Give us some ideas for RP-friendly game modes/antagonists

[kyle2143]

It's come to my attention that the RP server could use a couple more antagonist/game_modes that are tailored specifically to RP interaction. There are a few game types on the Main servers that are not in rotation on the RP servers because they rely too heavily on simple murder or culminate in mass carnage. 

To try to field ideas here that are actually actionable, I've listed a few constraints here to try to direct ideas into the sort of thing that can work well in RP:


Do Not's:
1. Shouldn't really involve instakills that sorta remove you from the round, i.e. Changer/blob.
2. Shouldn't rely solely on combat. I.e. Nuke, Rev
3. Shouldn't rely on leveling/gearing up for one fight at the end i.e. Woof, changer.
4. Shouldn't really be a conversion antagonist i.e. Rev.

Do's:
1. Possibly involve teamwork/communication between the antagonists in the game mode.
2.  Should allow decent counterplay for the crew to fight back.
3. Try to make the mode/antagonist affect multiple departments. Or more than just Security.

[Lady Birb]

A loooong time ago I had an idea for a syndicate spy drone antagonist that had poor killing power but many abilities that made them difficult to catch and could mess with station equipment in annoying ways by uploading viruses into consoles, with their objectives generally being focused on stealing important items and bugging important consoles. The general idea is an antagonist that struggles to kill anyone but can annoy the hell out of the entire station while taking significant effort to kill or capture. They could work well as an RP-exclusive gamemode where a group of them tries to stop the station from getting anything done, or alone as a side antagonist on the main server that distracts the crew from other antagonists by being extremely annoying.

[Cal]

A single Syndicate stealth ops with no lethals, and a toned down tranq gun with the objective to kidnap someone for mindslaving? They could spawn with a tranq gun with perf or something so people cant speak, and a stun baton to grab people.

EDIT: After some googling, it looks like other servers have something similar already, where they kidnap people and give them beneficial organs and a temporary antag status.

[Camryn]

Not really an antagonist per se, but I think kudzu people would make for an interesting dynamic on the RP server.

[TheRealFlapJackson]

I had an idea for a "Terminator(-ish)" antag at one point, and it would start the round disguised as a normal crewmember. Its objective would be to kill or *ahem* dispose of  a certain crewmember and take their place at the end of the round. After it scanned the crewmember it would take the place of, it could change to their appearance at any point, but it would be stuck like that for the rest of the round. If it (the Terminator) took too much damage, its skin would peel off and leave a pile of gibs at their feet, and they'd be an endoskeleton. you can restore the "skin" by pouring synthflesh on you and it'd disguise you as a randomly-generated character.

In other words, changeling but not as murder-y. Just one target, get rid of them and take their place. if you're disguised as your target at the end of the round and the target never made it to centcom (dead OR abandoned), the Terminator wins.

[Mrprogamer96]

An Idea I had was some kind of Evil Trickster or a framer, where there end goal is the frame a member of the crew for a crime they did not commit and has tools that are able to help with it, like they are able make a fake body of someone with someone's DNA.
have it so when they kill someone they can plant fake items, like fake chems that when tested do nothing, but are in the body if you want to frame someone in science.
they win there objectives by having there target brigged for an amount of time

[ObligatoryName]

I already said this in the Discord server, but i think an infestation game mode where there's two different antags cooperating with each other could be good.
I gave the example of a demon invasion, there would be a cultist and a demon mastermind, their common objective would be to either go loud and destroy the station (Not really inclined for this one, smells like nukie) or make the demons control the station and become its leaders.
The cultist antag would have to both help the demons enter the station and also convince the crew they are their saviours or something along those lines.
The demon antag would be one demon that controls other demon NPCs in an RTS kinda way (Think of the Flockmind, but with more control)

[Mrprogamer96]

A single Syndicate stealth ops with no lethals, and a toned down tranq gun with the objective to kidnap someone for mindslaving? They could spawn with a tranq gun with perf or something so people cant speak, and a stun baton to grab people.

my question is what is the end goal? since in gang it is basically a instant kill move to kidnap someone.
I do like the idea.

[Zergspower]

Abduction style antag, they spawn in with a target (RP it as a former employer/fellow employee that crossed them) and they have until the end of the round to get the reward for ransom.
Or have it literally be like an alien abduction, where you can have a similar ability to the changlings impersonator ability to where you can pose as someone to lure them to an area where they can then kidnap you.

[colossusqw]

A bodysnatchers kind of thing where someone(or multiple people) on the ship starts as an imitation of a crewmember(kinda like the changeling) and has to stealthly kill other crewmembers, creating clones of them(that are controlled by the original killed player) so that they can keep spreading it.

The goal of the imitations is to replace the entire crew without them knowing, but they can be found out by dying upon eating food or something simple like that.

I dont know if its that suitable for rp but it would generate tension to stumble upon your friends corpse in maint after seeing them go through the hallway, or just in general see people act weird and try to lure you into sketchy places.

[ObligatoryName]

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[Oremir]

Truth be told i'd like to see some existing Antag Roles in RP but perhaps with modified objectives to make for a more fun and RP heavy round.

I'l admit i havn't really experienced the other Antags as i've soley played on RP so i don't know how viable that would be but i always wondered if Wizard (or even Wolf) could've had a modified objective set that would incentivise RP over wanton destruction.

Perhaps a bit of a cheap awnser but there's always the idea to add an "Avoid killing people" or "Don't kill more then X people." objectives

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Alternatively if those things are not quite possible another idea is some kind've "conversion" Antag who's objective is to convert X amount of the crew. Conversion process, its duration, requirement or what it would look like, would be up for debate.

What could the Antag be/look like? Two examples could be:

• Parasite/Biological Entity/Infested : Admittedly a kind've a toned down/different Ling, a biological entity infiltrating the crew and trying to propagate itsself among the crew and eventually trying to hitch a ride to Centcom (2. Alternative Objectives could involve Kill/Convert Specific Target Objectives or perhaps Steal Item Objective ᵀʰᵉ ᵖᵃʳᵃˢᶦᵗᵉ ᶦˢ ᵗʳʸᶦⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ᵍᵉᵗ ᵃ ᵇᵉᵗᵗᵉʳ ᵘⁿᵈᵉʳˢᵗᵃⁿᵈᶦⁿᵍ ᵒᶠ ᵃⁿ ᵒᵇʲᵉᶜᵗ or Steal Food specifically ʸᵘᵐᵐʸ ᶠᵒᵒᵈ ᵖᵃʳᵃˢᶦᵗᵉ ˡᶦᵏᵉˢ). the Parasite host would have to hunt down and knock out/incapacitate a target and start a conversion process where they infest their target with a parasite aswell. (2. Perhaps the target has limited time to remove the parasite after the process similar to a Headspider although that would quickly become problematic if they decide to call alarms or decide to suicide). Once infected Target is converted and recieves Antag Status and has to try and help propagating the Parasite in the ship. (2. Parasites could potentially recieve Hive Mind but uncertain on this). They would likely have some abilities ready to help them allong but i've not finalized or even theorized too much on what that'd look like other then again toned down/different Ling abilities.
  

• Syndicate Conversion/Recruitement/Progapanda Op/Agent : A bit more based on technology/gadgets then the Parasite. Perhaps a bit similar to the Stealth Op previously mentioned in the thread except this perticular agents objective is to slowly (but permenantly) brainwash members of NT and allign them with Syndicate Interest. Synd Conversion Agents survival is often secondairy and typically they're not expected to make their way to Centcom, they're expected to convert a good portion of the crew to allign with the Syndicate. (2. Alternative Objective would probably involve Kill/Convert Specific Target Objectives or Sabotage Objectives of some kind). Perhaps the Agent has access to Syndicate Tokens similar to Traitors but they start out with fewer, earning more as they convert more members of the Crew and perhaps only have access to a limited amount of items (or new/different items entirely).
  

Annyway, that's it's a rough idea at best that i'm sure has already been thought of but throwing it out there annyway.

[childd]

So this idea involves a sort of "demonic mastermind" or some sort of being that has the sort of view a ghost or AI has, without a corporeal form

What it would do is have the ability to pick a certain amount of subjects, possibly depending on how large the pop is? Or maybe it increases to a set amount after some time. Not a long though, maybe 1-3 max.

After converting these subjects, they appear to have no abnormal physical differences at the beginning though will begin to behave differently. This comes in the form of the demonic mastermind attempting to communicate with them what it wants them to do, while being unable to directly speak or anything like that. Ways of communication would mostly involve hallucinations and strange noises that could mean something.

This demonic mastermind might have some goals to accomplish with some lesser goals, and larger ones. It might not be able to directly interact with the real world, however it can use its subjects to do strange things. Perhaps it wants someone to find a specific item and place it somewhere else? Or maybe it wants someone to straight up murder someone.

These tasks would give varying amounts of points, and can be used in ways to bring gifts as well as changes to its subjects. Perhaps it could physically alter one to run twice the speed, or simply gain a desirable object? While it could bring gifts to those that help it, those subjects that do not listen to it must be punished.

I'm thinking subjects might gain a sort of semi-antag status where they are almost like a mindslave, rather than converting them into a full on antag. The more they do for their evil entity, the stronger they themselves become.

This is quite a focused idea but could bring interesting RP themes, in my opinion. Maybe you've noticed the barman is behaving strangely all of a sudden and they've gouged their own eyes out - what's going on!?

Could add more to it where conversion actually takes some time but can be stopped via religious methods such as a bible over the head, or maybe farting on the bible straight up removes the demonic influence if you aren't fully turned yet. Then another subject would have to be picked.

While being subjected to its influence, you could get messages like "your skin feels like it is boiling." or "your vision blurs into visions of incoherent chaos." stuff like that.

Big talk, sorry! Hopefully it at least gives an interesting idea.

[breathemanually]

-The psychic
A psychic who’s power is gained from being in the possession of personal artifacts that people care about (personal items). These would rack up as points or grades of power, allowing them with each item extra abilities. These could range from powers such as making active contact with the dead and/or giving the dead some of their power to affect people in some way (allowing the dead to play a more active role as well), psychic links that ‘allow someone to be influenced’ up to reasonable degree in a sort of one-order mind slave effect, (use tarot cards to) find out the location of people or what they carry with them, cause electronics to shut off for a certain period, etc etc. The goal of the psychic could be the gaining of power itself, or to exact vengeance on the station or certain people such as the chaplain, or maybe people who have the Atheist trait due to them being opposed to the psychic’s way. Since the amount of power the psychic would have relates directly to how many items there are and thus how many people there are playing, this could bottleneck their power accordingly and allow a fair shot to take them down in any population size. 

-The collector:
An alien in human disguise that wants to collect as much as the crew (or just certain people) as possible for his rare collection. The way they would do it is by having an item (some ray gun) or power to figurinify people (like the special ghost critter figurines, with the sprites as the specific department/role they were/are). Their briefcase would be able to hold these figurines with more player being collected amounting to a higher random chance of the ‘weight’ of the case causing the collector to fall/slip and the briefcase opening, spilling the contents. These figurine players could maybe to talk to each other, do the bidding of the collector (on a cooldown ability), and try to escape. The cure to de-figurinify these players could be a reagent harvested from certain plants to include botany, mixing of the reagent with other reagents to include chemistry/medical and maybe an injection from someone with medical training as the figurines would be very small and a steady hand would be needed to properly inject them.
 
Also, maybe not for an antag type, but for modes/mode events, I was thinking for a little about an event or two that would keep players on their toes a little, especially in RP. One being a mass-mind swap where some interstellar radiation would cause people to randomly swap minds with pairs where one would become the other and vice versa (with a fair warning in advance so people wouldn’t be in an awkward position). This swap would either last for a given time period or possibly until both swapped players would be given each other’s blood with a hallucinogenic chemical such as LSD (as a nod to MKultra) to ‘link’ up the minds. One would be able to ward off the effects entirely by having a tin-foil hat prior to the ‘event’, which could be crafted using a refined ore of perhaps syreline or cobryl, giving the ‘cure’ of such an event in the hands of mining and perhaps cargo. potentially funny situations would be besides seeing how people react to being other's, but also when/if finding out the swapped player is an antag of sorts. do they go to security to confess or do they follow the plan and become the antagonist they now are?

[Brixx79]

I had mentioned this as an alternative to Spy/thief and could be reworked into something more along the guidelines set.

Space Pirate Raid

A small team of very rag tag equipped pirates are given a skooner (shuttle) that can warp near a beacon on a 5 min recharge. There are specific targets for them to steal that will give them bigger rewards like normal spy/thief would. But the buccaneers are also given a 'reclamation' device that will slowly teleport any equipment on the station into the hold of their skooner for points (total of materials to manufacture?). Pirates may spend the points to actually get some half-decent equipment, not all of which needs to be offensive. Crew may attempt to raid the skooner to reclaim stolen goods, but it comes with built in turrets the pirates may also upgrade.

This mode would require teamwork as the crew 'should' target one location near the chosen beacon to quickly raid while a few stay behind to defend their mobile base. With very basic starting gear, even a few angry chainsaw wielding botanists can do some damage so hit and run tactics should be the go to.

Captured pirates in the brig can be 'bailed out' and teleported back to the ship by using the reclamation device to exchange stolen goods back to the station. Dead crew/pirates may be respawned with basic gear by permanently expending points (or station budget?).

The goal is for the pirates to have reached a total amount of stolen goods before a time limit (intergalactic police force is en route!). I think the Head Buccaneer should be the only one to claim spy/thief items and try to divvy them amongst his capable crew mates. Puts them in more of a risk position (extra bail cost?) and stops the chaos of people running off to get XYZ on their own so they can get the prize.