I do think that Revolutionaries could be adapted to feel more revolutionary. I think there are two issues in the way of achieving that:
The goals
The rules
In terms of goals, the revolutionaries are really just trying to take over the station. Personally, I’d consider changing this to a series of demands that the heads naturally can’t just agree to, but benefit at least part of the population. Things like:
Flooding the station with Nitrogen so the vox can breathe (Naturally, Chief Engineer is not going to be happy - OTHER people still need to breathe.)
Distributing guns to everyone so people are better defended against intruders (HOS will hate it)
Disabeling the anomaly generator (RD would be angry)
Not requiring approvals for cargo orders (QM would likely hate that)
(I have not yet come up with one for medical)
There could also be some things that are less pressure based, but still worth including in the goal pool.
Declaring borgs and/or animals citizens, with all the rights involved
And of course, there’s
Replacing specific heads with revolutionaries
This will give Revolutionaries ground to try to recruit people via RP… but there’s currently a problem with that strategy. Helping the revolutionaries would be self-antaging.
This is where the last tweak come in:
Create a ‘neutral’ role that players can enter. They’d be able to help the revolutionaries, but would not be allowed to fight, nor would they answer to them. Mind shields would still work on this role to reset them to the Nanotressen role.
I do think if such a rework was to take place, the rules could be adjusted to accommodate players who join the revolution for reasonably rp reasons.
I feel like that kinda pokes at the issue with “self-antagging” as a concept.
It does stifle some potential for funny or otherwise compelling scenarios.
But I get why that’s the case - you can’t expect Salamander players to behave if self-antag was allowed.
Also, you could have a goal of something like “declare cargonia independence”.
I’m not sure how we could relax the rule to address the issues. My Vox has very real grievances (for example not having anywhere safe to eat and drink, and often being unable to find an air canister) that I would love to act out further, but I struggle to carry that forward without the self antagging rules becoming a problem.
buy 100 corgis (will use up all the money of the station and put us in debt, qm and cap won’t like it)
give crew rights to monkeys, mice, ratking and monkeys/kobolds (cap and hos won’t like this)
give all borgs funny laws (rd will not like this)
the classic give everyone aa (hop won’t like this)
give everyone a hypo and/or access to chem for make they own chems (cmo won’t like this)
call a clown station for bring a lot of clowns into the station (all command won’t like this)
use bluespace magic for turn all the power sources into a big weh plushie which gives infinite power just by existing only at the cost of turning all engi into weh lizards (ce and (probably) engi won’t like this)
Howeber this this ever goes through it will likely when revs get a rework. When that happens they conversion method may be completely different at flashing (maybe they could automatically convent anyone they convince to follow them or forcefully convert people after kidnapping them and injecting something).
I think it might be better if rev goals, or at least some of them, weren’t so immediately catastrophic for the station like giving everyone AA or using up the entire supply budget. I really like the original suggestions as you can understand, though maybe not agree, with them as political goals for a revolutionary movement.
Keeping with that theme, maybe there could be a Revolutionary Constitution template available to headrevs that they draft up. Essentially a rewrite of spacelaw meant to be more fair to workers and passengers and lift the boot of nanotransen from the common spacer. Headrevs/revs could go as deep into this as they want, writing up pages of legal documents or sticking to a predefined template that goes for classic “we demand the abolition of all command staff, to be replaced by committees of workers from each department who will collaborate and decide on the goals and mandates of their department, and together those of the station as a whole, and work to achieve these goals through equitable, communal labor” stuff.
Or you could just keep adding to OP’s list of understandable but unacceptable-to-command goals with things like idk prison abolition, not police abolition in full cause we don’t want to just delete security’s role for a round, but forcing a lawyer/sec to figure out community service instead of jail time sounds pretty neat imo
I was trying to use a balance of “doesn’t inherently destroy the station” + “undermines the authority of the heads” + “provides practical benefit to at least one group”, and I definitely think that making the station more democratic and overhauling the station prison system works well with those principles.
I also wanted most of them to be things that realistically, the head could grant to save their own life, allowing for a revolutionary win that isn’t as soaked in blood. It might be interesting to watch an entirely nonviolent revolution, where the revolutionaries add up in numbers, apply force on the heads, then make their demands when the heads are overwhelmed enough to agree.