Malicious Mail

[RSOD]

"Hello, Mail Courier. We've sent some important mail, marked with a red label. It is imperative for these to be successfully delivered. Don't. Mess. Up."

I like the idea of mail being a thing, but there's nothing much to it besides occasionally being given a screwdriver, bottle of saltpetre or credits based on your job.
So, Malicious Mail (or Mailicious, if you may), aims to fix this. This is a rare event that typically only occurs if there is a QM or a Mail Courier on board.
so, how does it work?
Couriers and QMs will be messaged via PDA about the delivery, as soon as it arrives. The red label can be peeled off, where it will instantly biodegrade and destroy.
As a QM / Courier, you'll notice they feel heavier in their inspect. To any other crewmember, they won't know any better.
These cannot be tampered, and will shock the user if they are tampered with.
When the victim opens it, they may find a bad suprise waiting for them.
Could be an activated curse artifact, instantly leaving them with a curse, an activated pipebomb, or generally unpleasant stuff otherwise.
After 5-12 minutes of the crate arriving, CentComm will warn crewmates of a "possibly hijacked batch of mail", and to be careful when opening any mail.

[Lefinch]

Cool concept and I've advocated for "more varied" mail, I agree with you 100% that now the system's been comfortably in game for over a year that someone enterprising (WICI) could expand on it, so I'm always interested in stuff like this.

I do feel like if people know bad mail is bad mail, you've just put them in the classic awkward position: Is giving this thing I know is bad to someone self-antagging? If you mean more of a QM/Courier-specific traitor item, like something that summons that mail though, I think that could be fun. Especially if somehow mail frauding "bad" mail comes with a harsher punishment. Feels like a funny gimmick for a courier looking to avenge the Greatest Crime Known To Mankind.

Otherwise, it's a random event that means theoretically it's only going to trap rookie players into doing an accidental bad, or people skirting that line of antagonism, or just 90% of the time the mail being returned to sender or people just...not opening mail because now it's a choice between a semi-useful but not gamebreaking item they can usually obtain pretty easily, or a bad thing. Further, bombs are also one of Those Things that people generally, at least to my observation, prefer to be entirely deliberate rather than a chaotic mistake. Mistakes happen of course, but this way I envision places like security and medbay insisting their members don't open mail at work, and ultimately mail becomes more of a hassle than it's worth. However, that's just my guess and I don't actually know if that'd happen, so please don't consider it me saying this is what'll happen, just something I'm personally worried about.

Another way to spin it is if the mail wasn't so much malicious as mischievous. Pranky stuff that doesn't cause lasting harm. Delivering prank-like mail feels a bit more like it wouldn't step over that line and not turn people off mail in general. We like a good prank from time to time. Confetti in the mail, a cartoonish "boxing glove jack in the box" popping out of it. stink bomb mail (though again, that'd probably be too much)

It feels a little bit stick for not much carrot that mail is right now. If mail was good enough to support the occasional bad thing I'd probably feel like this idea could fly, but right now you said it yourself: but there's nothing much to it. This idea turns it to "There's nothing much to it but occasionally a terrible thing happening" which makes me go "Okay I will not bother with mail"

[RSOD]

Cool concept and I've advocated for "more varied" mail, I agree with you 100% that now the system's been comfortably in game for over a year that someone enterprising (WICI) could expand on it, so I'm always interested in stuff like this.

I do feel like if people know bad mail is bad mail, you've just put them in the classic awkward position: Is giving this thing I know is bad to someone self-antagging? If you mean more of a QM/Courier-specific traitor item, like something that summons that mail though, I think that could be fun. Especially if somehow mail frauding "bad" mail comes with a harsher punishment. Feels like a funny gimmick for a courier looking to avenge the Greatest Crime Known To Mankind.

Otherwise, it's a random event that means theoretically it's only going to trap rookie players into doing an accidental bad, or people skirting that line of antagonism, or just 90% of the time the mail being returned to sender or people just...not opening mail because now it's a choice between a semi-useful but not gamebreaking item they can usually obtain pretty easily, or a bad thing. Further, bombs are also one of Those Things that people generally, at least to my observation, prefer to be entirely deliberate rather than a chaotic mistake. Mistakes happen of course, but this way I envision places like security and medbay insisting their members don't open mail at work, and ultimately mail becomes more of a hassle than it's worth. However, that's just my guess and I don't actually know if that'd happen, so please don't consider it me saying this is what'll happen, just something I'm personally worried about.

Another way to spin it is if the mail wasn't so much malicious as mischievous. Pranky stuff that doesn't cause lasting harm. Delivering prank-like mail feels a bit more like it wouldn't step over that line and not turn people off mail in general. We like a good prank from time to time. Confetti in the mail, a cartoonish "boxing glove jack in the box" popping out of it. stink bomb mail (though again, that'd probably be too much)

It feels a little bit stick for not much carrot that mail is right now. If mail was good enough to support the occasional bad thing I'd probably feel like this idea could fly, but right now you said it yourself: but there's nothing much to it. This idea turns it to "There's nothing much to it but occasionally a terrible thing happening" which makes me go "Okay I will not bother with mail"

honestly, yeah. having mail have a chance to be a large inconvenience would be greatly frowned upon and prank mail seems to sound fine, and now that i look at it, it does dance on the line of self-antag and not adding very much to the mail system altogheter, besides having a small chance to blow up in your face

[Lefinch]

But the idea itself is very, very cool. If it didn't end up a traitor thing, I feel like it could have legs when/if we expand mail a bit. We just need mail to be interesting enough that the occasional bad piece is worth the price.

[Frank_Stein]

You should get bills and junk mail.

Maybe some junk mail has ads for ordering gag items that are often shoddy or defective

[Drakios]

Would be funny if someone opens mail and then there is just a dead body that comes out, of course with no explanation how the hell it fittet in this small letter. But in my head its funny to imagine that someone is talking with some people maybe sec or something, they get mail they just open it and suddenly a dead body drops on the floor in front of them, could be just a random NPC or a random dead body somewhere on the map gets teleported there

[RSOD]

You should get bills and junk mail.

Maybe some junk mail has ads for ordering gag items that are often shoddy or defective

even better if you include a possible way to order them at a huge credit price. but yeah i think stuff like this would be a nice addition to mail

[Kotlol]

Since some mail is worthless to people like: "Crayons for a botanist"
I see no problem with some people getting advertisment or lame mail with a joke on it of some sort.

Like : "We are contacting you to talk to you about your extended pod warranty"

[RSOD]

cue the thousand year old scam of a "Space prince asking for credits so he can recover his fortune" being sent to everyone via mail