Game "moods" serious/normal/zany

[mozi]

there's always been a bit of tug-of-war between two ideals of Space Station 13: an overelaborate hyperdetailed playground of chaos and mayhem akin to a horrible circus gone totally wrong vs. an overelaborate hyperdetailed playground of byzantine scheming where everyone is on edge and ready to overreact to the slightest bit of trouble

certain members of each camp really seem to love sniping at each other "waah boring play to win loser" "waah boring massacre moron" and it carries over into this suggestion forum where every idea goes on wild tangents between people who want to nerf the shit out of everything/make everything do something zany

anyway here is Mo Zi's spectacular idea to Please Some of the People All of the Time. it's ripped off from the ttrpg Paranoia.

in addition to game modes is a game "mood" or "style," that is visible like the game mode. can be set by admin and maybe if it works it could be a random rotation thing.
the styles in paranoia are called Straight, Classic, and Zapped. i'm unoriginal & terrible & dead inside so until someone comes up with better terms we just use that.

Classic mode is just as everything is now, nothing to see here!!!

Straight mode is more oriented to stealth and scheming. the game mode selecter skews towards Traitor & Changeling mode more often, also maybe Conspiracy if it ever gets unfucked. Random events occur more often to give something for the average crew to react to but the really shitty ones (meteor storm, spacial tear) don't appear. the player selector ensures there's at least 2 or 3 conscious security officers at game start. traitors appear in high-access jobs less. Various gameplay elements are also tweaked to encourage this playstyle, FOR EXAMPLE, the telecrystal cost of goods could be skewed: in this mode really blatant stuff, shotguns, revolvers, pipe bombs, etc. are more expensive, the artbox is gone forever, etc. the station budget could start out smaller so the service sector would have to work to keep the payroll running. the health system could reflect it too, injuries might be made more debilitating, getting shot & bleeding out more dangerous. vampires are nerfed to SHIT in this mode because fuck vampires

RP is not enforced, god no, but like.. people might react to seeing you beat the shit out of someone in the middle of the hallway.

Zapped is a raucous roller-coaster of a good time! game mode selector will bring Wizards & Gangs & Werewolves into the mix more often. destructive traitor items & silly ones(like bowling kit) are cheaper. the number of traitors is increased. the "die a glorious death" objective will appear more often. the clown job is always available. sometimes people spawn as lizardpeople or other bizarre mutantraces, deal with it. people won't really give a shit about random fights, breakins, and admins won't care about grief adminhelps unless someone is doing something that completely removes you from the game. the more 'dull' events occur less frequently (blob, kudzu), the awful massive destructive stuff (meteors, disease) more often. dead bodies are less debilitating. bring back monkey mode

COOL CRITICAL thing is that the two different servers shouldn't run the same "style" at the same time so if you are in the mood for shenanigans you don't have to be bored in livechat and if you are in the mood for skulduggery you don't have to be bored in deadchat

[Lavastage]

Perhaps this would work where it would always be defaulted to normal. but when the previous rounds were all chaotic or too quiet and everyone is sick of it, an admin could set the setting mode (or perhaps have it automated so that if the last 2-3 rounds end in the 10-30 min range it would set it to serious, and 65 - infinite for the last 2-3 rounds would set it to zany. otherwise just be classic.) this would probably work.

[Dauntasa]

Game mood is set to: Straight

*a bunch of jerks(like me) go out of their way to be giant asshole clowns*

*click* Okay game mode is set to Zapped, everyone GET ZANY

*a lone tumbleweed blows through the server as everyone stands around awkwardly doing nothing*

[VictorMAngoStein]

zapped mode should bring back poop fights

[icarus]

lljk #1 should skew to being mostly Zapped/classic while #2 does Straight/classic
and we bring back gibbed #5 (now #3) to do Classic

[VictorMAngoStein]

good idea, then we could finally have 2 populated servers (although I'm going to miss using the lightly populated one for traitor practice)

[atomic1fire]

Here's a potentially cool idea.

Server sees a low number of deaths and destruction over a number of rounds, e.g tracks burn, suffication, toxin, and brute damage over a number of players and averages them out).
if the server is boring (e.g everything is a-OK) Zany could be more likely to happen automatically.

The Exact Opposite happens if a bunch of admin gimmicks that kill everyone happen a lot, or if someone happens to go on a bomb spree and kill everyone.
Serious is more likely to occur.
e.g nice and peace and quiet... or is it?

This would let players go back to playing a normal round, but also make sure that normal rounds don't get boring.

Normal rounds being the dead chaotic center that could go either way.

You could tie it into that server heatmap so maybe people could see a level of activity.

E.G
LLJK3 IS REALLY HOT RIGHT NOW, DON'T GO NEAR IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE BLOWN UP FOR SOME REASON.
LLJK4 IS COOL, WE'RE PRETTY SURE IT'S SAFE ENOUGH.

[babayetu83]

this sounds pretty interesting and sure would liven things up