Southbridge

Admin Applications
1

In-game Username: Southbridge
Discord username: Southbridge
Characters you play: Chartreuse Starplucked, Krec’Ravicha (also Krec Ravicha on other servers), Azayla-Dahr, Pleads-the-Fifth, Alloi Copperwing, Artemis Ashwood

On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 8-16

Days you are available to admin on: Any day of the week but would prefer weekends.

How old are you? 30

Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? I’ve played a decent amount on Frontier, Harmony, and DeltaV but my home is Wizden.

Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? I’m one of the admins of the North Carolina Anthropomorphic Society as well as the Director of Guest Relations for the organization. NC Anthro Society

In my professional life I’m a Senior Cybersecurity Analyst.

Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? No, never banned but I have received two warnings in Wizden. Both were stupid decisions I had made during a round.

What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? As an admin I look forward to improving the community whenever and however I can. I’d also like to use the position of admin to get a better understanding of pain points other admins have, and look to implement tools to aid them. I don’t plan for adminning to be the primary focus of my time engaging with Wizden, because I’d like to spend more of that time contributing to the game itself.

What are you least interested in doing as an admin? Honestly, engaging in drama. From what I understand given Chief Engineer and co.'s sign off blog post, there is some admin drama happening. I admin a furry group so I know how drama can be and I know how to avoid it, which is what I plan to do.

Detail Questions

What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?

Game admins facilitate a positive and fun environment for players who engage with the game in good faith. They do this by reinforcing good behavior, and punishing bad behavior. Admins also set an example for other players by not abusing their roles and by putting on fun events which help players stay engaged.

Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?

I want to help improve this game community. Also I want to use the perspective of adminning to identify issues with the game itself which I can help resolve with development work.

How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?

I think it’s in a decent place, especially with some of the newest rule additions regarding shuttle bombing and other antag behavior.

Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?

Giving players a place to ask questions for rule clarifications and the like has seemed to make a very positive impact on the playerbase. Ensuring that people know what the limits are and how to not overstep them makes sense to me as a decent way to stop a lot of problematic behavior before it happens.

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?

No negative experience with game admins. There are a good amount of negative experiences I’ve had with players though. Shuttlebombing being the most prominent example. There are a lot of solutions which have been proposed. My favorite proposal has been to add new traitor requirements to “perform a clean job” wherein a traitor has to ensure a certain number of people survive. I think this solution helps prevent a lot of negative situations creates some more interesting ones. Especially when it comes to antags working against other antags, antags assisting crew, and also just to help limit medical bombing.

Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?

I’ve had a lot of positive experiences both with the game and game admins. From several interesting RP situations to just generally fun rounds and stories being told in the game. My favorite has to be the one time I’ve played chaplain. I was Chartreuse, who is a moth and I decided to go hard on the “Lamp” theme. An antag gave me the syndie lamp which is extra bright, I was able to convince science to give me a high-cap battery, and generally I kept up the gimmick the whole round. My favorite part was when I had some interactions with an admin who made some money float towards me, and I - through picking it up - got cursed with narcolepsy.

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”.

Normally, I wouldn’t humor that request this early. I’d want the round to mature a bit before I started doing something like that. However if I was in the mood to do something silly here’s what I’d do.

Assuming I’ve checked around the map to ensure that everyone is doing their job, and that no prayers have come in for admemes (I’d prioritize those over observer requests), the more RP focused roles haven’t planned any gimmicks, and there’s no ahelps for bad behavior.

  • If there are borgs in the round, I’d activate an Ion Storm event early and see what happens. Depending on the nature of the laws the borgs get and how they interpret it, it could lead to funny situations.
  • If there are no borgs, I’d probably activate the random sentience event, just to give the observers a couple random animals they could do silly things with.

That’s about it, if I was going to do a larger admeme at the beginning of the round I’d have planned it before the round started. If I were joining in the middle of a round, I’d want to do something silly to support other events going on in the round.

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.

A lot of this hinges on the RP reasons for everyone doing this in my opinion. Even on LRP, I’d want to reinforce RP if it is happening.

That being said, if this is an NRP situation and these things are just happening without any real good reason, my reading is as follows,

  • HoS and HoP are committing role abandonment first and foremost.
  • The Captain and the QM are hiding from the Clown.
  • The Clown could be self-antagging, or could be aiding the HoS and HoP, but given this is NRP, it’s likely they’re self-antagging.

The actions I’d take in order are:

  • Given the way the question is worded, it seems like the Clown is definitely using the captain’s saber to do harm. Assuming they are actively killing people with the saber, I’d bwonk them for self-antagging and give a sentence according to the amount of damage they did.

    • Depending on the damage they’ve done, the immediacy of the actions I need to take, and the rest of the current round situation, I may or may not get other roles involved. A loyal member of security may get an ahelp if they’re not busy with the HoS situation.
    • If they stop their behavior, then I’d be more lenient. If they fight me or otherwise are just really shitty, in the worst case I’d just delete them or send them to the chess dimension.

  • At the current time, I’d do nothing with the HoS and HoP, the Clown is the bigger issue. After the clown is contained, then I’d assess the situation and figure out a strategy from there.

    • Assuming they have no good reason for their coup, then I’d start with a simple announcement from CentComm that the HoS and HoP are to be arrested for their coup. I’d include that they can turn themselves in to be given a lighter sentence. The biggest thing I’d want is to encourage other players in the round to handle the issue, rather than take heavy admin actions early.
    • If the HoS and HoP don’t turn themselves in or they start killing crew then it will escalate a bit. I’d make a CentComm announcement that they are stripped of their titles and are considered armed fugitives. If they do not turn themselves in then they will be at the mercy of the CentComm armed security.
    • I’d give them a couple minutes to respond. If they don’t look like they’re giving up then I’d bring in ERT, especially since there are likely some players who have ghosted due to dying at the hands of the Clwon, HoS, or HoP, and they’d like to get back into the round.
    • HoS and HoP are getting bwonked at the end of the round for sure. They may not get banned but definitely warned for role abandonment. Role banning might be on the table as well, depending upon how they react.

  • The Captain and QM are both doing what I’d expect. Depending upon the outcome of the Clown incident, I may need to give the captain their saber back, but otherwise they can do things in character. I’d expect the Captain to rally the crew and other command members to stop the HoS and HoP.

All kinds of things could happen in this scenario, and this doesn’t even begin to factor in antags and what their goals may be.

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.

I’d ask the other admin for their reason behind the indefinite ban. I’d lay out the information I have regarding this situation, that the player has no prior noted issues and that I was told by so and so that this should call for a temporary ban.

  • If the admin talking to me says they were mistaken then it’s no big deal and I carry out the temporary ban.
  • If they point out a flaw in my assessment of the situation then I’ll follow their advice and make it a permanent ban.
  • If it seems like it’s not clear either way, then I’ll serve the player a permanent ban, but I’ll follow up with the admin who gave me the info earlier, and ask for their input. If it turns out I should have given the player a temporary ban after all, I’ll make a note to review the case when their appeal comes in and apologize to the player that the ban was supposed to be temporary.