In Defense of Dying

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I've noticed a trend that has been developing for a few months now. We've laxed our standards on action and robust behaviour in our shift to blend HRP with more action, but at the same time we have a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong series of character complaints that boil down to "I died and I don't like that."

Here's my philosophical treatise on why you're all butts literally hitler moving down the wrong path of going about Aurora HRP.

 

• You are part of the story, not the story.
  
  SS13 is a stage, and there are, on average, 30 other actors running around. Expecting antagonists to give every single person an equal amount of RP that satisfies all of their own unique versions of "good RP" without killing them is some weird communist thought process for RP, and isn't reasonable for antagonists. You dying doesn't bring the story to a full stop. Your death is justified if it furthers the story set in place by the antagonist/event, because you are a secondary character. If anyone is the 'star' of the play, it would be the antagonist because they are the 'protagonist' that the roundmode revolves around.
  
• Dying is a completely legitimate method of storytelling.
  
  Your death, if it furthers the story in the roundmode or event, is justified. Basically, if it either leads up to something or has been lead up to, it's justified.
  
• Stop complaining in LOOC about gank after you died.
  
  I'm working on this too. Chewing out antagonists for murdering you is butts. Everyone has heightened emotions during their death, so let's all agree to take like four deep breaths or disable LOOC for like 10 seconds during these periods. Okay? Please? Can we be nice?
  
• While death is justified for the story, try to have it have meaning.
  
  Here's one for the antagonists themselves: furthering the plot" is not in itself a justification for decapitating everyone in the hallways 4noraisin. But, for example: Changlings picking off the crew to foster an atmosphere of paranoia and fear is completely fine - by virtue of remaining incognito, extremely efficient and quick methods need to be used to disable a character's means to communicate with the rest of the crew. IE mute-stun-cuff combo. But with the crew member at your mercy, and you are in a situation where you can spare some time monologuing or whatever, /me'ing your spoopy changling powers while devouring them could be satisfying. Personally I like a /me or two before nommed so I can ghost and watch the shenanigans, but that's just me. In other situations, itchy trigger fingers are less justified, and should satisfy a previously stated position.
  
• Antags don't know who will go along with them.
  
  I have no idea if you want to /me the entire Odyssey with me. If I'm in the middle of preparing to murder you and you have a working radio, I'm just as in danger of being exposed by "HELP ANTAGGY ANTAGONIST IS KILLING ME IN INCINERATOR ROOM WITH A METAL BASEBALL BAT" like a high stress game of Clue as any spazzy powergamer. If there is more than one individual involved in your plans as an antagonist and you don't have anything LOOC or meta-arranged for RP in that situation, having them assume that new individual is a robust powergamer isn't unreasonable. Reasoning: Look at literally all of sec or the engineering militia. If one of those is nearby, they're going to try to robust your butt so hard it flies off like we're goonstation.
  
• Dying isn't even such a big deal calm down.
  
  You're literally being cloned in like 10 minutes, relax.
  
• Everything else.
  
  I probably forgot to include another bullet point including another part of my reasoning, so here's a free space.

[canon35]

Here's something I've learned from SS13. Dying is a part of the game. If you die, don't bitch and moan and complain because an antag holding you hostage killed you. Even if you're aren't being cloned, there's a 30 minute respawn cooldown AND numerous other servers to join.

[jackfractal]

Could I suggest a five minute cool-down on looc after death?

I know that I, personally, have complained in LOOC immediately after dying and that both distracts and disorients the antagonist. Killing someone as an antag is a stressful thing to do, even when you're successful, and having to deal with their ghost immediately afterward cannot be particularly fun.

Dying in SS13 is often pretty emotional, and I think that deadchat is the proper place to process that, not LOOC.

[Tainavaa]

Not enough people die because too many people bitch when they die. To all the people that bitch about dying I have one thing to say.

Stop it. Okay? Stop it. Alright? Alright.

[Jamini]

You're literally being cloned in like 10 minutes, relax.

 

Generally my hackles only get raised when someone leaves another person unclonable. Aside from that I do agree, even if I don't always follow in practice.

... I will however still robust your nuts off in self defense. So go all out on me. It's really okay!

[Guest Menown]

I only complain if it's done without any RP, when I'm trying my hardest to RP it out. That and if it's a warrantless death, like randomly taking somebody out because you decide to kill, because you can't think of anything more creative.

Nine times out of ten, I die to my own carelessness, so I've come to terms with death.

[Guest]

I die more frequently to my own critical failure rather than by anyone's own power.

I've gotten more practice out of it and I've accepted my own death as a result, but I die a lot less frequently as a result.

[Erik Tiber]

I normally really dislike dying because it always seems to take so long to get cloned. But eh. I'd personally like it if people would spend more time alive-but-incapacitated before reaching the 'death' threshhold, but I have not yet bothered to properly make a suggestion thread like I really really should.

 

Not enough people die because too many people bitch when they die. To all the people that bitch about dying I have one thing to say.

Stop it. Okay? Stop it. Alright? Alright.

I Will admit, I'm soooo guilty of this.

[swat43]

There is something to be brought up here. A really important note that we tend to forget once we start up Space station 13.

This game has a nice little cute description on byond once you click on it, and it says.

'Can you survive inside the Space station 13'. or something like this.

This is what people forget once they come here and when they die the get mad, due to this simple reason, they forgot the main reason of this game, it is to survive.

But that's only my thought.

[VoltageHero]

I only complain if it's done without any RP.

 

And that should make sense. Even though dying is a part of the game, the server is still heavy roleplay.

It's quite silly to see nuke ops or security running around shooting without a word.

[swat43]

I only complain if it's done without any RP.

 

And that should make sense. Even though dying is a part of the game, the server is still heavy roleplay.

It's quite silly to see nuke ops or security running around shooting without a word.

 

But this is just silly, let me explain why. The thrive for survival, that's what. You wont OFTEN see any gunfights that we had, have me's each time, when ever someone shoots. They will not even think for a second to think of doing ME's when the gunfight is about to happen, and when you know, the main trouble that can kill you is in front of you shooting other people,and then turns to you to shoot you, you will haul your ass to cover, or just stand there before you can type 'Me: omg please don't kill me i submit!' and you're dead.

At this, this game is not even good at. Sure this is a rolelpay server but if you see a guy that already gun downed two people and goes to you for a kill and you end up dead, while meing.. is bad. Called gank? maybe, but it only depends on the situation if you know that there was such threat and or did you heard the gunshots and you went there out of curiosity..well, you got your answer. Sure i missed something out, but real tired to explain everything. Huge texts makes me worned out.

[Frances]

I have to back Swat up. As I have often said, there's nothing wrong with action as long as the roleplay happens somewhere. In a lot of these cases, the roleplay is around the fighting, not during the fighting itself. Trying to mount a realistic operation, heading into battle with your comrades, getting injured, retreating, that's all roleplay. You shouldn't have to roleplay the fights themselves, because the game already takes care of that for you. (Well, you can if you want, but it's going to be very difficult if more than two people are involved.)