Destiny & RP on Goonstation

[ZeWaka]

Sundance mentioned Solarium in his post. What's funny is with all the amazing depth Solarium adds to the lore, this is amazing depth makes Solarium an almost anti-thesis situation on the RP. Solarium is a massive puzzel-lore complex, and the only way to even hope to do it on the non-RP server is to have a group of people, each with already extensive knowledge on Solarium, work together...

In the rounds I've played on destiny as a telescientist, I've justified my 'Telescience Adventures' as looking up locations in a old space atlas I found.
For example, I said the biodome was a place ridden with caves that looked like it had been overgrown by kudzu from the outside.
I'm not sure how we should handle the whole Solarium adventure though. It eventually gets old if you use an excuse like a space atlas if you do that the entire adventure.

[Dastardly]

"I can do open heart surgery because back in space nam' it's the only thing I could do to save my fellow jarheads life"
"I can do construction because my dad thought me before he was killed in a custard related accident"
"I strip off and play the sax because it's the only way I can express myself"

What's wrong with these. Like I get heart surgery is a little extreme, but you're playing a game about space nerds on a space station, I feel like people having esoteric skill sets is appropriate. You just retroactively justify your skill with a one-liner, not an elaborate backstory about your tragic life or whatever.

Absolutely defer to someone else if it's not your job, but I feel that it's lame to be unable to solve easily solvable problems because your character "doesn't know how" when you the player clearly do. Not having an arm or leg is debilitating. Not being able to set up the engine when everyone else has fucked off/is absent doesn't make the game more interesting (doubly so when there is a piece of paper with explicit instructions for doing so).

[Dastardly]

To clarify, my point is something along the lines of "Can I know X or do Y?" "Do whatever, so long as you make a token effort at RP". It's better that things are fast and loose vs hard rules for WHAT YOU DO AND DO NOT KNOW.

[babayetu83]

How about some kind of ingame way to acquire knowledge your character wouldn't know?

Guide books, pamphlets, medical charts, brain implants, intelligence boosting drugs, ancient tomes, Centcom reports, VR training courses, multiple choice tests, Space Google.

i really really like this idea

[locusts]

The AI could help too. A simple "Some hidden emergency files just unlocked and it turns out the wraith hates salt!" or something like that. Of all the player characters, the massive computer that runs the ship probably has the best RP excuse for prior knowledge.

[BaneOfGiygas]

Not having an arm or leg is debilitating. Not being able to set up the engine when everyone else has fucked off/is absent doesn't make the game more interesting (doubly so when there is a piece of paper with explicit instructions for doing so).

If your arm is missing or the engine lays dormant because the engineers are too busy dicking around in space, that shouldn't be your cue to swoop in and set up a hellburn, that should be the cue for the respective heads of staff to yell at their subordinates for not doing what they're damn well supposed to do. If the respective heads of staff are dicking around, that's when the captain should yell at them, and so on and so forth.

The problem with people doing each other's jobs is that it drastically decreases the need for people to do their jobs. Why be a medic when everyone can perform self-surgery? Why set up the engine when the janitor can hack into the room and do it themselves? Why play security and patrol the station when you've got a sea of greyshirts with the same amount of dexterity around antagonists? On main Goon, no one really cares if you're doing something wildly beyond your job description, which is one of the chief reasons why main Goon is such chaos. But in order to distance Destiny from that kind of bedlam, the guidelines are in place to prevent people from getting into that sort of thing.

"Do whatever, so long as you make a token effort at RP"

"A token effort at RP" implies that the only reason one would bother to even put up the appearance of RP is so they have an excuse to do something they otherwise wouldn't be allowed to do. That's exactly the kind of mindset that brews anarchy, vigilantism, and other things Destiny does not or at the very least should not tolerate.

[babayetu83]

one thing that bothered me a lot was a round i played yesterday.

i was welcome to goodborger and i coincedentally had a borging artifact, everyone i ask to touch it said "no i dont want to get borged" and try to weasel out of it despite never have actually seen nor heard of the artifact before

but i guess the entire crew is omnsiscient and therefore privy to the very idea of how a cyborg commonly drags a conversion artifact behind them

and even when i threatened to kill them, they still wouldn't touch the damn thing too i had to kill lots of people that day too.

/endrant

[atamusvaleo]

one thing that bothered me a lot was a round i played yesterday.

i was welcome to goodborger and i coincedentally had a borging artifact, everyone i ask to touch it said "no i dont want to get borged" and try to weasel out of it despite never have actually seen nor heard of the artifact before

but i guess the entire crew is omnsiscient and therefore privy to the very idea of how a cyborg commonly drags a conversion artifact behind them

and even when i threatened to kill them, they still wouldn't touch the damn thing too i had to kill lots of people that day too.

/endrant

To be fair, I was screaming over the headset that the borgs were French red and flooding the halls with plasma. So they may have been wary of you as a result.

[Dastardly]

"A token effort at RP" implies that the only reason one would bother to even put up the appearance of RP is so they have an excuse to do something they otherwise wouldn't be allowed to do. That's exactly the kind of mindset that brews anarchy, vigilantism, and other things Destiny does not or at the very least should not tolerate.

What I meant was, so long as you try to make things fun for everyone, it doesn't matter what you do. I figure so long as everyone is following the golden rule, all is forgiven.

one thing that bothered me a lot was a round i played yesterday.

i was welcome to goodborger and i coincedentally had a borging artifact, everyone i ask to touch it said "no i dont want to get borged" and try to weasel out of it despite never have actually seen nor heard of the artifact before

but i guess the entire crew is omnsiscient and therefore privy to the very idea of how a cyborg commonly drags a conversion artifact behind them

and even when i threatened to kill them, they still wouldn't touch the damn thing too i had to kill lots of people that day too.

/endrant

"Why won't people touch this artifact which fucks up their round? What awful RP!"

[DocSalient]

The issue here is that people immediately said to him, "No, I don't want to be borged."

Implying their characters knew exactly what the artifact did when (I assume, based on the OP's frustration) there was no prior evidence that it was a borging artifact.

They simply used their OOC knowledge that borgs are advised by the borging artifact to get people to touch them, and therefore pretty much metagamed when they automatically jumped to the conclusion it was a borging artifact based on the circumstances.

Sure, I would have been instantly skeptical, and would have no doubt declined to touch the thing, but I'd have given a much better reason for it.

[Nnystyxx]

Some of them (me included, if anyone else) basically was like 'eehhh this is creepy and your threats to kill me aren't helping'. Like, I didn't want to be a chump and immediately fall for that, but I gave a reason outside meta ("I would really rather not touch the weird shit Science finds").

[BaneOfGiygas]

Sure, I would have been instantly skeptical, and would have no doubt declined to touch the thing, but I'd have given a much better reason for it.

Basically this. There are plenty of good, in-character reasons to not touch a weird thing that a cyborg is shoving in your face; if you can't come up with one and end up simply resorting to the meta explanation of "because it'll turn me into a cyborg", you're doing this whole thing wrong.

"Why won't people touch this artifact which fucks up their round? What awful RP!"

The fact that you stating that your core tenet of RP is everyone having fun was immediately followed by a message that not only completely misses the point of the entire message but instead elects to make a critique of someone's RP tactics solely based on your opinion (cyborgification ruining rounds is, at the end of the day, an opinion) is making me less and less willing to even continue this discussion until you at the very least respond to the main point of my message instead of just replying to the tail-end of it and calling it good enough.

[Dastardly]

I'm sorry, I was being a bit of a jerk. I interpreted it as that he was annoyed people weren't RPing in the way he wanted.

What I'm trying to get at is, let's not sweat the small stuff of what people do and do not know. If, OOC, you think it would advance the round or make things more interesting by having a certain skill or knowing a certain thing, then go for it. An example would be finding someone who died of a heart attack; Maybe you'd be inclined to think the died of natural causes IC, but OOC you know it's probably initropidril. So you toss around the idea that it could be poison, not because you want to 'win' the round, but because that leads to an investigation, drama, paranoia, all of the good shit. Heck, if someone has a suspicious skillset, then YOU can call them out on it, accuse them of being a double agent, etc.

I feel like we want to keep a laid back atmosphere rather than having hard rules.

[atamusvaleo]

Can we all just agree one person's trash is another person's treasure and that we all are here to RP, while trying to make it an enjoyable experience for all involved?

Basically, take a second to reflect on whether it's an action that will completely remove someone from the game or significantly limit their experience.

On the other side, if you're getting upset and/or angry over what someone else is doing, try looking at it from outside of your perspective of "hey this stops me from doing what I wanted to do" and see how you can roll with the punches, so to speak.

If that happens and you still say, "well I'm miffed," ahelp and let the admins help.

I had a round where the detective shot me about six times without reason or need to do so. Needless to say I was pissed and ahelped. One of the admins gave a short answer (can't remember who or what the exact words were) saying essentially to roll with it. Long story short, it turned into the HOP coming and giving him a talking to then a clown lawyer helping me to sue the detective and three others for all the crimes committed against me that round. So a situation that started with me being furious quickly became a fun experience that got so many others involved.

[BaneOfGiygas]

I'm sorry, I was being a bit of a jerk. I interpreted it as that he was annoyed people weren't RPing in the way he wanted.

What I'm trying to get at is, let's not sweat the small stuff of what people do and do not know. If, OOC, you think it would advance the round or make things more interesting by having a certain skill or knowing a certain thing, then go for it. An example would be finding someone who died of a heart attack; Maybe you'd be inclined to think the died of natural causes IC, but OOC you know it's probably initropidril. So you toss around the idea that it could be poison, not because you want to 'win' the round, but because that leads to an investigation, drama, paranoia, all of the good shit. Heck, if someone has a suspicious skillset, then YOU can call them out on it, accuse them of being a double agent, etc.

I feel like we want to keep a laid back atmosphere rather than having hard rules.

The apology's appreciated. I also apologize for any crassness on my part, it's just that your points looked like they were echoes of the same rationale some of the vigilante asshats have used in the past, and that's something I'm getting pretty sick of seeing on Destiny.

Anyways, I understand your point, but I don't think the rules are necessarily supposed to be hard and rigid. There's room for that leeway that you describe, and something like that wouldn't be too outside the realm of reason, especially if you're playing a medical doctor or scientist of some ilk. It's just that, as mentioned, that introduces the risk of people using it as an excuse to go antag-hunting and get into whatever other nonsense they want to get into. It's really subjective and probably the trickiest part of this whole RP thing.

Let's just put it like this. Before you decide that you have IC knowledge of something that falls outside of one's job description, it would be wise to ask yourself the following two points:
1. Will this knowledge encourage interaction between players and add complexity to the proceedings in a way that prompts investigation, or is it simply going to be used as justification for going after the antagonist responsible and beating their skull in with a fire extinguisher? In the situation you describe, bringing up the possibility of poison is a good idea, and it's okay to suspect people if you have reason to believe that they're suspicious. However, ignoring that and instead silently chasing after/murdering the antagonist without explaining yourself until after the fact is bad.
2. Does knowing this information make sense? If you're an engineer, you aren't gonna be able to perfectly diagnose someone with sarin poisoning without a reagent scanner. If you're a janitor, you aren't gonna be able to perform open-heart surgery. Now, that isn't to say that you aren't allowed to TRY these things, but make it believable. If you're not a surgeon and you're trying to perform surgery on someone, you're probably gonna fuck it up pretty badly. If you aren't an engineer and you're trying to set up the engine, you might forget to connect that plasma canister to the port before you release the vent. If you're doing something that your character isn't trained to do, it makes things more interesting and more believable if you make mistakes in the process.