Server Rules

## General Rules

1. **Don't be a dick.** We’re all here to have a good time, so try not to ruin the game for everyone else. Avoid assaulting people, nonsensical arguments, and etcetera over OOC channels and Deadsay.
2. **This is an English-speaking Server.** Speaking English in this server is required. While minor use of other languages for fluff is acceptable, they must use the Latin alphabet, and must be secondary to English.
3. Violence is expected in-game; this is SS13. However, **avoid bringing up hateful or overly sexual topics in OOC channels.**
4. **No advertisement of other SS13 servers on this server.** Please show respect for other servers in discussion, trash-talking or bashing other servers is not allowed.
5. **No IC in OOC** Do not reveal or discuss current IC events within OOC. Discussing events during round-end, however, is acceptable.
6. **No OOC in IC** Avoid breaking character: You are crew member aboard this ship. Do not use internet slang, text-speak, smiley faces, etc while speaking to others in IC. Use LOOC if out-of-character speech is absolutely required.
7. **No powergaming.** Roleplay takes precedence over objectives - do not engage in behavior which would be unrealistic for your character in an attempt to win the round. For example: building weaponry in preparation for a possible event is not allowed.
8. **No metagaming.** Your character is limited to the knowledge they themselves would have. This knowledge is limited to the role they fulfill and their background history. As an example: A bartender may have experience in Engineering, but an Engineer would not also have knowledge of surgery. (Other knowledge that would be extremely limited would be that of antag-types, traitor items, and other general OOC info.)
9. **Multikeying.** Using multiple keys with the intent to bypass punishment, such as warning or bans; to circumvent in-game mechanics or respawn timers; or to generally deceive server staff, is **a bannable offence.** Using multiple BYOND keys when there are no active punishments is permitted. Should you wish to swap accounts when you do have active punishments, contact staff. Failure to do so would occur in a lengthened ban, or additional punishment.
10. **Please use cryogenic sleep whenever possible:** it’ll free up the job slot for others. And please remember to store your gear in your office/work area before going to cryogenic sleep. If you’re playing a head position, please notify the admins via ahelp that you are exiting the round.
11. **Regarding End of Round Grief:**
	* Attacking people after the round ends **without a legitimate IC reason** is not allowed.
	* Legitimate arrests by security after round end is permitted, as well as other security actions.
	* Conflict caused prior to round end is permitted to continue. The Emergency Transfer is exempt for this rule.
	* If a staff member requests that all conflict be halted at round end, please do so. The end of the round is for finishing any RP, and staff business. The round restart is going to be delayed if the chat is flooded with attack logs.
12. **Abuse of bugs, regardless of intent, is a punishable offence.** All bugs should be reported on GitHub. If they are immediately gamebreaking, please contact server staff via adminhelp, in an attempt to find a temporary resolution.
13. **Use of proxy-servers is not permitted.** Due to the threat of griefers who utilize proxy servers, the utilization of a proxy, or rerouting your connection through a dedicated server host, can result in an immediate perma-ban.

## Character Creation

1. **Characters must be believable, and well-rounded.** Insane or psychotic characters are strictly not allowed. Mary Sues (characters who have no weaknesses, know too much, etc.) are also disallowed.
2. **Characters must be named following a Firstname Lastname model** (e.g. "John Smith"). Honorifics, nicknames, or middle names are not allowed, standard naming conventions must be followed regarding this (with exception to compound names such as Van/Von/Bin X). Alien races are an exception to this rule, as they may have alternative naming mechanics, such as the Vatgrown human subspecies. If you have any questions, ask the staff or consult the wiki (when available).
3. **Cross-departmental knowledge is possible, however, it should be done in a believable fashion.** Take into consideration the time that would be required to learn the required knowledge to work in a certain field and to obtain the specific certifications and qualifications to work in a certain department, as well as the closeness of sets of knowledge. For example: a roboticist may have a degree in electrical engineering, or at least may be skilled in it. Unrealistic cross-departmental knowledge a character may cause server administration to ask for a character rework.
4. **Criminal characters are allowed, if they are done in a believable fashion whilst non-antagonists.**
	* Regarding characters with criminal backgrounds, that are not known by authorities, they should attempt to keep their criminal activity low-key. Find subtle ways to further your goals when not an antag, and avoid any large-scale, obvious actions (such as murder or a large-scale heist). Security can and will arrest you, try and avoid that.
	* For characters whose criminal backgrounds are known to authorities, find ways to incorporate it into roleplay. A person convicted of murder would most-likely not be hired, but one who was only convicted of theft might.

1. **Your flavour text represents what can be observed, visually, of your character**, and nothing else. Absurd flavour texts (such as "He is a 8'6" Brazilian with Black and White Hair, Monochrome Eyes, and a Firm buttox") will be asked to be curbed/reworked. Refrain from placing backstory elements into the flavor text, it is a description of the character, not their character sheet.

## Roleplaying Characters

**If you have never played on a Heavy-Roleplay server before, it is highly recommended you read A Crash Course In Roleplaying to understand what is expected of you in terms of roleplay.**

1. **You must maintain character at ALL TIMES.** Suiciding to leave the round, griefing at round end, and general chucklefuckery (check the glossary for a definition) is not allowed. If you wish to leave the round ghost or use cryo storage
2. **Do not break the atmosphere of the game.** Avoid using slang such as “traitor”, “wizard”, “syndie”, etc. These terms for antagonists would not be common knowledge. OOC terminology such as “robusting”, “shitcurity”, etc. should also be avoided.
3. **Attempt to maintain a basic level of literacy when speaking in-character.** Proper punctuation and capitalization is also heavily recommended. (Exceptions can obviously be made for written messages IC, such as on PDAs).
4. **Restrict yourself to your character's knowledge.** As a player you may have the knowledge to hack airlocks, however the average doctor most-likely does not. Reference the glossary for the definitions of powergaming and metagaming. This rule is further expanded upon in the character creation section.
5. **Additionally, keep your character's goals in mind.** For example, as security, during a traitor round, your goal is not to catch traitors, but ensure the safety of the station and provide assistance as needed.
6. **Avoid pain.** Keep in mind that a sane and well-rounded character would generally not place themselves into situations where they would be subjected to large amounts of pain, or put themselves into harm’s way in

general without good reason. Unless one has a good reason, or goes about it in a realistic way (such as ODing on chemicals as a chemist) **do NOT commit suicide.** If you have any questions, ask the staff.

1. **Ask questions/ask for help** - If you wish to learn a new job, join as an intern or trainee, and attempt to learn IC. Don’t join as a job you don’t know how to do and try it anyways, ask for help!
2. **Take into account your character's comfort.** Wearing hardsuits or internals for long periods of time would be uncomfortable and exhausting, avoid wearing them for a prolonged period of time.
3. **Try to perform your job to a satisfactory standard,** especially in positions of power (security, head roles.) Constant and repeated failures at doing your job without any sense or reason may result in job-bans (As your character would probably not be hired if they could not do their job). You are not expected to be a role model or model employee, but using it to grief and to have an OOC understanding of current events
4. **Understand the effects of Near-Death.** If your character has been incapacitated, or revived from death it is extremely likely that they have suffered large amounts of brain damage. This means that ICly, you have lost, at minimum, fifteen to thirty minutes of memory (if you have reached the point of brain damage where a prompt shows up on your screen). If you have questions, ask the staff!
5. **ERP, also known as Erotic RolePlay, is not allowed on the server.** While displays of romantic affection are permitted, it is only allowed up to a point. Sexual tension, up to a point, is allowed, however sexual acts themselves are not. (Use common sense for this.)
6. **Do not rules-lawyer your laws as an AI or any law-bound synthetic.** If your laws as an AI or synthetic seem to be solid, act as-if they are. Lawyering your laws or skirting them may be seen as powergaming.

## Conflict and Antagonists

1. **Conflict is acceptable, even if you are not an antag,** but it needs to be **believable**, and meet roleplay standards. The average crew member will generally not suicide-bomb their workplace. Unless you are an antagonist, your character will generally not commit such a drastic act. The more extreme an act, the more your character must be motivated to commit it, and deal with the consequences. This motivation must be developed through roleplay on the server. Backstory alone would not legitimize an assault upon a security officer, as an example. It is highly recommended that consequences of a conflict are roleplayed out whenever possible.
2. **Only escalate conflict in a realistic manner** -characters may overreact to a conflict, but realistically, someone would not attempt to kill another for a minor argument or annoyance, such as stealing a pen. A character must be motivated enough to commit a more drastic action.
3. **Killing in self-defense is NOT preferred.** Fleeing or avoiding causing the death of a crew member, even if in self-defense, is preferred. Your character would likely not attempt to outright kill another crew member without **a very good reason**.
4. **Unless agreed upon by both parties, or interrupted by antagonist-related action, all conflicts will be considered canon.** Involvement of a Duty Officer may cause a conflict to be considered canon regardless of player agreement. This, however, does not exempt you, or anyone, from the rules on metagaming. Your character does not acquire knowledge of syndicate items, xenos, or any antagonist-related intel or equipment due to interaction from previous rounds.
5. **An interaction with an antagonist may be incorporated into the canon of a character** (though a player can obviously choose to not incorporate it)**, though the antagonist’s name and action must be modified to be believable, and properly fall in-line with the rules surrounding powergaming.** A condition of this is that the character would carry over any effects or traumas, and have them managed in a believable fashion. (An example to this would be mental trauma, physical injuries, etc) Do not use this to develop an unrealistic character: remember that traumatic events or high-stress situations, such as a firefight, will have an apparent effect on a character. Antagonist actions and character deaths will generally be assumed to be canon if they damage the round in a non-critical manner. The offender’s name, however, will be blanked from records so that the character may be played on the vessel in the future.

1. **Metagrudging is not allowed.** Displaying grudges or OOC opinions of a player or allowing those opinions to negatively affect IC interactions with that player’s character is considered metagrudging. This also includes basing IC interactions on events rendered non-canon.
2. **Avoid taking IC issues into OOC chat.** If one party was not happy with the outcome of an interaction, without being constructive, is rude. We’re here to enjoy the game, (refer to the "Don't be a dick" rule.)

## On Being an Antagonist

**Refer to the antagonist ruleset before considering playing an antagonist role.**

1. **The antagonist roles do not exempt you from any server rules.** Antagonists are meant to give you easier access to character motivation, and are meant to generate roleplay, though certain tools may be given to you to better assist with that.
2. **The goal of an antagonist is to generate roleplay over anything.** When coming up with objectives, be creative! Do something fun for not only you, but others as well. Don’t resort to the bare minimum for driving a story, either. This means that there should not be any unroleplayed or unmotivated mass murders, etc. See the rules below for clarification.
3. **Killing is not your only way of driving a story,** try to avoid it if at all possible. **Sometimes a non-lethal approach is better than lethal.** Randomly killing someone once you become traitor will cause you to become antag banned rapidly. This means that murder for murder’s sake is also punishable. Though random killing is discouraged, murder can be an effective tool if no other options exist. If you are uncertain, ask an admin via adminhelps!
4. **No ganking.** While antags do sometimes kill, it is expected that interesting roleplay be provided for your targets first. If assassination, for example, is your objective, a monologue is not necessary. Roleplay leading up to the murder can occur through the entire round, but the assassination itself could be wordless. Collateral damage is acceptable within reason, this means you must use common sense, and avoid causing massive amounts of collateral damage (like setting a bomb up in a highly populated area, etc.)
5. **SSD/AFK characters are OFF-LIMITS.** Killing, maiming, or stealing from a character who is SSD/AFK is strictly forbidden. If they go SSD mid-roleplay, give them some time to rejoin before continuing! If they don’t return, use judgement on whether it’s reasonable or fair to continue without them. There is one situation that is acceptable regarding stealing from SSDs, and that would be a situation which immediately requires that item for survival. Ask for admin guidance via adminhelp if needed.
6. **The station’s primary power source and atmospherics systems are generally off-limits in terms of catastrophic sabotage, due to the impact they can have on the round.** If you think you have a really good reason to mess with either, adminhelp first to get clearance.

## On Playing with Antagonists

1. **Knowledge of the antagonists and Syndicate Items is restricted.** We expect players to allow traitors some leeway and as such have a list (LINK) of who and what can be recognized and by who. We expect players to not powergame and give the antagonists a little leeway to get away with things.
2. **Try to avoid playing the hero.** Certain opportunities may appear that would allow a character to overthrow an antagonist, however, going rambo on an antagonist as a frail, unarmed doctor constitutes a failure to roleplay, not ignoring the fact that you would probably get shot. Repeatedly. If you’re unarmed and held at gunpoint, compliance is generally expected, otherwise be prepared for the consequences. Regarding melee combat: advanced close combat moves actually require training, using the excuse of it being a hobby for a character who expertly dislocates limbs won’t fly. Unless you are trained, restrict yourself to more basic moves.

## On Staff

**If you see anyone breaking any of these rules (or simply have**
questions on them), send an adminhelp (F1) to communicate directly with server staff.

1. **When sending adminhelps, be CLEAR and CONCISE** - it makes things a lot easier for us to deal with. Try to include character names if possible.
2. **Adminhelps are to be used exclusively for in-game and server-related issues.** Trivial matters and suggestions not related to the current round are to be left to OOC or the forums. **Bugs**, unless requiring immediate action (like the singularity not working), are to be reported on GitHub, and not over ahelps.
3. **If you are contacted by an admin,** you’re expected to reply and to communicate clearly and in good will. Failure to reply, or to show respect for the staff, may be grounds for a ban. We do our best to be polite and courteous, so please do the same for us.
4. **All staff ingame decisions are final.** OOC and adminhelp are not areas to argue about our staff’s decision-making. If you wish to contest a punishment, rule, or the actions from a member of the staff, start a discussion thread in the appropriate subsection of our forums