Clarify the Server Rules so that they are not bound to a wide range of possible interpretations

[Fluffy]

Our rules, as they currently stand and are applied, seems to be interpreted in various different and, at times, rather creative ways depending on who you ask.

I am well aware that this is a pandora's box that I am probably opening, but I will pick one just as an example, as it's easy to make examples upon:

Quote

No powergaming. Roleplay takes precedence over objectives - do not engage in behavior which would be unrealistic for your character in an attempt to win the round. For example: building weaponry, such as stungloves, without any IC reason for them. (Building something ‘pre-emptively’ is not a valid IC reason.) See the glossary for further explanation.

Metagaming = Using information acquired out of character to influence the actions in character. An example is learning who the traitor is from IRC, a friend on another computer, through VOIP or through ingame OOC chat and then acting on this information.

What seems, at least to me, the reasonable interpretation of the average person of what this means is on the line of:

"Do not go around venting the whole ship with the sole reason of making people die due to lack of spacesuit. Do not build 10 combat mechs at roundstart as machinist because you know Mercs was voted and won as a gamemode. Do not weld every airlock for the same reason. Do not send officers around armed and armored 10 minutes into the round, camping the airlocks waiting for the mercs to show up. Do not walk 10cm into the airlock as a merc, lock it from inside, weld it, place down the nuke, set the minimum timer and make the ship explode in 10 minutes of roundtime. Do not order 10 crates of weapons to levy Cargonian Militia as soon as you hear the first announcement on worker unions. Your 20yo doctor do not magically acquire the ability to fly the horizon and shoot its ammo as soon as the BCs are incapacitated. Do not build a guillottine and decapitate every corpse that died in a mysterious way as soon as you suspect the possibility of a changeling. [...]" (Yes some would also be covered by other rules, again, examples.)

 

What this was interpreted as:

"The Janitor, secretly ex burglar and with 10 years in the PMCG special corps whatever, is powergaming if it knows how to force open an airlock"
"A 70 years old medical researcher which is now practicing before retiring cannot possibly know how to make the most simple medications as it's powergaming, despite having done biomedical research for most of its life"
"An Officer that spent most of its life being an Engineer before changing career is powergaming if it knows how to force open an airlock"
"A bridge crewman, who was in the army whatever before, is powergaming if, in an emergency, takes the weapon of a fallen mercenary to shoot another one that is shooting on someone else. "Valid hunting", despite the rules never once mentioning valid hunting at all, is made to be included here"
"A pharmacist, in a desperate attempt to save someone's life, is powergaming in administering the medication they are an expert about"
"Using a locker as a cover, despite it making perfect sense IC to try to use something to put between yourself and the bullets, is also powergaming"

(Yes some would also be covered by other rules, again, examples.)

To be clear, I am not talking about the effect of those interpretations being good or bad, positive or negative, this is not a prescriptive statement nor a moral one, it is not about good or bad of their outcome, or if the effect of the interpretations above are desirable or not. That is not the point.

 

It is very unintuitive, contraddictory, and generally describable as "reaching" to have these interpretations based on what is actually written: In the examples above, the action is realistic for the character, there's an IC reason for the action, and is not using any OOC acquired information. As it is written, this rule should not cover those cases, interpreting it as such is not supported by what's written down, but it's neverthless interpreted as such. A new player would not know it and cannot realistically deduce it from the writing of the rule either. Even as a not new player you are left with scratching your head and playing "guess who" but with the possible creative interpretations of most of the rules we have, if not from knowing from history and errors both yours and of others how it was interpreted as. As you mix them with every other rule, most of which have their own creative interpretations attached aswell, which usually aren't even consistent, it just becomes a huge mess where it is never really clear what each rule forbid and does not forbid.

 

My proposal, therefore, is to make the rules specific/clear, less ambiguous, worded in a clear manner where the average Joe that reads them can reasonably interpret what each one covers and does not cover, and then actually stick to them, in an uniform fashion. Add new points/rules if need be, that cover the cases above, such as "Unless you are an Engineer or Machinist, you cannot know how to hack things" for example, but it should be almost crystal clear what each rule/policy is supposed to cover, and what it doesn't, without the need of doing pindaric flights or observe what happens in the staff complains and ban appeals to try to deduce the general direction of what it could be interpreted as and learn them in a "monkey see, monkey do" fashion. Most other servers are able to make (relatively) crystal clear what the rules forbid and does not forbid, we should be able to do that too.

Yes, there will be cases where something is more borderline and is not exactly clear if it's covered or not, just like any rule system, and yes those will need some clarification and addressing, but it shouldn't feel like wild interpretations that were pieced together as a post hoc justification or in lieu of actually updating / making them clear. If we can fill books worth of lore, we can also write a ruleset that is able to do as above.

[Carver]

While I'd potentially agree with you in most of these cases, this one

Quote

"An Officer that spent most of its life being an Engineer before changing career is powergaming if it knows how to force open an airlock"

Is a precedent we should likely be avoiding in most cases. If your character switched careers, fine, I'll overlook a trained Engineer with a degree switching to an unrelated field where the career competition is 20 year olds with no higher education. But forcing open an airlock with tools, if it's for something like Security purposes, and not for something like 'THERE'S A PHORON FIRE IN THIS ROOM I NEED TO BUG OUT', takes away the value of the actual Engineers in the round who you could instead choose to involve by asking for their assistance.

You also really, really shouldn't be carrying a toolbelt as an Officer in a vast majority of cases. If you're breaking open a door by force like most other Officers who are impatient or under stress, no one is really going to care.

[FlamingLily]

The rule seems perfectly fine worded. Don't do something your character could not reasonably do just to gain an advantage in the game. Your examples are also resolvable under other rules (Usually the "Don't make ridiculously unreasonable characters" rules.)

On 15/04/2023 at 09:00, Fluffy said:

"The Janitor, secretly ex burglar and with 10 years in the PMCG special corps whatever, is powergaming if it knows how to force open an airlock" - Unless there is an express threat to the Janitor's safety, there would be no circumstances where a Janitor should be forcing open an airlock. And usually characters with military backgrounds would be working in security.
"A 70 years old medical researcher which is now practicing before retiring cannot possibly know how to make the most simple medications as it's powergaming, despite having done biomedical research for most of its life" - If there are other Pharmacists currently active in the game, then yes, it's powergaming. Job regulations would say that a doctor should not be working chemistry, and it would be unreasonable to break those regulations short of extreme circumstances (Emergencies, or where there are literally no chemists online).
"An Officer that spent most of its life being an Engineer before changing career is powergaming if it knows how to force open an airlock" - See the first example, and the comment by Carver.
"A bridge crewman, who was in the army whatever before, is powergaming if, in an emergency, takes the weapon of a fallen mercenary to shoot another one that is shooting on someone else. "Valid hunting", despite the rules never once mentioning valid hunting at all, is made to be included here" - Bridge Crewmen are already armed, and if are caught in the middle of a firefight, are expected to defend themselves. Going out of your way to shoot at antagonists when you're needed to perform a job elsewhere is ridiculously unreasonable.
"A pharmacist, in a desperate attempt to save someone's life, is powergaming in administering the medication they are an expert about" - Pharmacists may be experts in the medications, but not in the injuries a patient may be facing. Short of there being no alternatives, it would be unreasonable to risk a patient's life by overstepping your authority.
"Using a locker as a cover, despite it making perfect sense IC to try to use something to put between yourself and the bullets, is also powergaming" - This isn't powergaming. Using a locker to charge the antagonists while not being Security, however, would be.

 

[Fluffy]

17 minutes ago, FlamingLily said:

If there are other Pharmacists currently active in the game, then yes, it's powergaming. Job regulations would say that a doctor should not be working chemistry, and it would be unreasonable to break those regulations short of extreme circumstances (Emergencies, or where there are literally no chemists online).

This was extensively interpreted as "nope, never ever once anyone can even attempt to"; the Captain is dying on the floor, the only surviving officer is fighting 4 mercs and 2 ninjas with the distruptor after 4 other engagements that wiped security, the HoS is going in pain shock and bleeding all over the floor? Well, thought luck, best you can do is use inaprovaline, bandages and trico as long as they last, then you're expected to basically let death take them. The example was not about "hey there's no pharmacist I will do it myself", it was about a "the ship is fucked, we are under code red" etc. kind of scenario, I think how you interpreted it (which is different from how it was interpreted by the staff, see the ban appeals section) perfectly outline the issue this suggestion aims to address.

But as I said in the topic, it's not a suggestion about specific ones, I just picked a examples to show what I mean, so going into every example to respond point by point would be essentially out of topic.

[KingOfThePing]

You are using extreme examples to describe rules that have to apply for a wide range of situations. Obviously they have to be interpreted, according to the situation at hand because otherwise you would have to write down every possible situation and how the rule(s) apply in it, which is impossible. You are overreacting to something I guess. 

 

The rules are fine as is and 99.99% of people are aware that general rules have to be applied to many different situations and thus cannot effectively cover every and any situation that might occur in direct wording.

 

[Fluffy]

15 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

You are using extreme examples to describe rules that have to apply for a wide range of situations. Obviously they have to be interpreted, according to the situation at hand because otherwise you would have to write down every possible situation and how the rule(s) apply in it, which is impossible.

15 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

The rules are fine as is and 99.99% of people are aware that general rules have to be applied to many different situations and thus cannot effectively cover every and any situation that might occur in direct wording.

This much is already stated in the thread I have posted, we are all aware that they cannot possibly cover every possible combination, refer to the "Yes, there will be cases where something is more borderline and is not exactly clear [...]" section.

17 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

You are overreacting to something I guess. 

I was instructed to make a policy suggestion from the "no references" discussion, and since I have seen it happen across different rules and players (just some days ago, to make another example, we got an AOOC message stating that the rules forbid two antag types to be in conflict with each other, which I can't find it reasonably covered anywhere, from a staff member), I thought that we should first clarify to a reasonably specific degree what they do and do not say, instead of leaving them to such a wide range of possible interpretations. I believe it is both positive and reasonable to have them be more specific on what they are supposed to cover.

[KingOfThePing]

Okay.

 

The rules are fine as is.

[dessysalta]

I honestly like what this aims to accomplish, but then it brings up reasonable concerns from the rest of us, considering there's two ways this can go:

1. A policy change isn't made and thus even in extreme circumstances it's considered "unreasonable" for a character to act in a realistic, frankly human manner. 70 y/o doctors cannot make basic medicines, those with any kind of combative backgrounds can never defend themselves or others unless they're directly threatened, etc.

2. A policy change is made and we have an influx of new players (or honestly idiots in some cases) that decide their bartender who served the Solarian Marines for 10 years can pick up a rifle they saw at the first chance and start blasting mercenaries. (I would know this can happen because when I originally played my static Kira, I didn't realize that combat escalation was different from civ roles to secoffs and did pretty much that exact thing until I was bwoinked and had it explained to me.)

It's kind of a slippery slope. I'm personally all for more diverse, in-depth character portrayal, but not everyone on Aurora is a competent writer who knows how to portray this sort of thing (and considering it was only four or five months ago Kira was batting antags that messed with her bar, I'd wager I'm not much better myself) and the more likely result is 16 y/o players that think combat is the best part of the game using their 80 y/o quad-amputee janitors to drop-kick antags because "they were a policeman" or something. HRP is lenient with escalation and 'powergaming', but I really doubt the vast majority of the SS13 playerbase trusts itself and other players.

To be clear, I'm hearing you on the concept and intent, it's running up the flagpole and I'm saluting it, but there's probably a better way to go about it. Just as you offered extreme ends to be considered ICly, I gotta offer the same OOCly. At least, that's what I think.