Escalation rules are looser with animals than with people.
Both sides can escalate much more rapidly than they’d be able to if both were people. Animals are often more limited in the maximum force they can use compared to people, which limits the negative effects of them rapidly escalating. Animals also typically have less health than people, and are limited in the ease with which they can get healing, which justifies them responding to even weak attacks more severely.
Neither the animal nor the person is obligated to get the other medical attention if they are put into crit. The transition from crit to death is considered significant. While sufficient escalation may justify continuing to attack, generally people and pets shouldn’t continue to be attacked once in crit, but non-pets may be. Gibbing is also considered significant because it prevents cloning or resuscitation, so similar restrictions apply. These exemptions do not apply to other people who involve themselves in the conflict. The fact that an animal made the last hit putting someone into crit does not allow people who fought on the side of the animal to not attempt to get them medical attention.
The use of sensible, non-targeted mousetraps does not require escalation.
The killing or attacking of pets can be treated as an escalation step by players with a genuine IC connection to the animal. Generally, all crew can consider themselves to have an IC connection to any station pets. The degree of escalation should be proportional to the connection to the pet, in addition to the usual requirement of being proportional to the attack. For example, an attack on Ian can be treated nearly identically to an attack on a crewmember, whereas an attack on a pet mouse is much less severe. Normal escalation limits still apply, you cannot attack people who defended themselves from an animal that randomly attacked them, just as you could not attack someone who defended themselves from a coworker that randomly attacked them.
Crew can “adopt” non-pets, like mice, and consider themselves to have a connection to the animal if they roleplay the adoption well. This does not affect the requirement of whether other players are required to apply escalation rules to these animals, it only creates a connection that can be used to justify retaliatory escalation to attacks by the adopter. Simply saying that they’ve adopted an animal is not sufficient, but carrying it with them is. The degree of connection is proportional to IC actions. Crew cannot consider themselves to have a connection for escalation purposes to animals which are typically hostile, such as space carp or bears.
Examples
In all examples the people and animals are non-antags. Antagonists do not need to follow escalation rules.
Allowed
- A chef kills mice who enter or approach their kitchen.
- A janitor kills mice roaming the station.
- A lizard kills a mouse to eat.
- A chef has carried a mouse around in their hat for the last 10 minutes, they put the mouse down for a moment and another player kills it. The chef responds by attacking the other player with their fists and refusing them service for the rest of the shift.
- Ian is randomly attacked, a crewmember who sees this happen crits the killer and brings them to security.
- Hamlet goes into the kitchen and starts eating all the food. A chef sees this and starts swinging their knife at Hamlet. Hamlet starts biting the chef and crits them, then resumes eating.
Not Allowed
- A janitor throws an armed mousetrap at Hamlet for no reason.
- Hamlet starts biting random people, trying to crit them, for no reason.
- A crewmember attacks security for killing a space carp they adopted.
- Ian gibs someone who was trying to kill someone.
- Hamlet attacks security for trying to arrest someone he likes.
Limitations
On LRP, improper escalation against animals is very unlikely to be enforced unless the animal was a player or someone else in the round reports it, but not realizing the animal was a player or that someone would care they were killed/attacked won’t be accepted as a justification for the action.
Nothing in this is intended to limit, require, or address IC responses from security.