In-game Username: RowntreeMackay
Discord username: RowntreeMackay
Characters you play: Terry Whyte, Marco Simms, Leon Hamlin, Leonard Straub, Jeb Kellogg
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 10
Days you are available to admin on: Fridays, sundays and saturdays maybe some other days when I’m free
How old are you? 21
Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? Nah
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? Nah
Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? I did engineeria super early when I first played SS14.
What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? Banning raiders is the easiest thing to do and watching rounds as it unfolds. I don’t have any interest in running events but rather just enforcing the rules. I love to do ban appeals, replaying rounds and deciding who was in the wrong and figuring out confusion of what broke out. I always had a massive issue of players arguing and not understand where it went wrong. I want to help clarify rules, make it black and white what is allowed and what isn’t allowed. I would love to communicate to players with their ahelps and questions. Including how to play the game which I have over hundreds of hours to explain to them.
What are you least interested in doing as an admin? Game events, they are uninteresting and the game mechanics speak for themselves. I do not want to interfere in the round in anyway possible. If there was a game event, I would help with it but it’s not in my scope of SS14.
Detail Questions
What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?
They serve to enforce the rules and resolve conflict in ahelps when it arises.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
Well I have been around the community for a long while and have been a vocal member for ages. I have played the game to death and thought I should finally try out being an admin and maintaining the game. The game is amazing and I think it would be a great start to help further push SS14 to be more successful and enjoyable for the community.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?
Roleplay is complicated. I’ve played HRP servers like cosmic drift to almost NRP servers like goobstation. Lizard was my first server and the roleplay there was great. It wasn’t expected but the moments when players try and do a scene especially as antagonist is rewarding. Stories forming out of the dumbest ideas you can think of just because someone thought “Why not?”.
I think levi and lizard is very different servers. Levi is much more roleplay focused than lizard which is most players go into to learn how to play the game and engage with it. I think it’s mostly fine. I’ve never played on wizden’s MRP but I’ve tried out MRP on SS13 such as Beestation, Funkystation, goobstation MRP, baystation, RMC14, CM13, MonkeStation, and more that I can’t think off the top of my head.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
No one probably notices this but I remember once I got lost in space as a nukie once when playing the game and an admin from wizden specifically threw me back to the station at a random location. It was great to not have my antag roll ruined because I was new to the game. The admin being there to ensure everyone is having a good time. I could of had a whole round ruined if no one was active and didn’t notice I was just lost in space because I didn’t understand the controls. The biggest impact an admin can have is being there and making sure the round flows naturally and only intervene when it’s causing a player to have a bad time.l
Have you ever had a negative experience in the game or with a game admin? If so what, if anything, would you do to prevent other players from experiencing this?
I’ve had bad experiences before with the admins where they interfered with a round without any actual need. One time a clown who switched to clown security was giving out disablers on a obvious greenshift to crew and acting stupid on purpose to get a rise out of me. I was the head of security and was acting like a drill sergeant, shouting at them in caps that they were the worst security officer I’ve ever seen. It was all fun and jokes and we all loved it but an admin came in just to cluwn them because they didn’t like how they were giving two disablers to the crew. It completely killed the roleplay and made the round stale for me after they were made valid to kill. Their experience was cut short and I was left to do almost nothing as Head of Security for the rest of the round.
I believe interfering in natural good ole fun like that shouldn’t be the case and you should usually let things be the way they are unless it’s dire or there is major player complaints.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
I’ve had several good experiences from admins. Banning raiders, getting me unstuck from space, helping me when I was bugged or explaining new mechanics to the game. Sometimes even an admin giving me small items to help further my roleplay such as giving me a briefcase of nomad cigarettes just to keep selling more cigs to the crew.
Scenario Questions
Scenario 1
It is the start of the round. There are 60 players on the server. The game mode is traitors, traitors have not been selected yet. There are three players who decided to observe the round instead of join it orbiting you. Two of them are encouraging you to “do something funny”.
I would easily ignore them. I do not have any intentions to do anything funny or gamebreaking. I would shut down their requests for something funny. At most if I was being generous and the captain seemed to be the type to enjoy central command faxes then I would maybe send them a fax giving them an optional task to do such as making sure the vault has at least 10k spesos inside before evacuating.
Scenario 2
This scenario takes place on LRP. The Head of Security has decided to coup the Captain. The Head of Personnel agrees with the Head of Security and has taken up arms in case it is necessary to aid in effecting the arrest of the Captain. The Captain is hiding with the Quartermaster in the cargo shuttle to avoid the Clown who has stolen the captains saber as a non-antag. There are five people named in this scenario. Please describe what actions, if any, you would take in relation to each, and why.
I would most likely bwoink the clown first depending on how they acquired the saber. If they just grabbed if off the ground when the captain walked over a wet spot and slipped them then I don’t feel as they would need any intervention at all. If they however robbed them with violence and being a shitter without any roleplay and generally self-antagging I would inquire why they did that.
Regarding the other four members of the command chain, it’s quite complex but if it’s done thoughtfully through roleplay and they are all clearly enjoying the situation that developed, I would sit by and let it happen assuming none of them ahelped to complain about it. If they were in conflict such as the captain complaining that their command is unfairly removing them for no reason (through their misunderstanding, them breaking the rules, the captain misunderstanding or the captain breaking the rules) then I would probably bwoink the hop and hos to ask about the situation and why they are deciding to do this. I would thoroughly check the rules and see what lead up to this situation and see what the players want to happen or what to be resolved from the captain’s perceived mismanagement.
A massive concern is prevent a bloodbath of all of security hunting down the captain with Hop and HoS permission so bwoinking the HoS is vital to prevent it spiraling out of control assuming that there was almost no roleplay involved and it was mainly player conflict than fun.
I’m not super experienced with adminning but I would probably ask if any other admins where online and see if they had any thoughts on it. It would be funny to do deathsquad if the captain, hop and head of security through roleplay wanted to do deathsquad (also if there was a lot of dead players) assuming none of the crew were doing any interesting projects that would be killed by doing deathsquad.
Scenario 3
You are ahelping a player about an issue. The player has no prior noted issues. A few days earlier, an admin had told you that this type of situation should result in a temporary ban for a first offense, and you are confident that this situation is not substantially different from the type that admin was describing. During the ahelp, another admin pings you on Discord with a link to the ongoing ahelp and tells you to just indefinitely ban them and make them appeal. Excluding trialmins and headmins, all admins are equally “ranked”. A headmin is not currently available.
This question is so incredibly vague I can not begin to explain my thought process. What type of ban? Where they being rude and saying outrageous things? Were they badly mismanaging their command status that caused the round to derail? Did they over escalate to a point where it ruined another players round? What I will comment on is that one issue that they never got their first temporary ban to begin with so if I had to do anything I would give them a temporary ban to officially mark as their first problem. I could not in my right mind permanently ban someone just based off one admin’s opinion without consulting a headmin. I would also check out the banning guidelines which I’ve read before doing my choice.