Game Rules Rewrite

[popecrunch]

Hello! Again!

Holy dogshit the rules page is a goddamned grimoire.  Let's clean it up a bit!

Here's my proposal (which also includes the most current incarnation of the now-in-public-review-phase IRC rules): http://wiki.ss13.co/User:Popecrunch

Please discuss ideas, edits, what I must have been smoking when I came up with xyz, whatever.  If you whine about my using 'nws' when the CLEARLY BETTER OPTION is 'nsfw' then i am going to take video of me sitting in the bathtub crying and make you watch it.

I'll leave the thread here until we've all come to a consensus, or until one (1) week has passed (so 6/27), whichever comes LAST.  Then I will move the thread to the general forums for player comment.  Please keep that in mind when posting! ! ! If you're commenting and you DON'T want your poast visible in the general forums, indicate it somehow and I'll edit it to elvis costello lyrics before moving the thread.

[ZeWaka]

Needs another parenthesis after "... stuff like that)"

Could do with some more explanation of bigotry and how it applies no matter what. Also could do with some of the possible punishments back in.

I really love the new adminhelp vs mentorhelp section, though maybe mention the prayer verb in it in regards to "pls give me lots of guns" or similar.

[popecrunch]

I will do the needful in the mornin

[ZeWaka]

do the needful

You are a fabulous person. I forgot about that phrase and how great it was for a while.

[ISaidNo]

Should probably bold and make very clear the whole "if you're told to stop doing something, stop doing it" part.

[popecrunch]

5. Addendum to the above regarding prayer: Use this when 97% of the time you want to be ignored, with the remaining 3% divided between being blown to smithereens; having your request answered in the most evil-genie / monkey's-paw way possible; and Oh God Pope Is Drunk, This Has Gotten Out Of Hand, It Started Out Pretty Much What I Asked For But Then He Headbutted That Cop And Now I Think We're Doing Some Sort Of Thelma And Louise Thing Into A Landfill.

[ISaidNo]

You know, now I think about it i'm curious to know what our main source of admin traffic is these days. It's definitely still lazy days today compared to how things used to be, so i'm wondering what the main thing we're banning for these days is.

[popecrunch]

A quick glance at bans tells me it's probably lazy grife and racism - so basically 4chan.

---

Also expanded the 'no sexual references or bigotry' bit to mention that yeah, we totally mean your BYOND key too. THanks for the reminder, esteemed BYOND user "i​h8n1663rs"!

[Grayshift]

My general guidelines that I've follow to Not Be A Jerk kinda go like this, in case we need to qualify what being a jerk is.

1. Do not intentionally and unavoidably incapacitate another player for an extended period of time. There are a number of terms that need expounding on in this simple sentence.
a. Intention matters. Accidents happen, whether you're blowing up toxins, making azide in chemistry, burning down the engine, smashing people with crates via belt hell, or releasing a loaf on the station. So long as you learn from your mistake and avoid repeating it, you'll not get banned.
b. Avoidable mischief is fine. Goon has good tradition of suicide booths, floor pills and deadly bartending. All a player has to do to avoid those consequences is not touch them. Caveat emptor! Likewise, refusing to evacuate the testing chamber when some guy is shouting to move back because he wants to test some hellacious concoction, that's your fault if you die horribly.
c. Incapacitate defined as removing the ability of a player to do their assigned job. Obviously death is incapacitating, but there's many other ways to ruin someone else's day. Cutting off their arms or straitjacketing. Walling someone away. Stranding a person in space/telesci with no way back. All the way down to destroying a workplace or stealing an ID. I know some admins have said ID theft by non-antags is kosher but I would disagree with that. Permitting it once invites random asshole who is disposaling IDs to do it repeatedly and round after round. So if it's okay once for mischief, why not twice? I think there used to even be an antag objective that was 'Steal # ID cards' or something.
d. Another player includes nonhuman players: monkeys, visiting diplomats, or the synthetics. But not cluwnes.
e. I used to say permanently, then encountered a round where a non-antag put several people into morphine comas for a half-hour. What exactly constitutes an extended period of time is unclear. Flashing or stun batoning someone, fine. Keeping someone locked up for twenty minutes, probably not fine. Where the line is drawn on how long it's okay to hold someone will depend on circumstances. A sec officer who forgets someone in the port-a-brig because they're being pulled to a half dozen different crisises is a different case than someone repeatedly flashing a guy for twenty minutes.

2. Rule 1 does not apply to antags, coming or going. A player should have reasonable suspicion that someone is an antag before going on the offensive. Reasonable suspicion is terribly nebulous. Chucklefucks who like to throw nitroglycerin at people who are carrying a suspicious pen get notes, then told not to do it again, then time outs if they keep being bloodthirsty. The more you push reasonable suspicion, the less leeway you get in the future.

3. Rule 1 protects the synthetics while Law 1 is in place and protecting all humans. Synthetics, however, don't have to follow Rule 1 - they just have to follow their laws.

Naturally all of this should be cleaned up to be directed at players by someone better with words than I am. But those were the guidelines I ran by to Not Be A Jerk.

[bubs]

I think stealing ID cards is fine, I also think beating up the guy who stole your ID is fine. This kind of violence and interaction between players is something I actually like to encourage. Keeps it SPICY

also, end of the day you can get a new one

[Huff H Law]

So, DO be a jerk, just don't keep players out of the round with murder/surgery/flashing/etc. for extended periods of time?

This feels like a major point of disagreement between admins. I'm of the opinion that crimes like theft, mugging, robbery and even aggravated assault are fine as long as you don't kill anyone or have a good reason for it. Robbing some department of some critical thing also isn't quite the game breaking thing as QM exists.

[Grayshift]

ID card theft discussion might be suited for another thread rather than send this one down a murky sidepath. I agree with Hufflaw that most of those crimes are fine and shouldn't require admin intervention because whatever's taken is easily replaceable, health repairable. ID cards are the exception: they're critical to some jobs, and there are some large if chains in the way of recovering access.

IF you can get your hands on some kind of weapon, and IF you can find the person who took your ID, IF you manage to robust them, and IF they're still carrying your ID instead of having spaced it, hid it or tossed it in the crusher: congrats.

Else IF the HoP/captain are alive and IF you can convince them to make you a new ID instead of doing whatever they want to be doing: congrats - but you've permanently lost access to your bank account without the old one.

Either way you're going to spend a fair chunk of the round trying to recover your ID, and it's probably quicker and with a higher success rate to see if you can steal the cap's spare. (Another if.)

In short, just about everything else can be replaced, but there are some big and unscaleable ifs a player may not be able to influence in the way of regaining access.

[popecrunch]

ID theft, mugging, etc etc are stuff I sort of categorize as 'being a jerk but not being a Jerk'. It's dickish, but handleable without needing admin intervention. I should probably stick something in there about how stuff that's crappy but not mega crappy should be handled by security.

[Huff H Law]

I feel like the word Jerk implies "being an asshole to your fellow spacemen". There should probably be another word used that doesn't imply you can't be an asshole.

Possibly "Don't be a Griefer That Adds Nothing To The Game But You Can Still Be A Jerk If You Want"

[popecrunch]

Good point!