Consent Toggles (and Exploitables)

[wowzewow]

Clickbait title is clickbait. Kind of.

 

Anyway. I think it's time to rework the exploitables section. Right now it's woefully underused for good reason : it takes too much effort to write, and too much effort to read. Antags are already spinning a lot of plates to read them. If no one reads it, then it's useless to fill it out anyway.

Ideally, it would be adjoined to a "OOC Exploitable consent" toggle in your character creator.

For example, when an Antag would examine you, it would show :

"This is John Spaceman!

...

Kidnapping - NEUTRAL

Torture - NEGATIVE

Blackmail - POSITIVE

Extortion - NEUTRAL

Bribery, etc. etc...

Exploitable Information"

So, from a glance, an Antag would know that they'd probably get the best mileage by blackmailing them RP-wise. 

Now, why Positive-Neutral-Negative, rather than a Yes/No? Mainly because sometimes, an antag's just going to have to shoot you point blank in the face. Shit happens. But when they are afforded the luxury to take their time, they can make the best of an RP situation.

 

As an addendum this can be extended to Psionics and other similar mind altering gimmicks. Also with Srom and mind-reading or whatever.

[dessysalta]

Just an idea, can we add a unique box that's along the lines of "feel free to just kill me with no build up if you need to accomplish a gimmick"? Would be fun to opt into that and then get turned into red mist in a second and watch the scales tip/the rest of the crew lose their shit. 

[Arbiter_Ambrose]

As a antag, and someone who has had a few gimmicks that require things similar across that line, I would support the above and the concept itself.

[HanSolo1519]

I very much agree with this, however, expanding this to general ooc-notes use would be great!

Personally, I get alot of mileage out of Heads of Staff and command threatening my characters. Their jobs and livelihoods, and insecurities around them, are integral parts of playing them, and having the looming threat of poverty manifested as a frustrated boss asking if they're worth keeping around is an excellent way to explore those themes.

Meanwhile, I know other people are the exact inverse of that. I've had a friend personally lament coming home from getting yelled at over nothing by their boss, just to hop on Aurora and get yelled at over nothing by their space-boss.

This exact sort of exploitables overhaul being expanded to general players would be great for that. A normal player could read "Yes, antagonise me over unfair, asinine reasons, I promise I'm having a good time." for the same reasons an antag would want to know "Yes, please murder-mystery-victim me!"

Edited Saturday at 09:52 by HanSolo1519

[ASmallCuteCat]

I'd love something like this. There was a conversation in discord about this when there was a sudden influx of torture gimmicks done over the Entertainment channels. Some people were okay with it, others weren't. Ideally there should be some way to make one's preferences and comfort levels known without having to directly confront anyone in LOOC or ahelp.

[zha everything broken]

I really love this! There's an important distinction that need to be made here between an Exploitables Framework and a Consent Framework though, as one is a development concern and the other is a moderation concern.

Using the word 'consent' for this changes Exploitables from a roleplay aid into something that also becomes an additional moderation subject. This would require a larger, separate discussion to pursue meaningfully. By logging into the server, a certain level of broad consent is understood (99% of antag rounds involve violence at some level, right?), and it comes down to having a community that has a basic level of mutual respect and trust to ensure everyone can feel comfortable and safe here on an OOC level. Even if someone fills in an entry as 'negative,' while a courteous antag would always do their best to avoid it, antag rounds Can be chaotic and shit happens and Sometimes you Need a human shield and there's only one to hand!

If this is to be a consent framework, I believe 'positive' and 'negative' would need to be changed to 'yes' and 'no,' and the admins/moderators will need to step in to discuss and decide among themselves.

All of the above is an important distinction to make between an Exploitables Framework and a Consent Framework, but I believe that if that discussion needs to take place, it would need to be its own thread in the future, as the latter would require the former to first be implemented.

So, with that all out of the way, and because I'm a developer and not a moderator or admin (thank fuck), here's my thoughts on an exploitables framework implementation. For the best of both worlds:

[Type] - [Pos/Neut/Neg] - [Notes (32 character max)]

Example:

Bribery - Pos - Money, Snowflake, Morta

Blackmail - Pos - TCAF Deserter, '55

Torture - Neg - [blank]

Kidnapping/Hostage - Neut - [blank]

Yes, a 32-character maximum for notes means you won't be able to write up complex narrative hooks, but it's much much easier for antags to digest. Some Types would have Notes be optional (Torture), others would be required (Blackmail).

If ya'll compile a comprehensive list of entries worth having for antags to reference, I'd love to implement this some time!

So far:

Kidnapping

Torture

Blackmail

Extortion

Bribery

[HanSolo1519]

57 minutes ago, zha everything broken said:

Using the word 'consent' for this changes Exploitables from a roleplay aid into something that also becomes an additional moderation subject

Using 'Preferences' or a different phrase may be a good idea to avoid the implications of going against someone's consent. Sometimes someone would prefer not to be targeted, but an antag's forced to from having a limited pool of choices.

Its semantics in the end, but it feels much less 'heavy'. The verbiage of 'consent' does carry alot of weight.

Edited Saturday at 14:48 by HanSolo1519

[KingOfThePing]

Something like this will make playing antag actual hell.
You have to tiptoe around getting ahelped because you pissed of somebody enough as antag already. Now I have to read (and memorize) every crewmember's "consent toggles" and have to skirt around them and if I don't then I am automatically the bad guy because I disrespected someone's "consent". What if someone gets kinda in between an antag situation by chance or mistake and they have all prefs off? What can the antag do? Hands are tied on a literal OOC level and it would be a rule break to act against these toggles.

Apparently I have to remind people here that this is collaborative, joint roleplaying space. When you ready up as anything than non-extended, you accept the possibility that you get antag interaction, which also includes violence, blackmailing, etc. If you are so concerned about your imaginary roleplay character (because you are not playing yourself) getting injured or kidnapped, then maybe you have to re-think if these collaborative, open roleplaying spaces are the right thing for you. 
It is actually really easy to not get reeled into antag interactions or situations in general when you don't want to interact with these situations at all.

This idea should not even be seriously considered.

Edited Saturday at 18:05 by KingOfThePing

[Loorey]

I'll have to totally second what Lanze said here before me. 

When you're playing an antagonist you naturally get put into odd and awkward spots throughout the round, for example, someone catches you doing thing X or Y, or whatever. If I as an antagonist have to look through someone's "antagonist interaction preferences" or whatever you wish to call the final idea before considering to interact with them, let it be before I even started antagging or on the fly, I'll have an even rougher time, with zero need for it.

There's already a lot of OOC bashing going on towards some antagonist players or specific gimmick ideas "...oh the antag did not do anything..." - things along those lines, we try to keep it at bay but it just naturally occurs or happens somewhere that isn't public. As an antagonist you're pretty much there to drive roleplay, entertain others, steer the round into other directions, with this you'll be significantly handicapped. 

Let me be quite simple and basically repeat what was said before me:

When you see 'Secret' or an actually voted antagonist gamemode, and you ready up, you are agreeing to participate in the round and interact with others. This includes antagonists. They are as much of an element in roleplay as everyone else is. We already do a lot against things that make you as a player uncomfortable, and you can always Ahelp and talk to us about it if you find that to be the case, but this idea plainly put is just bad and nothing more. 

[Loorey]

To ammend to this:

6 hours ago, ASmallCuteCat said:

...without having to directly confront anyone in LOOC or ahelp.

Depending on what is being done by the antagonist, LOOC might or might not be the place for it - ultimately LOOC is also toggleable so you should never take any response from your LOOC messages for granted. But more importantly: There's nothing, ever, stopping you from Ahelping something. Period. You do not even get into direct contact with the player you are Ahelping. We are there to for one, enforce the rules, but secondly also act as neutral mediators in the middle of people that have an issue with each other. We are not going to laugh at you if you Ahelp because you are uncomfortable with something, we are going to neutrally look at it, see what we think about the situation and then find a solution. 

I've seen a recently very big trend of "...but I don't want to Ahelp this..." for no reason whatsoever. Seriously, if you think something is odd, does not belong here: Ahelp it. 

[wowzewow]

1 hour ago, KingOfThePing said:

Something like this will make playing antag actual hell.
You have to tiptoe around getting ahelped because you pissed of somebody enough as antag already. Now I have to read (and memorize) every crewmember's "consent toggles" and have to skirt around them and if I don't then I am automatically the bad guy because I disrespected someone's "consent". What if someone gets kinda in between an antag situation by chance or mistake and they have all prefs off? What can the antag do? Hands are tied on a literal OOC level and it would be a rule break to act against these toggles.

I really regret putting "consent" in the title now because people are jumping to conclusions. My fault for clickbait title.

Again. The Antag is fully within their means to just point blank you if they need to.

This is simply an extension to how our current Exploitables system operates where if they have the time to RP, they can read it and play around it.

There are no overarching moderation changes, no policy changes, no antag escalation changes...

 

This is just an update to the small forgotten box called "Exploitables". Nothing more.

 

Edited Saturday at 19:58 by wowzewow

[KingOfThePing]

14 minutes ago, wowzewow said:

I really regret putting "consent" in the title now because people are jumping to conclusions. My fault for clickbait title.

It does not matter how you call it. It doesn't change what it is. And it opens a door.

 

15 minutes ago, wowzewow said:

There are no overarching moderation changes, no policy changes, no antag escalation changes...

This is a delusion.

[UltraNumeron]

As someone who plays antags quite often, i'll throw my two cents in on this.

I like the idea as it seems to be intended, some things just need to be made clear.

These should essentially be just checkboxes for what kinds of gimmicks youd encourage your antag to involve you in, with a clear disclaimer by that section that this does not change what you may get involved in within rounds, being just a showcase of what you're most interested in participating in.

This kind of thing is mostly a tool for antags to see where they should start their gimmicks because few people have workable exploitables written and many do not necesarilly want to have a gimmick built around them otherwise, so this would be good for showing who wants to be involved in a gimmick around them and what sort of gimmick. This kind of option as I see it would mainly just affect how people start gimmicks rather then the flow of the round. 

Say if a department gets hijacked or a hostage is needed from there its really irrelevant what tags there are because the gimmick is not about the people involved there. And if someone interferes with that, or is at the wrong place at the wrong time they're still as liable to get pulled into it as anybody else would usually be.

And a dessysalta said, an option to just opt into being no-escd works too, either as standalone or along with this sort of system. (Since having people that can be kill without escalation could be quite useful for building up a gimmick and setting stakes.)

 

Overall though, this idea has good potential. Implementation needs to be careful however.

Most of the people pro-this on this thread are the ones I see actually playing antags, and the ones against not so much. And it shows.

1 hour ago, Loorey said:

To ammend to this:

Depending on what is being done by the antagonist, LOOC might or might not be the place for it - ultimately LOOC is also toggleable so you should never take any response from your LOOC messages for granted. But more importantly: There's nothing, ever, stopping you from Ahelping something. Period. You do not even get into direct contact with the player you are Ahelping. We are there to for one, enforce the rules, but secondly also act as neutral mediators in the middle of people that have an issue with each other. We are not going to laugh at you if you Ahelp because you are uncomfortable with something, we are going to neutrally look at it, see what we think about the situation and then find a solution. 

I've seen a recently very big trend of "...but I don't want to Ahelp this..." for no reason whatsoever. Seriously, if you think something is odd, does not belong here: Ahelp it. 

This is a trend because aurora very much does have a history of admins butting in the middle of rounds, often in the middle of active conflicts to interfere. Sometimes for good reason yes, but I have not seen a server even a HRP one which gets admin interference as often as aurora does. (This all has gotten better recently, but still is the case.) Thats why having options people can check is good, because people don't want to be paranoid about upsetting someone and getting ahelped. I don't think many people really want god coming down and changing the flow of the round as the solution to things not going the way they prefer. There are good reasons to ahelp, though I really don't think its the sort of thing that should be used often to deal with things that can be dealt with icly. Having to argue why you did what in the middle of a scene to a random bwoink is not fun or good for the round.

So why not just make it clearer who wants their round to go what way? This is a solution to a problem that ideally wouldnt exist, but is one we have and this is much cleaner than the alternative.

[Arbiter_Ambrose]

On 27/09/2025 at 14:50, zha everything broken said:

I really love this! There's an important distinction that need to be made here between an Exploitables Framework and a Consent Framework though, as one is a development concern and the other is a moderation concern.

Using the word 'consent' for this changes Exploitables from a roleplay aid into something that also becomes an additional moderation subject. This would require a larger, separate discussion to pursue meaningfully. By logging into the server, a certain level of broad consent is understood (99% of antag rounds involve violence at some level, right?), and it comes down to having a community that has a basic level of mutual respect and trust to ensure everyone can feel comfortable and safe here on an OOC level. Even if someone fills in an entry as 'negative,' while a courteous antag would always do their best to avoid it, antag rounds Can be chaotic and shit happens and Sometimes you Need a human shield and there's only one to hand!

If this is to be a consent framework, I believe 'positive' and 'negative' would need to be changed to 'yes' and 'no,' and the admins/moderators will need to step in to discuss and decide among themselves.

All of the above is an important distinction to make between an Exploitables Framework and a Consent Framework, but I believe that if that discussion needs to take place, it would need to be its own thread in the future, as the latter would require the former to first be implemented.

So, with that all out of the way, and because I'm a developer and not a moderator or admin (thank fuck), here's my thoughts on an exploitables framework implementation. For the best of both worlds:

[Type] - [Pos/Neut/Neg] - [Notes (32 character max)]

Example:

Bribery - Pos - Money, Snowflake, Morta

Blackmail - Pos - TCAF Deserter, '55

Torture - Neg - [blank]

Kidnapping/Hostage - Neut - [blank]

Yes, a 32-character maximum for notes means you won't be able to write up complex narrative hooks, but it's much much easier for antags to digest. Some Types would have Notes be optional (Torture), others would be required (Blackmail).

If ya'll compile a comprehensive list of entries worth having for antags to reference, I'd love to implement this some time!

So far:

Kidnapping

Torture

Blackmail

Extortion

Bribery

As a antag, I think maybe uhhhh, as mentioned above mind-bending gimmicks, uhhh maybe a bit specific but religious gimmick? instant death, death in general maybe? these last two seem pretty important distinctions so I made sure to separate them using the comma, this might be a ton of hyperspecific lists..?

Additionally after consulting some colleagues of mine I have concerns it could turn into a moderation tool and I am going to be frank, that wouldn't be very fun if someone says, "oh no, you can't kill me I had death off, or hey you can't blackmail me, I had blackmail off or, why did you not torture me!! I had torture on but you tortured the person with torture off :/" and then you get bwoinked and suddenly you are twenty minutes into a stern talking to from a admin or something, this is obviously a hyper negative situation and it isn't really how I personally think it will go but I am bringing what you said to a kind of full, this is not exactly my mind to be clear, I actually have a really optimistic view I just want to cover all the bases.

And that is what I was going to say, and then I forgot to post it, I think everyone has really good points and ultrarat made my point alot better than me but witness what I was going to say.

[Sniblet]

Codifying Felix Jackson’s role as morgue stuffing

I think people should still be allowed to write exploitables at length. If they want antags to e.g. play as a specific person from their past (since I’m talking about Felix anyway), 32 characters will not suffice. About half of that would be their name.

All concerns in these replies are pretty easily dispelled by writing in a

IMPORTANT NOTE: These are suggestions. Antagonists are in no way required to read or respect these toggles at any time.

It’s not really deluded to say this can have no moderation impact, look. It says so right in the menu.

Edited 18 hours ago by Sniblet

[MattAtlas]

I think the only toggle I could endorse adding is a toggle that says "you are allowed to kill me without escalation for the round", basically a redshirt toggle. I think anything else has too much subconscious impact on antagonists and will lead them to feel even more boxed in than they already are. You can put all the disclaimers you like but when an antagonist is dealing with potentially being adminhelped for breaking consent, they will treat the whole thing like it is made of crystal.

[FlamingLily]

Brief thoughts.

On 27/09/2025 at 23:50, zha everything broken said:

Using the word 'consent' for this changes Exploitables from a roleplay aid into something that also becomes an additional moderation subject.

Completely agree with all of the discussion about framing. If this is to be implemented, it needs to be very clearly described as preferences. I've been on a server which had antag consent toggles in the past, and it had a worse antag gameplay loop than we do (and half of our discussion around antags is how we barely have any (although that's improved recently, tbh)).

In fact, I would personally take it a step further. No negative toggles. I think, no matter how strongly you describe it as a preference, issues will arise when someone with a negative toggle is targeted in a gimmick. Not all people, of course, but some people (and I need to stress, this isn't about anyone specifically) will treat it like a consent toggle. It being misinterpreted will be inevitable. In an ideal world, people with positive toggles enabled will already draw antag action away from people with neutral toggles.

9 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

I think anything else has too much subconscious impact on antagonists and will lead them to feel even more boxed in than they already are.

Exactly what I was getting at with the above but much more succinct.

That being said, Torture might be one thing that could have an OOC, moderation consent toggle. That's a different discussion, but I do want to at least make the distinction here that I think at most that kind of RP could maybe be more deserving of a consent toggle than the rest.

On 27/09/2025 at 23:50, zha everything broken said:

Example:

Bribery - Pos - Money, Snowflake, Morta

Blackmail - Pos - TCAF Deserter, '55

Torture - Neg - [blank]

Kidnapping/Hostage - Neut - [blank]

Ironically, this is basically how I format my exploitables anyway:

Quote

SUBJECT SUSCEPTIBILITY TO EXTORTION (Blackmail, threats against loved ones, etc.):

SUBJECT SUSCEPTIBILITY TO COERSION (Immediate threats against life or liberty):

SUBJECT SUSCEPTIBILITY TO MANIPULATION (Convincing subject to agree with goals):

SUBJECT SUSCEPTIBILITY TO PERSUASION (Bribery, etc):

So I do agree that this is probably a pretty solid way to go about this. HOWEVER, 32 characters is WAY too small, and I would be really disappointed if we lost that much ability for creative expression.

Ideally, I think we could implement it like flavour text, where it has individual smaller tabs but each field with a large size. That'd let us have preference toggles as well as IC exploitables, too.

Exact categories/toggles I don't know about fully yet but I also do like the idea of the redshirt toggle. - especially because that one's something that would ordinarily be against the rules but can override that.

[GeneralCamo]

As a former antagonist main myself, the ability to flag bypassing escalation would be an amazing tool for certain gimmicks. Plus, we could throw an icon in the player list on the uplink, allowing both a full exploitable as before, while also an "at-a-glance" viewing of whether we can treat them as a redshirt.