Make cluwne incurable

[Flaborized]

Being hit with the "Clowns Revenge" spell inflicts you with two ailments: Cluwning around and dyspraxia. Cluwning around forces you to speak only in haunting honks, keeps the whole ugly greasy outfit on you and gives you some of the more intense cluwne negative effects such as forgetting to breathe, and dyspraxia is kind of like a worse version of what the clown has. You can cure dyspraxia by being hit with a Bible a few times by a chaplain. You can be cured of Cluwning around with just spaceacillin, a very easy to get medical chem. 

Cluwnes are supposed to be brutally murdered for being cluwnes, but nobody does this because it is easier to cure them than it is to kill them. The spell itself is rather rare to see and this is a large part of it. Getting cluwned is a source of minor annoyance rather than an actual long-lasting handicap, it has a much longer cooldown than any of the "this just kills you at point blank" spells like prismatic spray and now has a startup delay making it harder than ever to cluwne a person. 

My proposal to fix this is to make cluwne incurable totally. The only fix should be merciful killing of the cluwne! Give the spell back its teeth, make getting cluwned as hard to fix as polymorph.

[Wisecrack34]

Polymorph has a fix? I thought you just had to accept your new fursona and live a life of shame!

Cluwnes are rare, make them fun to witch hunt instead of "fixing", if you're really worried about the player being removed from the round, maybe have the curse wear off after about 10-20 minutes.

Side Suggestion (Don't focus too much on): To make murdering them more appealing, maybe have them spill slippery tears of space lube on the ground as they cry

[Flaborized]

Polymorph has a fix? I thought you just had to accept your new fursona and live a life of shame!

Kind of. You kill the polymorph and then use a scalpel to butcher them to get their brain, which you can then do whatever with.

[Wisecrack34]

Didn't know you could de-brain em, guess you could just monkey clone them then.

[Skornzy]

As far as I'm aware people generally leave cluwns alone. Going out of your way to kill a cluwn isn't very sporting because they technically are not antags, and cannot fight back regardless of their lack of ability. If you want cluwning to be permanent then why not make them full antagonists? It would be like a hard traitor antag style thing that would allow them to feebly attack people, and make them actually want to kill you more than audio spam already does.

[Studenterhue]

About a year ago, somepotato said that spaceacillin doesn't actually cure cluwning and that he didn't know why the medical scanners said it did. That said, it's possible that 1) someone made it cure cluwnism after somepotato made his comment 2) somepotato was mistaken or 3) it does cure it, but it takes so long that cluwnism has time to go away by itself, meaning that somepotato was technically right.

Regardless, I agree that people don't murder cluwnes anymore, but I don't think it's because it's easy to cure them. I think it's more a culture shift. To expand on Skornzy's point, back then, when most of the server was hyper-kill-murder-happy, it probably was a death sentence. Now that the playerbase has calmed down a bit, it's more of another annoyance.

While we're on the subject of making the cluwne more antag-ish, someone (Sundance? AtamusValeo?) wrote an eloquently-written list of that traits would make the cluwne more hateable and likely to be killed. It had things like making the cluwne radioactive and having them leave trails of space lube in their wake. There was also some talk of making the cluwnism contagious and giving all cluwnes an objective to spread the their disease, like some bastard version of monkey, though I'm not sure how it was received.

[Spoodle]

Personally, I like the idea of a Cluwning being a horrible curse with no other escape but death. I'd kill cluwnes if it weren't so easy just (presumably) stick them with spaceacillin, or get the Chaplain to whack 'em with a bible once. Also, I agree with Studenterhue/Sundance/AtamusValeo, in that making the Cluwne more annoying with something like spewing radiation or something would give people more of an incentive to kill them.

[Wisecrack34]

Radiation trait, not working in genetics due to severe obesity, mutadone resistance and spewing space lube.

[Triacontakai]

While we're on the subject of making the cluwne more antag-ish, someone (Sundance? AtamusValeo?) wrote an eloquently-written list of that traits would make the cluwne more hateable and likely to be killed. It had things like making the cluwne radioactive and having them leave trails of space lube in their wake. There was also some talk of making the cluwnism contagious and giving all cluwnes an objective to spread the their disease, like some bastard version of monkey, though I'm not sure how it was received.

Please do this (and also the thread's suggestion). Cluwne is supposed to be a role that literally everyone should despise enough to beat them to death, not "oh no, cool guy x was cluwned, we should rescue them"
The contagious cluwnism might be a tad far, although would be kinda interesting if it's temporary

[poland spring]

Cluwne wears off on its own and it shouldn't that's my vote

[Frank_Stein]

Cluwnes should randomly juggle anything they are holding in their hands.

[Vitatroll]

Cluwnes are no longer cluwnes and that is sad. A large part of being a cluwne is that your very existence is an insult to all things. I'm generally in favor of any idea that reinforces this fact.

I do agree that there's a culture shift but the cluwne-lovers are mostly a byproduct of empathy; 'do unto others' and all that crap. When cluwnes became redeemable you were no longer killing a 'cluwne', but a 'player' -- a player that could have been you. Add this to lots of asshats holding grudges and the spacers who're afraid of said asshats holding grudges and you get touch-football and participation awards. (random tangent from grumpy old internet man)

Let cluwnes be cluwnes again. It's a bit of goonculture that didn't need to be sterilized.

[Sov]

As far as I'm aware people generally leave cluwns alone. Going out of your way to kill a cluwn isn't very sporting because they technically are not antags, and cannot fight back regardless of their lack of ability.

Always kill Cluwnes

It it out duty as men and women of space

[kyle2143]

I do agree that there's a culture shift but the cluwne-lovers are mostly a byproduct of empathy; 'do unto others' and all that crap. When cluwnes became redeemable you were no longer killing a 'cluwne', but a 'player' -- a player that could have been you.

Yes, this is the issue distilled down to one word for me, empathy. I hate clowns. But I can hate them because they chose to be clowns. Cluwnes had no choice, it was forced upon them by an evil wizard.

I think I would be more amenible to hating and killing cluwnes if there was some way for players to choose to be cluwnes as well. (Asking a wizard to cluwne you doesn't count)

[Xeram]

I've always said the game's community is caught in a struggle between whether the game should be a game with objectives to try and complete or a sandbox with some code of conduct and suggestions sprinkled in. Or at least I thought I have. Have I actually ever said this on record?

This thread and the original decision to make it from uncurable to curable is a natural consequence of this struggle. The "game" side of this is that the Wizard is a round's primary antagonist and crew objective and him killing or turning people into cluwnes and such should have a strong and impactful consequence, at the "enemy" player's expense, in order to further his goals and create fun in the round through conflict. The "sandbox" side of this is basically "The wizard wants to do what he wants to do" and "The player wants to do what he wants to do" and the might not necessarily be opposed to eachother, so something the wizard does to them should be reversible so the other player can recover and continue what they want to do.

In the "game" side of culture, empathy is usually discard because you have an objective: stop the damn wizard. If he makes a cluwne you either ignore it and let someone else deal with it, loot the stuff from it's now useless form, and if the wizard is gone usually clobber it or shoot the damn idiot thing to death so it stops making noise and getting in the way, at least with it dead it can get dragged off and cloned into something useful.

In the "sandbox" side of culture, it's typically pushed that yeah, everyone else is a player like you, how would they feel? Players here are typically seeking fun from some self-driven activity or other bit rather than the round conflict. These can vary in scope and responsiveness to outside events, like a wizard cluwning someone nearby. Some botany nerd trying to create weed with a potency in the exponents probably wouldn't even react much to someone getting cluwned outside his window, much less go out and saw it to bits. He's busy gardening. Maybe if the cluwne came in and started honking and messing with his plants he'd exercise the "valid" status on the cluwne but unless roused usually these types interact little with the round conflict.

I'd say that old goon where cluwnes were beaten to death on first sight the culture was more 85% game/15% sandbox, antagonists were clearly annouced when found, security was common enough and would mobilize to fight them and the crew would be on the lookout with their paranoia ready to get a chance to fight someone or something while still goofing around during the slow periods/buildup.

Current culture since I last played I'd say was more 40% game/60% sandbox. It has been a few months as per usual with me so I don't know if it's shifted again, but most players seemed to play each round the same, with no regard to the station conflict usually unless it directly impacted them as a threat nearby or a threat to end the round prematurely. I personally think cracks start to show when higher concentrations treat the game in the more "sandbox" style, as many tasks on the station can be useless to learn/master as a non-antagonist. Pretty much any use of bombs save for an extremely late blob round or blowing yourself up in the asteroid field as a non-antag is going to get a ban, most useful chemicals are very easy and basic to make, while a majority of them murder the hell out of people, getting big numbers on the engine used to be more of this before the PTL, but even then it can run the stations even when running poorly and the main draw of hellburning it besides big numbers was hotwiring it and getting a lot of power in it for lethal doors/apcs/power gloves and ambient superheated air. I think botany got worse for this actually after updates let fruits be containers, so now botanists got exploding tomatos and bananabombs and such other nasties. Literally nothing good comes out of pathology.

tl;dr: Game is shifting away from a culture that treats it as a game with an objective and more like a bunch of individuals in a sandbox, many of the mechanics and activities end up ultimately useless if you're not using/playing it as a "game", empathy ensues, local scientist discovers QGP, has nothing to blow up but himself unless someone tries to kill him.