Racially Themed Shifts

[flimflamm]

 

What & How: An OOC button called "Shift Race Affinity" (or something like that) which when pressed reveals the name of a single alien species that was randomly (or sequentially) selected at the round start. Players who press this button will be given an automatic message revealing the racial affinity for the current round, and if they have that species available can of their own volition choose to play as that race (or not), knowing that there's a chance that a greater than average number of players may have also selected to play as that race for that shift.

 

Why: The average spread of racial demographics each shift is too static and the culture and personality traits of each race are oft unexplored. By stimulating specific race populations in this way each shift, racially aligned group dynamics gain traction and specificity, and the mechanics, personality traits and culture of the inflated race will more or less have a spotlight put on them in a given shift.

 

I am particularly interested to know how larger groups of specific aliens will tend to behave and what knock-on effects this could have on actual gameplay. For instance, what tends to happen when the IPC population reaches a critical mass? How would a thicket of Diona affect normal work flow of the station? What happens if a critical sub-population of Vox (on a vox affinity shift) are chosen as starting cultists? Vox cult?

 

I don't know a whole lot about alien cultures and personality traits beyond a few races, but I would like to know, and really that's one of the main benefits of this sort of change. Not only does this incentivize (in the name of comradery) playing new characters and new races, including the less popular ones, it also will function as a mechanism for everyone to actually gain significant knowledge about them. Working in med-bay and having a sudden influx of Vox casualties for instance could be very educational regarding Vox physiology. Having a Plasma person laden command staff is sure to lean you something about their culture. Ever wonder which race fosters the highest degrees of moral bankruptcy (other than human of course)? Well you might just find out when the Vulpkanin (hint) security force shows up at your airlock.

 

Furthermore, we will finally be able to figure out the proper nouns for groups of aliens:

 

A "Skulk" of Vulpkanin?

A "Volt" of Vox?

A "Murmuration" of Greys?

A "Cloud" of Plasma People?

A "Colony" of Kidan?

An "Ambush" of Tajaran?

A "Swarm" of Slime People?

A "Float of Unathi?

A "Bask" of Drask?

A "Rhumba" of Skrell?

An "Assembly" of IPC?

A "Posy" of Diona?

 

We have all kinds of deep race lore but no great way to explore them in a more communal way.

 

Thoughts?

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

I can see a few issues with this, primarily mass metabuddying.

...On the other hand, this sounds pretty damn neat and I'd be willing to try it.

 

[HugoLuman]

 

Though to try this out, it could be done as a sequence of adminbusses, no need to code anything for it just yet.

 

If there was something coded for it, perhaps as an added incentive, the race would become unlocked for all during the round? Could give people a chance to demo things that are hard to unlock such as Vox or Plasmamen. However, having peeked beyond the veil at karma shop code during the Drask PR, that'd probably be a bit of a headache involving changing the database...

 

[Birdtalon]

I would find it funny as hell to see diona everywhere. Everything would run so slowly.

[necaladun]

Paradise now enforces furry only shifts!

[flimflamm]

 

I can see a few issues with this, primarily mass metabuddying.

...On the other hand, this sounds pretty damn neat and I'd be willing to try it.

 

Meta-buddying perhaps, but given that the race affinity changes every shift identities would naturally be obscured. Additionally, it will likely be players in the know who are actually participating, especially when it comes to karma species, so we can at least hope for some modicum of decency

 

[Sothangel]

A remember a round happened like this before, everyone was a human with a randomised name. Not sure which admin ran it, but it was a bit strange.

[FlattestGuitar]

 

I don't think there's much potential in this idea. Somehow, players being in larger groups of the same species seem to change their behaviour to a degree. It's not strictly 'metabuddying', but it's definitely closer to it than regular gameplay.

 

I'd rather we didn't encourage that.

 

Also, a group of sentient beings is just called a 'group', not some weird noun. >:c

 

[flimflamm]

 

I don't think there's much potential in this idea. Somehow, players being in larger groups of the same species seem to change their behaviour to a degree. It's not strictly 'metabuddying', but it's definitely closer to it than regular gameplay.

 

I'd rather we didn't encourage that.

 

I'm actually interested to explore how exactly the behavior does change, and perhaps why. One possible upshot of this is that the problematic tendencies of larger groups of the same species can be more directly understood, addressed, and corrected.

 

Also, a group of sentient beings is just called a 'group', not some weird noun. >:c

 

Gonna have to disagree here Humans have been giving groups of things collective nouns since time immemorial, including themselves! Convents, collectives, parliaments, packs, bands, battalions, armies, assemblies, gangs, and yes, groups!

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Whether or not someone accurately plays a race has to do with that person's capabilities as a roleplayer and their willingness to abide by established lore/convention.

 

It's got nothing to do with how many other people are playing a species at any given time. Hard mechanics (or fluff) that provides notable differentiation between species would encourage the sort of behaviour you're after. Large amounts of players playing something tends to just make a species mundane/uninteresting.

 

[saywat_the_15th]

I can already hear the skreeing

[flimflamm]

 

Whether or not someone accurately plays a race has to do with that person's capabilities as a roleplayer and their willingness to abide by established lore/convention.

Yes but how does convention emerge in the first place?

 

My thinking is that even the unwilling will inexorably learn something about alien races because of the sort of spot-light that would be placed on them each shift if they had a bump in population. It also could be said that while the lore itself is indeed arbitrated by a single sweaty nerd (proverbial), actually getting down to role-playing and testing the traits/culture/mechanics is arguably a much more important discovery process for determining what works and what does not. This evolution over time is what I think actually produces the best standards, and if there was a nucleus of RP conscious players making the effort to play a new race each shift then I think this would only be accelerated (especially as of late given the revamped lores not too many people seem familiar with)

 

It's got nothing to do with how many other people are playing a species at any given time. Hard mechanics (or fluff) that provides notable differentiation between species would encourage the sort of behavior you're after. Large amounts of players playing something tends to just make a species mundane/uninteresting.

 

"Large amounts" might be an over-estimate of the number of players who would actually participate. Firstly they're going to need a list of 12 saved characters and quite a few karma unlocks if they want to reliably play as the "shift racial affinity". Then they're also going to have to know that the OOC check affinity button is even a thing (this will automatically exclude over half an active player list I think). Between that and people just not being that interested in playing races they don't like I reckon that at most 20 players would reliably make use of the button on a 100 person shift (remember the button just tells you a species type, it's up to you to load a character of that race). Overtime people who do like to participate would likely lose interest and settle into their favorite races and so mostly would appeal only to people already looking for something new.

 

If everyone or mostly everyone was playing the same race each on a given shift, I would agree with you that this would be fairly mundane and uninteresting (although it would still be somewhat interesting with certain races). But since most players will still be playing as human, it cannot possibly be more mundane than that, and since the race affinity would cycle through the entire list of aliens, the shift to shift demographics of the station would actually become more diverse.

 

In the end it's not just possible development to culture mechanics and lore that think stands to gain from this suggestion, it's also something much harder to define: the unknown possibilities of action and reaction that comes along with a new sub-community or network within a complex system. For instance, say a community of Tajaran are communicating in tongues over the coms network during a nuclear invasion. Given their possible camaraderie, would they decide to group up for safety? Would they flee together or go hide somewhere? Would they (feeling a bout of war nostalgia) launch themselves claws first at the invading clan like so many pouncing kittens? If they tried would they win?

 

I also wonder things like what would happen on a shift with 20 Diona during a shadow-ling outbreak. What would happen on a Vox shift when Vox Traders/Raiders show up? Exactly how useful does the Grey telepathy ability become when there are more and more Greys around to reply? Such events are just not possible right now because the racial demographics are too static and too human dominated. No single alien "community" is able to form and so we don't get to see what sorts of things they tend to get up to except microcosmically and on rare occasion (the rare instances that enough of a single non-human race are in the same room at the same time)

 

Most of what appeals to me about SS13 comes from it's emergent complexity and it's dynamism. More dynamism and complexity injected into a system can be risky for the existing balance, but it can also stimulate the development of even more complex phenomenon. So it becomes a question of risk vs reward. I argue we could gain more than we are actually able to envision, so what's the worst that could happen?

 

[HugoLuman]

 

The ideas you present could already be covered by admins using announcements, such as the round-specific messages for when people open the client or for general OOC channel shouts and such. Thus, we could already experiment with this without having to make any changes to the code.

 

I think that this could be even more interesting if we were able to use such rounds as opportunities for people to preview races they might not have the karma to afford yet. That'd solve the problem of people needing multiple karma unlocks simply to participate in such events.

 

[fludd12]

 

I don't think there's much potential in this idea. Somehow, players being in larger groups of the same species seem to change their behaviour to a degree. It's not strictly 'metabuddying', but it's definitely closer to it than regular gameplay.

 

I'd rather we didn't encourage that.

 

I consider this an interesting form of emergent gameplay - I don't have an issue with people feeling kinship among their race, but I think there should be incentive for people to play races to a certain equal degree.

 

Alternatively, we could provide ways to disrupt the usual banding together, to form even more diverse groups - for example, the little-if-ever-roleplayed fact that Unathi have an immense divergence between tribal and technological culture, and how females are generally considered property, or how administrative bickering and paperwork - with a bit of world war involved - nearly caused the extinction of the Vulpkanin species.

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

or how administrative bickering and paperwork - with a bit of world war involved - nearly caused the extinction of the Vulpkanin species.

What did you guys change to the lore while I was gone

Hahahaha that's amazing

 

[Shadeykins]

 

or how administrative bickering and paperwork - with a bit of world war involved - nearly caused the extinction of the Vulpkanin species.

What did you guys change to the lore while I was gone

Hahahaha that's amazing

 

Burueacracy is death.

 

Also yes, all the racial lore has been changed thus far sans Plasmaman and Vox.

 

[flimflamm]

 

So as a lot of people have pointed out, in order to test this concept no code changes need occur whatsoever.

 

One person it could be easily admin-bussed, another said it could be done via admin announcement, but really in the end it could even be done by myself just screaming once or twice in OOC pre-shift.

 

All it would take it a message like "HEY EVERYONE WHO LIKES TO PLAY VOX, BE VOX THIS SHIFT!" in OOC preshift and there's a good chance a bunch of people would bite. I'm not planning on trying it out anytime soon (prerogative of (b)admins), but really that's all it would take.

 

And admin making a hardcore announcement might be overkill (result in too many participants) especially if the species is karma and unlocked for that shift.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Yes but how does convention emerge in the first place?

 

Don't think of it as a convention - it is not a behaviour that emerges or one that can be modified without serious incentivization. There are a lot of people who will simply do as they please irrespective of the established confines that lore or rules may present. While some of this may be due to a general inexperience in writing, more often than not it is a simple disregard for the established norms in favour of presenting themselves in a manner which either they personally prefer or provides more enjoyment for themselves (even if it is at the expense of others).

 

There are people who simply will not abide by established terms, and will go off and do their own thing. Having administrated for RP forums and high-RP gameservers (And I mean paragraph-level writing), the people who go against established convention will more or less always continue to do so.

 

Though it does not generally relate to roleplay, I can think of no greater example than the number of people who successfully appeal a ban only to receive a secondary ban. It demonstrates a lack of willingness to modify behaviour to what is generally regarded as acceptable.

 

There are of course exceptions (as people respond to levels of incentive in various ways), but by and large the established trend is that people will never modify their behaviour if they do not view the repercussions of doing so as problematic.

 

For a great number of people, the value of playing an alien species according to the established lore is often outweighed by their own personal preference/conception of how things should be done. The repercussion for inappropriately playing a species is non-existent as well which provides little incentive for abiding by established lore.

 

Though it would never be implemented here, the incentive successfully utilized on a number of servers is a "roleplay rating" which provides some arbitrary cookie at fixed intervals that can be modified by administrators according to whether or not you're being engaging/interesting and providing something beneficial to the community. The repercussion for being ridiculous/inappropriate with a species was a reduction of this rating, which could be seen as significant in the eyes of some (therefore providing an incentive to modify behaviour for those that were willing to do so).

 

Those who weren't interested in that incentive by and large wouldn't modify their behaviour irrespective of what anyone had to say about it.

 

tl;dr there is no present incentive to accurately play a species according to lore, and some people will never modify their behaviour irrespective of what incentives there are or how many times they may be asked to do so.

 

Hope that rambling paragraph clarifies on what I'm talking about.

 

[thebeoni]

 

Paradise now enforces furry only shifts!

 

oh no, we must share this onto reddit

 

[Spacemanspark]

What if that incentive is a ban

[Pseudo_Unicorn]

We've barely qualified as med-RP for months now, I'm not sure where on earth this idea is suddenly spawning from that people should adhere to the lore of the races they play.

[Spacemanspark]

 

We've barely qualified as med-RP for months now, I'm not sure where on earth this idea is suddenly spawning from that people should adhere to the lore of the races they play.

Because we want to improve the server's RP level?

 

[flimflamm]

 

Yes but how does convention emerge in the first place?

 

-snip-

 

Hope that rambling paragraph clarifies on what I'm talking about.

 

Actually I find it quite interesting. Complexity science intrigues me to no end and I find what you are saying resonates with some of what I already know.

 

Positive and negative reinforcement in terms of adherence to the lore indeed seems highly scarce right now. There's almost certainly no positive reinforcement given we do lave low lore-RP standards (nobody is around to RP back on the same level), but there is some negative reinforcement. Last night I was running a serious news channel as a Vox, but my articles were not written with Vox syntax, and my coms announcements were not either. A few Vox skrekked back at me on coms saying "Why is kin doing meat speak? "Yaya, is strange kin...". The social sanction they applied to me was one of shame (I RP'd my way out of it by explaining to them in Vox syntax that news broadcasts have to have certain vocabulary and syntax so everyone can understand). If i was a more hardcore RP'er I would have done the news in vox-speak despite how god-awful it would have felt, an the social sanction did actually make me reconsider taking such a drastic vox-leap.

 

Hypothetically, if a large enough nucleus of a given race exists as a sub-group (the specific condition that creates kin-ship and social division), then social sanctions both good and bad will actually have a functional network to be transmitted over. I.E, if one specific player is behaving in an unorthodox manner, the more of their kin that are around, the more of a chance there is for someone to sanction or correct them.

 

Regarding positive reinforcement, I think the very nature of an "affinity" round would appeal to people actually looking to get into something new (of course there will be outliers and exceptions). Given that hopefully a solid number of additional players will be also playing that race, it is possible that a desire to be well respected within that alien community will drive people to embrace the lore and work with it creatively. At the very least in-game cultural learning can take place much more often because more same-kin interactions will occur with a higher pop of a single race (an inexperienced player observing and interacting with an experienced one).

 

In the end any kind of hard incentive is a bad idea in my opinion. What works well works because it is robust and adaptive to diversity rather than because it was forced or contrived to work a certain way. The knock on effect of more kin being around to shame you for poor RP is only one hypothetical of the many effects that simply twisting demographical knobs could give rise to. Additionally it is my hope that the nature of the "affinity" concept it would be most appealing to experienced players actually looking for a community to engage in rather than those who could care less about the actual stories behind it all. (they will be sticking to their favorite race and established chars I reckon).

 

Personally, I could ramble about this stuff indefinitely , so I'll end it here