Romance and Goonstation RP

[Cal]

I am NOT going to go checking IDs, this is a volunteer thing we do for fun

[WantilaThor]

Just thought I'd weigh in.
PEGI guidelines are used on the bulk of other games- unique to byond, we don't have to use them. Here is an explanation of them.
However, the game contains gambling, glorification of drug use (stimulants offer a significant gameplay advantage) violence against people who look human, blood, gore, torture...

This game is not PG. It would struggle to be PEGI-16.

I still am horrified seeing the handcuff suicide option in action, its feels straith out of Saw movie and rest of the examples are not nicer at all.

[freedo5]

I have to say i think this post is very helpful for clarifying things, i once witnessed an interaction that i think was toeing the line rules wise and didn't ahelp it because i thought i would appear as if i was ovverreacting to things. While i'm no prude IRL i still have boundries, especially when interacting with people i don't personally know and i would like that to be respected.

On the RP side of things if you are roleplaying being a person who's working you probably should also act like it, just because people in a relationship are working in the same place it doesn't mean they act like lovebirds while on the job.
I'm glad that the admin team considers people isolating themselves and refusing interactions with others as something ahelpable. It's a multiplayer game, if you want to RP a relationship i don't mind, if you want to refuse any kind of interaction with people who are not your RP partner it's not fine, i don't want to jump into a game only to be refused when trying to interact. If you want to RP relationships one on one without interference from others then maybe you should actually do it one on one instead of excluding other people.

By the way, i'm making this comment because i think it's positive to share individual perspectives and not to inflame the thread.

[Emimiyu]

Honestly. The thread can be just summarize to be make boundaries with other players, especially known minors, and don't be a metaclique that may affect the round badly. It's not that hard to understand.

(Ugh, I delete the paragraph. I decide what I post might not necessary)

[JOELED]

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.

[Carton]

Honestly I think Joel put it the best. (Impressive for a tired stream of consciousness) I've seen a lot of weird and uncomfortable behaviour on the RP servers between players doing romance and this post is about addressing that and defining guidelines for the RP players, not to debate an age limit.

[jan.antilles]

I have been thinking, and honestly the main part of this whole thing that has got me so conflicted is the fact that a friend who never did a single thing out of line in my book, and never disrupted a single moment of the game that i was *aware* of, was likely, and indirectly, the catalyst that lead to the admins discussing this behind closed doors and then putting out a clarification.

Hey Kot, I just wanted to respond and reassure you about a few things: your "that I was aware of" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting. As Flaborized said in her post: "Again, you're genuinely not going to cross up against accidentally this if you're reasonable, and the bans I've seen are usually pretty egregious or the person has been warned several times before for the exact same behavior. "

Your friend knows exactly why they are banned. I will not be discussing the details because the Admin Guidelines discourage me from doing that, but I feel very confident telling you that if you are confused about how on earth they could have fallen afoul of what's written in this post, it's because of things they aren't telling you.

Zamu's testimony (and the fact she left the team at all) just has red flags a-wavin' and klaxons going off in my head. 

To offer an additional clarification: Zamu "left the team" because she was in the middle of being forcibly removed from it, for a long history of both violating guidelines regarding player trust and admin trust, and for verbally abusing people behind closed doors on the admin team to the point where numerous people left or stopped contributing to the project, including myself. If you are concerned about the atmosphere on the admin team, I'm happy to reassure you that it's actually better now than it has been in a long time.

Obviously this announcement i agree has nothing directly to do with that incident

Regarding the post itself: this is a clarification of our existing policy and the way we've been enforcing it. Nothing in this post is new. In a way it IS directly related to the incident, but not because of any changes as a result of it. My goal in making this was to offer clarification to any players who make incorrect assumptions based on the issue, because they didn't see anything happen that they think is against the rules, and worry they're going to get banned for things that are actually totally fine. I want to reassure them that these guidelines are what the entire team relies on, and that things like "announcing a wedding and pinging lots of people for it" genuinely had nothing to do with any administrative actions that were taken.

[Zamujasa]

I am NOT going to go checking IDs, this is a volunteer thing we do for fun

it's a good thing nobody suggested doing ID checks other than *checks notes* zewaka!

other places exist that are 18+ without doing it. everyone's favorite, tg station. coolstation. there are others.

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

then deal with the people causing the problem? if people are taking head roles and then fucking off, regardless of if they're doing it with a buddy or not, then headban them? if people are being exclusionary on a regular basis, then idk, ban them? that seems to be what they did in linkey's case.

the main beef i have with this whole thing is that it's being used as more "but think of the children!" puritanism when kids shouldn't be playing this game in the first place.

like even if you try to argue this shit, goon has gone heavy handed on "do your job" type rulings. fucking off into space with a pal isn't doing your job if you're a captain. whallop them under that rule, you don't have to invent whole new ones.

Honestly I think Joel put it the best. (Impressive for a tired stream of consciousness) I've seen a lot of weird and uncomfortable behaviour on the RP servers between players doing romance and this post is about addressing that and defining guidelines for the RP players, not to debate an age limit.

the problem is that the age limit is being used a a justification for these changes. it's not "these behaviors are exclusionary and we don't want players doing them" -- sure, whatever, i disagree but what else is new -- it's "we don't want players doing this because minors play here and we can't have them seeing things that are bad", which is an extremely transparently puritan POV in this fucking game of all things.


"we can't expose kids to romance like people making out, but we can expose them to gruesome murder, violence, and drugs" is an utterly hypocritical opinion to have, and it's the foundation of a lot of beef.

---

To offer an additional clarification: Zamu "left the team" because she was in the middle of being forcibly removed from it, for a long history of both violating guidelines regarding player trust and admin trust, and for verbally abusing people behind closed doors on the admin team to the point where numerous people left or stopped contributing to the project, including myself. If you are concerned about the atmosphere on the admin team, I'm happy to reassure you that it's actually better now than it has been in a long time.

thanks for the shoutout i've tried to make it very clear that i quit because of an active deadmin vote you started at my suggestion but i guess it isn't always communicated properly.

[jan.antilles]

the problem is that the age limit is being used a a justification for these changes.

These are not changes. This is a clarification of the existing policy. No changes have been made to the rules or the enforcement of them.

[Flourish]

First, as several other admins have stated, this post does not represent any change in how we administrate the game. This post is clarifying what we already do and have done for a long time. It is making explicit implicit understandings.

Second, the fact that minors play the game is not the justification for “no don’t be exclusionary in your RP”. Minors are mentioned in the post because it is a fact that not everyone here is an adult, and it is an important thing to keep in mind when engaging in romantic RP. There’s a profound difference between “yeah a kid just saw two characters kiss and proclaim their love for each other ingame” and “yeah, you, an adult, knowingly have a character who is in a romantic relationship with a child’s character, and you kiss and proclaim your love for each other ingame”. Former is fine and latter is not.

Like Flaborized said—

The only thing that we're not letting you do because there's people who are 13-18 here is... romance people who are 13-18.

[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.

Second, the fact that minors play the game is not the justification for “no don’t be exclusionary in your RP”. Minors are mentioned in the post because it is a fact that not everyone here is an adult, ...

Like Flaborized said—

The only thing that we're not letting you do because there's people who are 13-18 here is... romance people who are 13-18.

....and from that, you have the obvious extrapolation:

1. minors are explicitly allowed to play here
2. it is impossible to know who is and isn't a minor (edit: and everything is public, ghosts can see everything, etc)
3. thus, anything bad for minors shouldn't be allowed

my argument is that this whole line of reasoning is ridiculous and the focus in being a good place for 13 year olds is terrible. this isn't even anything new specifically because of this thread, when i was joking about my increasingly-less-a-joke spite fork soon after getting punted from the team i had a realization that having 13+ people around was a big error. not just for this, but for all the other reasons that have come up here.


edit 2: i'm having a serious laugh at remembering that the admins policed people's discord profiles and avatars at a time when wire still had the bdsm quark avatar

[GreenJelly]

then deal with the people causing the problem? if people are taking head roles and then fucking off, regardless of if they're doing it with a buddy or not, then headban them? if people are being exclusionary on a regular basis, then idk, ban them? that seems to be what they did in linkey's case.

the main beef i have with this whole thing is that it's being used as more "but think of the children!" puritanism when kids shouldn't be playing this game in the first place.

like even if you try to argue this shit, goon has gone heavy handed on "do your job" type rulings. fucking off into space with a pal isn't doing your job if you're a captain. whallop them under that rule, you don't have to invent whole new ones.

We are. That is kind of what this thread was meant for: Clarifying what behaviours are actually earning people warnings and bans under rules 4 and 6 so people who worry "I might get banned if I have an in-character wedding" can be more at ease, because we do not ban for weddings. We are warning or banning for repeat examples of exclusionary behaviour. We are warning or head-banning people who sign up for important roles and then vanish into space. 
This is not a thread about changing the rules, and it was never supposed to be a post about the age restrictions to play. There are currently no plans to make any changes to the wording - or way we enforce - Rule 4 or Rule 6.

Jelly

[Cropsey]

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.

[jan.antilles]

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.

The examples are from the entire history of my time as an admin, and are not specific to any one banned user.

[Flourish]

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.