Maybe he'll then assassinate the sell-out and die in the process. That is storytelling and progression. Otherwise, this will all become very draining, as you deal with the same ass at the same post every day, without change nor progression.

[Guest]

I agree with Jakers, the term snowflake has to be stamped out, because no one is really sure what it means. I've seen people being labeled as snowflakes for everything from who've picked a country from Earth that doesn't exist anymore, to being a cybernetic organism.

Yet, we have special snowflakes that have known Syndicate affiliations, unrealistic qualities (like mine) and characters whose repeated behavior doesn't fit workplace enviroment and should be fired (as pointed out by Skull), that are being overlooked. It would beg the question why these are being overlooked while others get shit for their flavor text.

It's because those snowflake qualities have been developed slowly over time or are supported by stuff people consider canon. It's when people understand why your character is special that they get tolerated. When people do annoying stuff over and over again, that is funny to everyone expect people having to deal with it, it should really stop. I know people are here to have fun, but when you do it on detrement of other people's enjoyment, you shouldn't do it, period.

That said, I would like to request feedback on my character, as this is tied to the topic. Stuff I do at times would get my character fired if it wasn't an antag round, especially unethical treatment of prisoners and unknown aliens. Would it be snowflaky if I did it and wasn't expecting to face OOC backlash, because I think, while it's antag's job to play the enemy, that all crew, especially heads of staff, should meet them half-way and help produce RP.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Personally, I think the term "snowflake" should remain a poorly defined concept, as it allows people to develop their own definitions, and allows it to evolve with the community over time. There are cases of obvious and inherently bad characters, complete with tails, color-changing eyes, and sexy buttcheeks. There are cases of characters that directly conflict/contradict established lore. But then there are more subjective cases that some will feel strongly about, and others will think are fine the way they are.. In a way, the cague definiition of the term "snowflake" serves to keep the community on its toes about it, and have individuals re-evaluate their own definition of it as they interact with new and different characters belonging to people with a different perspective.

[NebulaFlare]

Time to drop my two cents. Meep.

It should be kept in mind that newcomers might not know the levels of 'serious RP' expected in the station. We want it serious, but not to the point it's stale and boring. Fun fact: My first character had some snowflake name like "Moondust Stone" or whatever. I was new. I didn't know what to expect. I got messaged by an admin and was politely asked to change it. I felt dumb. I wasn't chased off for 'bad RP' and ridiculous snowflake levels. Thankfully. But just remember to be as understanding as possible.

Que in subject two: Hawk Silverstone. He's a bloody snowflake. Looking back, I...honestly have no idea how I got away with it. 17 year old implanted clone soldier. Yep. I was extremely hesitant at first to even bring him to existence. Him with his ex-peacekeeper Rose Watson who was working undercover.

But (mostly) everybody loved him! So I kept playing him! And by then it was already too late to yank him out, since his presence was already too ingrained with the community.

We glean off of each other on what can be seen as acceptable. "If this person has that level of snowflake/bad RP, then it must be okay for me to do that as well." >>> That's our testing ground. We can't blame others for levels of snowflake, because someone else probably held up to it.

[Jakers457]

I mean look at my Tajaran. He's pretty much the definitive cyborg, he was a science experiment and isn't really from Adhomai. If anything, that concept on it's own can be broken down into 'snowflakey.' He's heavily modified, a red flag for some people. He was an experiment, also a redflag. And then where he's from could also be a redflag for others. Yet when I presented the concept on the station, people seemed to enjoy the character perhaps mainly for his personality but the point is, there are going to be concepts ranging from the norm, to the strange.

We are basing our roleplay in a world with singularities being used as power sources, brains being used as processors, cultists and wizards using 'bluespace' as means of magic. You also have creatures who can modify themselves and even become other people. You have a wonder fuel called plasma, that acts as a catalyst for almost every chemical reaction and resource collecting. You have cybernetic bird men whose memories are transferred to another birdman growing in a vat. You have geneticists unlock superpowers and slimes that can create materials or even life. You can clone people from a vat of biomass. You have spacefish that no one seems to question. You have treepeople made from small tree creatures.

The universe in which we play in is batshit crazy, to use the term snowflake is invalid while you treat these oddities as the norm. Hell, IRL, there are many mutations that we don't even allow within the server.

Yes, we need to draw a line, but in a universe so big, so screwed up and filled with so many fantastical elements. Should we draw the lines so close and narrow to our own ideas? Can we not play test what we see as snowflakey and see how it is presented, see if it's more believable than the talking tree or the spacefish chewing through metal and glass.

[Chaznoodles]

We should not be actively preventing 'bad' roleplay. We should be ICly assisting those characters to become better roleplayers by interacting with them as a character and giving them things to respond to, instead of whining in LOOC or excluding them altogether. This is what Aurora is about: Inclusion.