Full disclosure. I am not a clown. I oftentimes help clowns and have shared many fun bits with them, but I am not one.
That in mind, I wanted to see what clown mains think about unofficial and non binding guidelines for clowning.
After all, the honkmother is trying to repair her reputation, and having clowns whose only gimmick is breaking in and stealing things does not help her that much.
So clowns, what guidelines would you propose were the banana phone to ring and ask your opinion?
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Clowns breaking in to steal things are covered by the OOC rule against self-antagging, and the IC laws against theft. I don’t see why they need a special set of rules to cover things they’re already not allowed to do.
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While yes, the point is less about the clown breaking in to steal things (technically an ahelpable thing, but so minor it honestly feels stupid to report.) And more about “What guidelines should a clown keep in mind for clownery?”
This isn’t a condemnation of clowns at all.
As ward I just come down very hard on general clowning. my goto line is “breaking the law is no joke” and often give higher side pentalities. break into the bridge to make an announcement? enjoy your 8 minutes for sec tresspass and 4 minutes for major contriband for a total of 12 minutes. do it again? 22 minutes. break out of prison, 20 minutes. never perma even though I could sub it.
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i know starlight has “The Carnival Treaties” which allow the clown to commit any minor crime once. (which are Trespass, Disturbance, Impersonation and Fraud)
I assume so long as it’s being done for funny purposes, rather than malice and leaves little to no lasting damage?
on starlight it is just “1 free” but also anything that would leave lasting dammage is another more severe crime which the clown does not get to skip out on.
i personnaly don t have singular good interraction with any clown even tho i have been playing for year or two, i personnaly wouldn t mind if they get straight up removed. (played on salamander MRP most of the time)
I’ve had some very fun moments with clowns myself.
One instance, blind CMO me gave the clown the cane at round start because she refuses to use the cane. Told the clown to have fun with it.
Some time later the detective comes in and hands her the cane. Apparently the clown told sec he “stole it from some poor blind doctor.” And led them on a chase around the station, slipping and all.
Blind CMO immediately laughed, tossed the cane out, and congratulated the clown for his clever bit, only then explaining to the by then defeated detective that she gave the clown the cane.
I think a guideline goes against the spirit of clowning. You are supposed to be spontaneous and creative, to bring comedy to the situation however you can think of it.
As for rules, as was said here, clowns already follow OOC and RP rules.
However, they are allowed to commit crimes as long as they are not causing major issues to the crew (like any other non-command/sec crew really).
Like, it is usually not allowed to steal command IDs as crew, but if you can confirm there is a duplicate, and you steal it specifically to do something funny (anounce something in bridge) and return it later, staff will probably not be bothered with it.
TL;DR: Focus on being funny, don’t powergame and mind everyone’s experience.
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There is no expections in space law for clowns. though sentencing or even if they get arrested is entirely at the descression of Sec.
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ofc, i just meant that they won’t get OOC punished for breaking it on its own. While a command member would.
Unfortunate. I feel like the entire point of this topic was missed. It wasn’t about what can clowns get away with or if it’s okay for clowns to break law.
The point was about code of conduct for clowns. Things a clown can keep in mind to be fun and not a simple menace, separate from any laws.
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That would depend if you and mime run prank wars(who will outprank the station).
Standard ss13 checklist for clown is
- Pie HoS
- Slip captain
- RP with a mime in either ally or rival form
- Get access upgrade(usually through RP with HoP)
- Run bad puns all the time depending on situation(extremely hard)
- Do not mess with people round in very big way?(incapacitating, harming etc). Then stop
- HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK
- Wear cardboard head and pretend you are a borg(convince borgs and ai that you are a silicon with broken acess. Aka id is in your bag)
- Pretend to be any job and be either comically good or comically bed at it
- Lube the halls(not outside sec or med. General halls)
- Insert donuts into sec pockets. Giggle and run away from baton
- HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK
- Join miners\salv and get hurt in the most comical ways you can(all for that bananium)
- Bully people with boxing gloves(Heavy funny RP required. Pretend to be evil space clown warlord or something)
- Unionize assistants against sec(if sec mistreated you)
- Yell half truth`s about antags or pretend to be one, without causeing any harm or damage.(Example. Make sindie bomb bar coctail. Hack into engie. Scream on radio “Hey HoS i have a honking sindie bomb at TEG\AME, i will use it unless you dress in maid outfit and HONK!”)
- If you clown is antag. Oh boy can you cause some actual carnage now. But make it funny in a grim way
P.S. I didnt play clown much in ss13. Because its flipping hard role with high expectation. I do know a bit about clown code and general clown thing.
Oh and if janitor ever remove your art. You are enemies for life now. So make sure station is as dirty as it can be. Puke in all corridors, throw food packaging wherever, used sigs, half eaten foods etc.
Would these rules/guidelines be like a spacelaw/atmos book but just with harmless pranks ideas? Hmm… what if there was honklaw, randomized set of pranks that clowns/mimes were expected to execute if given conditions were met? Just to promote some less obstructive pranks, or let poor crewmembers (if they happen to get in possesion of honklaw book(?)) what they should expect.
Seems a bit extreme since your not supposed to go over 15 minutes sentences
Its because of repeat offense. They just do timer instead of perma(because they are strict yet kind of warden player).
once you have 15m of crimes you can choose to sub for perma, but dont have to. I generally reverse perma for folks who I consider a serious danger to the station, I feel its more fun for the imprisoned players as well, like if you botch a theft and get locked up a couple times you still have a chance to green text. I do perma if you get arrested 4 times on the same charge though.
Its a hard say on what is cool and what isnt, like for example “lube bombing” is it funny? Fuck yeah im sure most people do, is it distruptive? depends on too many factors like “is there a janitor near by to clean it up soon?” “is this lube bomb assisting an escape or combat encounter?” its easy to say just to stop lube bombing entirely but if this is in some low stakes area then why not? This will forever be debated by the community, what pranks you can and cant pull and when it gets to the point of distrupting the game enough to be annoying rather than a hardy chuckle.
theres not a correct answer to this so it’ll never be solved, some clowns wanna be space assholes, meta gaming to fuck everyone over or just taking jokes way too far and some clowns wanna be a genuine compotent of an RP and make peoples day within this dumb video game. I myself am apart of the RP crowd so I prefer being a lil silly guy but I and neither should the rest of us dictate that space asshole-ery (to an extent) should be abolished, its my two cents on the sitch though.
In the end you cant tell a clown what to do for better or worse.
That was sorta the (now lost) original purpose of this thread. Suggestions and guidelines on how to add fun to a crew and make things funny without creating (justified) anger towards a clown. When a bit is okay, when it’s okay to act and when it’s best to not interfere.
It was never about making rules for clowns, just some non official code of clownery.
Your input by the way was very welcome, thank you.