Staff Decision: Multiple jobs - Job hopping - Realism vs Gameplay

[Faris]

So staff have discussed this topic thoroughly. The general consensus and what it boiled down to is, extreme cases are forbidden, this has always been the case, it's just what defines things are extreme varied. A lot of the responses boiled down to things making sense, which is an issue as people view things differently as well, so what makes sense for them may not align with what staff deem alright.

 

So, the established policy is as follows.

1- People are permitted to play within the department to the extent in which they have the qualifications. A Head of Security to Warden is fine. Certain exceptions to the rules apply, such as an Officer going cadet due to lack of slots.

2- To be able to play a job outside the department, your character will need to have believable qualifications AND staff approval. Staff approval can be acquired by contacting a member of staff.

 

These have been in a sense policies we've already enforced, they were simply not set in stone and open to interpretation at times.

IMPORTANT thing to note is that while certain instances may be permitted, like an Officer/Paramedic cross. There's an OOC aspect to it, don't hoard all the work as an Officer when there are paramedics are around, this is a quick way to have your privilege in this instance removed. Example, you respond to all calls for help with a roller and such, giving them triage and moving them to medical while paramedics just stare at you. It’s bad sportsmanship.

So, how do you get permission? It’s fairly simple, the infrastructure behind it is also fairly clear cut. You contact a member of staff, detailing your character and circumstances behind your request. If approved, a note will be added in a format similar to this “Name: Role 1 - Role 2 - Staff Member”. Keep in mind that if majority of staff find an issue with a ruling, we can still override it. For ease of process, I’ll be permitting people to contact staff about it outside the server for the next seven days, from 05/02/2018 to 11/02/2018. After that date, requests will ONLY be considered on server.

Addendum 1: PREVIOUS permissions are now null. New guidelines are being enforced.

Addendum 2: Just because it may be technically possible, does not mean it's believable. A Head of Security would not be a janitor. A Scientist may spend 50 years acquiring multiple PhD's to do everything, it doesn't mean it's believable.

FAQ:

Q: Are Job - Visitor affected.

A: No.

Q: What about Captains? What changes about them?

A: Nothing, it's stipulated they can be a departmental head or visitors. Anything else and you haven't read your wiki.

Q: Are races put into consideration?

A: Yes, feel free to consult your lore dev or a member of staff that specifically plays that race.

[Faris]

I'd like to state that this isn't entirely a set in stone policy and is liable to be changed depending on how things go, so post your feedback.

[Bauser]

This rule is in place to enforce a sort of canon between rounds. However (owing to the hectic nature of the game), events and other details typically aren't canonized between rounds. Is there a particular reason that realism between rounds is important for job/character selection, but not for other things?

To me, the episodic nature of SS13 sort of suggests that anything - characters included - should be variable between games as long as it's realistic within the confines of a single round. I mean, for obvious reasons, we have antagonist actions completely nulled from the record - but how do we decide which events are strictly caused by an antagonist, which are merely consequential, and which are unrelated at all?

I don't have any big problem with enforcing character permanence, I just think that - for the sake of consistency - we should take an "all-or-nothing" approach. That is, have a lot more things be canonized, or don't bother with permanence at all as long as the legitimacy of the single round is maintained. Personally, I do prefer the latter - allowing people to change their characters however they want between games - because it's more accessible to people and makes it easier to invest in new characters (we don't want to become Baystation). But I do see the storytelling benefit of the current system.

[Exia]

Though events caused by the antagonist, either directly or indirectly, within a round will generally not be considered canon, there can be certain aspects of the round where the antagonist has minimal/no involvement whatsoever. These parts are easily made canon and can be remembered by the characters in the round.

For example, ten minutes into the round Ian Foster (Medical Doctor), starts the day by yelling irritably at Jaime Smith (Bartender) because Jaime keeps adding too much milk in his coffee. Later on, Ian becomes a traitor due to the Auto-Traitor gamemode. The yelling earlier is canon as it has zero antag involvement.

It would make no sense if next round, Ian comes on as an engineer, losing all the medical knowledge he possessed last round due to it breaking our powergaming rules, and then come on as a warden the round after. Allowing people to change between games does not just affect one player, it affects every character who has ever interacted with them. A medical doctor last round who is an engineer this round cannot remember how he helped a patient recover if he has zero/little knowledge on how to doctor in the first place.

All I'm saying is if there is no consistency, there cannot be an overarching story for any character. Friendships and even rivalries of characters will be difficult to form while in game simply due to the constant retconning of knowledge and experiences and a character will typically be stagnant. The reasons we don't allow the canonization of a lot of antag-related stuff is because of:

A) Metagaming knowledge. Should a character face a certain antag one too many times, and canonize those encounters it gives a severe disadvantage to antagonists in the future. AI acting funny? Must be malf, let's destroy it. Guy with a arm blade just died? Must be playing dead. This guy had a buttload of contraband weapons? His PDA and radio are belong to us! Now tell me the code!

and

B) Ridiculous amounts of traumatization and unbelievable scenarios. A vampire sucks the blood from your character's lover till he's dry right before her eyes one round, a cultist slices her best friend's head off with a sword the next. Considering the average number of rounds people play in a day ranges from one to three and that secret is the most frequently voted roundtype, these scenarios will be a daily experience for your poor character. Realistically, they'd be suffering from so much PTSD among other things that they wouldn't last a day. They'd probably resign the next day or get locked up in a mental asylum in less than a week. And to those who can 'tolerate' all this abuse, it'll end up being a daily thing pretty much. "Oh, a vampire. I killed one last thursday." "Oh no, you're a traitor to the company? Bill was one too just yesterday!". It takes the surprise out of antag rounds, lessens fear RP and links back to my first point about metaknowledge.

[Faris]

This rule is in place to enforce a sort of canon between rounds. However (owing to the hectic nature of the game), events and other details typically aren't canonized between rounds. Is there a particular reason that realism between rounds is important for job/character selection, but not for other things?

To me, the episodic nature of SS13 sort of suggests that anything - characters included - should be variable between games as long as it's realistic within the confines of a single round. I mean, for obvious reasons, we have antagonist actions completely nulled from the record - but how do we decide which events are strictly caused by an antagonist, which are merely consequential, and which are unrelated at all?

I don't have any big problem with enforcing character permanence, I just think that - for the sake of consistency - we should take an "all-or-nothing" approach. That is, have a lot more things be canonized, or don't bother with permanence at all as long as the legitimacy of the single round is maintained. Personally, I do prefer the latter - allowing people to change their characters however they want between games - because it's more accessible to people and makes it easier to invest in new characters (we don't want to become Baystation). But I do see the storytelling benefit of the current system.

 

There are only two cases in which things are not canon. First is when it becomes an OOC issue, generally rule violations and such. Second is when antagonist involvement is present.

There is a level of consistency which makes the server what it is, the narrative carrying around from round to round. That's why I'd say consistency is a pillar of what the server is. When a character jumps from one character to another, interactions become cheap and a characters presence becomes cheap.

So I'd say we are going for the "all" approach, if not that, almost all.

[Azande]

plz add species information in an addendum so I don't need to PM four different loredevs.

[Faris]

Q: Are races put into consideration?

A: Yes, feel free to consult your lore dev or a member of staff that specifically plays that race.

 

https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=5568#p55612

[Bauser]

I just haven't observed that level of consistency. So all the people who die due to accidents (or of their own fault) and aren't cloned should be discontinued, right? And I don't know how to reconcile the consistency we do have with the round-based format of SS13. What it results in is a system where, in a given round, some events are canonized and others aren't - even though they happened side by side. And you get situations where certain events which should ideally carry over (E.G. part of the station is destroyed or something new is built for a reason other than antagonism) simply can't because of how the game works.

I guess there just aren't many categories of things to even consider making canon. There's character creation (so backstory and role), there's character death, and there's relationships between characters. Other than that... everything is either antagonist actions or something that necessarily resets every round.

[UnknownMurder]

I fail to see how [mention]Bauser[/mention]'s feedbacks is relevant to the purpose of this thread.

I'm satisfied with the current proposed policy, though could have been a little strict and tighter but I'm sure that people will know right from wrong.

[Bauser]

You fail to see how the discussion of realism vs. gameplay is relevant to the topic about realism vs. gameplay? The extent to which we sanctify the canon or 'meta' is fundamental to the question of whether we should or shouldn't allow job hopping.

[UnknownMurder]

My apologies. Let me place that bandaid on your gunshot wound. The topic is about realism vs gameplay ON Multiple Jobs and Job Hopping. Realism vs Gameplay ON Antagonists. It's a whole different subject to argue one.

That's a whole different story this is easily explainable and I shall summarize it for your sake as I had assumed everyone knew the reason why "antags" should not be canon after each round. This is a weak point to use in an argument stand on. You're not merely suggesting that we should uncanonize their appearance as we did to antagonists. As Aboshehab (SHARP) has mentioned, it is to prevent players from being able to mention something that had occurred in a round for instance; "I know of Nar'sie's cult. I have seen the face of their dark god, Nar'sie. I know what equipments that they use. They destroyed one of NanoTrasen's station and because of this I have sought revenge and chased Nar'sie across the galaxy to only bring a swift end to their worshippers." As such, we must prevent this. Antagonists are meta in first place in which their existence is only to drive the round and make it more entertaining for the crew. Obviously, you wouldn't suspect your buddy Joe McTraitor to be a Traitor and obviously he is not going to stay canonized as a traitor for the entire life because RNG deemed it necessary.

I believe many people may agree with me on realism vs gameplay on antagonists is a different subject to discuss and there is likely a dead thread regarding that discussion somewhere in our archives or just a make a new one. There is no need to derail this topic for a different subject that we've been debating for an approximate month for headmins to make a decision on how it's going to work now. I'll give you an advice since I noticed you joined on Feb. 03, 2017, do some research around forums and present your case into a new thread.

[Bauser]

All those reasons against canonizing antagonism are reasons I'm personally in favor of removing canon entirely. Ideally, since everything necessarily resets, it would make sense that the game would be played like 'groundhog day' - everything starting anew each time, like rewinding the clock.

And in the future, I'll try not to bring up any relevant, ongoing topics that are inconvenient for you.

[drakuba]

I think its good the way it is now. Antags ar non canon, everything else is canon. Mild job hoping is ok. For example, my char started as assistant, got to try barman and chef. Then had been janitor for about 15 rounds before "NT validated his engineering degree" and he started being engineer. He still remember his buddy whom showed him the station from times he worked as janitor, even now as maintenance tech he still remembers that, as well as all fruends he made from his apprentice days. As it should be. Treating others as strangers every round feels kinda weird