What makes a good HOP gimmick?

[SkinChanger]

Recently, on Goon 4, I played a round in which I late-joined as the Head of Personnel. I decided to run a gimmick because, as with all HOP rounds, nothing interesting was happening to me.

I decided that for all changes to ID, I would require a document verifying the identity of the applicant. I thought this would lead to interesting roleplay interactions with people bringing in all sorts of silly documents, like Costco membership cards or forklift certifications. It did not. Instead, barely anyone requested an ID change, and when they did, it resulted in incredibly antagonistic interactions, and led to security constantly bugging me about giving people IDs. Simply put, this gimmick was a total and complete failure.

This got me thinking about HOP gimmicks in general, and they almost always boil down to extreme levels of bureaucracy, which doesn't lead to much healthy roleplay interaction in my experience. So, does anyone have any good HOP gimmicks that I can steal take inspiration from?

[Nerkson]

So the issues with paperwork is that the paperwork just fails to save sometimes. I don't know why, the last I heard it may have been an issue related to BYOND 515 -> 516 compatibility, but people cannot physically fill out the paperwork. Paperwork isn't super elegant as a system. Instead, I'd suggest just handing them a stamp and have them stamp their name, shift time, and approval. Stamps tend to be much quicker and don't have as many issues.

Some other gimmick ideas you could try:

- Team building exercises. Can science do a trust fall with medical?
- Contests. Who can make the best pizza? Strangest pizza? You have cash at your disposal, give that out instead of All Access.

At the end of the day there's a specific meme about HoPs, that they do their job for 20 minutes then go fuck off into space to never be seen again. Are they dead? Alive? Trapped in a pocket dimension? No one but Space god Knows. Playing HoP long term, for a 90 minute round, requires that you think of something or find something to do.

I think Bureaucracy CAN work, but you have to be fair about it and be willing to drop it the second things aren't working. It sounds like you were giving people access that didn't require it, much to the ire of the heads of those departments who never knew you were doing it. If someone wants Maintenance Access, make them prove how resourceful they are. Medical access? show me how a health scanner works, etc. Annoyance that doesn't go TOO far should be more helpful.

[SkinChanger]

So the issues with paperwork is that the paperwork just fails to save sometimes. I don't know why, the last I heard it may have been an issue related to BYOND 515 -> 516 compatibility, but people cannot physically fill out the paperwork. Paperwork isn't super elegant as a system. Instead, I'd suggest just handing them a stamp and have them stamp their name, shift time, and approval. Stamps tend to be much quicker and don't have as many issues.

Some other gimmick ideas you could try:

- Team building exercises. Can science do a trust fall with medical?
- Contests. Who can make the best pizza? Strangest pizza? You have cash at your disposal, give that out instead of All Access.

At the end of the day there's a specific meme about HoPs, that they do their job for 20 minutes then go fuck off into space to never be seen again. Are they dead? Alive? Trapped in a pocket dimension? No one but Space god Knows. Playing HoP long term, for a 90 minute round, requires that you think of something or find something to do.

I think Bureaucracy CAN work, but you have to be fair about it and be willing to drop it the second things aren't working. It sounds like you were giving people access that didn't require it, much to the ire of the heads of those departments who never knew you were doing it. If someone wants Maintenance Access, make them prove how resourceful they are. Medical access? show me how a health scanner works, etc. Annoyance that doesn't go TOO far should be more helpful.

It wasn't that I was giving people access that they weren't supposed to have, it's that I did give one person an ID, and because of that some issue with secmate couldn't be resolved.

[Lefinch]

Sometimes a bit isn't going to fly in a round. What's important is to identify if it's because a bit isn't going to work in general during a round, or if you were just unlucky on this particular one and had to drop it. One thing I find helps me a lot with bits in general is being willing to adapt it on the fly. In this particular case if nobody is bringing in fun documents to try and get through it, consider potentially changing it to a "making money on the side" operation where you charge a small "handling" fee for drafting up your own obviously spuriously worthwhile identity document.

[Asterion0]

IMO the main 'issue' with paperwork as a HoP is that while you can make nice or silly forms, in actuality the person isn't doing anything besides writing on a piece of paper.
Comparitively, when taking bribes or requiring a stamp from a head of staff, the person is actually doing something! Albeit withdrawing money from their bank account or trying to find a command member over radio to get a stamp, but still.

Probably the main point with any gimmick really is to follow that one really common and cheesy quote "it's the journey that matters, not the destination" (of whoever is experiencing it)