Complaint LeahTheTech, 3/10/2025

[SageAcrin]

HELP:  You: "Please don't just run around silently stinging people all shift as a changeling on RP. I know it's not that harmful but it's still not really roleplay." - from Leah, earlier. This is an incredible misrepresentation of what occured; I spent the round specifically stinging security and heads of staff(captain, HoS) looking for opportunities to eat while talking and roleplaying normally and was absolutely not silent. If you look at the round (which occursed around 5AM) you can see I was constantly talking with people and roleplaying my heart out; I was simply not making myself blatantly obvious. I did sting people late in the round that weren't those roles *to make myself more obvious*, not to be a random offender. I then recieved massive negative feedback in rp-chat including accusations of rulebreaking based on this gameplay, and including this note; which is entirely misrepresentitive of the case. I do not want to bring this to admin feedback, but I strongly wish that you would look at the round in question and reconsider this feedback on my round. I feel like in rp-chat at that time my play recieved an incredible amount of chilling effect negativity for simply being successful stealth play, and I've recieved similar feedback before. If stealth is meant to not be a role on RP, I would strongly suggest clarifying the escalation rules and removing some gear, particularly things like sleepy pens, as they are impossible to work with under conditions where "escalation" is truly "required to say multiple aggressive lines to anyone you consider utilizing an aggressive movement towards" as opposed to "roleplaying well towards that person but in a non-aggressive manner towards a role that is suitable to be assaulting such as security/command before assaulting them.".

HELP:  You: Also, sorry if I come on strong on this, but I have *literally* spent all morning getting over the negativity and came online to that admin feedback that seems to have been a "well recieved an admin help about this person better slap them" without realizing they were a former admin that is really trying their best to follow rules and then some.

Hi Sage, I know you were talking to people during the round because contrary to what you assume I did read the logs. The issue is that you were just (as far as I saw) playing as a normal crewmember the entire round aside from randomly stinging people. Stealth is fine as long it leads to something or has a point to it or otherwise contributes to the round in any way other than medbay filling people with charcoal over and over. This is how we've enforced "escalation" rules on RP for a while and being a former admin doesn't exempt you from that.


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So, firstly, as I replied before making this thread; obviously the point here was nothing to do with trying to pull sway as a former admin to pull something I "shouldn't" and I'm horribly offended and this escalated something that *already* has gotten me incredibly upset and, yeah, this is "oh *wow* did I make a mistake coming back" levels, but let's back up a bit already and talk about this.

First off, the crux of this complaint seems to be... that I'm violating... what rule or RPing exactly? Escalation? But as I pointed out (and commented before going to make this post; I didn't copy out my last answer, but I'm sure Leah has it), stealth naturally occurs best when you're utilizing a weapon without showing your hand; why even *have* stealth on *RP* if you're going to say "well all poisons are bad because they just fill medbay over and over"? Why have anything because it just fills medbay over and over, after all? That's what all the damage does, right?

The complaint fundamentally was that I didn't make it easy to identify me as an antagonist; *that* is the crux of this, and therefore that stealth is undesireable. And you know, fair enough! I can see saying that's against the spirit of RP! *But it's not against any rules and should be something an admin should be looking at changing the rules for, not passing down admin comments on.* And no, that is *not* what the escalation rule says; it says this;

"Escalate through roleplay before attacking other players. The goal of the roleplay server is character interaction and interesting scenarios. Both crew and antagonists are expected to roleplay escalation before engaging in hostilities. As an antagonist, your goal is to increase, not decrease, roleplay opportunities. Give people a sense of dread, an obvious motive, or some means of roleplaying and reacting, before you harm them. As security, your priority is the crew’s safety and maintaining the peace. You should treat criminals fairly and determine appropriate consequences for their actions. Enemies to Nanotrasen such as confirmed non-human antagonists and open syndicate members may be treated harshly."

I was roleplaying constantly, chatting with people, giving as many chances as I could to identify a poisoner as I could by targetting high profile targets and generally being as much of a target as possible *while being a good stealth player!* I was giving a sense of dread, as I watched the HoS lock himself into the security area as half the shuttle *bled*.

Just because you don't like my RP style doesn't mean it's against the rules, and I want this critiqued by other admins-particularly the slam against me for bringing up that, *yes*, I *was* a former admin and *yes*, I do know the rules, *which is why I brought that up and not for goddamn favoritism*.

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On reflection, there's actually more to this I find objectionable, even. Why even use an admin system notice on a borderline case when you could have discussed it with me in say Discord, given that it's more of an RP styling preference thing? That would have been a really great discussion and would have been received on my end utterly differently.

If you did look at my round; why come in with "Please don't just run around silently stinging people all shift as a changeling on RP. I know it's not that harmful but it's still not really roleplay."? This is just insanely offensive to someone that's putting any effort into roleplaying at all; there's no possible way they won't be offended. What on earth?

[LeahTheTech]

Okay, I'll let other people reply to this but I just wanted to say I apologise for saying "silently" as that wasn't accurate. A more accurate description would have read: "Playing the round as a normal crewmate apart from randomly stinging people with poison".
As far as why to use an admin system, I'd always prefer to have this kind of conversation through official channels where other admins can see and chime in rather than arguing with people over discord DMs. An admin notice isn't a black mark against you, it's just a way to relay a message when you're not online to talk to.

[SageAcrin]

From my perspective, that's difficult, because I don't know if it's paired with a note that *is* a black mark or not. An official statement of disapproval without any real give to it *reads* like something that would be a logical note.

It's possible the system got updated to make that more clear when a note was added to your record since I left and I'm not aware, of course.

[ZeWaka]

It's possible the system got updated to make that more clear when a note was added to your record since I left and I'm not aware, of course.

Notes have associated rounds/logs and also have a time. This has been the case for quite a while.

[SageAcrin]

I meant more to the person receiving the note; last I checked there was no easy way to know an admin had noted your account besides "they told you/you requested that knowledge".

So while I didn't *assume* an admin added a note here, I thought there was a reasonably good chance, particularly since in this case I wasn't online at the time and came back on to the message.

(I was on for about 20-30 minutes into the next round IIRC, then the vampire I was watching disconnected and I took a nap.)

[LeahTheTech]

The escalation rule reads: 

Escalate through roleplay before attacking other players. The goal of the roleplay server is character interaction and interesting scenarios. Both crew and antagonists are expected to roleplay escalation before engaging in hostilities. As an antagonist, your goal is to increase, not decrease, roleplay opportunities. Give people a sense of dread, an obvious motive, or some means of roleplaying and reacting, before you harm them.

This can be tricky to apply to stealth gameplay, but let's look at some examples. You mention removing sleepy pens since they are impossible to use within the rules, so -

Example 1: You fill your sleepy pen with poison, lurk around the cafeteria and inject people after they eat something. Then you blame the chef for all the poisonings and try to get the kitchen shut down as a public health hazard.
You're not talking to your victims here, there's no sense of dread, BUT there is an obvious motive (framing the chef) and you are increasing roleplay opportunities by starting an entire conversation about whether their food is poisoned, maybe even getting people to protest and calling for the chef to be arrested.
Verdict: PASS

Example 2 (I did this one): You're a medical doctor, fill your sleep pen with a cocktail of illegal drugs and stab the captain with it. Then, when they come into medbay complaining that they feel ill, you tut at them for getting high on duty. Do this a few more times while the captain is getting increasingly desperate to convince people they aren't taking drugs on the job, then try to convince the HoP to relieve them of their command due to their drug problem.
Again, you have a motive before you harm them and you're using the poisoning to try to make something happen in the round.
Verdict: PASS

Example 3: You walk into botany and start talking to a botanist about plant food, during the conversation you inject them with poison, watch them collapse, go "huh" and then walk out again.
You're talking to them, you're roleplaying with them, BUT you're not giving them a sense of dread, an obvious motive, or any means of reacting. You're also decreasing roleplay opportunities by taking them out of the round temporarily for no tangible payoff.
Verdict: FAIL

This is how I interpret the escalation rule, and as far as I'm aware how every current admin does.
The reason I said "silently" in your case is because the effect is the same as if you hadn't been talking to people, it doesn't change how the escalation rule applies because you're still not fulfilling any of the listed conditions. I know you weren't actually being silent and I'm sorry if you thought I was insulting you by saying so, or that it indicated I hadn't read the logs and was simply giving a knee-jerk reaction based on complaints. That was not my intention and that's not what I do.

I reacted sharply when you brought up being a former admin because to me it seems irrelevant and I can't think of a reason to bring it up other than favouritism or accusing me of being overly harsh on you. Quite honestly I don't really know who you are, I wasn't on the team when you left and the only interactions I've had with you are chatting about things in deadchat. I left you a notice because in my judgement you were (mildly) breaking the rules and that is how we inform people of that.

*breathout

-Leah

[SageAcrin]

Example 1: You fill your sleepy pen with poison, lurk around the cafeteria and inject people after they eat something. Then you blame the chef for all the poisonings and try to get the kitchen shut down as a public health hazard.
You're not talking to your victims here, there's no sense of dread, BUT there is an obvious motive (framing the chef) and you are increasing roleplay opportunities by starting an entire conversation about whether their food is poisoned, maybe even getting people to protest and calling for the chef to be arrested.
Verdict: PASS

-- I framed a person accused of being poisoned while they were being interrogated by the HoS. I think they were actually a changeling, in the end, but I had no way of knowing that-I knew they were being accused of poisoning the captain, so I went for poisoning the HoS in the hallway while they were talking to them.

I reacted sharply when you brought up being a former admin because to me it seems irrelevant and I can't think of a reason to bring it up other than favouritism or accusing me of being overly harsh on you.

Perhaps context could help?

"HELP: You: Also, sorry if I come on strong on this, but I have *literally* spent all morning getting over the negativity and came online to that admin feedback that seems to have been a "well recieved an admin help about this person better slap them" without realizing they were a former admin that is really trying their best to follow rules and then some."

I mentioned it in context of; A: I know how admins can handle things by rote and don't necessarily pay attention to an ahelp and was apologizing *within* that context, after realizing I had came on strong, and B: was stating that I was a former admin and the rules are incredibly important to me.

I'm not sure how you jump to favoritism without looking for it, there, which doesn't make me feel like you started from a good place on this.

---

Example 1: You fill your sleepy pen with poison, lurk around the cafeteria and inject people after they eat something. Then you blame the chef for all the poisonings and try to get the kitchen shut down as a public health hazard.
You're not talking to your victims here, there's no sense of dread, BUT there is an obvious motive (framing the chef) and you are increasing roleplay opportunities by starting an entire conversation about whether their food is poisoned, maybe even getting people to protest and calling for the chef to be arrested.
Verdict: PASS

-- I framed a person accused of being poisoned while they were being interrogated by the HoS. I think they were actually a changeling, in the end, but I had no way of knowing that-I knew they were being accused of poisoning the captain, so I went for poisoning the HoS in the hallway while they were talking to them.

I reacted sharply when you brought up being a former admin because to me it seems irrelevant and I can't think of a reason to bring it up other than favouritism or accusing me of being overly harsh on you.

Perhaps context could help?

"HELP:  You: Also, sorry if I come on strong on this, but I have *literally* spent all morning getting over the negativity and came online to that admin feedback that seems to have been a "well recieved an admin help about this person better slap them" without realizing they were a former admin that is really trying their best to follow rules and then some."

I mentioned it in context of; A: I know how admins can handle things by rote and don't necessarily pay attention to an ahelp and was apologizing *within* that context, after realizing I had came on strong, and B: was stating that I was a former admin and the rules are incredibly important to me.

I'm not sure how you jump to favoritism without looking for it, there, which doesn't make me feel like you started from a good place on this.

---

Also, I want to be clear on something. There seems to be a belief that my idea here was never to kill anyone. No, that was not the case. My idea was never to wantonly kill in ways that simply chaotically removed people from the round for giggles and expose myself idiotically, and honestly to experiment with a new changeling sting to see if it was practically speaking simply debilitating or actually lethal and if a changeling could pick up kills and absorption off it. I didn't manage it, so it's probably not practical. The goal wasn't "never kill", it was "never be an idiot and blow my cover", and frankly I wasn't up to amazing feats of dragging people out airlocks so I was taking it methodically.

To a certain degree, hilariously, I feel like I'm being punished on RP for not being at my most robust when I first woke up and not wanting to immediately lose. This plays into some cultural things I've absolutely noticed (which culminated in seeing people actually honest to god say that you should have your fun "then let security win"). If playing into letting security win is your goal, alright; but explicitly rule it out, please.

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Wow, replying to my own thing did not work like I meant it to. Sorry about that, I don't seem to be able to edit it.

[LeahTheTech]

I framed a person accused of being poisoned while they were being interrogated by the HoS. I think they were actually a changeling, in the end, but I had no way of knowing that-I knew they were being accused of poisoning the captain, so I went for poisoning the HoS in the hallway while they were talking to them.

Okay, good! This is the kind of thing that's hard to tell from logs, especially if you just sting them and don't do anything else, so it would have been a good thing to lead with here. You were still more or less randomly poisoning people for the rest of the round though, which is why I asked you to not do that. Again, you're not banned, you're not indelibly marked, you're just being asked to change how you play slightly.

To a certain degree, hilariously, I feel like I'm being punished on RP for not being at my most robust when I first woke up and not wanting to immediately lose.

Again, you're not being punished.

This plays into some cultural things I've absolutely noticed (which culminated in seeing people actually honest to god say that you should have your fun "then let security win"). If playing into letting security win is your goal, alright; but explicitly rule it out, please.

The point of the RP servers is to generate interesting RP, not to try to "win" or "lose" the round. If you get arrested, exiled or executed as part of that- it's not you "losing" the round, it's just the next part of the story. Some players will deliberately let themselves get arrested in order to gloat at security or just because they think the story would be better if they did. That's entirely up to them though.

It can sometimes feel like escalation requirements are overly harsh on antagonists, but remember that security are also (in theory) playing to generate a good story and so will often in turn be more lenient on antagonists that are making one. They might also do things like wander into an obvious trap or believe someone who is almost certainly lying to them, just because it makes the RP better (I know I do this).

[SageAcrin]

Okay, good! This is the kind of thing that's hard to tell from logs, especially if you just sting them and don't do anything else, so it would have been a good thing to lead with here. You were still more or less randomly poisoning people for the rest of the round though, which is why I asked you to not do that. Again, you're not banned, you're not indelibly marked, you're just being asked to change how you play slightly.

Well, as I said, the attempt was failed buildup. The idea was to see if I could use the poison to kill one person, optimally-despite appearances, I was hunting victims-and then pull them aside, opportunistically killing them.

In retrospect, a lot of this was simply not thinking it 100% of the way through; given Security's safeguards that I've thought of afterwards and the protections on people like Captain and Medbay's ease of treatment, the only possible viable targets for that would have been the isolated innocent, which now that I say it makes it, in practice, a much worse neurotoxin. huh.

You know, I hate to say it like this but what is this for? Weird melee weapon I guess? Hm. Sure, go with that and see if it works.

Regardless, yeah, it's poor RP in that regard and wouldn't be done again, I agree. It was done with the idea of better RP in mind. This is the kind of discussion I would have enjoyed but... well, things came across much less friendly than this in the note I came to, and I was honestly already in a fairly bad mood from the reception of the round in chat compared to the reception of the round in game, which was jarring. In-game the round seemed to be enjoyed. On Discord there was... quite a bit of negativity. But that's not a subject for this, so I'll leave it at that.

The point of the RP servers is to generate interesting RP, not to try to "win" or "lose" the round. If you get arrested, exiled or executed as part of that- it's not you "losing" the round, it's just the next part of the story. Some players will deliberately let themselves get arrested in order to gloat at security or just because they think the story would be better if they did. That's entirely up to them though.

It can sometimes feel like escalation requirements are overly harsh on antagonists, but remember that security are also (in theory) playing to generate a good story and so will often in turn be more lenient on antagonists that are making one. They might also do things like wander into an obvious trap or believe someone who is almost certainly lying to them, just because it makes the RP better (I know I do this).

I won't lie here; In a bad mood, sometimes I use verbal "traps"-things I don't believe to gauge reaction-and the strong use of win/lose here was essentially that.

(I suppose, on some level, performing some self-analysis right now, I do feel strongly about wanting to accomplish literally anything. But I think that's probably most people as antagonist, and also probably good RP, both.)

At any rate, this is basically exactly what I hoped, rather than feared, to hear when I said that; I don't view rounds like that. I have a high standard for myself for survival, yeah... so the round isn't boring. But dying? Eh, especially if it moves the round and people have a more interesting time; I also love to observe. I want to accomplish moments, not live, let alone (heaven help us) greentext.

Every part of this seems really in touch and aware with the reality of how difficult it can be for antagonists and encouraging of RP first, accomplishing later and really makes me feel a lot better right now, so thank you.

Overall I think I'll give this some time and come back in... soonish, whenever my brain decides to, unless you have more feedback you wish to give? I need some time to really process this and remove any mental negativity. I do respect that it's hard and that this isn't a paid job, but it really helps RP if the preference for the RP is clear in the rules.

[LeahTheTech]

I hate to say it like this but what is this for?

Good question! Hemotoxin sting is only testmerged for now, pretty much just to see what people do with it and if it leads to anything fun. The pull request is here if you are curious or have feedback about it: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/21781

I don't really have anything else to add here, I'm glad you're feeling more positive about this and I hope you haven't been discouraged from playing here. If you have thoughts on how the RP rules can be better presented feel free to voice them, we have considered rewriting the escalation section in the past but the current version is the latest best compromise (as always :P)