I don't like off-station crimes and I can't describe why

[DisturbHerb]

I'm kinda stuck when people bring up a jailbird's SecMate record, see the charges, then promptly dismiss them as "off-station" or whatever. This has never sat right with me. I can understand prioritising more pressing security matters but outright dismissing an arrest warrant feels wrong. The only reason they'd be on the record is if Security had the jurisdiction to pursue them with the full force of the law, right? I'm similarly getting mixed reactions when I ask people to pursue these arrest warrants with detaining and questioning, with pushback including the whole "off-station" bit.

We've been discussing the merits of the trait as it has been for ages and I'm not sure to what extent this thread is gonna contribute to the discussion, but I just wanna know if this feeling is shared at all.

[xenomni]

I have a character with the jailbird trait. I love it when security bring me in or have a chat with me or like just beat me up a little for it. I think its probably something you oughta push for more rp wise, and to be fair to some others, remember that even security can be lazy and not wanna do their jobs in character! But yeah, when it comes to the crimes being off-station or whatever... maybe think of it like how when you're tied to a company you can't post just anything on social media? Like even though its your personal social media, you can still be reprimanded and even fired for it. That's kinda how I might view it in terms of being 'off-station'. Because you're still an employee, your actions even off station reflect on the NT company.

[Lefinch]

I don't take the trait entirely because it falls into my personal purview of "It's going to create situations that are less fun than it'll create situations that are fun" to me, mostly on the basis that I think "Dismissing crimes" has become a kind of functional default a lot of the time, which also means that people seem to feel it's an inconvenience to not have those crimes dismissed. Which in itself feels very meta, and I feel discourages more unique reactions to it.

I've seen some really great RP from it from both officers and the crew. I would say that's really not the default in my limited observational experience and over time. That it's a randomized crime as well seems on its face to be great: a novel improv experience each time as you and an officer discover that your blorbo hasn't paid their parking tickets. I think however this often contributes to the problem: People see it as arbitrary, and treat it thus as arbitrary.

This absolutely applies both to the trait selector and security. I've had people bugging the AI (circumventing security entirely) to try and get a record cleared which is incredibly incongruent unless you're playing some kind of "don't you know who I am" VIP.

But still, I think the times it works almost, almost make it worth it:
- I've seen people genuinely engage with the system on both sides, blagging excuses for their crime or working it into the character narrative.
- I've seen people opportunistically use it as an excuse to "talk" to an officer in a more isolated environment. For evil.
- Rule of funny is that sometimes it is just very entertaining to see someone being arrested when they've forgotten (or intentionally elect not to ic remember) their criminal record.

I'd say that the idea is still sound, but we'd need to be more consistent in both treating an arrest record as something to engage with, and also committing to the bit when we select the trait. I don't know how to get there beyond making it more costly points-wise so that anyone who wants to do it is genuinely making a cost-sacrifice to do so. That's not really a great solution though and doesn't address the other side of the equation except to hope that security also engages with it too.

[Shiiba]

Maybe we can shift the idea from "it was done off station" to "hey they did this on another shift and were never processed for it."

[Nerkson]

I'll be honest and say I do not enjoy Jailbird as a trait.

Robust Jones exits Cryo, heads to medical, alarms are triggered. Why? According to the jailbird trait, they firebombed the captain and murdered someone unspecified.

If I had set these notes myself for a crew member mid shift, those two crimes would probably be worth execution at the worst and exile at best. Now we all know that Robust Jones didn't actually do that in the round. Is it worth killing, brigging, or exiling someone for that? No, not at all. But in roleplay and in character, it is the same to me.

I don't see there being fun in me grabbing people who have arrest records not set by players in round and shoving them in the brig.

[ju45he]

Jailbird gives a trait point right? It should probably be made neutral if people are regularly circumventing the downside of it.

[Shiiba]

I'll be honest and say I do not enjoy Jailbird as a trait.

Robust Jones exits Cryo, heads to medical, alarms are triggered. Why? According to the jailbird trait, they firebombed the captain and murdered someone unspecified.

If I had set these notes myself for a crew member mid shift, those two crimes would probably be worth execution at the worst and exile at best. Now we all know that Robust Jones didn't actually do that in the round. Is it worth killing, brigging, or exiling someone for that? No, not at all. But in roleplay and in character, it is the same to me.

I don't see there being fun in me grabbing people who have arrest records not set by players in round and shoving them in the brig.

I agree, some of the crimes are actually insane. Maybe we can remove like the murders, assaults, etc and keep it to something lighter?

I think it's an okay trait but I do agree that just brushing it off is kinda....meh. I know I've tried to RP with jailbirds in the past but I feel like some of it is the mentality of dealing with it in the first place.

[Solenoid]

Jailbird gives a trait point right? It should probably be made neutral if people are regularly circumventing the downside of it.

Actually, it costs a trait point, it doesn't give you one. Iirc it was done that way to specifically to avoid having tons of people just pick it.
However, since it just costs 1 trait point, and everyone gets a free one, it's basically free if you don't care about other traits.

[TDHooligan]

in my experience several people that take it are barely prepared to roleplay around it when I do arrest them. and setting up a roleplay scenario for someone to sort of ooc-ly go "oh... oh yeah, i have that. oops" is a one-sided effort for little payoff.

if it were something you actively picked, i could see it being a lot better. and that's what you get when someone deliberately does crime.

but by being a trait it's fire-and-forget. so I let the jailbird lead. and more often than not they make zero effort to make it into more than a three-four sentence exchange.

[glowbold]

Jailbird would be more interesting if they were marked Parole instead of Arrest, so that it didn't become a chore that both sides (sec and the jailbird) have to deal with every round. There's only so many ways that RP interaction can go. Parole piques some interest of having priors, would make sense that they are treated more harshly when/if they do commit crime, and less likely for someone to just erase the status out of frustration in SecMate.

[Silent Majority]

I almost never have jailbirds do anything but immediately demand to be unflagged and destroy securitrons.

Not a fan of the trait. It adds nothing while taking something

[Solenoid]

I really dislike when players destroy/disable securitrons just because they're a jailbird, and I'd like to see some sort of punishment system introduced for players who regularly destroy them. Maybe a rule adding onto RP rule 1 that destroying securitrons is not in line with wanting to keep your job, even if you're a jailbird or have that other trait that makes bots mad at you? I guess it's implied, but maybe having it in writing would help some players stop doing it?

I don't know what specifically I'd wanna change, but I agree with a lot of the thoughts here and would like to maybe the see the cost of Jailbird raised, or have some significant changes made to the trait so that it's not just something people pick and refuse to RP around while blowing up securitrons and stuff.

[xenomni]

I definitely agree that some of the crimes listed are nuts if you genuinely want to rp around the jailbird trait. In a recent round I had a murder trial for my jailbird crimes and it might've been fun if the round didn't get so crazy we had to just pause the trial indefinitely.

As a jailbird user, id be 100% cool with the point cost being raised to mitigate the people who take it and just forget about it. Like how pug is a huge cost to show off, maybe jailbird could cost up to 4 points or so to prevent it. If I don't want to rp around the jailbird trait when im joining a round, I just... take it off before I join. Its really not difficult so yeah... anyways id be cool with adjustments to cost and what it says/does is the gist lmao

[Emimiyu]

Tbh, I don't see an issue of adding more people who got tagged arrest without actually doing harm to station or being antagonist because it would add more deduction part of the game. I do feel like jailbird should be "bully me" trait. Remove major crime, add more silly stupid confusing minor crimes. Idk, like put pineapple on pizza or unironically eat cream cheese sushi. So we can point and laugh at them.

But as someone who used to play jailbird, at one point it went from funny to just stale and boring. It also hard to keep up with 5-6 people who pick the trait who suddenly decided to join in the same round.

[Chasu]

I'm not a fan of the jailbird trait overall, and have nothing to say about it that hasn't already been mentioned, but I do believe that if an officer would arrest someone for commiting a major crime in the Space Diner, they should also be going after jailbirds.