Player Complaint - Oddbomber3678/Unknown

[Susan]

BYOND Key: SueTheCake
Game ID: css-aJdV
Player Byond Key/Character name: SueTheCake
Staff involved: No one was online.
Reason for complaint: Violation of ghost spawner directive; essentially, self-antagging.
Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation?: There was no response.
Approximate Date/Time: 2/26/2024 at around 12:00 AM Central Time

Oddbomber3678 (as Mitsuki) and and unknown player (as Song Eun-seo), spawned as Konyang pirates. I found out via deadchat that at an earlier point they had hopped a fence and looted the Konyang Telecomms Outpost, before taking their shuttle to Point Verdant, which had spawned. At face value, this may have been acceptable - but then once in Point Verdant, an ostensibly large city, they opted to duo storm the Konyang Police HQ, take the LT hostage, and then gun down a crowd of responding 5-Cheung and other civilians/army personnel after looting the police armory.

The ghost spawner for the Konyang Pirate role says this:

Highlight mine.

I would say, quite obviously, assaulting the Police Headquarters of an entire prefecture with just two people because of dead hour/a lack of the ability to accurately represent the actual amount of police officers that would have been there/etc is acting as an antagonist, unequivocally. The Konyang Pirates are not Traitors, Revolutionaries, or Changelings. The rules we have, specifically the 'sane and mature character rule', are not exempt from them as they are antagonists whose job it is to drive the round. A Bridge Crewman from the Horizon got swept up in the whole mess, Samga Kuhlan, and was radioing back to the ship for security - in essence dragging the Horizon into this, and diverting attention away from actual antagonists, in theory. It was a Vampire round, and he died in Point Verdant, but had there been other antagonists, this long overshadowed them.

I make this complaint because the guidance in the role's description is very, very clear, and it's hard not to take 'having the police superintendent hostage/raiding the police armory/shooting up half of Point Verdant' as anything but antagonistic, and thus a flagrant violation of that guideline. I would not like to see this sort of action or conduct become more prevalent here; it strains the bounds of credulity and the suspension of disbelief, and so long as we have players choosing to be antags, diverting and subtracting attention from them is a net negative. Otherwise, if this is what the staff team want from this ghost role, then perhaps a revision of the guideline on its spawn menu should be made. Whatever the case, that is the reason I make this complaint.

[La Villa Strangiato]

Without stating my opinion on the complaint itself; I wrote the Guide to Ghost Roles rules, so allow me to quote the rules here.

Quote

 

• OFF-SHIP ROLES ARE NOT INHERENTLY ANTAGONISTS. This is important to get out of the way. While some gamemodes might have third-party assets with offship roles that are antagonistic, offship roles are not the same as rolling an antagonist. You are under the same rules of character believability as normal crewmembers. (emphasis mine)
  • Playing offship roles like antagonists is considered self-antagging and should be generally avoided. While offship roles like pirates or smugglers can harass the Spark and the Intrepid when they're away from the Horizon, it should also be kept in mind that the Horizon is a massive cruiser with powerful armaments. If you're going to perform antagonistic actions against the crew, it might be best to keep it to stealing from them and driving them away with guns. Like any antagonist, this should have escalation and roleplay behind it. (emphasis mine)
  • The exception to this rule is other offships; while you are expected to roleplay and build up to conflict with them, it's accepted that an Elyran military corvette and an FSF vessel would probably start shooting each other after a few tense words.

 

This rule notes that off-ships can antagonise other off-ship roles. However, the first paragraph states that all ghost roles are under the rule of character believability. Ergo, whether or not the actions taken here qualify as violating the "sane and reasonable character" rule depends on whether the presiding staff sees the pirates as acting sane/reasonable/believable within the round.

Edited February 26 by La Villa Strangiato

[hollyhock]

hello! i was song in this round. i was not aware how the armor was stolen until after the round. i also honestly should have surrendered by myself when the entirety of aoyama confronted us with weapons after things kept going to shit, in retrospect.
i'm not sure what else to say i'm very sleepy. goodnight

[Oddbomber]

Hi. As the player of Mitsuki, this complaint pretty much ignores an entire round's worth of roleplay and escalation between the local gang and the run-away pirates that occurred, as well as missing the fact that we very purposefully attempted to avoid getting any players from the Horizon involved in what had eventually become a conflict between gangs and a failed heist.

From my perspective: 
- Breaking into the Army armory on Konyang is not at all a rule break or a breach of character, and would probably be done as soon as the pirates learned that the military had backed out of the region. There's no law enforcement, and they have literal scrap-weapons. Especially considering the ongoing apocalypse of robot zombies.
- The pirates fled to Point Verdant after some passerby (a homesteader RPing as a Konyang Army Lieutenant and one of the soldiers on base who had caught the attempt on the Armory) radioed for help to the Horizon, something we could hear with autolathe printed radios. We did not reach the firearms of the armory, and only the vests were taken. At this time, I was completely unaware that hopping the fences was a bug. 
- Our intention in going to Point Verdant was, initially as stated in dchat, to sell weaponry to the local gangs to accumulate money and some rapport with the local criminal underground. Logs will support that we spent practically half of the round wandering around, asking a Cheung-5 gangster for their boss, and even selling said gangster some ammunition printed from our autolathe - about three hundred credits worth. From there, the events of the round essentially spiraled out of control due to a series of misunderstandings. 
- We were surrounded on an open street by the gangsters at the order of their boss in a particularly aggressive way. When Mitsuki tried to walk off, a pair of gangsters came chasing after her to corral her back. A gun was drawn because it seemed particularly like a jumping - especially when one of the gangsters emoted hitting Mitsuki in the back with a baseball bat. From there, she assumed hostility, and tensions kind of naturally rose from there. It erupted into an argument, then almost into a street fight. During this time, the Cheung-5 boss - who was obviously on a police bike and speaking to the police superintendent - began vaguely motioning to us and walked out of view. The superintendent then called the evacuated Lieutenant to also speak. It was not a far-reach to assume that the police were essentially working with the Cheung-5 gangsters and that the boss was trying to have us arrested at that point. Having spoken to the player of the Cheung-5 boss afterwards, it seems that this was in particular a misunderstanding on the gangster's part of her orders. 
- We circled to our ship, grabbed a few extra bullets and the stolen military ballistic vests, and then snuck over to the police station when activity sparked back up on the radio over some kind of happening. We assumed that the police would be drawn to the incident and attempted to stealthily make entry to secure some illicit merchandise and sneak it back to our still-hidden shuttle. The police superintendent walked in on us hacking through the door to the downstairs area and was, as such, quickly grabbed before she could radio for help. 
- The standoff was between three Cheung-5 gangsters, the boss, as well as a pair of soldiers who we presumed to be en route. We had body armor and assault weapons (military gear which we knew to be in the Armory, due to observing the de-geared soldiers roaming around) - whilst the small group of opponents were mostly armed with two or three handguns, a few melee weapons, and no body armor. The rest of the individuals were noncombatants - a doctor, a maintenance synth, and the aforementioned bridge officer who had run over at the call of a hostage situation at the police station, thereby putting herself in danger. We shouted multiple warnings to clear out and let us leave, which were ignored by the gangsters. When the two Army troopers showed up - both were unarmored and only one had a handgun against our stolen ballistic armor - we retreated into a hallway adjacent to the garage to escape. We were chased after by a gangster, whom we then fired upon - leading to the shootout. Perhaps it would have been logical to surrender after the first shots had been fired, but we essentially held the upper hand for much of that encounter - particularly considering that we retreated into a tight, thin chokepoint.
- After having escaped, I circled back to rescue Song and was swiftly killed by a mech taken from the local garrison's bunker.

I do not believe any of these things violated the "sane and mature" character rule, particularly considering the circumstances and the long escalation roleplay that occurred beforehand. At each point was a logical decision made in tune with the off-ship role and the changing circumstances of the round, that being of a rural pirate seeking to make some pirate out of the situation. As for the antagonist being overshadowed by the later events of the round - I do not believe that it is necessarily my fault that they chose to go to Point Verdant to antagonize, attempted to attack and kill a random passerby, and were killed by the Cheung-5 gangsters, or that the death was overshadowed later by the heist. They occurred completely separately and were unrelated to one another. That the SCCV Horizon was involved in the first place was due, largely, to the crew of the Horizon putting themselves intentionally in harm's way. 

[Susan]

The added context, in my opinion, does not justify the choices made; I would say assaulting the police HQ of an entire prefecture is a major violation of the 'sane and mature character rule', and an overt breach of the suspension of disbelief. Aayoma is not only ever populated by the 10 people who choose to join as a ghost role; the precinct would be staffed and a hotbed of activity no matter what time of day given what it is, It is egregious to attempt to rob a government building that we all know would never really be left empty or entirely undefended - which is problematic just like the looting of the army outpost, when it was broken into without anyone even having had a chance to spawn in at the location. They came later, after anything was stolen.

The long and short of is that I think leaving back to the wilderness - or space, you had a working ship, or anything else - is more of a sane and logical conclusion when faced with 'the police and a well-established criminal organization of a major city are directly targeting us' than 'let me run into the police station with an SMG and commit a mass shooting, thereby making me a national terrorist'. You point out you went back to your ship after they let you go and rather than use this opportunity you instead armed up to attack a government building with two people. Irrespective of whatever escalation there was, this is not a justifiable leap. That is my opinion.

I've said all I feel I can, and will wait for further staff input.

[Oddbomber]

We weren't let go by the police or the gangsters, a random soldier had interjected himself into the situation and told us to scram - which we took as a chance to avoid having to take on both the police and the gangsters, who were undoubtedly working together. Furthermore, saying that I ran into a police station with an SMG and committed a mass shooting is a gross misrepresentation to the point where I question if you bothered to watch what happened at all - it was intended to be a stealthy heist committed while the attention of the police was drawn elsewhere, namely to the miner shooting a soldier. The hostage-taking only occurred as a response to being discovered.

That being said, I will also await further staff output.

[Bear]

I will be handling this complaint with @Roostercat

[Bear]

@hollyhock I've heard a lot of your ghost spawner partner's opinions on why the actions they took. But I would like to know if you have anything else to add or say about the situation as for why you guys took the steps you did.

[hollyhock]

okay!

1: i had been under the impression that ghost roles not being antagonists means not being antagonistic on the Horizon, based on the guide to ghost roles.
2: this was toward the last part of the round, and there had been conflict leading up to this with the locals

it may have been more reasonable to surrender, and my character probably would have, had the 5-cheung gangster not attacked when they thought we had no ammo. this made us fight back.

[Bear]

After taking some time to review the complaint and rationale given by all parties. We've decided that this situation was not okay and violated several server rules. I'll explain a few things for the rationale we used in our conclusion:

-As under-equipped, and under manned jungle pirates. Taking on the KAF outpost is not a sane decision. It is also something we are not okay with on the OOC level, which will also be enforced just as any other ghost role raiding unspawned 3rd parties that have not spawned. It discourages other players from joining the roles knowing their base has been raided with nothing they can do about it. From the IC standpoint, they are better equipped, better trained, and better positioned then you are. It's not logical or sane to think this fight would end in your favour and is rather suicidal.

-Moving to Point Verdant. Trying to sell the weaponry in itself isn't a big deal. On a whole, I wasn't as much of a fan of the 5-cheung turning on you so quickly at least as the situation was described but that isn't something we're that interested in. We are, however, not okay with what happened when dealing with the police. Self-preservation is still applicable to all ghost roles along with the other character expectations and rules. After escaping, gearing up in combat armor with automatic weapons to stealthily raid a police station is by default self antagging, suicidal/without preservation, and a bit power gamey. You are in one of the most populated cities that is safe on Konyang. Assuming the police station would be empty because you have only seen the police superintendent doesn't make much sense. While server population may be low, and ghost roles are not actively taken. You should ALWAYS assume they are when dealing with how your character would approach this situation.

Because of this, action will be applied to involved parties who will be notified over discord of the outcome, and the complaint will be closed and locked in 24 hours unless there is anything else.