Cult Rework?

[Bug]

So uh.

I came from Bay, and back in the Hay day of Bay kill me, one of their big complaints was the cult gamemode. So, me and two other dudes started up a rework for Cult that would be big, brand new, interesting, and would accommodate different playstyles. We came up with the following ideas:

Corruption: We proposed an added system called corruption, which would be the new way to convert as opposed to forcing someone onto a rune. It's gained by seeing culty things and being the poor guy who is subject to their trickery, and it drives you mad. You can give into the madness to become a cultist, or just stick through it and become that raving hobo on the street.

Mind, Body, Spirit: To give cultists some choice in how they approach things, we divided cultists into three different paths of magicks, being Mind, Body, and Spirit.

- Body: Body was made to appease those who like to brute force things, stuff dealing with blood, pain, etc.

- Mind: This one appeals to those who like to mess with people's heads, strategics, and magic stuff.

- Spirit: Finally, spirit was for the scouts and sneakers, and was intended to give ghosts something to do.

Unfortunately, interest was eventually lost in the project, and it died in it's tracks. However, after some talk in the discord I rediscovered that I still had the doc. Here it is, with mine and two other Bay nerds' comments.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19c_AT6_gqa8KA13LfMtJmKccWYY4cvYy3PUj1y_YyLo/edit?usp=sharing

Let me know what you guys think of it. I know that staff is busy implementing new map, and this won't be even thought of being implemented for a long time, but I would like some feedback on it if we ever do want to make cult more original and fun.

[Skull132]

I know that staff is busy implementing new map, and this won't be even thought of being implemented for a long time, but I would like some feedback on it if we ever do want to make cult more original and fun.

 

Just confirming your thoughts, ye, devs won't look at this from an implementation standpoint until ~a month from now when new map meme is done and we've figured out what direction we want to take next.

[Bygonehero]

It sounds pretty awesome, indeed much of the lovecraftian side of things is lost with cult how it is.

[NoahKirchner]

This sounds neato as heck. Right now as soon as runes are found everyone subconciously knows what round-type it is, this allows for a more stealthy approach and everyone going insane slowly would be p/ neat0.

[Bug]

I know that staff is busy implementing new map, and this won't be even thought of being implemented for a long time, but I would like some feedback on it if we ever do want to make cult more original and fun.

 

Just confirming your thoughts, ye, devs won't look at this from an implementation standpoint until ~a month from now when new map meme is done and we've figured out what direction we want to take next.

 

I don't expect them to be thinking about implementing this for some time; I know they're busy, and I don't wanna overload 'em. I'm just posting this here to get some community feedback and criticism. So far the responses are positive, and I'm hoping to see some more comments soon. Maybe we'll have a finished system prepped by the time you guys are ready to implement something new!

[driecg36]

I +1 this, eldritch stuff is awesome and I think this would make cult a lot more interesting.

[Coalf]

Don't know what will stop shitlers from shouting CULTS IN MY MAINTS WHIP OUT THE SHLONGBATON besides moderation, which people complain about right now.

And the complaint that people are forced to be cult or construct, instead now people have to be cult or insane.

Or murdercult just going ham as soon as they get enough stuff.

I am an avid defender of current cult and I want to say I DON'T disagree with the change, I'm just pointing out that you're switching crocks for socks&sandals.

It's the same thing with a different wrapper.

[Outboarduniform]

Another solution is to simply copy the Lifeweb Thanati system. Instead of different 'paths', per se, as you are referring to, we have the different 'circles'. The circle of malice, the circle of traps, etc. In the Thanati system you have to manually set up the runes (Sigil) and manually invoke them with the certain phrase that correlates with the circle that the ritual is associated with. Ex: Circle of Malice must be invoked when doing a ritual within the Circle of Malice. I always thought that cult needed a rework anyways, and is simply too simplistic in my opinion.

[Kaed]

While I applaud some of the ingenuity of this idea, there's a lot about it that makes me frown and shake my head. It's clear that you're going for a theme, and it's a good theme, don't get me wrong. But, aside from a few exceptions, a lot of the cultist abilities you're coming up to amount to 'like wizard but vury spoops'. And that's not a good thing. Every antagonist we have right now is deliberately significantly different. We can't change cult and have the result be 'oh it's the mini raging mages round type god this is annoying'. A few similarities is fine, but if the ability list starts containing a large amount "like X ability from Y antag' then you have a problem. An individual cultist should also almost never have a power equivalent in scope to a primary antagonist, because they are multi-antags.

As an example to make the mechanics significantly unique enough, I offer an alternative to these that I came up with in the last five minutes of typing this.

Dark Dream - Your target dreams as if they were someone else, they are right ~ While a mind swap is fitting for mind, the question of tattoos and cult items being lost remains a big downside. Would the victim gain those abilities now that they are in your body, or not as they aren’t familiar with them (not converted). If that is too much of a hassel, perhaps this can be reworded to be more like Subjugate.

Ghostly Form ~ basically ethereal jaunt would be fitting.

Astral Projection - Leave your body, to see the world as a spirit. ~ can be like scrying orb, allowing them to talk with the dead, and scout out nearby rooms.

----

Overshadow: You whisper a word of power that mortal minds were not meant to know, and infest the mind of a nearby target. This ability only works at a very short range (probably 1-3 tiles), and causes you to gain control of the victim, but they can leave that area afterwards. Essentially, you take over their body and can make them do whatever you wish during that time (though there might be some limitation on making them commit suicide?). This ability only lasts a short time, roughly 30-60 seconds, and your body is helpless during this time as you collapse and mutter dark incantations to help you focus on controlling your subject (it is not subtle, so it shouldn't be done if you are surrounded). You mainly use this ability to for escapes or to make someone do something awful, and they receive a significant amount of corruption from this.

Spirit Sight: You inscribe a tattoo on yourself that you can activate at any time, allowing you to, at the cost of nominal blood drain while active, to see the presence of anything living nearby. This essentially amounts to having thermal vision, but does not involve goggles anyone passing can see.

Spirit Shift: You gain the ability to leave your body at will. The process requires some concentration and time to do (several seconds), during which you whisper dark incantations under your breath. Afterwards, you leave your body, entering the spirit realm. While you are in the spirit realm, you can see and hear many things in the material world, and walls do not affect your passage. Your body begins to slowly die (slow oxyloss rather than the old bruteloss, you aren't breathing anymore with no soul inside), but you can re-enter it at any time to recover, or you can perform a dangerous ritual that moves your body to the location of your spirit. This process also takes several seconds, and will telegraph what is going on to nearby people ("Urist McCulty's body begins to shimmer and fade away!"), and at the completion, you reinhabit your body at the location. Flesh is not supposed to move like this, however, and doing so makes you take a moderate amount of brute damage (enough to hurt you significantly, but not enough to start breaking bones unless you do it repeatedly in a short time). If possible, making this version of ghost lack the ghosty speed/acceleration would be good, so they can't just zoom across the entire station in seconds.

The obvious things like Overshadow and Spirit Shift would corrupt people who are nearby to hear the dark whispers and see things that should not be, obviously.

[Bug]

Don't know what will stop shitlers from shouting CULTS IN MY MAINTS WHIP OUT THE SHLONGBATON besides moderation, which people complain about right now.

And the complaint that people are forced to be cult or construct, instead now people have to be cult or insane.

Or murdercult just going ham as soon as they get enough stuff.

I am an avid defender of current cult and I want to say I DON'T disagree with the change, I'm just pointing out that you're switching crocks for socks&sandals.

It's the same thing with a different wrapper.

 

I've always heard complaints about cult being a force antag gamemode. That's why things like rev are so hated. I tried to make this system of conversion give you a chance to resist conversion. For current cult, if you get captured you're either becoming a cultist or dying and becoming a construct. If the conversion is distant, then you can continue to RP (even if you're insane), and try to find a way to cure yourself of the corruption. I'd like to hear more of what you think about this system when compared to the current one.

While I applaud some of the ingenuity of this idea, there's a lot about it that makes me frown and shake my head. It's clear that you're going for a theme, and it's a good theme, don't get me wrong. But, aside from a few exceptions, a lot of the cultist abilities you're coming up to amount to 'like wizard but vury spoops'. And that's not a good thing. Every antagonist we have right now is deliberately significantly different. We can't change cult and have the result be 'oh it's the mini raging mages round type god this is annoying'. A few similarities is fine, but if the ability list starts containing a large amount "like X ability from Y antag' then you have a problem. An individual cultist should also almost never have a power equivalent in scope to a primary antagonist, because they are multi-antags.

As an example to make the mechanics significantly unique enough, I offer an alternative to these that I came up with in the last five minutes of typing this.

Dark Dream - Your target dreams as if they were someone else, they are right ~ While a mind swap is fitting for mind, the question of tattoos and cult items being lost remains a big downside. Would the victim gain those abilities now that they are in your body, or not as they aren’t familiar with them (not converted). If that is too much of a hassel, perhaps this can be reworded to be more like Subjugate.

Ghostly Form ~ basically ethereal jaunt would be fitting.

Astral Projection - Leave your body, to see the world as a spirit. ~ can be like scrying orb, allowing them to talk with the dead, and scout out nearby rooms.

----

Overshadow: You whisper a word of power that mortal minds were not meant to know, and infest the mind of a nearby target. This ability only works at a very short range (probably 1-3 tiles), and causes you to gain control of the victim, but they can leave that area afterwards. Essentially, you take over their body and can make them do whatever you wish during that time (though there might be some limitation on making them commit suicide?). This ability only lasts a short time, roughly 30-60 seconds, and your body is helpless during this time as you collapse and mutter dark incantations to help you focus on controlling your subject (it is not subtle, so it shouldn't be done if you are surrounded). You mainly use this ability to for escapes or to make someone do something awful, and they receive a significant amount of corruption from this.

Spirit Sight: You inscribe a tattoo on yourself that you can activate at any time, allowing you to, at the cost of nominal blood drain while active, to see the presence of anything living nearby. This essentially amounts to having thermal vision, but does not involve goggles anyone passing can see.

Spirit Shift: You gain the ability to leave your body at will. The process requires some concentration and time to do (several seconds), during which you whisper dark incantations under your breath. Afterwards, you leave your body, entering the spirit realm. While you are in the spirit realm, you can see and hear many things in the material world, and walls do not affect your passage. Your body begins to slowly die (slow oxyloss rather than the old bruteloss, you aren't breathing anymore with no soul inside), but you can re-enter it at any time to recover, or you can perform a dangerous ritual that moves your body to the location of your spirit. This process also takes several seconds, and will telegraph what is going on to nearby people ("Urist McCulty's body begins to shimmer and fade away!"), and at the completion, you reinhabit your body at the location. Flesh is not supposed to move like this, however, and doing so makes you take a moderate amount of brute damage (enough to hurt you significantly, but not enough to start breaking bones unless you do it repeatedly in a short time). If possible, making this version of ghost lack the ghosty speed/acceleration would be good, so they can't just zoom across the entire station in seconds.

The obvious things like Overshadow and Spirit Shift would corrupt people who are nearby to hear the dark whispers and see things that should not be, obviously.

 

You bring up a very good point. We wanted to use some of the wizard abilities reskinned because it would be easier to program, and it would be something the playerbase would be familiar with, but I can see your concerns. I'm all for hearing the community's ideas for better abilities and powers: That's why I made this post.

Dark Dream: The downside for the cultist using this is that yes, you do lose your cult items and tattoos. I'm wondering if this ability would be used more for a scouting/subversion thing, or if it would be a last resort to escape your body and start anew as it's phrased on the current wizard. For the person in their body, they wouldn't really know how to use the abilities, and being inside a cultist's body with such mindbending tattoos and equipment would leave lasting corruption on that person's psyche. Subjugate wouldn't exactly get the same effect, and adding it to the cultist's roster would just make it closer to Wizard, so we'll probably not make it a booze ray.

Overshadow: While it does sound very powerful, it seems like a unique ability that could be useful for a one on one chase. Could have some interesting uses.

Spirit Sight: Thermal vision but with blood. I like it.

Spirit Shift: A new take on Teleport, which doubles both as a scouting ability and a movement tool. Sounds pretty good.

All in all, some good suggestions. I'll try to work these into the doc.

[Kaed]

You bring up a very good point. We wanted to use some of the wizard abilities reskinned because it would be easier to program, and it would be something the playerbase would be familiar with, but I can see your concerns. I'm all for hearing the community's ideas for better abilities and powers: That's why I made this post.

Overshadow: While it does sound very powerful, it seems like a unique ability that could be useful for a one on one chase. Could have some interesting uses.

Spirit Sight: Thermal vision but with blood. I like it.

Spirit Shift: A new take on Teleport, which doubles both as a scouting ability and a movement tool. Sounds pretty good.

All in all, some good suggestions. I'll try to work these into the doc.

 

On the note of Overshadow, I think, much like wizards and muzzles, you could counteract it with deafness or earmuffs

[Coalf]

Don't know what will stop shitlers from shouting CULTS IN MY MAINTS WHIP OUT THE SHLONGBATON besides moderation, which people complain about right now.

And the complaint that people are forced to be cult or construct, instead now people have to be cult or insane.

Or murdercult just going ham as soon as they get enough stuff.

I am an avid defender of current cult and I want to say I DON'T disagree with the change, I'm just pointing out that you're switching crocks for socks&sandals.

It's the same thing with a different wrapper.

 

I've always heard complaints about cult being a force antag gamemode. That's why things like rev are so hated. I tried to make this system of conversion give you a chance to resist conversion. For current cult, if you get captured you're either becoming a cultist or dying and becoming a construct. If the conversion is distant, then you can continue to RP (even if you're insane), and try to find a way to cure yourself of the corruption. I'd like to hear more of what you think about this system when compared to the current one.

 

One thing I agree with 100% is that cult needs a progression bar, as of now a single cultist can figure out EVERY WORD spending 10 minutes of the round writing runes in maintenance, hell I've seen people complete the book withing 5 minutes!

Adding a progression bar to cult will fix one thing, murderbone cult will become much MUCH harder since cultists will actually need to gain verbs through in-game interaction.

The thing I don't agree with is this

"If the conversion is distant, then you can continue to RP (even if you're insane), and try to find a way to cure yourself of the corruption. "

 

This is like throwing a parachute to a drowning man.

People that complain about forced conversion are simply whiners, they're not going to go away with the addition of this.

I have argued time and time again with these people and the issue can be summed up thusly, "My character would not do that."

Except this is exactly what their character would do, joining a cult in itself IS INSANITY.

If you read Lovecrafts short stories the protagonist often tells these stories in past-tense, already post insanity the reason for this is, these characters survive those stories, they go insane AFTER the matter but how do their interactions with the cults go?

Join or die, same as our own.

The cult of Cthulhu? Join or die, Cult of Miigo? Join, die or become a brain in a jar. Cult of Dagon? Join or die. Shadow over Innsmouth? The populance had two options, join or die, outsiders had one, die.

But your insanity system? There is a wide difference between a sol marine that witnessed his friend being burned by a flamethrower and a cutie cargo tech from Essex who saw a splinter wound once and fainted.

This is why the rune conversion system has a "Resist", if your character is tough he can resist the conversion for much longer or hell DIE because of how strong his will is.

What you're giving us is an iron bar, when you reach X points you are automatically cult or insane, unless resisting has some kind of drawbacks you better believe people are going to abuse resist as they do now.

And curing insanity after it happens? Again this is either going to be abused to hell which makes it useless or people are going to complain it forces their character to act a certain kind of way.

Third issue is the avalanche issue.

The reason Vampire, Wizard, Traitor and Ninja are so popular because there is a semblance of quality control, there is one/few antags causing trouble, they have a plan and they go through it.

Meanwhile Revs/Loyalists and Cultists face one issue, not enough AOOC communication.

At the start a gimmick is agreed on but as the round progresses more people join, and when say for example, Frank McDinkler converts Chef La Newguy the Newguy may not understand the gimmick fully, Newguy converts Baldie Von Baldson and Baldson only knows half of the half that Newguy understood and this goes on and on and in the end you have a massive group of people that have NO idea what the gimmick is and they revert to their natural state and result to their basic instincts, sex murder and trying to summon Nar'sie for any price.

Again the progression COULD solve this but the inherit issue is in the lack of communication of playerbase, we have AOOC for gods sake people use it, most of the time people talk at roundstart with it and then never use it again, thus new people have no idea how to use it.

Fourth issue, metagame/powergame.

We often like to pretend like this doesn't exist, but it does and even if our staff team is probably stronger than ever it's hard to spot these instances as people lack the drive to ahelp powergaming until it directly influences their style of play.

Right now the biggest issue of cult is the clear powergame of security, people outright questioning you about "where did you get these cuts????" when you're wearing a jumpsuit with long sleeves, security outright just "knowing" how to counter cult, people arresting cultists with HuT sentences for killing a monkey in maint instead of maybe submitting them to the psychiatrist for help.

Cultists being pretty much STALKED by security after only being suspected of doing cult stuff.

I have created the Oroboros theory for this.

Player tries RP conversion>Gets shut down by convertee/security immediatly>Player decides to murderbone>Everyone else is upset at murderbone and tries to shutdown cult more>Player quits cult after being shutdown by security>New player joins cult and tries to RP conversion et cetera.

We have had for multiple weeks the same 3-6 players begin as cult over and over because people refuse to enable cult and maybe try it out.

Again maybe the progression bar could fix this, but I doubt it.

I am sorry if I sounded a bit hostile in this, none of this is aimed at you and I still FULLY SUPPORT this change because I feel like nothing bad can be done with this, the question I am simply posing is.

Is it worth it?

To me all we're doing is choosing if we want to wear a glove on the left hand or the right hand and just because something is new doesn't mean it will be better.

[Bug]

Alright, first let's start off with this little section here.

 

I am sorry if I sounded a bit hostile in this, none of this is aimed at you and I still FULLY SUPPORT this change because I feel like nothing bad can be done with this, the question I am simply posing is.

Is it worth it?

To me all we're doing is choosing if we want to wear a glove on the left hand or the right hand and just because something is new doesn't mean it will be better.

 

Don't worry about giving me criticism as long as it's constructive and not a barrage of personal attacks, which yours isn't. I want to hear feedback and potential flaws that I may have missed, that's why I made this.

Now that that's out of the way, let's address some of the concerns you posed.

 

People that complain about forced conversion are simply whiners, they're not going to go away with the addition of this.

I have argued time and time again with these people and the issue can be summed up thusly, "My character would not do that."

Except this is exactly what their character would do, joining a cult in itself IS INSANITY.

If you read Lovecrafts short stories the protagonist often tells these stories in past-tense, already post insanity the reason for this is, these characters survive those stories, they go insane AFTER the matter but how do their interactions with the cults go?

Join or die, same as our own.

The cult of Cthulhu? Join or die, Cult of Miigo? Join, die or become a brain in a jar. Cult of Dagon? Join or die. Shadow over Innsmouth? The populance had two options, join or die, outsiders had one, die.

But your insanity system? There is a wide difference between a sol marine that witnessed his friend being burned by a flamethrower and a cutie cargo tech from Essex who saw a splinter wound once and fainted.

This is why the rune conversion system has a "Resist", if your character is tough he can resist the conversion for much longer or hell DIE because of how strong his will is.

What you're giving us is an iron bar, when you reach X points you are automatically cult or insane, unless resisting has some kind of drawbacks you better believe people are going to abuse resist as they do now.

And curing insanity after it happens? Again this is either going to be abused to hell which makes it useless or people are going to complain it forces their character to act a certain kind of way.

 

The first/second(?) issue. What I found interesting about your phrasing here is the extensive use of the word "insanity". Yes, joining a cult is insanity, and people who witness such horrors go insane. However, think to current cult. If you see some constructs or crazy cultists going around saying weird shit, you're usually not gonna go insane. You're gonna go "The fuck is that? Someone call security" and not really do much. Sure, some people may RP some PTSD, but usually you can get away from a cult with a fairly sound state of mind, considering you're facing eldritch abominations. Adding some actual insanity would make more sense, no? This system doesn't remove "Join or die", cultists are still going to want people to either join them or be slaughtered, it just adds an effect to a cult's presence. For current system, sure. You can resist cultists once they put you on the conversion rune and die, but it doesn't matter in the end. They're going to shove you into a shard anyways and put you in a construct. It's not really a matter of "Join or die", moreso "Join or join as a construct", and I personally haven't found this too fun. As for resisting insanity, of course there is going to be drawbacks to it. You start losing your mind. You have a choice of either giving into the madness because your will is weak and you want to end the torment, or you can power through these troubled times like a trooper, but it won't be easy. Neither will curing your insanity. I'm not too sure how it would be "abused" per se, so if you could give me some scenarios that would be great.

 

Third issue is the avalanche issue.

The reason Vampire, Wizard, Traitor and Ninja are so popular because there is a semblance of quality control, there is one/few antags causing trouble, they have a plan and they go through it.

Meanwhile Revs/Loyalists and Cultists face one issue, not enough AOOC communication.

At the start a gimmick is agreed on but as the round progresses more people join, and when say for example, Frank McDinkler converts Chef La Newguy the Newguy may not understand the gimmick fully, Newguy converts Baldie Von Baldson and Baldson only knows half of the half that Newguy understood and this goes on and on and in the end you have a massive group of people that have NO idea what the gimmick is and they revert to their natural state and result to their basic instincts, sex murder and trying to summon Nar'sie for any price.

Again the progression COULD solve this but the inherit issue is in the lack of communication of playerbase, we have AOOC for gods sake people use it, most of the time people talk at roundstart with it and then never use it again, thus new people have no idea how to use it.

 

This is...true. Communication isn't the best in these kinds of gamemodes, but that's not really my job to make players talk to each other when they're an antag. All I can do is provide the resources and facilitate it. I can give someone a tool, but only they have the choice of using it or not. I believe progression would definitely help curb newbies from having their killing sprees being too overpowered. An idea that came to me while reading this was having a "Head Cultist". As I've never played as a mercenary or raider, I can't say this for sure, but there likely would be someone to lead the antags and instruct them on what to do. Having one or more of the beginning cultists, the ones who signed up for it and know what they are doing, have the resources to communicate to the other cultists (Perhaps add an ability to all standard cultists that acts as a private communications line similar to changelings, and an added ability to high tier Mind specialists that allow their text to be bigger, thus allowing their word to be more prominent and listened to [similar to Squad Leaders and COs in CM]) telling them what to do and what not to do would be good. Rather than relying on an OOC mechanic to talk, having an IC means to communicate would likely improve this.

 

Fourth issue, metagame/powergame.

We often like to pretend like this doesn't exist, but it does and even if our staff team is probably stronger than ever it's hard to spot these instances as people lack the drive to ahelp powergaming until it directly influences their style of play.

Right now the biggest issue of cult is the clear powergame of security, people outright questioning you about "where did you get these cuts????" when you're wearing a jumpsuit with long sleeves, security outright just "knowing" how to counter cult, people arresting cultists with HuT sentences for killing a monkey in maint instead of maybe submitting them to the psychiatrist for help.

Cultists being pretty much STALKED by security after only being suspected of doing cult stuff.

I have created the Oroboros theory for this.

Player tries RP conversion>Gets shut down by convertee/security immediatly>Player decides to murderbone>Everyone else is upset at murderbone and tries to shutdown cult more>Player quits cult after being shutdown by security>New player joins cult and tries to RP conversion et cetera.

We have had for multiple weeks the same 3-6 players begin as cult over and over because people refuse to enable cult and maybe try it out.

Again maybe the progression bar could fix this, but I doubt it.

 

Trust me, I have been there. Back on Bay, I would try to be akin to a 'peace cultist', offering people power from an old book "me grandpappy used to have, where he'd heal people and do amazing magic tricks". Everything was going fine until I put them on the rune. They screamed into comms and ran off the rune. I tried to bring them to medical to heal them, they clawed at me while I was doing it, security came down and beat me within an inch of my life. They then took me back up to security, where I told them what was going on truthfully. They then tortured me, put me in a straightjacket, and locked me up for the rest of the round while the other cultists went around murderboning. After about three tries to be a "good little cultist", I swore off ever doing it again, that peacecultist was the stupidest fucking shit ever, that it was not worth it, and I would simply force others to be a cultist or die because I'd get meta'd the fuck out of and abused if I tried otherwise. That's one of the reasons I want to bring about a better cult. I like cult. I want it to work. But currently, in an RP setting, it's just not made for it. Bringing a new face to cult that would be fun for both cultists and witnesses is what I want. Giving cultists different ways to approach their situation, keeping the station on their toes, and giving the crew an actual chance at fighting back at Nar'sies influence, rather than going straight to cryo when you're converted or leaving the game when you're put in a soul shard. That is what I want from cult, and I'm hoping this rework will give us the first steps to get there.

[driecg36]

I very much like the idea of cult being more subversive and less murderboney. Currently, as cult stands, it is really encourages meta/powergameing (finding all the words in 5 minutes, knowing how to counter it instantly, etc). It would take an excellent group of Rp-ers (Both sec and cult wise) to make this gamemode work in an enjoyable, non murdeboney way, and since cult is a gamemode where you forcibly convert people that don't want to play cult, that just doesn't work.

However, I do see a potential problem with resisting being abused to hell if the only way to convert someone is through the insanity meter. I can definitely see people constantly spamming resist to not got converted, even long after their character should've given in. I think there should be a way to "force" someone over the edge, either by extreme, overwhelming exposure to sanity reducing events, or by some spell making them unable to resist. Otherwise, they're are just gonna be "those people" that never get converted because "muh character wouldn't do that." Personally, I enjoy forced conversion game modes like cult and rev because I'm pretty good at telling when my character isn't the one in the driver's seat anymore. At some point, you just have to accept it's not your character, it's whatever superior power is controlling your character, and you have to serve that superior power however you can.

[Rushodan]

However, I do see a potential problem with resisting being abused to hell if the only way to convert someone is through the insanity meter. I can definitely see people constantly spamming resist to not got converted, even long after their character should've given in.

 

This times a million. The amount of times I have gone after crew that appear to be physically and mentally weaker (ICly) and they end up spamming resist on the rune until they die. I mean, one that comes to mind without mentioning names was a tiny feeble hydroponicist that stuttered all of her words. I informed her that the pain would get worse and worse, and unless she submitted herself to the 'masters' she would suffer a long and painful death.

Turns out she suddenly has the will of a battle-hardened soldier. How interesting.

There should be a way of 'forcing' people into the cult whether they like it or not, with command staff being the hardest to convert for various reasons (loyalty implant and so on). Its pretty crappy how at the moment people will kill themselves to avoid joining the cult which kind of...really shouldn't happen much at all. Its even worse when cultists put themselves at risk to do this early game (chance of being spotted by random people/ the AI) - only to have the feeble victim they have picked out spam resist for more...OOC reasons (I dont want to play as a cultist).

[Kaed]

This times a million. The amount of times I have gone after crew that appear to be physically and mentally weaker (ICly) and they end up spamming resist on the rune until they die. I mean, one that comes to mind without mentioning names was a tiny feeble hydroponicist that stuttered all of her words. I informed her that the pain would get worse and worse, and unless she submitted herself to the 'masters' she would suffer a long and painful death.

Turns out she suddenly has the will of a battle-hardened soldier. How interesting.

There should be a way of 'forcing' people into the cult whether they like it or not, with command staff being the hardest to convert for various reasons (loyalty implant and so on). Its pretty crappy how at the moment people will kill themselves to avoid joining the cult which kind of...really shouldn't happen much at all. Its even worse when cultists put themselves at risk to do this early game (chance of being spotted by random people/ the AI) - only to have the feeble victim they have picked out spam resist for more...OOC reasons (I dont want to play as a cultist).

 

In my experience, people who create characters with fragile/vulnerable traits such as stuttering, especially if they are female, tend to do it for the sole purple of being a special, precious snowflake, and will become ornery and upset if you try to derail their waifu-bait character by making them a villain. This isn't universally true, of course, but I have noticed a tendency of people playing timid-seeming female characters absolutely loathing the existence of cult.

This is an endemic problem with cult, though. It doesn't really matter how you change it, there are people who just want to play their character like it's extended all day every day. These people will usually avoid even interacting with antagonists.

[Rushodan]

This times a million. The amount of times I have gone after crew that appear to be physically and mentally weaker (ICly) and they end up spamming resist on the rune until they die. I mean, one that comes to mind without mentioning names was a tiny feeble hydroponicist that stuttered all of her words. I informed her that the pain would get worse and worse, and unless she submitted herself to the 'masters' she would suffer a long and painful death.

Turns out she suddenly has the will of a battle-hardened soldier. How interesting.

There should be a way of 'forcing' people into the cult whether they like it or not, with command staff being the hardest to convert for various reasons (loyalty implant and so on). Its pretty crappy how at the moment people will kill themselves to avoid joining the cult which kind of...really shouldn't happen much at all. Its even worse when cultists put themselves at risk to do this early game (chance of being spotted by random people/ the AI) - only to have the feeble victim they have picked out spam resist for more...OOC reasons (I dont want to play as a cultist).

 

In my experience, people who create characters with fragile/vulnerable traits such as stuttering, especially if they are female, tend to do it for the sole purple of being a special, precious snowflake, and will become ornery and upset if you try to derail their waifu-bait character by making them a villain. This isn't universally true, of course, but I have noticed a tendency of people playing timid-seeming female characters absolutely loathing the existence of cult.

This is an endemic problem with cult, though. It doesn't really matter how you change it, there are people who just want to play their character like it's extended all day every day. These people will usually avoid even interacting with antagonists.

 

Hit the nail on the head there, and as you said there are always exceptions to the rule.

[Azande]

I don't really like the idea of force conversions. If they dont want to convert, kill them. They have no obligation to play as an antag if they do not wish too, and if they get stuck in a do-or-die like conversion and refuse to cooperate, end them.

For example, I have a Skrellian who is able to resist conversion out of sheer mental will and disbelief in 'dark gods', she's been alive for hundreds of years and shes a tough nut to crack.

A rework in general would be nice though.