The nature of Jailbird crimes

[Agent reburG]

I feel like it is the wrong kind of people often picking it, 
Attention Seeker and Self Antags. 

My take on this, only have it triggered when you roll Antags, it's the only reason I could justify this, non-antag roles should not intentionally bother sec like this. 

My argument, a trait should be pickable by EVERYONE on a shift without causing havoc or breaking it.

[TDHooligan]

Security gives Jailbirds a similar amount of effort as picking the trait costs.

It's not a cultural issue, so much as it is a problem with the trait existing as a thing you roundstart with.

Every time you play your character. You can't see who's putting effort into being a Jailbird and who's picked it because it's cool and funny to get a dash of harassment from sec.

If there were some element of effort, like not being arrested for a shift = +1 'Crime' then you might see security guards finally cotton on to the guy who has '20 goddamn crimes'

[Ragemorrow]

I see Jailbird as being a case of diminishing returns. People may take the trait because they want interaction; and the general consensus seems to be that if the security player doesn't want to be bothered to deal with the jailbird in any meaningful sense (such as just unflagging them) then that is subpar behavior.

But to me it's a matter of jailbirds getting old? Like if you play 3 rounds, and the same character is present all three shifts. That's three interactions with Player 1 because they took a trait. Which might be amazing interactions, who knows! But then add 2-3 more jailbirds all playing in a similar timeframe. Then over three security rounds you've got 9 relatively similar interactions of "What did you do this time, Bart? Ohp, Killed a guy? Shame on you Bart"; while possibly trying to juggle that with actual crimes, either by antagonists or just people being rowdy.

Then take that and put it over a month of gameplay; where now you've had 85(ish) similar interactions with people; with maybe the occasional good interaction shining through. For me, dealing with the random jailbird for hundreds of rounds just became tedious. I don't really know what you do to "fix it". Making stowaways a job was a nice change for the trait; so my brain automatically says "make criminal a role " but that sounds like it would just encourage all the wrong behaviors and expectations.

Treating jailbird's crimes with any level of severity also seems hard, considering the emphasis on a speedy process for detainment so people can get back to the game, and I'd personally worry about holding a jailbird for any significant time because I don't even hold murderers for 5 minutes if I can help it.

I understand the point of the thread isn't to say "remove jailbird" but I struggle to find meaningful ways to recontextualize the system in a way that's fun. Maybe letting Jailbirds select their own crimes? That way you can put stupid stuff like "punches puppies" in there or something? That'd at least let people set a type of "tone" to it, possibly communicating how they want the trait approached.

Maybe the trait doesn't mark you round start and an event can trigger the arrest status sort of like a "Be on the look out for John Nanotrasen, for he did *THIS*" thing?

As is now, it feels like a well that runs dry. And then once I stop going to the well for water, people admonish me for not feeding into the thing I've fed into hundreds of times before with mostly lackluster results. I dunno, man!