NewOriginalSchwann Posted March 8 Posted March 8 (edited) BYOND Key: NewOriginalSchwann Game ID: cyu-dLZV Player Byond Key/Character Name: QuestioningMark/Cam Mueller Staff Involved: I did not ahelp this in-round as I assumed it was a revolution round, or another one where we would have a mutiny. Approximate Date/Time: 9:30 PM EST 03 March 2025 Let me preface this by saying I’m not really an experienced engineering player (I regularly played it during the Aurora II, so about three years ago or more, with my Horizon engineering rounds coming here-and-there irregularly), with me mostly hanging out in security or medical, so I don’t necessarily have knowledge of what systems and expectations engineers are/should be familiar with. I spawn in on a new engineer and get called to the lobby, then get intercepted along the way by the CE, Cam Mueller, who tells me he needs to take me down to the lower level to “test my knowledge.” of some systems. I’m not unused to hearing about CEs wanting to “knowledge check” new characters, so I figure I need to go on and show I’m not some hub player who doesn’t know what they’re doing. So I go down and get told to pull open the engine purge valves, being told they’ll put gas into the engines. I have no reason not to believe this – it’s my in-character boss, he seems to be testing me for my knowledge, and have no idea how the thrusters work as a player, so I go along with it. There is a desire, I find, to look as if you know what you are doing in front of your in-character supervisor. We do this to both sets of thrusters, then I get a short speech about how important it is to know atmospherics as an engineer. Fast forward a bit, shortly after transfer’s been called, and I get told to go to security by an investigator. I walk there, ask what’s going on, some lines are exchanged, and the investigator starts holding me at gunpoint and telling me I’m under arrest for sabotage. This is, understandably, a shock to me and I initially assume there must have been some misunderstanding, like I pulled the wrong valve or something. My radio is taken, the engineering key popped out at the direction of Mueller (per security), and I’m thrown into processing, questioned, then put into permanent holding. I remain in it for the rest of the round. I play with OOC turned off, so my communications with the player were after this via Discord. I said some things I should not have, and I apologize for those. It was inappropriate for me as a player, let alone as staff. Returning to the matter of the complaint, I don’t really agree with the justification behind the player’s actions. A head of staff wields immense power over their subordinates and is expected to move the round forward, but I don’t believe that’s a good enough reason to have one of your subordinates – who may be a new player – arrested and thrown into security for 20-30 minutes when they’ve done nothing wrong. I was excited, with a new character who seemed to be clicking with the rest of my department – perhaps this was finally the character I needed to break into engineering with a solid, good personality – but that experience, and my agency, was ripped from me by the decision of my head of staff. Not an antagonist head of staff, not an antagonist themselves, but my head of staff, who wanted to get money for disabling the thrusters and needed a “fall guy” for his attempt to drive the round forward. Sabotaging your own ship and blaming one of your subordinates is not something I believe a character would reasonably do for any amount of money as a head of staff. Furthermore, I do not believe the argument of, “my character is racist and nasty,” is enough to justify this. There were two tajara and an unathi in the department when I arrived – why hadn’t he decided to involve one of them in his attempt to drive the round forward? When I first joined this server years ago, I played with antagonist heads of staff and was one of the voices pushing for their removal, which was ultimately successful. This round reminded me of why I, and others, fought so hard for the removal of antagonist heads of staff. Considering the totality of information, I must ask if this is what we want from a head of staff, a role which we place behind a whitelist in the hopes they’ll be able to direct the round? A player who is taken to security and handcuffed loses all agency, and ordering their radio taken away from them only exacerbates this lack of agency – their round is, in essence, ruined, and their time wasted. It’s nothing a head of staff should do outside of exceptional circumstances, such as if they are an antagonist – a loyalist, for example. Ultimately, with my initial anger at it having faded, I find myself more disappointed in this than anything else. A head of staff should know better. Edited March 8 by NewOriginalSchwann Forgot to specify PM.
Loorey Posted March 9 Posted March 9 @Fyni and I will be taking the complaint. We will be sifting through the round logs and information about the round that we have accessible to ourselves. While that is happening, @QuestioningMark, it would be nice to hear your side of the story. Thanks. On 08/03/2025 at 01:46, NewOriginalSchwann said: and ordering their radio taken away from them only exacerbates this lack of agency – their round is, in essence, ruined Also, @NewOriginalSchwann, was it Security that took away your radio by themselves, or the Chief Engineer that explicitly ordered Security to do so? What was the HoS' stance on all of this, if they said anything regarding it? It's important to know where that came from.
NewOriginalSchwann Posted March 9 Author Posted March 9 43 minutes ago, Loorey said: Also, @NewOriginalSchwann, was it Security that took away your radio by themselves, or the Chief Engineer that explicitly ordered Security to do so? What was the HoS' stance on all of this, if they said anything regarding it? It's important to know where that came from. I don't recall if there was a head of security in the round, and lacks the logs for it so I'm going off my memory here. I remember Taylor Morgan, an officer, telling me the CE wanted my engineering key removed, "to prevent leaking information to a saboteur," or something along those lines. So from my knowledge it appears the CE ordered it, but I can't be sure.
QuestioningMark Posted March 10 Posted March 10 (edited) Writing up a response now, just became aware of this thread. Sorry! Edited March 10 by QuestioningMark
QuestioningMark Posted March 10 Posted March 10 (edited) Hey guys, So Schwann, yes you did say some things that weren't particularly nice. I did respond to you there Schwann I wasn't trying to target you as a player, I truthfully had no idea you were the player, this isn't in any way a personal thing. I also didn't intend to make you unhappy. My intention with my actions was to assist in the plot device that had been made by the antagonists and, given my character had partaken in a bribe, cover his tracks while still keeping it fun for everyone. I don't believe we have a history either, or have really interacted, in any particularly negative note. The reason I’m saying this is because I genuinely feel really bad that you didn’t enjoy this. It wasn’t my intention to do you dirty, and I genuinely was just trying to be a cool component to the story that the Antagonists were setting up. No matter how this report goes I clearly missed the mark on that, for that I’m sorry dude. What happened from my perspective: (I'd like to caveat this by saying my memory for a round as energetic as this isn't going to be serenely clear. Logs will obviously shine through.) 1. The character Ta'Akaix'Loxs'tor'nok C'thur, a consul, reached out to Cam and asked him to sabotage the ship's thrusters for a total of 50,000 credits. He agreed to this, 50,000 credits is an agreeable amount and as a head of staff it's to an extent my responsibility to facilitate antagonist gimmicks. I reached out with an A-help at the time to have a clear for taking the bribe, can't remember which mod/admin spoke with me, and since Ta'Akaix'Loxs'tor'nok C'thur wasn't popping peoples heads or shooting people at the time and gave a nice little speach Cam was convinced. At this point, I was sort of wondering if this was a revolution round myself as well. So I played ball. 2. Cam took the most obvious character to have not done the conspiracy possible. Ta'Akaix'Loxs'tor'nok C'thur is tied in with the Na'laak federation and they hate synths, and the gimmick was all Na'laak this Na'laak that. Marika was an IPC, so she was tagged in for a 'show about' and asked to basically purge the thrust from the ship - resulting in the thrust dying. He set her up and took the money. 3. With the job done, payment was received and he kept quiet. But the round developed further. Ta'Akaix'Loxs'tor'nok C'thur started claiming over command radio that it was Cam's job to rebel right now, and he had not been recruited into the revolutionary side mechanically. Small discussion in engineering later, we're planning how to siege the bridge to assist the HoS after what basically came across as a succession crisis between who was in charge and who was with/anti corporation. I actually thought for a time the HoS had gone rogue too, Cam faxed command that. It was a rather confusing round at around the midpoint for me atleast. Really easy for me to see with clarity and hindsite what must have gone on, but mid round with partial information I was as a player a bit confused. 4. With the matter handled there, I had the investigators check the thrust pipes because Cam's betrayal had been on command chat and he’d been implicated. He revealed he believed a sabotage had taken place, and he led investigators to check the pipes. Due to how Marika had been deceived by Cam, her prints were on the thrust leaks. He was content with her being the fall guy as a synth, I questioningmark was content with her being a fall guy because it was so obvious it wouldn't be her. (And given he was taken to security with a 3 man escort at the end, it was in fact, found out.) 5. Despite this, Marika partakes gloriously in the siege on the bridge, saving lives and helping security push forward. We’re taking a considerable period of time here where she got really into the meat of the round. I think all I really did was save Morgan. Great stuff, I didn't remove or really 'grind' the gear on making her the fall guy until all the bad guys were dead because well... that would drag her out the fun. The end of the round is coming about, that's the point I really start nudging the detectives so Cam's bribe (a choice the antags spent TCs on) could come to light. 6. The detention. Here, I'm going to debate a point here but also admit a part where I probably did fuck up, and I'll openly acknowledge I could have handled better. While I contest that this was a 20/30 minute affair as I believe this all happened just before round vote was finished so closer to 15 minutes (though again, not got crystal clear memory on this). As I understand, Marika was boxed up and carted off, and then by the time the engineers got back to the lobby we had officers knocking on the windows and Morgan arresting Cam. That scene sadly got cut short by the round ending. Now, during the detention I did say remove their engineering radio. I had intended with this to remove Marika from the engineering channel key here, my character said a line something to the effect of “I don’t want her talking on the engineering radio channel” but I can’t remember what wording I used and I may well have ended up with a violation of enabling poor treatment for the player by getting their entire radio taken away. If I caused that, that’s totally on me, my bad and that I admit was entirely the fault of my own actions. Closing statements: I didn’t try to break any server rules here, powergame, or self antagonize here. The server rules permit acceptable amounts of conflict even by non-antags and in this case, having been tied into an antags gimmick my character produced a amount of conflict which I felt was reasonable to the situation - had foundational roleplay throughout the round with buildup - and was timed to not be too disruptive to the wider round’s arc. Marika was not yanked out of the big round event, she was smack in the middle of it and got to see it through. At the end, close to vote, she was taken away by security to forward a plotline produced by the antagonists that my character had worked with. (I’m still not entirely sure why Ta'Akaix'Loxs'tor'nok C'thur need the thrust cut, but it happened.) If there’s anything else I can clear up I’m happy to. I don’t really have more to say, apart from the fact that I was simply trying to perform in a cooperative story and working with antagonist players, and seeing through their plotlines they’re setting up. Thanks for reading. Edited March 10 by QuestioningMark
Fyni Posted March 10 Posted March 10 Loorey and I have reviewed the logs and both testimonies. To cover the important points: 1. It is expected that command members do give room for antags to do their thing - this is a key part of getting the whitelist. Accepting bribes and been corrupt is generally acceptable to a point, but command players should keep in mind the flow of a round. Once an antag "goes loud", so to speak, the action of command charcter should reflect this. 2. Having a character permabrigged is almost on the same level as killing said character - it often removes them from the round, away from any action and roleplay. Care should be taken when pushing for such. I know in a way Cam intended for them to be obviously innocent, but again the chaos of a fully escalated round was in action and the flow should have been obvious - security will likely not question this. Command members should be aware and concious of this. 3. Headset removal. While it seems the full removal of the headset was a miscommunication, we would like to stress that security should not be removing headsets and PDAs from people in the brig unless they have a good reason to (which amounts to them been shown to abuse this priveledge by shouting insults or similiar). In part, this is because uplinks for antags can be hidden in these things, but also because without any way to communicate with the outside world, once in the permabrig this completely cuts them off from the round. Loorey and I have discussed this matter, and the appropriate action will be taken. This complaint is now closed, but the thread will be open for 24 hours if anyone else would like to comment
Recommended Posts