Request for Feedback: Changes to MRP Rules, enforcement on salamander, and whitelist Procedure

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This is a request for Feedback from the Wizard’s Den Playerbase on changes to our MRP rules, how we enforce those rules, and how players get whitelisted and dewhitelisted. This proposal is undergoing concurrent discussion and voting inside the admin team.

The proposed changes can be found here

Background

Salamander has for a long time had an issue with declining quality in roleplay from players. Previous initiatives to fix this have been for admins to enforce rules more strictly, and to hand out dewhitelists more readily. For a variety of reasons(Unclear standards, not enough admins to enforce rules, large amount of new whitelists without enough filtering, etc.) this has not been very effective.

Proposed Changes

This proposal aims to address these issues through the following:

  • Introduce a greater filter for accepted whitelists with new requirements on a whitelist request.
  • Change our rules to require a higher standard of roleplay.
  • Standardize how we issue punishments related to MRP
  • MRP amendments have been clarified.

Rule Changes

The following changes to rules on MRP are proposed:

  • Powergaming as a rule is reintroduced. You must be able to justify your character’s actions in character. Player characters are expected to have a semi consistent personality and loosely follow their backstories.
  • Objectives should be completed on station. You should not destroy or kill half the shuttle to complete an objective.
  • The limits on clowning and tiding are more defined. You should not become such a big problem where security can use lethal force against you or sentence you to permanent confinement.
  • Use of LOOC is further limited. It should only be used for purposes of teaching where teaching it through IC means is not possible.

Changes to whitelist requests

The most relevant changes for players:

  • Whitelist requests will now be made on our forums
  • Whitelist requests will require the applicant to provide a character, and a backstory for that character. They will not be required to play as that character on Salamander, nor barred from using other characters. They will however be expected to abide by a similar standard.
  • Applicants can be vouched for by other whitelisted players. This waives our playtime requirements.

Player Reports

Punishments can now be issued where a large number of players find issue with another player’s behavior in mrp. This does not mean that players will be able to lynch another player who they believe to be rude, or otherwise play in a way they disagree with. All player reports will be reviewed by admins. Issues with whether the player follows mrp standards will be considered. For example a character that completely changes in personality every round and goes against their stated backstory may lead to a punishment under the player report system. Bad faith reports will be strictly punished.

Changes to further mrp rules

The following changes will be made to how we add new rules, as well as how we amend and remove existing ones:

  • New amendments voted by the admin team will be tried out for 2 weeks before going to a vote by the playerbase on our forums.
  • Amendments introduced with these changes will go through the same process.
7 Likes
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Added wizden-servers

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Immediate major issue with the Whitelisting rules is the “Mismatched Name/Species” as presently Rules allow for Convention mix/matching and have made possible more varied character origins that themselves are more inclusive overall.

“I am a human orphan from a reptile dominant colony and was given a name that was more common from the culture”
“I was a lizard raised on a human dominant station and adopted a human name to fit in and it stuck”
“I adopted a Moth name instead of my original diona one for familial reasons”
Or really any other more interesting reasons

It would carry poor connotations about inclusivity from varied walks of life should this change from Any<->Any conventions to Species specific conventions

Edit: disregard, the rule got removed from the proposal, the point is now entirely moot

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This was a leftover from an initial draft that was discussed with the admins during proofreading. The original “Salamander/MRP Standard of Quality” had 5 rules, with one of them being a standard for names. It was removed before we posted the document. I, however, forgot to remove the corresponding table entry. I have already fixed this. Please let me know if there are any other instances I missed.

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I have a couple issues with these proposed rule changes.

  1. Powergaming as a rule is, to me, impossible to justify simply because what powergaming is is very loosely defined and each different admin seems to differ in opinion.
  2. Objectives completed on station sounds like a bad way to word this, I think you just need to better enforce rules around objectives being roughly equal in chaos to what you actually end up doing.
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With the “complete objectives on-shift” rule, could some clarification be added for the following cases?

  • What happens if evac is called incredibly early and there is simply no possible way to complete your objectives off evac?
  • Antagonists are still antagonists IC even without objectives, how does this rule relate to EOR fighting/terrorism by antagonists?
  • With the escape alive objective, how this rule restrict what antags can do to complete it once the shuttle has left? For example, can a traitor use a minibomb or bigger to avoid being stuncuffed on the shuttle? If so, how does this set a precedent for the other objectives and how one may or may not complete them on the shuttle? If not, should this objective be reworked to be more “fair” to traitors?
  • How does DAGD traitors/nukies interact with this rule? Since their goal is blank-slate destruction, can they continue this on the shuttle?

And could these answers be worked into the rule itself?

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powergaming could be better remedied with a better rule about “metagaming” ig, wich most of the issues with powergaming comes from as far as i know

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In regard to the MRP Standard of Roleplay Amendment, it is stated that:

You are expected to at least try to act in the manner you described your character(s) as within the whitelist application. You do not need to follow it 100% of the time, you are at the very least expected to try to remain consistent with personality, backstory, or behavior. You are however expected to remain within the MRP guidelines while playing on the MRP server.

I believe that this seems to imply that the character(s) we play must be described in a whitelist application. It would be best to clarify this for players reading the guidebook to make it more explicitly clear without admin clarification that it remains permissible to play new characters without new whitelist approval, provided additional characters are played to the same standard required by MRP.

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Well here’s the thing: it’s not technically “metagaming” to do a lot of shitty stuff, it’s just failRP. Sure in an alternative universe sec could carry around Lecters roundstart and it wouldn’t be metagaming if that was just “what sec does lol” (i.e. possibly codified in NT policy), but it would suck for everyone and that’s why powergaming is the bigger problem here.

All metagaming is powergaming (unless you metagame to make your own experience worse which is a moot point) but not all powergaming is metagaming.

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Whitelists shouldnt not be on the forums. Sounds more HRP gatekept. I think you should just keep it to a discord forum.

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whitelist on forums feels a bit strict. Discord is fine, how about having a description requirement for every character? Is there a way to put a character minimum on descriptions to join? Make it 150 characters minimum to join with a character. As a precaution also make it against the rule to just put jibberish to meet a word count. (like just copypasting one word 50 times to meet the character minimum). 150 characters is like 30 words which most people should be able to manage if they are interested in MRP.

I believe we need stricter rules on escalation. In my experience Sec is the primary issue, Revs/Nukies have very little incentive to go the RP route because historically through shifts sec will just attack as an immediate response. regardless of lethal or non-lethal it’s still a major contributing factor to why antag RP is rarely a thing.

as for meta/powergaming strictness I agree. I’ve tried to RP as thief/syndie on various targets but because most command players are meta-aware of antags and their possible item targets they carry the items on their person. please please PLEASE extend the protection to non-crew. “You’re not crew so its not against the rules to KoS you for no reason” shouldn’t fly on MRP. If someone ran around murdering mice, sentient skeletons, or talking giant rats for no reason other than “I anticipate they could eventually turn evil!” we would put them in a hospital.

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I can think of someone off the top of my head who murderbones Rat Kings the second they see them and it’s the shittiest excuse of RP I’ve seen. Its all on MRP too. The Rat King will be completely friendly and abide by having only a few rats but that one person will still go out of their way to ruin that players ghost role.

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Forum accounts are automatically created the first time you log in with your ss14 account. Since everyone playing on Wizden has an ss14 account, everyone can easily make a forum account. If anything, this makes it easier for people to get access to whitelisting since its more accessible for some than discord.

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Processing through the forums allows us to have an exact format that we want people to follow, and if they fail to follow it they get denied. Its already an issue on discord where people blatantly don’t read the pins. We won’t require a masterfully written paragraph for a character, just something more as proof that you can put thought into who your character is. Plus, these aren’t automated whitelisting; if someone keyboard mashes we’ll just deny them.

As for escalation issues, we intend that the playerbase will report players who RP poorly including secoffs escalating poorly. Its not easy to enforce situations like this with written rules, so we have to actively monitor the situation or have reports from players like you.

It also makes sense that command wouldn’t hand out their one of a kind proprietary NT technology (or personal bedsheet) to people who ask. Same with the rat kings. Sure, this two foot tall mutant rat that may or may not be smarter than you could be friendly, but it also has the ability to tell thirty smaller rats to shred you at a moments notice. Same with skeletons, though I would enforce the “Don’t be a dick” rule for freshly spawned skeletons.

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There’s a lot to respond to, so this will be fairly long.

I have now updated the powergaming section to include examples.

This has also been updated. Specifically, a clarification has been added that the destructive part of your objectives should end when on evac. Also added a clarification for DAGD.

The clarification I added should cover this, but in short you should move onto less destructive means.

Your actions at CentComm should be to make it to the round-end. If you don’t have objectives, you shouldn’t be causing death/destruction. That’s a rulebreak in and of itself.

Using a minibomb as a distracting technique is one thing, as an example. Using things to create situations in a “least destructive first” method is completely different from using things in a “how can I just get this done and over with the least amount of effort.”

Clarification already added.

Powergaming clarification added.

:wave: I know I already addressed this on Discord, however I’ll echo my response here for clarity/transparency:
Your application is showing you have a baseline for what is expected in MRP. You wont get punished for playing a different character. You will, however, be expected to play any additional characters on MRP to the same standard that MRP requires.

This has also been reworded/clarified in the document.

If anyone else has any feedback, or if I missed anything, please feel free to let me know.

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I feel like a lot of the time the issue is explained away with “It would make sense if meta knowledge of previous shifts gives you outlook into the possibility of a situation.” and its rampant on salamander. My issue with the supporting of just outright killing a ghost role because its rats could kill you is that it just shoves every player under the “they might do this” umbrella. I for one would never antag as rat king because i just wanna be a stinkly lil dude. By supporting KoS all players of that ghost role we’re basically just saying “your enjoyment of the game is less important than others because of others, you are fodder for other’s enjoyment”. At that point we can say secoffs need to be strictly admin’d because their enjoyment of the game comes second to others as just a general expectation of the role. they are both optional roles a player chooses to go into? either mark Skellies and rat kings as antag or give them MRP protections imo. side-note players are faster to RP with spiders and make them station pets and they are marked antag. Should spiders be non-antag, just a reclassifcation? maybe a vote to see how the server culture is

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Previous rounds are shielded and IC never happened. But this doesn’t prevent the knowledge that rat kings or skeletons are naturally chaotic and can flip on a whim. I’d be very afraid of a large intelligent rat with an army of rats behind it or a literal skeleton back from the dead and would probably call local authorities to deal with it.

Mechanically, rat kings are very strong and I’ve seen a rat king fed enough pizzas wipe out a full nukie squad while the king itself mostly stayed out of harm’s way. From what i’ve seen, skeletons are usually respected more on MRP anyway and given a chance to exist; I frequently see catatonic skeletons dragged out of wherever they were and dressed up and sat on a chair.

For security players, so long as they’re following server rules and following space law, they are free to RP how they desire. If that RP is seen as bad by other players, they are encouraged to report it so we can investigate it.

For the vent spiders and slimes, players should be ahelping the friendly antags so we can bwoink them.

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So what are you going to do about meta friend groups? There is one very prominent one on Mander and in the past I was harassed by their entire group (has been dealt with in the past) but this just seems like those with big friend groups will be able to remove anyone they dont like and mass report them.

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To paraphrase a few parts of the document together:

Players who abuse the Player Report system can be dewhitelisted

In short, abusing the player report system is treated much like abuse of ahelp. All player reports are investigated for their validity, so a wave of reports from a friend group would still be looked into in order to find if it’s a valid report or not.

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I like most of these changes! The forum sounds like a great idea. The rule changes and power gaming rules are absolutely needed. I think the emphasis on the character not having a proper justification IC is important.

Looking over the document, I have a few issues.
Firstly, I think that the answer to denying a whitelist application for “User has recent bans/notes that would result in Dewhitelisting” needs to be reworded.
It reads:
“Your recent ban history includes offenses that we would like to see continued positive behavior before considering you for whitelisting.”
It has a few errors and it makes it makes it annoying to read. I’d just change it to something like:
“Your recent ban history includes offenses. We would like to see continued positive behavior before considering you for whitelisting.”

Secondly, when looking at the actual amendments that will be shown in the rules, I just have some questions regarding some of them.
Under the 2.0 MRP Standard of Roleplay Amendment,
“As a nonantagonist, when coming into contact with antagonists, to not provide aid within reason, report them to security whenever possible, and not to actively hunt antagonists unless security is completely unable to on their own (examples include but are not limited to: WarOps, a large percentage of security is dead, etc)”
This part is fine mostly. My concern is with the reporting of antagonists whenever possible. Firstly, we can all agree that a vent spider is an antagonist, and should be reported to security. We can call these, open antags. However, with the primary antag in the game being syndies, this makes it harder. So I imagine we are talking about, antagonist behavior. If I see someone being murdered by another crew, I should report that. Fair enough. However, a harder example, assuming we are looking for antag behavior. If I am a passenger, and I see someone with a hypospray. They quickly put it in their bag. I ask what it is, they say:
“None of your business.”
Will I need to report this? There is reasonable assumption that this passanger has never seen a hypospray in their life. It could potentially be argued that they would find this person suspicious but not necessarily need to report them. Lets take that same example, except I’m a doctor instead. I know exactly what this is, and potentially already know its missing. I would almost certainty have to report it then. Essentially, I bring these up because characters have different thresholds until they report crimes. And I think it should likely be clarified to mean overt antagonist action. Being an open antag is a part of that likely. Then again, I’m not exactly sure, good luck.

Under the same Roleplay Amendment:
“As a nonantagonist, when coming into contact with antagonist contraband, you are expected to return them to security if at all possible.”
I do have concern. First a question. Will salvagers be expected to turn over contraband from salvage if it will help them do their job better? I don’t really mind either way with this ruling but I want to know for sure if that’s what the admin team intend to occur. And secondly, characters at least I believe can react to holding contraband differently. I don’t believe all characters would go out of their way to hand in contraband to security. However, all characters that aren’t antags should absolutely hand over their contraband when it becomes clear they have it. Now, of course this is a case by case basis as well. As an example, a viper is probably more egregious than a syndicate gas mask or syndie pajamas. I think however, this rule could stifle interesting roleplay. It can make interesting moments to confiscate contraband, just as long as that person, the player, understands they need to hand it over now. I believe it could potentially be reworded to make it so it allows people with IC reasons to have these, but understand they need to hand it over if requested. I don’t exactly know how practical that would be but, there you go.

Overall, I think this is good step forward. And I’m glad its happening. Also, this isn’t edited. I’m not doing a pass, FISH OFF.