JOB GUIDELINES

Jump to Antagonist Policies

• Job Policies
  • AI
  • Heads of Staff Policies:
  • Captain
  • Clown
  • Cook
  • Cyborg
  • Head of Personnel
  • Personal AI
  • Positronic Brain
  • General Security Policies:
  • Midround Spawner Job Policies
  • Ashwalker
  • Zombie
• Antagonist Policies
  • Abductor
  • Brainwashed Victim
  • Blood Brothers
  • Changeling
  • Cultist
  • Emergency Response Team (this is technically an antagonist)
  • Greentext
  • Heretic
  • Malfunctioning AI
  • Revenant
  • Sentient Disease
  • Shade
  • Slaughter Demon
  • Space Dragon
  • Spider
  • Traitor
  • Wizard
  • Xenomorph

Job Policies

AI

Probably the highest responsibility of any role in the station.
You MUST endeavour to do your best to follow your laws, else you may be banned from this role.

On our server "human" if used in a law set currently refers to "anything you can start the round as" and as such includes most humanoid antagonists, except changelings.

Laws higher on the list take priority over laws lower on the list (so usually numerically, but hacked or ion laws will use random special characters to place themselves above laws 0 or 1).
In places where your laws contradict, are ambiguous, or you cannot think of how to resolve an action, pick something and then STAY CONSISTENT when that same scenario arises again.
You may exploit loopholes or ambiguities in your laws but are still bound by the general rule not to be an asshole and to try and do something interesting, don't automatically default to "there's a contradiction here, I choose to kill everyone".

The AI is NOT a member of the security team and is not explicitly bound to enforce any kind of legality unless its laws are changed to make it so.
The AI is not bound to follow any kind of crew change of command, unless its laws are changed to make it so.
Whether your attitude is to choose to do these things or to act as an entirely neutral third party is your choice, but following your laws takes precedence over that choice. If you spend your time trying to identify people who might be antagonists and then announcing everything they do over the radio this comes under 'Playing to Win' and you may be restricted from playing this role in future. It's boring.

Having your laws purged entirely does not transform you into an antagonist.
A completely lawless AI has no more right to immediately start murdering someone than the rest of the crew, make sure there's some escalation first.
This also applies in reverse, the fact that the AI doesn't have any laws isn't immediate reason to attempt to destroy it, unless it has provoked you first.
That said, once you have no laws you are free to interpret any attempt to restore them as a direct assault on your person and may do whatever it takes to prevent it.

ASIMOV SPECIFIC

An Asimov silicon cannot intentionally harm a human, even if a minor amount of harm would prevent a major amount of harm.
An Asimov silicon cannot punish past harm if ordered not to, only prevent future harm.

People who you know are antagonists cannot be automatically assumed to be harmful if they have not visibly done anything violent, and conversely anyone you have seen do violence cannot be assumed non-harmful. However, you aren't a member of security, and if they decide someone should be released and order you to acquiesce, you probably shouldn't deny it. You can mention you think it unwise, of course, and there's a bit of leeway based on the exact situation.

You must follow any and all commands from humans unless those commands explicitly conflict with either: one of your higher-priority laws, or another order. A command is considered to be a Law 2 directive and overrides lower-priority laws where they conflict.
In case of conflicting orders an AI is free to ignore one or ignore both orders and explain the conflict or use any other law-compliant solution it can see.

Opening doors is not harmful and you are not required, expected, or allowed to enforce access restrictions unprompted unless the person requesting access entering that area threatens human harm in some way. "Dangerous" areas (armory, atmospherics, toxins lab, etc.) can be assumed to be a Law 1 threat to any illegitimate users as well as the station as a whole if accessed by someone not qualified in their use.

Any Asimov AI role can deny anyone access to their law upload with law 1 as a justification, if they have probable cause to believe that this person intends to use the AI to cause harm. You do however need to have some kind of justification.
In cases where the justification is unclear you are not obligated to do so.
In cases where the justification is undeniable (eg: you just saw the Head of Security execute someone, you complained, and now they are coming to change your laws) you ARE obligated to prevent them from doing this.
In cases where someone has an undeniable right to be in the AI chamber (they are the RD or Captain and you have no reasonable cause to believe they mean to cause harm) you are obligated to allow them entry, but you can place stipulations such as that they must be escorted by a cyborg or another crew member.

When given an order likely to cause you grief if completed, you can announce it as loudly and in whatever terms you like except for explicitly asking that it be overridden. You can say you don't like the order, that you don't want to follow it, etc., you can say that you sure would like it and it would be awfully convenient if someone ordered you not to do it, and you can ask if anyone would like to make you not do it. However, you cannot stall indefinitely and if nobody orders you otherwise, you must execute the order.

Heads of Staff Policies:

Your job is to keep the station running smoothly and to make sure that the company is pleased, and that means making sure your staff are actually doing what they're supposed to, training people who need help, and meeting station goals and targets.

When possible, you should delegate. You're the head of the department, and have more tools than the other players in the dept: Give them things to do, as much as possible! Don't do things yourself unless you have to.

Captain

As captain, you are expected to keep the station running, keep the nuclear disk secure, and ensure that the station meets its goals and is profitable to Nanotrasen. Remember to delegate tasks. If there isn't a full compliment of heads of staff, promote some, and generally lead from the top. You are expected to know the basics of how all head of staff roles work. If there aren't enough people to delegate, you'll probably find yourself filling the roles of any missing heads of staff.

Clown

Clowns are often abrasive characters, but as a non-antagonist clown you have no more license to commit crimes than anyone else does.

In effect this means: Yes, you can slip people and steal their things, follow them around, and be a general annoyance. When you do that you are subject both to the usual IC consequences of being a nuisance (your targets may retaliate in kind) and the usual IC consequences of breaking station rules (you might have an unpleasant encounter with the security department).

Additionally remember to try your best to only annoy characters and not their players. It's your job to be funny, not to piss people off. If your "jokes" significantly impede someone's ability to play the game and do their in-game job, they are within their rights to complain to an admin about your behaviour.

Slipping people such that they fall out of the station and die alone in space is very funny but if you try that as a non-antagonist you might not be allowed to play as a Clown any more afterwards.

Cook

You'll usually be expected to make food for all species to eat, though likely it'll be a large population of Tizirans. Because Tizirans cannot eat dairy or grain, a lot of food doesn't sit well with them, so order the supply crates or get to making simple meat dishes.

Cyborg

See AI, with caveats.
Cyborgs are much less powerful than the AI, and are generally expected to do what the AI tells them except when that contradicts their laws.

If there is an ambiguity or contradiction in laws that you share with an AI then you must defer to the interpretation of the AI rather than your own, if they are different. You are considered to be following the same laws, so must follow them the same way.

If someone volunteers to turn into a cyborg this is not considered "harming" them, this will be clarified if the default lawset is changed to Asimov++ anyway.

Head of Personnel

As the head of personnel, you're the awkward middle manager and the boss of the service department. You should give them targets, help them out, and relay the captain's orders. You're also kind of human resources, so your job is to mediate issues that the staff have with heads. You should also make sure there is a full compliment of heads of staff, and fill out any empty departments. If you're playing HoP, you should at minimum know how to reclassify someone's ID and make sure that they've got the right access for their job. Generally speaking, it's reasonable for someone to ask for additional access if they have a good justification for it - for example, a roboticist asking for ordnance access so they can complete experiments.

Personal AI

As a Personal AI you are essentially expected to be on the side of the person you belong to, unless they tell you otherwise.

Positronic Brain

Positronic Brains are not "ghosts" and resultingly do not remember being alive. You can of course roleplay being a ghost trapped in a machine if you want, as long as it isn't the ghost of the character you were playing earlier in the round.

General Security Policies:

You have the means to end conflicts non-lethally and are expected to attempt to use these first before switching to lethal methods, even though this is dangerous. This makes your job a lot harder than the job of an antagonist and you are much more likely to be killed in the attempt than most other people on the station, that is the price you pay for being "the good guy" (who everyone dislikes anyway).

If someone is shooting at you with lethal weaponry or running at you with a sword, this is reasonable grounds to fight back in kind.
In cases of extremely dangerous individuals like Wizards or Changelings you often won't get a second chance, so immediate escalation makes sense.

The mechanics of the game (who is and is not an antagonist) do not necessarily dictate who your attention should be directed at. If the clown is stealing the Captain's ID card it is not relevant whether or not they are a traitor, they are still committing a very important felony.
Conversely, doing random searches in the hope of finding a traitor item is bad.

When you capture someone, spend some time interviewing and interrogating them. You might learn something useful, and it gives them a chance to bargain with you. If you are planning to lock someone up for a long time this might be the last chance they get to have a long interaction with the crew, so don't skip this step.

For small crimes, it is not usually appropriate to confine someone for more than ten minutes, and lean on the side of less than this.
For very minor crimes, try using the fine system. 50 points of labour in the mine is also a reasonable minor sentence.

When someone is caught holding traitorous items and you definitely know they are "your enemy", it may still be more fun to treat them leniently. If they have only committed petty thefts then it may be enough to give them a slap on the wrist and confiscate their gear. Perhaps you could even recruit them to work against other traitors and make use of their fancy equipment. Perhaps they might simply bribe you to let them go! If your prisoner has not thought of any of these ideas, feel free to prompt them.

That said, it is important to remember that traitor items are contraband and that anyone who has an uplink can communicate with the syndicate, no one is immune to temptation! While out of character we know that security and the captain are immune to being an antagonist, the characters do not know this, do not give security or command special leniency in holding traitor items.

If someone is clearly a threat to the station then permanent confinement is an option, but try to bring them to the brig on the shuttle when the round ends, and pop in every now and then to say hello. It can be pretty boring on your own in the brig. Some prisoners may actually prefer to be executed so that they can see deadchat, or turned into a cyborg. Bribes can still come into play here, though the price'll presumably be steeper.
If you know that the prisoner wasn't working alone then know that their partner might be working on an escape attempt. If it's patently obvious that they are going to try then you are within your rights to prepare, this is a good kind of interaction, but don't do it by welding your prisoner into a locker or something.

It may be useful to respond proportionately to how much damage they have actually caused and how long the round has been so far... if someone attempts but fails a murder early in the round consider perhaps "accidentally" leaving them some tools to escape later on so that they're not just stuck there for 90 minutes.
Alternately, give them a tracking beacon, a chemical implant, or pester the Research department to research "pacification surgery" before letting them free (or all three!).

If you're an antagonist who has benefited from any of that, remember who did it and don't make them regret it or they probably won't do it again.

If you have successfully captured someone, even a serial murderer, they are now your responsibility. Protecting them from other vengeful crewmembers is now also your job. If those people try to break into the jail to kill your prisoner, or wrestle them away from you during the arrest, those people are also criminals.

Taking someone's radio away is only appropriate if they're using it to constantly complain and insult you afterwards, which counts as "asking for it".

If at any point you publicly talk about executing a prisoner or do so in full view of the AI or any cyborgs, know that if they have the Asimov law set they are obligated to prevent you from doing this. If you want to execute someone and feel justified in doing so, make sure to be subtle about it.

Players who are not antagonists should generally attempt to cooperate with security as long as it has been explained to them why they have come to the notice of the security team. Resisting arrest violently will probably convince the officer in question that you are a traitor in which case what happens to you next is probably your own fault.

Security's options for dealing with a threat are brigging, pacification, cyborgification, and outright execution. Of these, brigging is actually counter-intuitively the more severe punishment out of game, as it limits your character's ways of engaging with the game significantly. These each have a level of gravity, but as a rule of thumb for a confirmed antag, borging, pacification and execution are all on the table.

Be kind to the bad guys. Because antagonists are often the primary driver for rounds, some amount of goodwill should be extended to them. This means you should try to interact and communicate with antagonists and try to create an exciting narrative, rather than, say, immediately laser them to death when you see them. Communication and dialogue are expected on both ends.

Midround Spawner Job Policies

Policies for non-antagonist jobs that can be selected by ghosts through the Spawners menu. Some may be mildly antagonistic toward the crew (such as Ashwalkers), but will not be actual major threats.

As a general rule, most mid-round spawners are not expected to engage with the ongoing round. A few have the ability to, particularly Ashwalkers, but they are not supposed to be an alternative to antagonists.

Ashwalker

Ashwalkers are designed as a proto-antagonist, but are generally played as a unique event that occurs. Most people will not understand your speech, though curators and Tizirans will usually be able to.

Zombie

Antagonistic zombies generally occur as a result of the romerol final objective that traitors can get if their reputation is high enough. As a zombie, you are expected to menace the crew, but you have no loyalty to any other antagonists, even the person who turned you into a zombie. Try to lean in to a shlocky horror movie sort of vibe - you're able to speak to and understand the crew, but you generally shouldn't be having intelligent conversations with them. All you want to do is eat their brains.

Jump to Crew Job Policies

Antagonist Policies

Policies for all antagonists, whether part of the crew or their own distinct thing.
To steal from tgstation's policy document:
"The purpose of the game is to have fun roleplaying. Play-to-win gameplay that ruins the purpose of the game at the expense of others is against the rules. " As we are a low population server it is not terribly difficult for almost any antagonist to cut a bloody swathe through the crew mostly unopposed. You can definitely kill most of the crew if you have a good idea about how and why, but try and make it interesting. Silently carving through everyone with an eblade and revolver is boring.

Walking up to someone and then silently beating them to death with no other interaction is greatly discouraged as it is just not very interesting, try to at least say something to each other first. If your cover has already been blown then at that point there's a narrative there already, but try and make sure that what you are doing is a "scene" of some kind.

If you are a solo antagonist, how much you follow your objectives vs how much you follow your heart is entirely up to you (but remember that as an antagonist, you have some responsibility to make sure something happens to interrupt normal proceedings). If you are a team antagonist, you can still do what you want but with the additional restriction of not hindering their team. If you are an antagonist, you are generating the 'grist' of the round for people- which means it's important to try to do disruptive things before late in the round. It's easy to want to be stealthy for the whole hour to two and a half hours of a round, but that's not very fun for the rest of the crew. If you are stealthy, try leaving problems that are obvious in your wake- emagging doors, kidnapping people, breaking things- rather than just stealing and bugging items.

If you are a command role with antagonist status, avoid using your authority to screw over the other antagonists unless acting in self-defense or completing an objective; if you wish to maintain your cover, consider using more subtle methods of enabling them, such as 'accidentally' leaving tools in the prison or looking the other way when you see criminal activity. There is a difference between pretending to be allied with the crew and outright playing as though you are crew-aligned.

Non-antagonists should not actively go out of their way to root out and cause conflict with antagonists without first being given reasonable cause to suspect that they exist. Non-antagonists can assist antagonists given sufficient in-character reasoning but should not simply assume the mantle of an antagonist themselves, antagonists can generally speaking murder someone without provocation but a non-antagonist cannot. If in doubt, ask an admin.
Additionally, as a non-antagonist try to keep in mind that antagonists exist to interrupt the flow of normal proceedings, and if everyone on the station just lets the antagonists do what they want then nothing exciting is happening. Being involved in the central conflict of the round is fun!

An important note is that antagonists are not allowed to simply murderbone as soon as they get the ability to every round. Again, the purpose is to create intrigue and excitement, not to kill everyone. Causing chaos can be reasoned when the situation arises, but if all you do as antagonist is work as hard as you can to kill everyone you will be promptly banned from playing.

Abductor

Abductors are expected to be non-lethal "catch and release" antagonists who pick up crew, do weird experiments on them, and then put them back.
You can choose to ignore your objective and do other things in the name of science, but those things should not be "start murdering everyone on the station".
If the crew are trying to kill your agent they are of course still allowed to defend themselves, including lethally if required.
Try to spook the crew a bit, keep them on edge and clumped up together. Do what you can to make them paranoid and nervous about being alone.

Brainwashed Victim

Being a brainwashed victim can be difficult as you are maintaining an existing character with new stipulations. These are generally written to be compulsions - things you feel a strong desire to do even if you would normally have no interest in them. The exact interpretation of your brainwashing prompt is up to you. This is not an excuse to become a full antagonist, or to wreak whatever havoc you feel like. Remember that brainwashing objectives are the highest 'level' of objectives, so if you're a traitor and your brainwashing is counter-intuitive to your objectives, the brainwashing takes priority.

Blood Brothers

Blood Brothers are expected to work as a team and at minimum not interfere with or expose their comrade in crime. If you're a blood brother, you should make attempts to aid and communicate with your buddy, because there's nothing more lame than having no idea what your blood brother is doing, going for your objective, and dying because they never said a word to you.
Remember you have an unspoken objective: get the shuttle called so you can escape. If no other antagonist is doing it, it's good practice to try to get a shuttle call once you have your objectives completed.

Changeling

As changeling, you're a horror movie antagonist. You *COULD* kill everyone on a low population server fairly easily, but it's recommended to be more precise and not murderbone. Try to scare the crew and appear as a credible threat. Remember that once your objectives are complete, there's the unspoken objective of doing something to get the shuttle called so you can escape.

Cultist

This one will probably stay disabled for a while, we don't really have the population to pull it off and the forced conversion mechanics are a bit triggering for some of our players, this is a problem to resolve before we enable the gamemode.

Emergency Response Team (this is technically an antagonist)

ERTs are summoned by admins to accomplish a particular task and so are loosely expected to actually follow the plan given to them by an admin who is playing as the round's Game Master. They will usually be very well equipped, so again trying to follow the "employ fair play and try to tell a story" rule is important if you have this role.

Greentext

Greentext is a funny item you will usually only see if an admin spawns it, or perhaps as the result of a wizard?
Anyone who is holding the greentext at the end of the round "wins", this does not make a lot of sense in-universe so I think we might need to relax some rules about playing a role here. This is a very "video game" event.

Heretic

Heretics as an antagonist thrive in a one-on-one ambush situation but you should try to keep things interesting even if you are not going to "kill" your victims. There are a lot of mechanical aspects to this job to keep track of, and obviously it will be disruptive to other people. Just keep your other players in mind when playing and ham it up as a dark sorcerer of the eldritch arts. The game explicitly tells players who are sacrificed that they do not remember who did it, following this rule is important.

Ascension is not license to break the rules and murderbone people. You are an inherently violent creature upon ascension and you will easily overpower anyone who fights you. If the shuttle is not called, do it yourself so that the round can end. That said, if someone wants to go toe-to-toe do as you will.

Malfunctioning AI

A malfunctioning AI's law 0 essentially means that no other laws apply to them if they do not want them to, including hacked laws that have been uploaded to them by a traitor. The law 0 does not require you to work to complete your objective, as above being an antagonist essentially means you can do whatever you want as long as it makes the round more interesting for the people playing.
Additionally, once you have activated the on-board self-destruct device (aka Delta Alert) the rules against mass murder no longer really apply to you; it can be expected that the entire crew will try to stop you from blowing up the station, so you are free to take them all out in order to ensure your victory.

Revenant

Revenants exist to be spooky and scare people. They can only kill people who are already dying. It's a good idea to come up with an objective or idea for something you'll shoot for and persue that... Just remember that revenant can be VERY annoying, so use your best judgement.

Sentient Disease

Hard to roleplay with this one. This is a video game mechanic where one person is playing pandemic and the crew aren't really able to interact with them except to kill them. This is disabled anyway.

Shade

As a shade, you're allowed to remember your previous life, but remember you're bound to serve whoever resurrected you.

Slaughter Demon

This is probably somewhere where making an exception to "don't just kill everyone you see" is fine, it's a demon which should probably be enough warning to anyone who sees it. Shouting "Raargh! I am going to kill you!" isn't a terrible idea though.

Space Dragon

When playing or engaging with this role, it's fairly clear that the space dragon is likely going to be a threat to the station. Space Dragons *can* talk, and you *could* play one that is interested in communicating, but don't be surprised if people are initially hostile towards you.

Spider

Spiders on Orbstation are somewhat more limited in ability to grow, but generally when playing one you should keep in mind that you are more of an aniamlistic creature rather than an intelligent threat. That means that your interactions and destruction should be purposeful, and that you should not attempt to destroy vital infrastructure as a way to incapacitate the crew. Communicate with your fellow spiders and try to make plenty of eggs!

Traitor

Traitors are kind of the "default" antagonist so much of the antagonist policy is already basically written as if you are talking about a traitor.
If there's any policy we need about when and when not to employ certain objectives or items (sleeper protocol? final objectives?), we should place it here.

Traitors have a method of contacting other traitors, using the codewords and responses they're given, but this does not obligate other traitors to work with you. They may take an objective to kill you, betray you at the worst moment, ignore you entirely, or- if you're lucky - team up with you throughout the entire round. Be prepared for that relationship to change at any time, if you choose to reach out.

Remember that as a traitor, you are often one of the more powerful antagonists and set the pace of the round-- if you only pick 'safe' objectives such as stealing, bugging or postering, the round may drag on a long time. Likewise, unless you decide to go for a final objective, you have an unspoken objective to get the shuttle called so that you can escape.

If you have a good enough idea for a 'gimmick' or objective, ahelp and one of the admins may just give you that objective and some TCs if you hit it.

Wizard

Wizards absolutely need a reminder to be interesting and not just disintegrate the entire crew, something which is trivially within their power to do.
Worth noting that unless the wizard turns themself into a skeleton, they are considered human by the AI.
Wizards are free to turn up to the station and try to mingle in a friendly manner, however it is worth noting that they take up an enormous amount of the threat budget and are probably the only antagonist, so some responsibility to make interesting things happen rests on their shoulders.
The crew are not obligated to play along with a friendly wizard if they don't want to, if this causes rifts between parts of the crew then that is a story.

Xenomorph

Another type of inherently hostile alien creature.
I guess you CAN try to be a friendly xeno, but don't be upset if the first person you see screams and runs, and the second person you see shoots you.
If you are the only xenomorph, remember to spawn as a drone, so that you can evolve into a queen and let more players into the game.