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title: Antagonist/Ghost Role Policy

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# Antagonist/Ghost Role Policy

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## General

Antagonists are here to make the game fun. They are there to be the primary driver of a round, which in most cases will involve some degree of mechanical combat depending on what kind of antagonist they are and what their goals are. 
- Antagonists should not make it a goal to get a high body count or end the round as quickly as possible, unless specifically stated in their own section. We are all here to have a nice time. If your entire schtick of playing here is making everyone else miserable, you will be forced to seek another server, as this isn't the place for that.
- Antagonists are generally split into lone and team antagonists. Specifics in the sections for each antagonist override anything in the general sections for those types of antagonists. If an antagonist type is not yet included here, use best judgement and follow the category (lone vs team antagonist) that best describes your antagonist role.
- **Antagonists are *generally* exempted from most rules on IC actions for crewmembers and should follow antagonist guidelines instead**.
    - Notable exceptions include more OOC policies, including not talking about OOC concepts in IC/using netspeak emojis/abbreviations, things like OOC consent to adult content and similar.
    - You should still attempt to stay somewhat in character for an antagonist - this rule just means you don't need to act like a believable employee. Antagonists are allowed to be insane.
    - **Do not be too much of a dick to the player at the other end of the screen** - if you are resorting to "gay baby jailing" (unescapable jails, see primary main rules), and similar tactics to "win" you are playing antagonists wrong.
    - **Global community rules still apply to you,** including bug exploits, spam, illegal things, etc. Common sense.

### Murder
- Antagonists are meant to be dangerous on main. Antagonists are allowed to murder.
- Antagonists should have a sliver of a reason to kill someone, most of the time.
    - Even something as flimsy as "it'll spread paranoia" would work as long as you are not trampling on the line between believable excuse (killing **one person** and leaving them in a hallway or maintenance tunnel where they will cause panic by being found) and obvious flake (killing all of a department is not spreading paranoia).
    - Forcefully "borrowing" someone's gear, whether by robbing, critting, or killing them, is allowed.
    - Objectives are always a reason to kill someone - up to and including the extent needed by the objective. A kill once objective doesn't require full round removal, while assassinate-forever objectives should be taken in good faith.
- Think about how fun it would be for the other person. Try to make it enjoyable.
    - Most players will complain about dying. It won't be enjoyable.
    - The point of this is realizing the difference between **consistently** doing things like bomb syringing your target/rushing them roundstart with .357 and a bomb/etc, and letting them settle in before gunning for the kill. **Even for perma-kills.**
- Murderboning - killing large amounts of people for flakey or no valid reasoning - is not allowed.
    - Putting a large amount of people in critical condition to bleed out is considered murderboning.
    - This scales to population. Killing 5 people in a huge brawl at 80 pop is not as harmful as killing 5 out of the 8 players on a lowpop round.
- Perma-killing/going out of your way to fully round remove someone whether by destruction of their brain + any cloning records or by hiding their body in a very hard to spot hiding place should require a bit of stronger reasoning.
    - Examples of valid reasoning: someone repeatedly validhunting you when given multiple chances to stop, someone validhunting you with extreme (think chem warfare and bomb syringes) tactics, someone trying to do the same to you without a real need (cremating a changeling necessarily vs cremating traitors just because).

#### Self Defense Clause

- Antagonists may freely defend themselves from threat of their life or freedom with whatever forms of violence necessary. Escalation and murder in this regards, will not be considered murderboning/unreasonable, even if it involves many casualties.
- Antagonists should strive to avoid getting into lengthy fights that **will** invoke this clause on many other players or otherwise bait the crew into validhunting them specifically to kill them.
    - The difference between hiding in maintenance and necessarily killing the people coming in to kill you, and running around the hallways for 15 minutes with an energy sword out and killing anyone who looks at you wrong.
    - Some amount of chaos is to be expected. This rule will not be used against you if you act in good faith - just do not go out of your way specifically to get a body count.
- Doing something necessarily loud either for objective or gimmick reasons (killing the head of security, someone surrounded by people, etc) that will cause the spotlight to be focused on you is not a breach of this policy. This is for clear attempts at baiting a kill count, not for causing chaos and unrest.

#### Round Removal
- See above regarding perma-killing. Sometimes necessary, e.g. changeling **legitimately** impersonating someone rather than "I needed to be them for 5 minutes", etc. Remember that Clone Memory Disorder is something enforced on the crew - don't do this unless you have to.
    - Full intentional destruction of brain/clone methods + hiding bodies in realistically irrecoverable places counts as removal.
    - If someone is being overly a dick to you, you may remove them if they are clearly not going to stop after one or two deaths/crits/etc.

### Destruction

- Similarly to murder, antagonists are allowed to destroy, sabotage, and subvert station assets as they see fit.
    - You are *expected* to cause chaos. If you don't want to harm anyone, subterfuge and sabotage is the best way to cause it.
    - Obviously, you have even stronger reason if your target is in an area, or you desperately need area denial, or a distraction (see below).
- However, destroying large amounts of the station is not allowed without your objectives or antagonist type demanding it, or a very good IC reason to do so.
    - This is in place for similar reasons as the murderbone policy. We do not want antagonists to force the round to a close for their own entertainment.
- A good rule of thumb is to consider whether an action will **force** a round end through mass destruction that likely is borderline impossible or improbable to fix, and if an action will cause enough death to be considered murderboning.
    - Think plasma floods, supercharged CO2 delams, blowing up maxcaps, etc.
    - The larger the destruction the more reasoning you need. If you want to explode a few small grenades, no one will bat an eye if you don't make it your consistent schtick. If you want to maxcap the middle of the station, you must have some pretty solid reasoning of **need**.
- Gas flooding of CO2/N2O/Plasma or venting/panic siphoning counts under this if they are not localized. Flooding a very specific part (see: security, a room or two at a time, etc) with a dangerous gas does not.
    - "A room or two" does not include the primary hallways.
- If you have **hijack**: you are allowed to do whatever you need to, to make the final hijack easier.
    - When the round starts feeling like it's going to come to a close, when you know the shuttle's going to come, that is the time to strike. Hijack is notoriously difficult and thinning the numbers is absolutely valid for you to do.
    - You may force an earlier round end if needed. Use discretion. Creating full-on chaos with a huge amount of players is more acceptable for hijack than killing everyone 10 minutes in on lowpop and waiting the next 15 to call the shuttle while the entire server sits in deadchat.
- **Glorious Death**: You may pick a gimmick, however destructive it needs to be. Things like tesloose, etc, are all acceptable for you. Try not to just go on a boring ecombo murderspree or repeat the same gimmick too many times, though.
- **Reasonable distractions**: Causing something dangerous for a distraction is fine. Unwrenching a pipe from the SM to force all engineers on deck and security to guard it while you go raid the vault is whatever. Pumping CO2 into it to tesla and kill everyone as a "distraction" is not. The same applies for bombs - destroying a room is fine, maxcapping doesn't count as a distraction.
- **Joke-placements of destructive things**: Setting a bomb to 60 minutes is an age old classic, and so is setting high-timer X4 on things. This will not result in punishment unless you start to wear a gimmick out.
    - Dragging around a syndicate bomb to cause a manhunt and ultimately bait people into kills or explode a major part of the station and similar gimmicks are obviously not part of this.

### Doing Nothing
**Antagonists are expected to participate.** If you don't want to antagonize, ahelp it away, and consider turning the preference off.
- You are **required** to **either** do your objectives, **or** some form of free-form antagonism that does not violate any of the above.
    - You should not **consistently** rush objectives and do nothing afterwards - this is awful for an antagonist. **You should not be defined solely by your objectives**.
        - Occasionally doing nothing after finishing objectives will not be punished. Sometimes, we want a break.
    - You can ignore objectives entirely if you want to antagonize a different way.
    - Antagonizing = causing trouble. **Switch your gimmicks up, do not run things to the ground.** Break things, destroy things, sabotage things, harm/kill people, just don't make everyone sit in deadchat while you run around with a double-sided energy sword. You will not be punished if you are acting in good faith, and take constructive feedback in stride.
- **Scale your chaos to the amount of people.** It's almost never okay to do nothing all round when the population is high, especially if there isn't much going on. If there are literally 12 people, no one will get upset if you stop at "annoy a few people with some shennanigans". Rampages and similar things become far more intolerable when the stress is spread among lower amounts of players.
- **While ERP is not a "hard", blanket ban for antag roles, if that seems to be all you want to do, expect to be talked to or removed from the role. You are here to antagonize, not emote in a dorm room for an hour.** This is pretty similar to our expectations for command/security players.

### Friendly Antagonists
- **Friendly antagonists are not allowed. Antagonize if you take the role.** Read on for what this means.
- This is specifically for, but not limited to, the following: 
    - Saying you're an antagonist roundstart and claiming to be crew-aligned.
    - **Validhunting other antagonists with your abilities to get the crew's favor.**
    - **Only using your abilities to help the crew.**
    - **Hunting down troublemakers for the crew in general.**
    - The gimmick of "I am a Ratvarian/Narsian chaplain and this is my chapel". 
        - Furthermore, if you do this consistently and spend the entire round complaining about how your chapel is sovereign and worse, bait people into validhunting you and ahelp them, expect an immediate antagonist ban.
    - All of these are extremely distasteful and obnoxious to deal with for everyone involved.
    - **If you want to do any of these as a gimmick, it better be a very good gimmick, and must be adminhelped. If the crew treats you as what you claim to be, do not be surprised.** 

#### But I'm not being a friendtag-
- **You are allowed to harm other solo antagonists as a solo antagonists, and help the crew. Roleplay is roleplay. Sometimes, there will be IC reason to assist the crew. We want antagonists to make a good story.** Things that seem to go against the above will be excused if they are done in good faith and taste.
    - **Solo antagonists can antagonize other solo antags for their equipment/gear/powers, but this is not your goal.** Antagonizing the crew and creating a story is your goal, and going after other antags, even as say, a changeling, which is the one that benefits most from this right now, is not going to be of too much help. Do this sparingly.
- **Team antagonists should not be doing this, obviously. HELP YOUR TEAM FIRST.**
- Some examples of things that are why this section is here:
    - Someone saved your life, and you save theirs, whether it's rescue or killing someone trying to kill them, regardless of antag status.
    - You throw out some gear to people who need it.
    - The station just got trashed by meteors, and you decide to fix some breaches so everyone doesn't just *die*.
    - You do some **very careful** vigilante anti-hero gimmick where you end up killing some criminals.
        - Anything like or close to this, tread very carefully with, as it's a thin line between a gimmick and "validhunting troublemakers". We recommend you don't, as it'll be a quick ban if you turn out to be doing the latter. **If someone is making good fun, reciprocate in kind.**
    - You recover some bodies you come across.
        - A lot of antagonist are crew, human, or pretending to be one of the two. Even if you are not, **you are allowed to act human and show mercy**, even without being required to help.
- It is usually very easy to tell if someone is trying to do an unique gimmick, or just trying to throw themselves at the crew's feet to get an easy win/get the crew's assistance with their objectives, **or worse, blatantly metafriending**. Making a hard policy against antagonists helping the crew would serve to kill roleplay more than it would make rounds interesting. **If you end up being the odd one out and abuse/lawyer this, you will be removed all the same, regardless of how antagonistic you think you are being.**


## Antagonist Types, Specifics

### Lone Antagonists
- Avoid handing out your gear or losing it to the station. *Avoid*. It will happen all the same, but be considerate of others. Security catching you and taking your things is different from you immediately giving them a 20 TC uplink the moment someone pulls a taser in your general direction.

#### Traitors
- No specific policies exist at this time.

#### Changelings
- You are allowed to hide bodies or make someone hard to recover if you need to disguise as them for a long period of time.
    - "5 minutes to escape from security" vs "I want to be the changeling \<head of staff\>". Use common sense.

#### Bloodsuckers
- Currently not in rotation
- As a power-ramping antagonist, escalating and fighting including murder is allowed to gain power. Be reasonable about this in what you actually need to do, and expect the crew to fight back. When they inevitably do, try to play defensively for the majority of encounters, see self defense clause.

#### Heretics
- As a power-ramping antagonist, escalating and fighting including murder is allowed to gain power. Be reasonable about this in what you actually need to do, and expect the crew to fight back. When they inevitably do, try to play defensively for the majority of encounters, see self defense clause.
- Basically: Killing for sacrifices is allowed, even if technically not required.
- Working for an ascend is obviously allowed.

#### Wizards
- Rampage antagonist

### Team Antagonists
- If your team has a leader, listen to them where possible.
- If you **are** the leader, don't be a jackass to your teammates.
- You may never work against your team. You should always be finding ways to help your team.
    - Like it or not, all of our team antags are forced-conversion high violence modes.
    - If you want to do something to trick the crew into thinking you are good that would otherwise harm your team, **make sure everyone involved agrees with it, especially if they are going to be negatively impacted by your actions.**
- Remember to communicate with your team
- **Conversion antagonists:**
    - Whether we like it or not, people are going to inevitably have a bit of bias for converting their friends and people viewed as competent. This is stated here as stopping it is realistically not feasible.
    - **If you are found to be specifically only gunning for people you think are good, in a HARMFUL MANNER, you will be dealt with according to metafriending/metagrudging rules.**
        - Think killing/sacrificing anyone who isn't "robust" without an ounce of effort to convert, consistently. **This is toxic, do not do it.**
- For conversion antagonists, roleplay tends to go out the window when the swords and guns come out.
    - Act in best faith - If a fellow rev is escorting a surrendering head of staff to the mining shuttle, for example, you probably should let them do it or just follow along, instead of stunning them and killing the head immediately because you want to win.
    - Work with your teammates, not against. Even if you are competent, don't ruin everyone else's experience to win. This is highly subjective as a clause, and aims to catch other cases similar to the above example. You are here to win as a team.

#### Nuclear Operatives
- Team leader has absolute say on strategy. Don't abuse this.
- Rampage antagonist

#### Revolution
- Your revolution **ends** if your leaders die. Protect your leaders at all costs.
- Heads can be killed or exiled. Let IC be IC.

#### Blood + Clock Cults
- No specific policies outside of general ones

### Midrounds
- Midround antagonists are for the most part hostile or leaning hostile, or at the very least, has a conflict of interest with the station.
- Follow your spawn text, see what's around you, and recognize that some of these are gray-area roleplay roles.

#### Abductors
- **YOUR GOAL IS TO ABDUCT AND EXPERIMENT, NOT KILL.**
- Sabotaging the station:
    - Should never be mass destruction
    - Don't steal the AI. Remember that you want to be untraceable, stealing the AI, killing people, blowing things up, kind of opposite to that eh?
    - Anything done should be to make your goal easier. Light sabotage is fine.
    - **Don't do things like empty the armory/toxins/start stealing lathes, this is not light sabotage.**
- Dealing with "test subjects":
    - **DO NOT KILL PEOPLE,** outside of an absolute emergency. This includes with your decloner. You should only do this if your life or freedom is in immediate and severe danger. Remember that you can heal on the ship.
        - Your technology being stolen (see: crew stealing your baton) counts as an emergency under this.
    - Don't teleport people into unescapable or very hard to escape from areas, or into deathtraps. Be reasonable.
- Mind control
    - Things like "shut down all surgery" are whatever
    - "Kill all of security", "remove all the walls", etc - **No.**

#### Nightmares
- Think of a thematic thing to do based on what you are and your thematic spawntext
- No, you cannot take out the engine to "turn off the lights".

#### Slaughter Demon
- Rampage antagonist

#### Revenant
- "Grief ghost"
- Smashing windows to depressurize areas is fine. This is one of the only exceptions to "do not destroy everything".
- Obviously, the crew can powergame you to death freely once you start doing bad things for that reason.

### Ghost Roles
- These roles are far more RP based gray-area than black/white nonantag/antag. Let IC be IC, **read your spawntext, and act reasonbly.**

#### Ash Walkers
- Follow spawntext
- Notably, do not instantly kill miners and smash their outpost without provocation.
- Escalate semi-reasonably - miners killing a tendril may be ran out, miners killing you can be "dealt with" as needed (see: killed).

#### Free Golems
- Be reasonable, you're on the same research system as the station due to code limitations
    - Don't start a war because stationside science researched nodes you didn't want. You're a guest
    - If the station is being a dick to you, you may retaliate in kind
- You're a true neutral role, unlike ash walkers (who have conflicts of interests automatically, more or less), don't be a dick.

#### Hermit
- Follow spawntext
- Being at odds to the station is fine but we expect no mech murderbones in the halls.

#### Random Sapient Animal
- Think of a thematic thing to do for what mob you got put into
- Don't be too much of a dick. Example: If you're a carp, attacking people who come outside and smashing the occasional window is fine if you decide to be hostile. **Random Sapient Animals "deciding" that they need to start hiding bodies, or otherwise fuck everyone over, is not okay.**
