[Denied]Mark Nutt Head application

[Tony Doughnuts]

BYOND key:

mark_nutt

Character names:

Maxwell Sidonus

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How long have you been playing on Aurora?:

off and on for maybe a year cumulatively. SS13 is a game i pick up and drop for 6 months at a time.

Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?:

Because playing head roles can be fun, and it can be annoying when you don't have a head for your department and nothing gets done.

Why did you come to Aurora?:

Because most servers that are "medium RP" are only one step away from being murderbone deathmatch servers. I like being able to play a chemist or an engineer or whatever and actually explore the mechanics of the role without worrying about the chef coming in, popping out an armblade, cutting my head off and then observing for the nexct 20 minutes until the shuttle gets called and half the crew is dead.

Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?:

I think i've read every page of just about every SS13 wiki. I wikisurf when I get bored or am on the toilet.

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Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each.

Give a definition of what you think roleplay is, and should be about:

Roleplay is about having fun. In comparison we all live pretty boring and unexciting lives, we all have things we wish we could door don't like about ourselves. It's a form of escapism, to be able to step into the shoes of someone else and forget that you're fat, ugly, and have no friends for awhile and play a security officer that is THE LAW or a chemist with a drug addiction. all the while flying through space at a billion miles per hour aboard a tin can that could erupt into chaos at any moment.

What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?:

Be a target for antags in rounds that have them. Provide structure and establish a chain of command. They're the cogs that keep the wheels turning. They authorize things, lead departments, make decisions. They're basically IC moderators/admins. they keep everyone in-check. they make sure things that NEED to get done do. The CE makes sure instead of the engies fucking off to build a second bar to drink in and pass out that the engine gets started and solars get set up so everyone else can actually play that round. The RD makes sure the scientists don't kill themselves or the rest of the station. the HoS makes sure the security officers don't go all judge dredd on everyone and beat up the librarian because he threw a cigarette butt on the ground. the CMO makes sure the medical doctors actually treat people instead of just throwing everyone in a cryo cell and hoping they live. The HoP protects Ian and drowns everyone in paperwork, and the IAA occasionally gets to be relevant too.

What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?:

Not be a shitter, play your roles well, meaning actually have an understanding of the mechanical side of whatever department you're heading up. If you're playing CE you should know how to set up the supermatter, how to fix it if it starts delaming, set up solars, repair breechs, build and take apart just about everything on the station. On top of that you should be able to know how to lead people, without being an asshole (oocly) about it. there's a difference between telling the scientist no you cannot put that bag of holding inside another one "just to see what it would do" and telling a roboticist he's not allowed to make a ripley without signing 7 forms, getting clearance from the captain, and calling his mom to ask if it's OK.

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Please pick one of your characters for this section, and provide well articulated responses to the following questions.

Character name: Mark Tidwell

Character age:

56

Please provide a short biography of this character (approx 2 paragraphs):

I'm leaving this previous part in for the sake of transparency.

To be honest I haven't given it a ton of thought. I don't really keep a running character. It's not my style. I very much keep them in the moment. There's some overarching details that stay the same. such as him have a robotic left arm from a supermatter explosion and a robotic right foot from a mining accident, but other than that I keep it pretty fluid and just adjust how I play him depending on what role I'm doing. Maxwell is just the name I chose because I like it. He's whoever I want him to be from round to round. Maybe this time he's the gruff security officer whose seen too much in his time and hates his job. Maybe he's the budding scientist fresh out of school trying to learn his field and make a name for himself.

it's less about the character for me than it is the experience. I don't need a character with a ton of history I've carefully crafted and detailed to have fun. It's boring to try to have some kind of long-winded history that

regal to some random cadet that doesn't actually care. What's happening in the here and now is what matters. If some really impactful experience occurred that stuck with me i might jot it down and run with it for a few days/weeks but nothing that stays permanently, because eventually I'm doing to completely reinvent who the character is to suit what I'm trying to play at the time.

Too often I see people that get so wrapped up in the character that they forget that they're here right now doing something. they focus so much on what their character HAS done and WILL do that they completely lose the moment. I don't want to spend a round sitting at the bar as the bartender and have to listen to somebody about how their character did this and that and these and those. what are you doing NOW? this is a video game, where we're roleplaying. If i wanted some long boring history that's made up. I'd watch the history channel's ancient aliens.

 

If you were to ask any of the people that knew Mark growing up to give a short summary of Mark, you'd get a lot of short answers that aggregated into "Average". Mark has spent his whole life being average. In school growing up he always brought home decent grades, played sports but was never at the center of attention, Participating but never leading. He had a small group of good friends that hung out after school and on the weekends, stayed relatively fit and out of trouble. As he grew up and got into his college years he desperately attempted to break free from the mediocrity that life has seemingly consigned him to. He joined every and any club that would take him, played any sport he could make the tryouts, filled his schedule to the brim with classes and electives. Racking up debt and losing a lot of sleep put too much strain on the young Tidwell and he ended up flunking out, having pushed himself too hard. Defeated, He went to a local job fair and met a slick, fast talking recruiter promising him everything he ever wanted. A fast paced, high octane job in chaning environments where anything can happen!

It did not take long for the newly Minted Assistant of Nanotransen to realize the reality of what he had signed up for. He had found his exciting new environments aboard the space station Exodus but, having no proper college education his options for assignment were limited and he spent the better part of two decades swimming around in the various civilian jobs available aboard the station. Saving every plug nickel he could in the hopes of saving up enough to get the degree he needed to further his career as an employee of Nanotransen. Finally, when He had saved up enough he enrolled in an Employee Career Advancement program, devoting his time to his studies, determined to finally rise above the label of "Average". After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering he was put into an apprenticeship program in the Engineering department. His years aboard the station up to this point had not been wasted though. Mark had learned how things worked on the station. He knew schedules, when things were going well, and when something was amiss. Mark was not just a member of the station, he was connected to it. He knew the layout of every maintenance tunnel, where anything you might be looking for was, what worked, what didn't, and had his own ideas over the years on how to improve thing.

What Mark lacked in knowledge he more than made up for with his experience. As he came into his own as a fully fledged Station Engineer he was able to work with his department and help pioneer new procedures and protocols to improve the efficiency and safety of not only his own department but many of the systems aboard the entire station. He received a respectable handful of minor awards and commendations for his work, making a name for himself as "a model employee" even having the opportunity to pose for a photo that was featured in a motivational poster posted in various areas aboard the station! Mark, now a grizzled and well versed Engineer, is ready to take the next step in his career and finally completely realize his dreams of being better than average, having submitted his bid to Central Command to be given the chance to lead his own department.

What do you like about this character?:

He's an extremely realistic and believable character. No dark and tragic past with a TERRIBLE SECRET or some such similar such similar nonsense. He's grounded in reality and it's a story that could be applied to the real world and still sound entirely plausible. It's a conservative character that is "safe" and doesn't try too hard to say "hey look at me!" while still being able to feel lived-in and temporal. He also leaves a LOT of room for further development to be taken in just about any direction, not being precluded from any particular fate because of something in his past.

What do you dislike about this character?:

He can seem extremely boring to others at times. The squeaky clean "company man" whose only real defining achievement was being able to do what was asked of him a little better than the next guy. It's very much a character that needs to be constantly driven forward and not mire in the past.

What do you think makes this character fit to be a head of staff?:

He's what a company looks for in an employee, achievement driven, efficiency focused, and most importantly: keeps them making money. He's someone you can point to and say "see that guy? be like him."

 

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Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions.

How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I'm usually not a tryhard. The particular personality I take for a character can change depending on how I feel that day. Sometimes I play them gruff and gravely, or something else. I try not to take everything too seriously because at the end of the day it's a video game, and a pixelated one that's built in what is basically a bootleg RPG maker software.

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Extra notes: I've played on roleplay servers/games of all kinds for many years, 8+ at least. I grew up doing it and admined a few myself. Most of it was on Gmod on the many flavors of HL2RP.

Edited April 14, 2018 by Guest

[tbear13]

Gonna -1 this. You need to have a real character with a set backstory, and to stop jobhopping before I can support your application.

[Robinkhaliq]

You're gonna want a character to be their own, and only work one job (or at least department). Also, strong backstories are important for defining how a character acts and why. Without a backstory or even a defined job, I'm gonna -1 this.

[Tony Doughnuts]

I understand where you guys are coming from and I don't begrudge you for it. I don't see myself doing this anytime soon, if that precludes me from being able to play head roles so be it, I can fulfill that desire elsewhere. It is not fun for me and I don't get anything out of it playing that way. I won't be altering how I play and reducing how much fun I have just to be able to play head roles. It is nothing against the server or you guys, It just is not enjoyable for me to do it. I spent far too many years of my life on RP servers painstakingly sculpting and building characters over literal years of playing as them. To be quite honest I'm burned out on it. Could this change in the future? maybe, probably not but it is certainly a possibility. Don't mistake this for not putting effort into the characters, I just don't keep a running character so to speak. I would just set it to give me a random name every time but It would be annoying to try to keep track of who I am each round and reduce recognizablility between me and a couple of friends.

[Robinkhaliq]

Snip snip snip the nips

 

That's all well and good, but it is actually against the rules to job hop like that now, as it makes your character far overqualified. Plus, that is kinda the purpose of having multiple characters. You'll not want to be changing jobs all the time with the same character.

[Tony Doughnuts]

Snip snip snip the nips

 

That's all well and good, but it is actually against the rules to job hop like that now, as it makes your character far overqualified. Plus, that is kinda the purpose of having multiple characters. You'll not want to be changing jobs all the time with the same character.

nobody has said anything to me so far. If it was really an issue i'd just play a random character every round.

[Azande]

- 1 . Complete the application properly please so I can give you a fair score.

[Tony Doughnuts]

- 1 . Complete the application properly please so I can give you a fair score.

 

I have completed the app properly to the best of my ability. At this point I'm talking in circles and there's no point in me regurgitating what I stated in previous posts.

What would you have me do? Make up a bunch of stuff off the cuff and create some random Character? It would be a blatant falsehood and a misrepresentation of what kind of player I am if I did. I'm just being honest with my application and not trying to mislead anyone.

If you require a cohesive backstory for a singular character to give it a "good rating" then I find your current to be more than fair.

[Azande]

The point of the character backstory is so that we and staff can see if you are capable of writing a well-written, lore abiding character that could believably exist in our universe. It doesn't need to be a character you've played or plan on playing - it's a writing test.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello,

I understand where you are coming from with wanting to play with random names. Jumping departments is something a LOT of people do. People either stay that way or slide into one particular department. I myself cannot break free of the Head of Personnel slot.

It would be to your benefit if instead of a single character slot having randomized names, you have multiple character slots that play the specific departments. One security character, one medical character, etc. This will give you the 'brand recognition' that gets people to recognize you while still letting you jump around departments. Being a heavy roleplaying server it's important that characters try to stick to their particular lane. If you wanted to job hop with one character freely and with no consequence, I would encourage you to make a whitelist application to play a Skrell character. Skrell have no limitations on job hopping outside the requirement that they get progressively older with each new job.

The biography page is not just a writing test - I do not think Coalf and whoever the other admin is that handles head whitelists have little checkmarks and red pens to study the application. What they tend to look for are signs that the applicant (hey its you) understands the roles of the head whitelist. IE, can you manage the department you're playing? The biography section is sort of an accessory for this to show that you can make a character with a realistic background who understands the department he's gunna run. You do not even have to play the character you are applying with.

Applications done in good faith tend to have a better chance at being accepted. If you meet the head whitelist handlers halfway, I have seen them more often than not accept an app.

i responded mostly because i saw mark "nutt" and absolutely lost it

[Tony Doughnuts]

It would be to your benefit if instead of a single character slot having randomized names, you have multiple character slots that play the specific departments. One security character, one medical character, etc. This will give you the 'brand recognition' that gets people to recognize you while still letting you jump around departments. Being a heavy roleplaying server it's important that characters try to stick to their particular lane. If you wanted to job hop with one character freely and with no consequence, I would encourage you to make a whitelist application to play a Skrell character. Skrell have no limitations on job hopping outside the requirement that they get progressively older with each new job.

 

I appreciate the recommendation and you taking the time to weigh in Jackboot. You've provided me with some much appreciated insight. The idea hadn't occurred to me and It seems like a pretty good idea. I'll probably just go ahead and make one of each next time I'm on the server later today.

Once again, my intention was not to try and circumvent the application process by not providing a backstory, It simply just seemed disingenuous to do so based on my personal stance and preferences. If the requirement is merely a formality I have no problem with editing the OP to include this just to make sure all the boxes are checked.

[Tony Doughnuts]

Updated OP with a proper character and backstory.

[Alberyk]

After discussing with the whitelist team this application, the player's presence on server and the feeedback provided, we have decided to deny this for now. Feel free to apply again in those weks.

Application denied.