Romance and Goonstation RP

[RubberRats]

This thread is clearly being derailed by people who either miss the point, or are deliberately ignoring it so they can engage in some pointless horse-beating. This may just be my perspective as someone who pays attention to these things, but I thought it was pretty clear why this post was made.

Several years ago, an admin complaint thread was made accusing some RP admins of being homophobic. Why? Over several weeks a handful of players who happened to be playing gay characters got banned. In hindsight, it seems fairly obvious that clearly isn't the entire story of what happened. In the moment, though, I was around several RP regulars at the time. People seemed to genuinely believe that players had gotten banned for having a lesbian wedding in game.

Goonstation today is a very different (and I would argue better) place than it was back then. However, I feel like if a clarification like this had been issued at the time, a lot of grief could have been avoided. I am very glad we have it now.

[Carton]

In my opinion this entire first post in this thread felt pretty like dunking on said banned user, honestly. Some of the examples are so specific I can't see how it wouldn't be, and in my mind that's not a very nice thing to do. Clarification is great, dunking on people, not so great.

I'd like to point out that no users were mentioned directly at any point by the admins, including in the first post, only general behaviors. One user was called out multiple times by others though.

[Zamujasa]

you can have "don't be exclusionary in your rp" as a rule without tying it to romance. it's already a thing, metacliques.

And we do have a rule about it. Since this post is specifically about romance, then of course mentions of exclusionary behavior will be in the context of romance. That doesn’t mean “no don’t be exclusionary” is only ever in the context of romance and that people are free to be exclusionary otherwise.

Please stop derailing the thread with your personal grievances with the team.

feel free to point out where i was derailing the thread with team grievances, outside of the one quote i edited into my post, which was responding to jan

because i'd like to think i've been pretty much set on how i think this thing sucks + the 13yo age target, which this is partially motivated by for reasons i have already explained, sucks

[GreenJelly]

The comments and concerns regarding player age and how to verify it have been noted, but is not the goal of this thread. Further discussion on the issue should be moved to a separate thread so as to not bring further confusion to this discussion, which was meant to clarify enforcement of parts of Rules 4 and 6.
If and when the Administration Team make changes to the current age policy will be made clear to the playerbase as it happens, but it should be expected to require extensive time and discussion if any changes are made.

There will be no further discussion or updates on the topic of age restrictions in this thread.


Jelly

[Solenoid]

Honestly, I feel like people are missing the point with this one.  I don't like the fact goon is 13+ either, but the original driving point behind this post was very clearly meant to be the exclusionary behaviour that some folks who do romance RP on goon tend to trend towards  --  It's real, it happens A Lot, and it's annoying as hell.  I played nearly exclusively on Sylvester for nearly a year, which is where you can see the worst of it.  Not because Sylvester is Inherently Clique-y and Bad, but because the lower pop levels make exclusionary behaviour EXTREMELY visible.  I've seen people take command roles and disappear with their honeybuns for the rest of the round, for multiple rounds, and have both of them refuse to engage or participate beyond the occasional radio response of "NO we're not dead to antags, but NO we're not going to come play the game with the rest of you ".  This isn't a one-off, this is a frankly relatively common occurrence, and one that merits having a more explicitly written "cut this shit out" descriptor like in the OP that folks can point to to say, well, "cut this shit out".  I've tried to engage in RP with people who refused to stop carrying each other around and whispering sweet nothings to each other (SO awkward), I've been the only person in a department of 3 for 90 minutes straight while the other two were doing the carry each other around station and do nothing else all round gambit, with multiple different couples, in multiple different rounds.  Romance RP =/= inherently bad.  But romance RP is, by nature, something that trends towards exclusion: by definition it's putting a special bond between your character and One Other Character (or more if you're polyam, respect) which also isn't Inherently Bad, but it's really hard when you're the one doing it to see when you've crossed the line.  If you think you or someone else has been banned out of nowhere for metafriending and exclusionary behaviour that you don't think exists, consider that.  It's more obvious to the people who are trying to play the game with you than it is for you on the inside. 

Sorry if this stream of consciousness is barely legible, I just woke up, backread, and wanted to get my thoughts out before work.  People who consistently treat the public goon servers as a private RP environment should be banned.

JOEL, from one 4 player to another, I think you hit the nail on the head with what's been happening lately and I'm glad you wrote this post. I have genuinely been feeling uninterested in the game since the sort of "carry people around, go on dates, be all lovey" thing became more common in shifts on 4 and I'm personally upset with the trend of exclusionary RP and behavior shown by some players. I think we need to have more welcoming faces on 4 which build friendships with new players, not more cliques which push them away and get more. 

I've had times as a doctor where I was the only or one of only 2 doctors actually doing work in a medbay of 5-6 people during stationwide crises. Arguably some of this is metacliquing between friends, but some of it was romantic as well. The consequences of this exclusionary and isolatory behavior are not just social, but mechanical as well and put extra stress on players which are not participating in it by making them pick up the slack. Romantic behavior can also be awkward to roleplay around, as you mentioned, especially for new players(both new to the game, and new to the server as well). Nobody wants to try to make a name for themselves and meet new people only to be met with two lovebirds sweet talking one another as their only coworkers.

I would just like to say thank you for your post and thank you for bringing up what's been affecting 4 when the majority of the RP community is none the wiser and I really do feel everything you said in my soul.

[jan.antilles]

I just want to say that if anyone takes this thread or its original post as passive aggressive or a callout of any player, that is truly not my intention and never was. My genuine goal was to avoid having players think that innocent things were against the rules, because the things they saw people do were usually fine, but the things I saw behind the scenes weren't.

I'm sorry to anyone that was hurt by this. I just wanted to help. I only ever wanted to help.

[GreenJelly]

For the record. The initial post on this thread was written with the co-operation and go-ahead of multiple members of the Administration Team, myself included. Subsequent posts by Admins and Devs have been written by the individual person.

The goal was to bring more clarity to our rulings regarding aspects of Rule 4 and Rule 6 in order to address concerns we saw and heard through various means in the community. It is regrettable that the thread got as muddled and heated in parts as it did; that was of course not our wish or intention.

If there are any questions or concerns, they may be posted as private or public Admin Feedback, sent in through the MedicalAssistant's ]report or ]reportanon functions, or sent in as Ahelps if they concern events during an active round.

Jelly

[Waffleloffle]

it may just be the fact that I'm sleep-deprived but I genuinely can't tell what people are up in arms about. this is one of the most straightforward pieces of rp rules policy on goon and the only real flaw in the initial post imo is perhaps the formal tone making it kinda unclear whether this stuff was newly codified or not

people who are trying to move the discussion to "goon should be 18+ by default" are missing the point: it's not 18+ as-is, and arguing that it should radically shift its public-facing demographic (especially when there are, as zamu mentioned, other sfw 18+ servers!! to fill that niche!!) seems like... I dunno, kinda weird to me? it's also not hard to just ask your rp partner, through dms or looc, whether they're a kid with the explanation that you don't want to play romantically tinged dolls with a kid as an adult, because That's Weird. on the off case that they lie that they're not a kid but they are, I highly doubt the admins would side against you if you're just honest about the situation, because at that point, you took your responsibility and what happened isn't your fault

as someone with a disorder that puts me in the trenches daily regarding Morality, it's extremely valuable to be able to separate The Ideal from The Reality. you can argue that goon's ludicrous violence and plethora of funny drugs make it inherently bad for kids, and I genuinely think you have a point. but there's a major Major difference in a kid seeing their character explode into blood and gore, versus a kid being in a situation where another character, a proxy for Another Real Human Person, is trying to make out with theirs and they don't know how to say no because it's the first time something like this has happened to them. society, in its hypocrisy, has given them plenty of tools to deal with the former, but not the latter. is this fucked up? yes. would this not be the case in An Ideal society? for sure. but it is the hand we're working with, and to call for a different hand as your First Alternative just seems obtuse

also, as a quarter-century old man, honestly I am glad that it's against the rules for people to swap spit in-game. I don't want to see that. it's not Puritanical to not wanna see people having e-sex (or the leadup to e-sex) in the digital equivalent of a public place, it's a matter of consent. goonstation isn't one of the servers that just says "hey you're gonna see people getting Intimate" up front, so I think it's extremely reasonable for other people to feel the same. and, due to how observers Are, you can never be sure you're alone. during the first half a year or so I played, I mostly observed lowpop rp rounds, and god damn, I saw some Repeat Sexual Behavior that I sure wish I didn't. that's part of why I'm glad the no sexual content rule is being properly enforced nowadays

[Silent Majority]

For what it's worth, having read the entirety of this, in my opinion as a nobody that knows nothing:

I don't think this feels targeted. Maybe it is and I don't know? But this isn't behavior I haven't seen here, or elsewhere, on this game, and others.

Lefinches post sort of has some clarity to it that feel is worth noting. Ultimately any online community is going to have trouble. Any real life community is going to have trouble. Any socialization between two or more people that have any differentiation in any opinion or post experience is potentially going to have trouble. People are trouble.

My PERSONAL take from this is: I think the post sat out with a desire to specifically want to talk about exclusionary or isolating behaviors, and how those affect people. Romance just can often bring that about. I think isolating behaviors are bad. I recognize this. And I am sure that most would agree. If people want private encounters, they can do those in private spaces. In my opinion. Not my cup of tea but I am not going to judge anyone that enjoys it.

The stuff related to the age limits on the game, if necessary, feel like they'd be better served in another thread, it wasn't the topic of this, In my reading of it.. Let's not get hostile everyone? Its not going to be conductive.

I appreciate the no sexual content rule. I would agree with its current enforcement in general from what I have observed. nt

[Frank_Stein]

also, as a quarter-century old man, honestly I am glad that it's against the rules for people to swap spit in-game. I don't want to see that. it's not Puritanical to not wanna see people having e-sex (or the leadup to e-sex) in the digital equivalent of a public place, it's a matter of consent.

Honestly, yeah. I'm here to play a game and blow off some steam, not watch two or more people play kissy face with each other.

Imagine if you were at a baseball game and the short stop and 2nd baseman were too busy braiding flowers into each other's hair and whispering sweet nothings to catch a pop fly

[DisturbHerb]

I've paid a significant personal and professional price for actions that I've committed correlating with the release of this thread. I'm not going to pretend I act purely out of altruism all the time, but it is genuinely heartbreaking to see how intensely emotions have flared between us as of late, inclusive of myself. This really hurts, folks.

[Kotlol]

This topic has gone way out of hand...
What the heck is going on?
Can we re-rail on the RP rules and such insted of all this.. uuh... topic that we shouldn't talk about?

Anyway... Roleplaying is fine as it is. I just think we need more people to guide them or some fun admeme's to have people to engage with RP.
And I don't mean the ones admins can do only but admins show off: "Hey I know I used admin powers to speed up the progress but the things I did you can do as well in game if you learn how!"

I think that ALONE will make people go: "I can do this for a roleplay!"