Leviathan PSYOPs

[Chief_Engineer]

Wizard's Den Leviathan (US East) has been added as a new LRP server recently. In the time it's been live, it's maintained respectable player counts (30-50) for sustained periods. During these times, it's also had a much lower rate of issues when compared to Wizard's Den Lizard. There are multiple factors that I believe may be contributing to this, but I think a major factor is Leviathan having a different culture than Lizard. To try to create a server with a higher quality of playstyles by maintaining this culture as population grows, I've created the following guide for players to use. This can be applied to any Wizard's Den LRP server, but it will be much more effective if players who apply it all play on the same server, Leviathan.

1. This guide is not rules. Players are not required to follow this guide, not everyone will. Keep this in mind during player interactions, they are not necessarily breaking the rules by not following a suggestion in this guide. All LRP rules apply.
2. LRP is the minimum, not the maximum. Leviathan is an LRP server, but that doesn't mean you can't RP at a higher level. Things like textspeak and OOC IC are not allowed by the rules, but that doesn't mean you need to stop there. As long as you are still doing your job, you're free to do things that you'd only expect to see on a higher RP server. Not everyone will match your level of RP, but people will often raise their level of RP to be closer to yours.
3. Respond IC. Contacting admins to resolve an issue is always an option, but certain issues can also be very effectively handled IC, and handling them IC discourages others from repeating the issue. For example, by responding to people using emotes to bypass chat restrictions as if their character is doing something unexplainable, or by responding to people using OOC terms IC by acting as if they're not making any sense or going crazy, you send a message to them and to anyone watching that it's something that people on the server won't respond well to. Again, these can all be done in addition to ahelping.
4. IC issue doesn't mean you can't do anything. While many things can be described as "IC issues", IC issue doesn't mean you can't respond IC. Minor theft may be an IC issue, but security is still free to respond to the theft, and repeated thefts can eventually justify permabrigging. Minor incompetence is also often an IC issue, but the chain of command has options for dealing with incompetent crew members.
5. Take breaks. This isn't a job, don't feel like you have a responsibility to play. Space Station 14 is a game that's easy to get frustrated in, playing while frustrated will make it much easier to get even more frustrated and will eventually reduce your quality of play, which is counter to the goal of this guide. There's nothing wrong with taking a break from the game, or from joining GHOST GANG! for a few rounds.
6. Avoid grey areas. You shouldn't do things that violate rules like metagaming, powergaming, self-antagging, but to set the best example for other players you should also avoid grey areas. Try not to do anything that's close to a rule issue to avoid giving others the impression that things that would actually be an issue are permitted.
7. Ahelp rule issues. There is currently a much higher admin presence on Leviathan because I've been focusing heavily on it. Despite this, it's not possible to be aware of everything going on. Ahelps are most useful close to the incident, but they can still be useful at any point during the round. Don't feel like you need to stop everything you're doing to ahelp. During the next week, feel free to silent ping me on discord or DM me if you ahelp something on Leviathan, don't include any information publicly other than saying you sent a Leviathan ahelp. I won't always be available, but I won't mind the ping. The Admin Message section of the forums is available if you want to make sure admins are aware of any important unhandled ahelp from a past round of any Wizard's Den server.
8. Shitsec doesn't exist. Don't call security shitsec. Assume every player who isn't playing security well is new to the role, even if you know they're not. While calling security shitsec is a long time tradition in SS13, it's become overused. Many people scream shitsec the moment security does anything. Avoiding it creates a much better environment for players to learn. If security is actually doing something wrong, don't be afraid to tell them, but doing it without calling them shitsec can help stop the term from being so widespread and meaningless.
9. Don't let antags be friendly. Don't be a friendly antag, don't befriend friendly antags, treat friendly antags as hostile. Feel free to ahelp friendly antags, since they're against the rules, but like textchat this is an issue that can greatly benefit from having IC discouragement. Rat kings are a special case and can work with the crew for mutual benefit. Releasing a caught syndie after some brig time and taking their contraband as "reformed" is an IC issue as long as they don't keep reoffending.
10. Don't turn a blind eye to troublemakers. This doesn't mean you should validhunt someone for hacking into the kitchen, or that you need to immediately do something about any issue, but if someone is being suspicious or doing something illegal, try to report it to security. If someone is trying to interfere with an arrest, consider helping security.
11. Be an interesting antagonist. There are much more interesting ways to play antagonist that killing as many people as you can, avoiding unnecessary killing can lead to much more interesting experiences for everyone involved. For example, in one round a syndicate and their reinforcement captured the captain in the brig. They could have killed the captain, but instead decided to imprison them in perma. This choice had a minimal effect on the antags' round, if any, but prevented the captain from being removed from the round.
12. Focus on encouraging behavior that follows these guidelines rather than shaming behavior that doesn't. People respond better to positive reinforcement than to negativity. If someone isn't following these guidelines, but also isn't breaking the rules, blame the rules not the player. Discourage unwanted playstyles by responding in a way that discourages it IC, and by talking about the good things that happened after rounds rather than giving attention to the bad things.

Command and Security

Command and security players have a much higher ability to impact the culture of the server. If you feel you can follow all of these guidelines well, I'd highly recommend you focus on playing these roles. Due to the difference in culture, these roles are currently much less stressful than they are on other LRP Wizard's Den servers.

1. Confiscate contraband and weapons. Unless there's some major station emergency that calls for it, don't allow crew, especially command and security, to carry weapons that they don't need (spears, bats, guns, etc) or syndicate gear/weapons. Security/command use of contraband outside of extreme circumstances is ahelpable and grounds for demotion/arrest.
2. Confiscate problematic items from prisoners. LRP rules allow security to confiscate "items used to commission crimes or items that prove problematic in possession of the detainee". This means that if someone breaks into an area, security is free to confiscate things like insuls, tools, and welding masks from them.
3. Don't freely distribute department equipment. Random tiders don't need insuls, tools, welding masks, plasma canisters, artifacts, etc.
4. Coordinate with security. Security should be a department, not 5 people running around with stun batons. Security should try to work with other departments to keep them secure, and other departments should aid security when they can, along with communicating issues to security instead of feeling like they need to deal with security issues themselves.
5. Use brig timers. While not completely necessary for good sec play, they set a good example for others, reduce the chance that someone will be accidentally overbrigged, and make it less likely that people will incorrectly feel that they've been overbrigged.
6. Increase brig times for repeat offenses. If someone is brigged for a 3rd time during a shift, permabrig them. This keeps station issues much more manageable for security than having the same person constantly causing issues throughout the shift.
7. Use Space Law as a guideline. LRP has no space law. Space law from Wizard's Den MRP, or any other server, can be used as a guideline for things like brig times whenever it doesn't conflict with LRP rules. If it helps you be more consistent, feel free to do so with the understanding that other may not follow it or may use a conflicting space law as a guideline.

I wrote up these guidelines over a few hours while adminning Leviathan, so I may update them in the future. Feel free to share guidelines you personally follow or your experiences on Leviathan on this thread.

[eclips_e69]

god i love leviathan

[Fey]

god i love leviathan.

[EEASAS]

god i love leviathan

 

[Quartermaster]

man i hate leviathan

clowns be bullying me 

[threg]

Huh, sounds good. I'll give it a go sometime.

[Execute]

haven't played on it but I am sure I'll love it

[Stealth16]

god i love leviathan

[EmoGarbage404]

engaging player psyop and mental manipulation. will send bombs through disposals.

[f0x]

Never played leviathan and now after reading this I kind of never want to if this guide is representative of the culture. I tend to view things toward the goal of improving roleplay for everyone, that also includes gray areas.

8. Shitsec does exist and some people roleplay as sec to be as lawfully evil as possible and they can actually roleplay it pretty well, although sometimes it is outright self antagging.

9. The way this is worded sounds like it'll encourage nothing but metagaming and validhunting, this issue should be approached from the perspective of self antagging.

 

C&S.

This is an amogus sussy imposter whodunnit murder mystery game 70% of the time and a syndicate with a bag of c4 30%, not second life or vrchat. If people don't want stress they probably shouldn't intentionally go for difficult command roles, shouldn't be playing this genre of videogame, or should be playing on a server with the extended gamemode.

 

3. While there is ic reasons to not give everyone everything they want as we work for a corporation that is most likely interested in maximizing profits at any cost, it seems like a lot of this is metagaming as we all know most rounds tend to be syndicate spies not nukies or whatever.

 

4. All departments cooperating would be ideal but as command if they arent it is your job to fix it or tell the appropriate command staff to. Take it as a roleplay challenge.

[Chief_Engineer]

PSYOP 1 week update

Levaithan has risen! Levaithan now peaks at or near max pop daily, and I don't think pop ever drops to 0 anymore. It continues to have less issues and much more effort put into RP than Lizard. There are times when there are dips, so I think it's still important for those who feel they're able to follow the guidelines here to play roles like security and command where they're able to be an example for others in those roles and on the station.

There's a self-assignable role on discord which I haven't been pinging as much to try to keep growth manageable. Once Leviathan is well established, the role may end up being used to continue the PSYOP on Miros or some other Wizard's Den server.

Thank you to everyone who's played on Leviathan. Whenever I watch, I constantly see people doing great roleplay and an amazing job overall. People coordinate, issues from non antags are infrequent enough that security is often able to handle the IC end of them when they do happen, and a lot of people seem to be focused on the experience itself rather than getting upset if they die or something goes wrong. The community and playerbase cannot prevent every issue, which is why it's important to report possible issues via ahelp when you're able, but it would not be possible for Leviathan to be as good as it currently is without all of you.

[Froozigiusz]

It's kinda sad in a way that out of all non-lizard servers only Leviathan survived the low-pop death (salamander ). I'm hopeful that in the near future Miros will get stable like this one did and [EU West] servers will get their structure overhauled (one LRP and one MRP server, not clone 1 and 2; or just one server in general).

[Chief_Engineer]

6 hours ago, Froozigiusz said:

It's kinda sad in a way that out of all non-lizard servers only Leviathan survived the low-pop death (salamander ). I'm hopeful that in the near future Miros will get stable like this one did and [EU West] servers will get their structure overhauled (one LRP and one MRP server, not clone 1 and 2; or just one server in general).

Ya, I'm hoping our active servers don't end up all being US based. Hopefully as pop goes up there will be more people interested in MRP and they'll feed into Salamander. Once Salamander has a higher stable pop, it'd be nice to have an MRP server outside of the US too.

[Skarlet]

god i love leviathan

[Sosa]

Can we get a 3 week in update, Chief?

[Quartermaster]

Can we get a 4 week in update, Chief?

[Chief_Engineer]

PSYOP 4 week update

Leviathan regularly rises above Lizard's pop now. It does this weird thing where it'll shift from stable lowpop to stable max pop over the course of a round, then like 12 hours later or something it'll drop back to stable low pop immediately after a round. As players who typically play on Lizard for the high pop may now see Leviathan as an option, it is still important for those who can maintain the culture to play in command and security roles. Discord pings don't really happen anymore because of this.

Somehow, at some point, I became a head game admin. This has caused me to have less time available to admin on Leviathan so I don't know how well the culture has been maintained with the pop changes. I think we have more trial admins right now than active fullmins, hopefully things will be easier to manage as trials are completed.

I welcome any suggestions to help maintain the culture of Leviathan. I've considered lowering Leviathan's pop cap, but there weren't any culture issues at the time and I don't want to drop it lower than is needed, and I think the effectiveness of it would be highly dependent on what the cause of any culture issues is. Ideally any changes would be temporary.

Thank you to everyone that plays on Leviathan and puts effort into their roleplay, and thank you to everyone that ahelps issues and makes posts in Admin Message to make sure unhandled ahelps aren't missed.

[RatherLargeGuy]

As someone who frequently plays as HoS, I've discovered that security personnel on leviathan is much more willing to follow orders, and generally less shitty than security personnel on lizard.

[Chief_Engineer]

Ya, I'm hoping it's stayed pretty close to how it used to be on Leviathan because in general it was just all around better. It was LRP, but people would put effort into their roleplay and just kinda go along with other people's roleplay. People would put effort into doing their jobs and working with people rather than trying to solo everything and abandoning their job half the time for some personal project.

I think a good way to describe how it was is LRP is the minimum, not the maximum, and "low" means that the RP isn't necessarily very realistic, not that there's very little of it. I hope that's still an accurate description.

[PixelTheAertist]

God I love leviathan