Roundtype proposal: Wraith/Haunting

[Daeren]

Aw yiss time for one of those big annoying responseposts because I haven't read this in a few days

This idea sounds pretty cool.
The only suggestion I can think of is having the chaplains prayer cleanse an area so that the wraith becomes visible while within the purified area. That way a wraith will want to be stealthy at first so that they don't immediately invoke a purifying chaplain.

I kinda like this.

Sealing

I had the idea of sealing wraiths as well, but my problem was thinking of a way to seal a wraith that's accessible enough that the round's not screwed if the chaplain dies, but tricky enough that wraiths aren't constantly dunked on. Salt-gas was the reason I was hestitant about saying salt immobilizes/blocks wraith movement, because that encourages chemistry gas-bombing everything, which spreads lag from shit to be tracked and is generally a Not Fun strategy.

Sounds like Meme from baystation code. (OH NO I WENT THERE)

If I have to complain, it'd just be about the chaplain. Chaplain's already buffed against wizard and vampires, do we really want another antagonist where the chaplain is the weakness?

What meme (also rude)?

Chaplains may be nominally buffed against vampires but have you ever actually seen one using holy water on a vampire and surviving? A vampire's only true weakness against a chaplain specifically is they can't feed off them, and they have plenty of ways to murder the chaplain that don't involve that. Wizards are a different story.

Sealing wraiths/revenants in coffins

This is one of the first ideas I had about sealing and also one of the first i dismissed as dumb without some reworking. While the idea of sealing the horror in a sanctified coffin is pretty cool from a fluff standpoint, have you ever been stuck in a welded locker with no radio? The wraith player has to stare at a welded coffin stuffed in a corner of the station or launched into space for up to an hour, without the ability to even chill as a ghost and watch the rest of the round. That's pretty awful from a gameplay standpoint. Coffins may be a good way to seal them to help deal with them but it shouldn't be a viable permanent solution. Have the seal irreparably degrade over time if it works like that, so it's more of a way to contain a wraith while taking it to wherever/whatever kills it permanently.

Ghost hunting

I think one of the major design choices for dead-player ghosts is that they can't meaningfully interact with the station, or be interacted with. Also, with ghost movement being the way it is, it'd be fucking impossible to catch a player ghost if they didnt want to be caught, wraith or ghostbuster.

[icarus]

for the coffin sealing thing, two ideas:

1) the pure size of evil inside the coffin could keep it from being moved

2) maybe the wraith could have some sort of special telepathy? they could send a DARK MESSAGE into the soul of anyone, or they could "tag" someone so that they can contact them later

talking to the person wouldn't make them for sure go and open it but itd give you a chance to try and have someone get you back in the game by promising them kind of reward you probably won't give them

i dunno, i just like ways to keep antags still have a chance to live/get power again instead of just being killed, and the wraith convincing people to free it could be fun

[Dauntasa]

You could have it so that splashing holy water onto the item is what seals it, or if that's too easy then moving the item into the chapel.

I like the idea of having moving the item into the chapel be the way of doing it because then once serious shit goes down there'd be a like a fortified chapel full of dudes surrounded by the rest of the station being a haunted nightmare braved only by the chapel dudes heading out for supplies.

[Captain_Bravo]

Have the seal only seal the wraith's powers. It kicks it back into normal ghost mode, but removes the wraith powers tab until the seal can be broken. Basically "killing" it, with the possibility for revival if someone opens the coffin.

[atomic1fire]

Perhaps destroying the coffin somehow, (e.g grinder, explosion) could also release the wrath, because the coffin breaks.

[Preid]

What if sealing the 'Body' prevented the Wraith from taking a new possession, yet allowed it to 'lend' power to a player character. At first it would be purely beneficial to the player, granting them powers similar to the wraiths, but as more time goes on the wraith would periodically gain temporary control of the character who would black out, allowing the wraith to ether free its self or simply raise hell with the host body.

[Zadeon]

The idea of sealing it in a coffin then splashing it with holy water to complete the seal would be nice, but what happens when you run out of coffins?

Also what IS the main goal for the wraiths? Posses X amount of bodies? Kill X? Gain 10000 ghost credits???

[atomic1fire]

Perhaps the wraith's goal could just be to terrorize the crew for the sake of terrorizing the crew.

For each scary haunting thing the wraith does, perhaps each crewmen could elicit a more fearful response.

The station could have a terror level, that goes up as the wraith does more really scary stuff, like some kind of horror movie meter.

As it goes up, the crew is stunned in fear more often, screams a lot more, and occasionally faints, until they literally become scared to death and the wraith pretty much wins.

[Daeren]

Some adminchat brought up an unorthodox idea:

Why does the wraith have to be killable?

Bear with it for a second. Going back to my idea in the first post about a power pool/health combo for incorporeal wraiths, why not make it so zeroing out on that doesn't do anything aside from neuter the wraith for a while? Because it got its shit slapped around so badly, now it can only do really minor things until it gets its power back, so it had better be either extremely patient or extremely good with using low-cost powers to cause death. Another suggestion was that the wraith could use darkness to recharge its powers without waiting on deaths (if that is indeed how it would work), which would encourage flashlight brigades to try to flush it out and deny it spooky places to lurk. That might run into trouble with all the maintenance tunnels and shady side areas, though.

Overall, I had three ideas for wraith as a game mode, and it's these that I want to focus on. Anything branching up off them can be trimmed, reshaped, or removed, so long as the basic center of the proposed gameplay remains about the same. In rough order of importance:

1) Make the crew afraid of the station itself.
2) Make an antagonist type with a more indirect playstyle, and dealt with using techniques other than 'find bad man and shoot him a bunch'.
3) Give the crew a good reason to deal conclusively with bodies, preferably in more final, interesting manners than just gibbing or juicing them.

And yes, for objectives, I was thinking simply "here's a list of people who need to die, go bananas," same as what wizards get. If you want to be creative, you might have different escape objectives.

Escape on the shuttle while incorporeal
Escape while embodied in a revenant
Escape while inside in the body of a [job]
Escape while inside the body of [person] (pretty infeasible if rot is a thing)
Ensure no one escapes the station alive (would replace wizard corruption as that one objective nobody ever completes, though it is an interesting concept)

[Preid]

For the game mode, would you want a single Wraith, or multiple?

This also raises the possibility for gimmicky haunted station rounds what with vampires, evil ghost, werewolves, and zombies.

[mbc]

Escape while embodied in a revenant

I think that this objective would be good as the 'standard' objective that wraiths always receive, if:

Wraiths cannot go into space - They are bound to the station, the only way they can escape is to board the shuttle inside of a human host

Revenants rot - this means that the revenant will have to build up enough resource points to be able to either sneak or fight its way onto the shuttle.

Also, I like the idea of revenants rotting a lot because of the way the rotting would be linked to the corpse's health(damaging it more makes it rot faster), and I want to add that I think damage should only contribute to rotting if it's dealt after the wraith possesses the corpse.

That way, if they murder someone by doing a ton of brute damage to them, when they take over the body they won't have less time because of the damage they used to create the corpse in the first place.

For the game mode, would you want a single Wraith, or multiple?

This also raises the possibility for gimmicky haunted station rounds what with vampires, evil ghost, werewolves, and zombies.

also, someone had mentioned that Wraiths could be fun if they were thrown into a mix with the other antagonists. I think that might be fun.

[Zadeon]

So lets say wraiths are made to not die. How would the crew win? Uncover all the wraiths?

Another cool idea I think would be for wraiths to put some power (a lot, so that this can't be spammed on everything) into making an object(s) alive and start attacking people, without the wraith controlling it. Since it would take a lot of power the wraiths could team up and make an entire room haunted which would start attacking people that went into it. This method would also help the wraiths complete kill objectives. But it should still take a lot of power so that the wraith can't do anything else for a while until they get their power back. Also depending on what type of item it is would decide what kind of damage it does.

Newbie McPub is robusted by the mechanical toolbox, spooky!
The welding tool burns Captain Pooplord, yikes!

[Readster]

What if the wraith gets a spell choice kind of thing like the wizard does? So you could choose between overt and covert attacks.
For example, you could choose possession (As described in this thread) which is really obvious, or you could choose the more covert control electronics, giving you the power to open, bolt, and shock doors, turn off power, blow lights and shoot arc lightning from APC's.
This would also mean a rogue AI could feign ignorance and claim wraith.

[Lavastage]

I like this idea, it would be fun having everyone running around trying to survive until the shuttle comes, though there is a problem. if people find out its a wraith round, people will vote to call the shuttle immediately. how about you make it impossible to call the shuttle until the... oh 60 min mark? something like that. give the wraith a chance.

[Spy_Guy]

how about you make it impossible to call the shuttle until the... oh 60 min mark? something like that. give the wraith a chance.

Awww, hell naw!

People figure it's a traitor / ling / ohgodwhy round all the time and the shuttle doesn't get called straight away. Either that or do it like a wizard round and have space ghosts scare the first shuttle off if it comes in too soon.

What is the time limit on that anyway? Only ever seen it happen once.