Admins Messing With Rounds - Please Vote

[Noah Buttes]

Before that was a prison gimmick where all jobs were replaced with "guards" and "crimers" (wearing, untastefully in my opinion, Cosby sweaters) that was pretty directionless.

However, the most important thing to remember when running a gimmick is to have fun and try to let other people have fun too.

hey, I was there for that round and I had a shit load of fun.

Do you see the dilemma?

You can't please everyone.

I guess the goal is to try to entertain the majority of the audience and to avoid pissing off the rest.

[TheNewTeddy]

I don't really see the humor in deleting every door on the station, then after that resulting lagfest was over with, filling the entire station with plasma and setting it on fire.

Bluntly, just reading that made me laugh.

[Megapaco]

Before that was a prison gimmick where all jobs were replaced with "guards" and "crimers" (wearing, untastefully in my opinion, Cosby sweaters) that was pretty directionless.

Yikes on the Cosby sweaters.

In general, it feels like someone needs to step in and enforce some subtlety or at least some PLANNING.

Most of the admin gimmicks I've seen over the past week have been either half-baked or embarrassingly over the top yet somehow vapid.

If you're going to run a gimmick, keep it as unobtrusive as possible for those who don't wish to get involved. At the same time, keep it as engaging as possible for those who DO want to get involved.

Above all else, stay dedicated to the gimmick, don't enter it half-heartedly, otherwise everyone will be disappointed.


Some examples:

Game shows:
Unless the whole theme of the talent contest or quiz show or what have you is centered around how untrustworthy or shitty or underhanded it is, DON'T FUCK OVER YOUR PARTICIPANTS UNANNOUNCED. Don't spawn a wendigo king on top of your contestant as a "prize" for correctly answering a question, it just discourages people from participating. Let your participants become victims of their own hubris. Take a page from Bob Barker's book: give the participant a choice between a safe, smaller prize and an enigmatic yet tantalizing mystery prize. If they decide to go for the big prize and get screwed over because of it, they'll more than likely laugh it off rather than throw a hissy fit.

Spooky stuff:
If it's meant to be an actually spooky gimmick rather than just a horror-themed gimmick, then don't fall prey to a very common mistake: OVERTNESS. Don't do that dumb shit where you make announcements about "the void taking over" and then just creepify the station and spawn zombies or some shit. No, you have to personally commit to the gimmick. Take control of a mob, noclip through walls, blink in and out of existence, emote stuff, etc. Whatever you do, don't call attention to yourself directly. Let your actions and behavior speak for you. In short, be The Shining not Saw 3D.

Prayers, religions, cults, gods, etc:
Respond to all prayers. I can't stress this enough. RESPOND TO ALL PRAYERS! Hell, you don't have to actually GRANT them. Just acknowledge their reception. If you've set yourself up as a space deity, then you knew what was coming to you. It's even better if you grant them all, but not necessarily as the wishers intended. Obviously, that isn't always practical ("KILL EVERYONE BUT ME" comes to mind), but for those exceptions you can just tell the wishseeker to fuck right off. If they persist, smite them in a hilarious manner in divine rage. Whatever you do, don't just ignore their requests.

THE BUS:
If you're going to use THE BUS, then don't just drive it around willy-nilly. Give it some direction, some goal, some purpose. A field trip isn't fun if it's a mindless drive through the country. Drive it into a portal to the ice moon, drive it into a raging engine inferno, drive it into the brig and dump everyone out. Do something PURPOSEFUL. Make BUS STOP announcements, offer to take people on tours, engage pods in space combat, DO ANYTHING SO LONG AS IT ISN'T AIMLESS.

ANYTHING AT ALL:
CATER TO THE PLAYERS
What I mean by this is that you should always be ready to change up your act at a moment's notice in order to keep your players invested. If a gimmick isn't working out, don't force people to keep slogging through it. Inject some spontaneity into it. Nobody willing to join your wrestling tournament for the title belt? Offer some better or unique prizes. Nobody smoking your omega weed? Triple the size of the icon and call it alpha weed. Did a bunch of people bite the dust thanks to your swarm of geese? Respawn some people as a syndicate strike team with the objective of capturing some of the destructive birds for future use.

Don't let your gimmick stagnate or feel forced, it should flow freely and should be adaptable to the situation at hand.

However, the most important thing to remember when running a gimmick is to have fun and try to let other people have fun too.

P.S.
Oh jeez, I didn't mean for this to turn into an essay. I guess I'm just really passionate about this sort of thing.

As a fan of gimmicks I gotta say you hit the nail on the head.

[Noah Buttes]

I tried

[Hulk Hogan]

Before that was a prison gimmick where all jobs were replaced with "guards" and "crimers" (wearing, untastefully in my opinion, Cosby sweaters) that was pretty directionless.

Prayers, religions, cults, gods, etc:
Respond to all prayers. I can't stress this enough. RESPOND TO ALL PRAYERS! Hell, you don't have to actually GRANT them. Just acknowledge their reception. If you've set yourself up as a space deity, then you knew what was coming to you. It's even better if you grant them all, but not necessarily as the wishers intended. Obviously, that isn't always practical ("KILL EVERYONE BUT ME" comes to mind), but for those exceptions you can just tell the wishseeker to fuck right off. If they persist, smite them in a hilarious manner in divine rage. Whatever you do, don't just ignore their requests.

This is a problem I see. Sometimes I just want a space god to respond to my prayers, even if its just a quick message or two, but, sometimes its just dead silence. If a chaplain busts his ass off and tries to do a fun gimmick, or makes a complicated ritual, at-least recognize it, if you're playing space-god. Maybe give the chaplain a thing to do, like order him/her to steal shoes and you'll grant them a small token of appreciation. Maybe curse the chaplain if he goes against your commands. Be creative. You don't have to listen to dumb prayers such as: "Please kill everyone", or "I want zombies vs clowns", but don't ignore the chaplain. This doesn't apply to busy admins who are dealing with adminhelps or other things.

[TheNewTeddy]

I back 110% responding to all prayers even with a "no"

Caveat: only respond to the first if the player sends a chain.

"can I have X"
"no"
"how about Y"
"hello?"
"hello?"

[MaRcuSTheDAWG]

I back 110% responding to all prayers even with a "no"

Caveat: only respond to the first if the player sends a chain.

"can I have X"
"no"
"how about Y"
"hello?"
"hello?"

wow that's totally me

[Vitatroll]

I rarely problems with admins pushing gimmicks or roughing stuff up. In general it alleviates the boredom of an average round. Admittedly this is probably because I'm jaded. Hell, my whole schtick is basically finding an interesting way to die, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

That aside, I generally know what pisses off the others. This is basically what I gather from ig chatter:


- Lack of warning
Giving a heads up before doing a highly invasive and destructive 'everything explodes' round is a good way to prevent the 'ME PLANS! ZEY ARE ROONED!' saltiness. Granted this isn't always applicable with some gimmicks but it would save headaches if warranted.

- Delayed onset
It's one thing to lose 5 minutes. When a destructive gimmick starts 20-30 minutes late, anybody who had invested that time will probably be a tad pissed. If they can't be or weren't warned pre-round then start the gimmick at round start or when the round is dying (or should die) for less salt.

- No room to breathe
Back to back admin rounds can be good on occasion. This is generally in proportion to how benign the interference was. Having two highly destructive improv rounds back to back will usually generate a lot of salt, while making a friendly bearperson will probably start a memecult after a few rounds.

Why must I elaborate. Fuck.

[UrsulaMejor]

I think, in general, gimmicks should allow non participation, and if they don't allow non participation by their nature you should provide alternate things to do.

I was the roboticist in a round where an admin repeatedly set all wrenches on fire, meaning my job was entirely useless. You can't activate a cyborg without a wrench. I now had 60 minutes to kill with literally no direction, and if I wanted that I'd have joined as an assistant.

When I complained on the radio that this gimmick was preventing me from doing my job and wasn't even that funny to begin with, I was filled with spiders that nearly killed me because I was already pretty heavily damaged when they were injected.

I couldn't not participate in the gimmick, which might have been ok, but there was literally no direction given to provide alternate things for me to do.

[Cirrial]

That round was absolutely terrible. I remember being a staff assistant and trying to help out people to do absolutely anything, won a golden wrench from the arcade, threw it to engineering so they could have a damn chance to start the engine and the next thing I hear on the radio is that that wrench got set on fire too. Stopping people from being able to do their jobs for totally arbitrary reasons sure is hilarious!!

[thehman03]

Rule 1: if you can't think of a really cool idea: don't fuck up the round anyway just for the hell of it, it will piss people off. example: ye olden days of popecrunch having elmo fight shrek with a chaos dunker attempting to stop it in a huge yet pretty non-invasive story. 

rule 2: if you disregard rule one, don't act like a baby if people don't want to play your gimmick. If you have a really good gimmick, like the one listed above, people will drop what they're doing to go see it. Non-interest is not a personal insult holy shit

Rule 3: Don't feel pressure because some people in pre-round ooc started chanting badmin round, you should probably pre-meditate on your gimmick idea and then put it into action in a good way, rather than saying "ok if u want it" and whipping up a fun-filled round of every one is a meatcube and you can't change back.

but that's just my opinion

i should note: if you're intervening in a round that is b o r i n g and s h i t then pretty much anything involving bringing back players is a good thing, in this case disregard rules 1 and 3.

[Fried Ferret]

A lot of the time, its very fun! But if it it ruin's someones round or something, or causes lag everywhere, then ehhhh, not too good

[Fried Ferret]

A lot of the time, its very fun! But if it it ruin's someones round or something, or causes lag everywhere, then ehhhh, not too good

I redact this statement, after a recent game, a whole buncha admins give me massive anxiety attacks

[Ed Venture]

I love admin gimmicks. I don't get why some people say "NO more admin gimmicks they put zero thought into them and they just ruin my important work as a geneticist"

Sure some can be down right shitty for everyone involved and yes sometimes admins fuck with four rounds in a row. Yell at them, make a complaint (people have in the past on this subject) and if they ruin your antag round ask for a token. Fun has always and forever will be a work in progress.

[Roomba]

Nobody's saying 'no more admin gimmicks ever', at least not since this thread resurfaced. This thread was brought up once more because recently (at least, recent when the most recent discussion occurred) most of the admin gimmicks seem to be ill-considered gimmicks just for the sake of running gimmicks that are laggy, unfair, and unnecessarily spiteful to the crew who protest or simply show disinterest - the stuff that most of the gimmick detractors have been arguing about.

Speaking of recent posts, it was the wrench thing that prompted me to bring it up once more, actually. That particular gimmick came on the tail end of a string of several poorly-conceived gimmick rounds, but that one probably took the cake. To this day I have no idea what the admin(s) involved thought it would add to the round, nor why they seemed so unhappy when people rightfully pointed out it was kind of shitty to make half the crew's jobs pointless right at the start of the round (and throughout the rest of the round because every opportunity to obtain a wrench was denied).