Clarification/Feedback

[Eler00]

Admin(s) Key: Unknown
Your ckey (Byond username): Eler00
Your Discord name (if applicable): Zix on the server

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): No idea, sorry.

Nature of complaint: Clarification required, feedback

Brief description (tl;dr here. Just the critical elements): As an antagonist, I tried to bribe a non-antagonist into helping me in exchange for breaking their IC friend out of prison. Admins told the non-antagonist that this was not allowed. I believe the self-antagging rule was applied too strictly.

Full description of events:

It was a while ago so some details might be off, sorry in advance for that.

I was a traitor and tasked with killing a scientist, Airo(dunno remember the last name, sorry). According to their suit sensors, they were in perma quite a lot, next to a prisoner, which took me a while to figure out. They were visiting their friend in perma/RPing with them, which I took as my chance to lure them out. Another traitor earlier that round mentioned on syndie comms that there is a backdoor into perma and told me about it, so I knew I could get in easily. I contacted Aior via PDA and offered to break his friend out of perma. In exchange, I claimed I wanted him to print me some things on his protolathe and bring them to me. That was mostly a cover to get him alone so I can take him out, though I wasn't going to turn down some science gear either.

 

We sent some messages back and forth, me promising nobody would get hurt in the process (a lie, since I wanted to kill him), it seemed like he was on board, then he suddenly wrote he needs some time to think about it, followed by a refusal. In the round I just thought he backed out on his own, was a bit sad I'd have to go with my plan b, stormed into perma via the backdoor, syringe gunned Airo and the warden, kidnapped and murdered, etc.

After the round he messaged me on discord, told me he ahelped for permission to take my deal but was told no. To quote him: 

Quote

[19:02]LuxMiz: Non antag assisting in freeing a prisoner

[19:02]LuxMiz: is a nono they said

The rules have the following to say about perma escapes:

Quote

Breaking people out of the Security Brig area is allowed as a Non-Antagonist to the extent of minor damage to the station. Releasing anyone from the Permabrig as a Non-Antagonist requires Administrator permission;

I believe the admin in question interpreted the rule too strictly. Firstly, freeing someone from perma yourself is in my opinion very different from paying someone else to do it. Secondly, accepting an offer that is brought to you by an antagonist is another thing entirely from on your own approaching someone and paying them to do it for you. Cargonia sometimes gets bribed with nullcrate spam into being quiet, something which causes far more chaos than a scientist handing out some weapons from his protolathe.

Also, it merely requires permission, it isn't, as far as I can tell, a total 'nono'. I believe the character in question also had a valid RP reason to accept my offer.

 

You will notice I tagged this as both feedback and a request for clarification. Let me summarise what I hope to get out of this:

First, clarification: Does paying someone to break your friend out of perma count as breaking them out of perma yourself for the purpose of the self-antagging rule, even if you were approached with the offer instead of initiating it yourself? You are taking a far more passive role in this. Would it be different if I first freed the perma prisoner, then afterwards came asking for Airo to return the favour without arranging this in advance?

Secondly, feedback: If the answer to the above is 'yes', then I believe the rules are too strict. The rules for self-antagging prevent total chaos and people breaking the law just because. But it is the job of antagonists to make the round interesting. Being involved in a jailbreak that is instigated by an antagonist IMO shouldn't fall under the same umbrella. Also, and this may be a bit strenuous since I am acting on secondhand information here, I believe the admin in question should have considered the IC reasons for Airo to accept the request and considered it more thoroughly rather than giving a blanket 'that is a nono'. I don't know the exact messages that went on between them, so maybe this is a moot point.

 

Lastly, I want to apologize for how long it has been since this event took place before I made this thread. Mostly, I was thinking about that incident again and realized that I probably was interpreting the self-antagging rules too loosely, so I wished to get some clarification. Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings.

[necaladun]

Since the removal of collaborators, this is absolutely something that needs more clarification, and thus completely valid.

"No breaking out of perma" is a weird line in the sand to draw, so I'd like the rules to reflect a bit more of a grey area here. The admin permission part may need to be encouraged to be given a bit more.

I'll try to get this resolved over this week.

@BryanR - Make a post on the admin forums for me about changing this rule over for me pls I'm time limited until monday 

[necaladun]

By week I mean two weeks and a few extra days.

Discussions with the specifics of when people can break others out of perma has resulted in...many mixed opinions, to say the least.

As things are, I (and many other admins) are uncomfortable with this being just generally allowed, for the fear of full-scale riots etc, whenever anyone in permabrigged.

I'd like to leave things as it is - only with admin permission - but I'd like to explicitly encourage admins to give said permission if they think it will add to the round. Just remember that as a player in the round, you can't see all the factors, and sometimes admins just want a nice quiet(ish) round.

So the end result here will be no official changes to rules/policy, but I'll be making a ping for all admins to encourage them to be a bit more ok with breakouts that are ahelped first.

Let me know if you think this is a good solution, and/or any other points you have to bring up or ways I can address this.

[Eler00]

I wasn't after blanket permission to break out of perma anyway, but I did think that having an actual antag involved should change things quite a bit.

As long as that is one of the factors involved when the admins make the decision to to allow it or not, I'm okay with this solution.

[necaladun]

Seems this works out well then, hopefully it will encourage people to be a bit broader!