Goonhub
12-08-2015, 04:31 PM
What Houka suggested is a grand solution, but also comes with the potential caveat of people constantly changing their character's backstories up on the fly to match whatever situation is going on. Those sorts of people should be cracked down on HARD by the admins.
The main centerpiece of this issue is that Goonstation has been all about accumulated knowledge and knowing how to do everything. Medical doctors who can set up the engine, chaplains who excel at firing a revolver, an entire crew with encyclopedic knowledge on syndicate gear, all of that is the norm for Goon play. But that just doesn't work in an RP setting, and if everyone knows how to do everything, background convenience be damned, there's going to be very little distinguishing the two playstyles.
Some people are apparently of the impression that this translates to people only being allowed to do their jobs and being banned for so much as hitting a button they aren't supposed to, which is stupid and doesn't mesh at all with the mission statement of Destiny. Any NT-hired idiot can press buttons, whack things with other things, poke alien artifacts to see what happens, and so on. But when you get an entire crew of people, from the captain to the clown, who are able to effortlessly hack airlocks, repair hull breaches, and display absolute mastery in combat, all you get is a gigantic clusterfuck.
The other issue is that of people reacting to things and not playing the game inside a vacuum of not caring about anyone else. People need to do more things like respond when spoken to, recognize that there's a headless corpse in the hallway, realize that the man standing before them has a gun and will very likely kill them if they try anything sudden, and so on. Goonstation players have been almost encouraged to be hypercompetent, constantly vigilant, almanac-esque spacemen, but all the RP server asks you to do is step back from that and exercise some discretion and, dare I say it, realism in your actions. Your spaceman is not you, your spaceman is a character, and all you need to do is play that character.
The main centerpiece of this issue is that Goonstation has been all about accumulated knowledge and knowing how to do everything. Medical doctors who can set up the engine, chaplains who excel at firing a revolver, an entire crew with encyclopedic knowledge on syndicate gear, all of that is the norm for Goon play. But that just doesn't work in an RP setting, and if everyone knows how to do everything, background convenience be damned, there's going to be very little distinguishing the two playstyles.
Some people are apparently of the impression that this translates to people only being allowed to do their jobs and being banned for so much as hitting a button they aren't supposed to, which is stupid and doesn't mesh at all with the mission statement of Destiny. Any NT-hired idiot can press buttons, whack things with other things, poke alien artifacts to see what happens, and so on. But when you get an entire crew of people, from the captain to the clown, who are able to effortlessly hack airlocks, repair hull breaches, and display absolute mastery in combat, all you get is a gigantic clusterfuck.
The other issue is that of people reacting to things and not playing the game inside a vacuum of not caring about anyone else. People need to do more things like respond when spoken to, recognize that there's a headless corpse in the hallway, realize that the man standing before them has a gun and will very likely kill them if they try anything sudden, and so on. Goonstation players have been almost encouraged to be hypercompetent, constantly vigilant, almanac-esque spacemen, but all the RP server asks you to do is step back from that and exercise some discretion and, dare I say it, realism in your actions. Your spaceman is not you, your spaceman is a character, and all you need to do is play that character.