General Player Policy and Standards

From Nova Sector 13
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Nova Sector policies
Return to policies page

Character Creation, Roleplaying Standards, and General Crew Standards

Character Creation Guidelines

Your character must be functional.

  • Your character must be functional and capable of doing their job.
  • Your character should be able to function on their own, regardless of help or not.
  • This however, doesn't meant they have to be a perfect, law abiding citizen, they can be criminals, liars, thieves, murderers, even deviants, however, they shouldn't be incapable of functioning in the station's environment.
  • A character cannot be excessively primitive if they are part of a civilized faction such as the station crew.

Your character must fit the setting in a grounded way

  • Your custom species must be adapted if they are of supernatural or cartoonish origin that is ill-fitting to the server, without adapting it to be more believable.
  • i.e. Demons, Angels, My Little Pony, etc.
  • For example: if you want an imp, incubus, succubus, and so forth character, you may if you avoid excessive mentions of magic, or abrahamic origins, stick to what's grounded and believable.
    Note: Possessing cartoony art of your characters is completely fine.

Give your character a proper name

  • Give your character an acceptable name. Do not name them after real-world people (historical, political or just general popular figures) or pre-existing fictional characters (Don't just name your lawyer Phoenix Wright, be creative!).
  • You should not give your characters titles in their names, unless a mime or clown.

No mary sue characters

  • Your character should not be good at nearly everything, and especially not literally everything.
  • They shouldn't be of notable importance to the lore.
This means, while you can be good at engineering, and know how to patch yourself up, you shouldn't go from building your own functioning SM, to doing heart surgery.

Their background, equally, should detail where the knowledge they do have, when capable, especially in regards to background records.

No feral-like custom species

  • Your custom species and character cannot be a talking four-legged animal with no arms. They also cannot be anything too animalistic to the point they are difficult to distinguish from an actual animal.
  • Taurs are allowed, and borgs are not a custom species.

Flavor is encouraged within reason

  • You are allowed to be flexible with your character, even if they have abilities or features that cannot be fully depicted within the game.
  • However, it cannot be anything that may influence mechanics, even if it is only for emotes.

For instance, you can say your character has minor psionic abilities, given you act within reason about them.

No purely fetish characters

  • Your character or custom species cannot revolve solely around a fetish and should instead be a believable, fleshed-out individual.
  • For reference; if you have a vore fetish, the character can have physical alterations to accomodate this, but they should be able to exist without the fetish being the main focus.,
  • Another example are latex characters. As long as the character is sensible with a reasonable backstory on why they are the way they are.
  • This does not prohibit characters that are designed to allow for whatever fetish you may have, rather your character must be well-balanced in their personality and appearance.

Remember: While this server allows for ERP, it is not its central focus. For any NSFW detail in the flavortext/oocnotes/speciesnotes/records, please write them under an "incoming NSFW" warning.

Adults only

  • Your custom species or character must follow the adults-only rule.
  • Attempts to skirt past this rule will be dealt with harshly.
  • To keep it simple, they must look like adults, and they should not act like a child either. Short species like dwarves, goblins, kobolds, and so forth are allowed, however, they must be physically mature.
  • Age play is explicitly forbidden and will be met with a community blacklist.

Roleplaying Standards

What are Nova Sector's Roleplaying Standards?

Nova Sector should be treated as a roleplaying server.

To keep it short, while you don't have to be unerringly serious at all times, you should keep in-character, and believable at the minimum.

On Nova Sector, 'LRP' is shorthand for RP without effort, or in direct contrast to the setting, (see: someone saying they're from hogwarts, while throwing BS crystals at people)

Wherein "HRP" is used interchangably for anyone trying their very-best to play a character, that's both believable, acting as they would, and matching the setting.

Though; by nature of the codebase, you will inevitably get 'forced' into a situation that isn't towards our ideal; and that's alright! It's just a fault of the codebase, while staff will be more focused on active, conscious, "lrp!"

DEPRECATED BLOBS, kept around just for a vague reference

What are Examples of LRP and NRP Behavior?

There are different tiers of LRP. For instance, there is "explicit LRP" where a player is acting in clear contrast in what is acceptable IC behavior such as attempting to hug a horror-form changeling in the middle of a gunfight. There is also "subtle LRP" where a player is acting LRP in a way that is not as noticeable or is internalized such as having OOC feelings dictate how they behave towards characters or acting in a way that tries to optimize gameplay and winning. Lastly, one may not act outwardly LRP in typical fashion, but they may outright ignore or dismiss any attempts at roleplay, especially with emotes, and are solely focused on gameplay mechanics. Neither is acceptable.

What is Medium Roleplay (MRP)?

Medium Roleplay (MRP) is the minimum requirement to play on the server. While many servers on SS13 are MRP by name, they range widely in the amount and quality of the roleplay required. For us, we will go by the standard that you are making a serious attempt to roleplay and that you make a good effort not to break immersion. You might crack a few jokes that may not fit the setting completely, you might be somewhat silly, and you may be mechanically motivated in some ways. However, as long as you make a good attempt to roleplay in good faith in a somewhat realistic fashion without heavily relying on mechanics or combat, you will maintain good standings with staff. You can focus on the mechanics, given that you are able to pull away from them to roleplay in conjunction with the mechanics when needed. For the most part, minor breaks in immersion are tolerated. It is a game after all.

What is High Roleplay (HRP)?

High Roleplay (HRP), otherwise known as Heavy Roleplay, is what we want people to be where they treat their character with respect for the relative realism of the setting. We are not saying your character must be realistic. We are, after all, playing in a relatively lackadaisical setting on a 2D pixel game that is almost two decades old. However, we want players to take a page from the HRPer who will attempt to immerse themselves as their character and play them according to the setting in a hardcore fashion, as that is the most crucial part when it comes to playing on a roleplaying server. They treat the character separately from one's OOC self. They have a good understanding of their character, their background, and personality. Therefore, they are able to use all that to articulate how their characters behave and conduct themselves through roleplay by showing, not telling. They play their characters as if they are living and breathing in the setting in a way that is distinctively separate from the player.

What are Examples of High Roleplay (HRP)?

Keep in mind, HRP does not mean you emote before every action. While you should be emoting here and there, the amount you emote does not dictate whether or not you are HRP. Instead, HRP is all about how you treat your character, the environment, and how they interact with everything by contributing to the immersion. Your character should exist outside of your OOC self as its own living, breathing entity that shows through its emotes, dialogue, and even mechanical actions.

Let's take for example how a player can engage in combat. The act of engaging in combat can be an expression of roleplaying, as the actions you portray with your character should tell a story about the character and how they would react in a situation like the present one. A HRPer will understand that being the best mechanically will not make much roleplaying sense for your character, especially if said character is physically or mentally weak. A HRP player will not try to play to win, rather they will play to tell a story with their character and to show how they would act in said scenario.

Again, emotes are a good way of showing how your characters are from their idiosyncratic tics to any unique style of talking, moving, or behaving. Emoting should be a big part of how you play your character, and it should not be overshadowed by mechanics. All we are saying is that emoting isn't everything about roleplay. At the end of the day, you must show that you are roleplaying your character, rather than to tell. Staff and other players cannot read your intent, rather you must show it. You have many tools at your disposal to express your character such as game mechanics, dialogue, and emotes along with your flavor text.

A Parting Statement

NRP/LRP/MRP/HRP does not necessarily correspond with quality. One can be very much LRP with quality and effort, rather it correlates more directly with effort placed into roleplaying and creating a comprehensive story that is coherent from start to finish. More often than not, the two do go hand in hand, as quality roleplay cannot be done without effort. Yet, we are not here to be snooty elitists, and we highly discourage such behaviors here. We must emphasize that we have no desire to replicate the restrictiveness of traditional HRP servers, nor do we advocate for elitism. Rather, we advocate for people to treat the setting and character with respect, even if the game itself isn't perfect when it comes to roleplaying.


General Crew Policy

While Nanotrasen put their name on the station, it doesn't mean that everyone is loyal, or even employed by them!

  • The 'Frontier' is [ WAITING FOR LORE ]
  • This means, in short, don't expect all of the crew to be 'NT', especially not for departments such as security, and cargo, who are usually if not always entirely outsourced workers!
  • The station is more than just a place for mining and research.
  • It's a transit hub where travelers, contractors, and so forth stay in between trips. While you could be an NT employed workman, you might just be a vagrant, or an independent contractor, trying to get by on a station with a dwindling amount of government oversight!
  • Below is a list of guidelines and rules to detail what is expected out of your IC and OOC behavior as a non-antagonist crewman.

Don’t needlessly involve yourself.

It's all too common where people involve themselves too much in situations, they should either observe or step back from in ways where they can become a detriment to roleplay. Examples include:

  • Watching an arrest occur is usually fine. Randomly running into one, just to start shoving the officers over while they're cuffing, isn't.
  • Seeing an argument between two command staff and butting in when you have no context, and then physically intruding on it.
  • Seeing someone use a Stealth Implant and without prior context, opting to viciously hunt them down while not security.

Try to use common sense and judgement to figure out when you should get involved. If you have reason to suddenly jump in, like someone getting beat to death, then it's fair game!

Do not go beyond your scope

In short, this means stick to what your character would, and should know, and don't involve yourself for the sake of it, for examples:

  • Don't rush into the SM room mid-surge as a janitor, to start 'saving it.'
  • Don't start doing surgery in the medical lobby, in spite of the doctors just for the sake of 'well, I can do it.'

tl;dr: keep your actions, and choices to what's within scope of your character!

You are not perfect

  • To help favor a roleplay friendly environment, we expect people to limit their mechanics knowledge to some degree when possible.
  • A cargo technician shouldn't know how to do an ultra-secure and safe plasma SM setup, but if there's no one else available, the pipes are straight forward enough to get it rolling on a basic set up.
  • Use your best judgement and try to let others do their job before you jump into things.

Not everyone is Nanotrasen

The station isn't entirely NT owned and will be very-prone to contracted, or elsewise outsourced workers,

Important: As a non-antagonist, your on station character can not be a double agent without an approved app!

Be realistic with your allegiances remember to lean towards 'small fish' instead of main character!

NOTE: This does not give you a license to grief or self antag.

Clothing & Nudity Policy

(HERE)

Nova Sector policies
Retrieved from "https://wiki.novasector13.com/index.php?title=General_Player_Policy_and_Standards&oldid=3391"