Game Rules Rewrite

[popecrunch]

I'm a bit iffy on saying this but I do feel that it is a valid point that will help discussion:

There seem to be two mindsets here. One that we need a long set of rules to cover more situations that ensure people fully understand the rules and don't accidentally get themselves banned.
Another that we should keep the rules short and sweet so that they can be easily digested so that nobody accidentally gets themselves banned after forgetting one line in a 5 page rulebook.
With 1, 2, and 3 being links to pages explaining what being an asshole etc is in the eyes of the admins.

This is exactly the issue. I can't even count the number of times an admin interaction with someone has gone they are fucking up -> hi why are you fucking up -> i'm not though??? -> did you read the rules -> lol no they're a million pages long -> you jerk read the rules

The existing rulespage is too long. That is the entire purpose of the rewrite. The only reason it is going to be extended more than a sentence or two from where it is now is if something really VERY important is suggested, and I'm only interested in having a separate page for the finer points of grife because it's an issue worth expanding, and I even want to keep that reined in.

No, a shorter rulespage is not going to cover every possible situation. There will never be a rulespage that covers every possible situation even if it's the length of War and Peace, because there are just so many ways for things to interact in this game. Attempting an all-encompassing rulespage is a failing proposition anyway because the vast majority of the time, you're going to miss something, which means some jerk will murder every fourth player with a screwdriver painted pink on a Thursday in a month that has an even number of days in it, and think they'll be able to get away with it because rule 87 paragraph 3 subsection d CLEARLY states...

Sure, we could just ban the jerk murdering people with a screwdriver and trying to ruleslawyer their way out of it, but I'd rather avoid the situation that generates it.

And let's say for the sake of argument we DO manage to write a ruleset that covers the vast, overwhelming majority of interactions and as a bonus assumption, that nobody starts exploring the weird edge cases. Great, we've now codified exactly how to play this game in a way that deviating from the beep boop formula is implied to be Bad And Wrong. This takes all the magic of emergent gameplay out of the game.

There's no situation in which an attempt at an all-encompassing ruleset is a net positive. It's not happening, the rules are getting shorter, learn to deal with it.

[69andahalf]

There's no situation in which an attempt at an all-encompassing ruleset is a net positive.  It's not happening, the rules are getting shorter, learn to deal with it.

I've always found that the "Don't be a dick" rule was always the best and most fully encompassing rule there way. Too bad people have different opinions of being a jerk, but I've always found that that one rule is sometimes enough.

[popecrunch]

Yeah I'd prefer a world where 'Yo. Don't be a dick.' was the only rule we needed, but different people have wildly different definitions for what being a dick entails, so a little clarity is in order.

[Vitatroll]

People who don't know what being a dick is tend to be dicks. Hah.

Most of the ruleset bloat is from concept defining. I'm for keeping the list as short as possible while having links to pages elaborating their concepts where needed. Metagaming and griefing are good examples of this. Ideally the rules could be shortened to just the bold text, which would be quite short and clear enough for any person of reason.

[popecrunch]

I'm liking how it is now - I can go from the top of the rules to the bottom, including IRC rules, by hitting my space bar twice. The two rules that really need expansion (what is griefing, what is metagaming) have their own pages, which are linked from the rules and also included in the footer.

[popecrunch]

Rules are going up tomorrow if folks have had their say. If there's stuff you wanna talk about, make it snappy!

[Grek]

I don't like the current Don't Grief page (for reasons already explained) but I don't expect that a better version will happen before the deadline.

[popecrunch]

How about:

1. Don't grief. Keep in mind, the other players are people too. Don't do anything that will ruin their round without a Very Good Reason. This isn't limited to just killing people: dismembering, stripping, crippling, force-feeding, force-borging, uploading murder laws to the AI, setting up death traps, wrecking or depowering parts of the station, anything that explodes, etc. are all griefy. As is whatever horrible thing you just thought of that wasn't listed. As a rule of thumb, if it's bad and takes more than 10 minutes for a normal player to fix, it is covered by this rule. If someone is confirmed (via game mechanics) to be an antagonist, is a cluwne, has agreed to whatever you're planning to do (note: doesn't apply to bombs or otherwise destroying station parts), or you've seen them griefing people this round, you probably have a Very Good Reason to go after them. If you're not sure if your reason is good enough, it's probably not. Feel free to adminhelp for clarification anyways. Antagonists and emagged cyborgs may ignore this rule whenever they want to. Mindslaves and thralls must ignore this rule if their masters require it of them, or if their orders are made more convenient by ignoring it (example: if you are ordered to kill someone, go ahead. if you are ordered to steal a pair of shoes, you probably don't need to blow medbay to smithereens to do so.) Silicons must ignore this rule if their orders/laws require it of them, but aren't allowed to grief otherwise. Note: braindead people still count as people. They might be coming back. A longer discussion of grief and what does and doesn't constitute it is available [link here].

I blurred the 'you have a Good Reason' bit slightly to make it clear that no, you can't destroy medbay because one doctor said it was cool, and also adding the word 'probably' to discourage using it for ruleslawyering.

I also clarified what I'm pretty sure the stance on mindslaves is, which is that grife is only against the rules for a mindslave if it's absolutely gratuitous.

I still want to keep the page with more detail, because it allows expansion of a few more edge cases.

How's that look?

[babayetu83]

what quantifies as a 'Ｖｅｒｙ　Ｇｏｏｄ　Ｒｅａｓｏｎ’？

[Huff H Law]

Cluwne clause should probably be its own thing. Besides the qualifier of "monstrous" in the cluwne bit would only serve to confuse people.

Also this is just a pet peeve, but could we have grief spelled properly on the rules page? And as for another teensy, tiny complaint that you are well within your rights to just dismiss, I kind of dislike Using Capital Letters to emphasize something, but it doesn't really matter. The grife thing probably matters though since the rules should at least have some reverence, right?

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Also sweet jesus is that don't grief thing a solid block of text, how about at least splitting it into paragraphs. Also a very good reason was explained to be if they were a threat or antagonist, I don't blame you for losing it in the text though:

1. Don't grief. This isn't limited to just killing people: dismembering, stripping, crippling, force-feeding, force-borging, uploading murder laws to the AI, setting up death traps, wrecking or depowering parts of the station, anything that explodes, etc. are all griefy.
As a rule of thumb, if it's bad and takes more than 10 minutes for a normal player to fix, it is covered by this rule. If someone is confirmed (via game mechanics) to be an antagonist, is a cluwne, has agreed to whatever you're planning to do to them, or you've seen them griefing people this round, you can go after them. This means that you shouldn't kill people for annoying you mildly or inconveniencing you, but only if they are actual threats/a cluwne. Feel free to adminhelp for clarification anyways.
Antagonists, emagged cyborgs, mindslaves and thralls may ignore this rule whenever they want to/can in the case of mindslaves and thralls. (Huffnote: mindslaves and thralls whose owners die have long since been allowed to just do whatever they want if they can't revive their owner) Silicons must ignore this rule if their orders/laws require it of them, but aren't allowed to grief otherwise. Note: braindead people still count as people. They might be coming back. A longer discussion of grief and what does and doesn't constitute it is available [link here].

In case it wasn't clear, I added that people can only allow you to grief them, not destroy the entire station. Also I removed the Very Good Reason bit because it's a bit unclear and just added "if they're a threat/cluwne" to when it's allowed to kill someone. I also changed the bit about mindslaves and thralls since I'm fairly sure we just let them grief however they want as long as their masters allow them to.

[popecrunch]

I use "Very Good Reason" because it's a cheap handwave to give admins leeway in arbitrarily deciding if something is okay or not. Eliminates the need to codify four pages of thou shalt and thou shalt not.

And yeah I'll fix the spelling of grife, it's just a favorite word of mine. Grife. Hee hee. The capital letters thing - I only have so many ways to emphasize text in wiki formatting, and I've been using bold for 'if you read absolutely nothing else, read this', italics for parentheticals, and the rare underline for non-negotiables.

And yeah OK I actually like your edit of it better than mine.

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Fixed the spelling~

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and edited the don't grief rule on, http://wiki.ss13.co/User:Popecrunch

[Huff H Law]

Alright this rule might actually need to be put into the rules page proper since a lot of people seem confused over this:

It is not metagaming if it's inside the game. Whether you got your info from deadchat, from a ghost spinning a chair at you or from whatever other weird ass source you got in game, you can use it. We are not an RP server (aside from the RP server) and we do not enforce any "clone memory" stuff in any way. Bottom line is if you learned about it in game you can use the info.

I dunno if it's good phrasing or whatever.

[popecrunch]

Edited to:

No metagaming. Look, we all know that gamers like talking to other gamers, and doing so while gaming - all we ask is that if you are playing SS13, you do not use any out-of-game means to communicate with another player on the same server. This effectively gives you more eyes and ears on a round than other players, and that's not fair. Conversely, acting on any information obtained using solely in-game mechanics (yes, deadchat counts) is explicitly NOT metagaming with very few exceptions - going to areas you shouldn't be is the meat of it, check the page for a fuller explanation.. There's a more in-depth discussion of this rule at the Metagaming page.

last sentence includes link to page on the wiki.

[popecrunch]

WE DID IT EVERYBODY DRINKS ALL AROUND

http://wiki.ss13.co/Rules

[Huff H Law]

Oh wait can we also add a rule about backseat administrating, currently it's not against the rules which is strange because it's insufferable.