Server Rules
This is Impstation, the unofficial SS14 server for fans of RTVS. You must be and act at least 20 years old to play on this server. This server is an English-speaking community. You are free to use other languages in-character, but all discussion in out-of-character channels should be in English.
This is a medium roleplay server. While playing the game, please enjoy telling an interesting story alongside your fellow players while embracing the game's mechanics.
Space Station 14 is a disaster simulator. Many rules are designed to require roleplay, and not all rules are intuitive. Please take the time to read and understand the rules before you play. Game admins will treat you as if you have read the rules, even if you have not. If you have any questions about the rules, please use the admin help menu by hitting F1 in-game or clicking the "AHelp" button in the lobby.
Impstation's rules are divided into 4 categories.
These rules apply at all times, including between rounds.
The rules are not perfect. They attempt to communicate what the administration team intends to allow and disallow, but there are likely loopholes that can be "lawyered". Do not attempt to manipulate the interpretation of rules to suit your personal goals, or to degrade the experience for other players.
- Admins can disregard and override any and all of these rules if they deem it in the best interest of the current round, server, and/or community at large.
- Rules can be bent if it's funny, but watch out. If you want to bend a rule, always ask an admin for permission first through the use of AHelp.
- Admin actions and interpretations of the rules can be contested through AHelp. Administrators will ban players they believe are an overall negative impact to the community, and will be held fully accountable if they exercise this privilege.
- If admins, on unanimous vote, find a player to be a consistent source of complaints and headaches to other players and admins, we reserve the right to ban you and remove you from the community. Such bans typically qualify as Quality Control (QC) bans.
Don't do anything with the intent of negatively affecting another player's experience of the game. Killing players is allowed in some situations, even though it may negatively affect them, and dying is a part of SS14's gameplay, but you should not do anything to deliberately make another player have a bad time.
- If you are impacted negatively by another player, or you are worried that your actions have negatively impacted another character beyond the bounds of what is reasonable in roleplay, you may choose to use the LOOC (Local Out Of Character) chat channel to check in with each other, and make sure that everyone is comfortable. Alternatively, you may contact an admin via AHelp.
- Do not interact negatively with AFK ("SSD") players. Interactions to complete antagonist objectives, or duties like security searches/arrests, should be avoided unless there are no alternative options (for example, stealing an item which is the only one of its kind) or an SSD player has been absent for at least 20 minutes.
- Hate speech, bigotry, discrimination and harassment will not be tolerated. This includes slurs used in a reclamatory fashion.
Romantic relationships between characters are acceptable (though they should never become the focus of a round/gameplay, see Roleplay Rule 4). Erotic content is not allowed under any circumstances.
- This includes comments not explicitly sexual in nature, but that contain words, phrases, or ideations that are deemed inappropriate by administration or players. Raunchy humour and insults are given some leeway; otherwise, this rule is strictly enforced.
- Act like everyone can read any message you send (because they can). Even if players are not engaging in definitional ERP, admins reserve the right to intervene when they feel romance has taken precedence over gameplay.
- If roleplay reaches a point where it has become sexual and/or uncomfortable, immediately stop and contact an administrator through AHelp.
Examples:
- Good: Typing 'cum' in OOC chat
- Good: Making a reference to characters dating
- Good: Giving another character a hug
- Bad: Emoting sexual acts
- Bad: Conversations of a predominantly sexual or fetishistic nature
- Bad: Emoting defecation or related acts
Do not use exploits, cheats, macros or alt accounts.
- This includes third party applications, known glitches and bugs, and any other applicable software to gain an advantage, avoid intended game/server mechanics, or harm server infrastructure.
- Stream-sniping (the act of watching another player livestream the game while playing the game yourself) is strictly prohibited.
- Any and all instances of the above will be met with an appeal-only ban. Please report bugs in the issues section of the GitHub.
SS14 is a game about dying. Discussing your own death and the status of your body to the exclusion of all else is not pleasant for other members of dead chat. Remember that this is just a game, and take a break if you find yourself upset.
- If you believe another player has acted inappropriately or in violation of server rules, contact an admin through AHelp.
If at any time you suspect that someone is breaking the server rules, press F1 or the 'AHelp' button in the lobby to open the AHelp menu. Please give a moderately detailed report, including the names of involved parties where possible.
- All AHelp messages are relayed to admins via Discord, even when they are not in game. Your AHelp not receiving a response does not mean it was not acted upon.
- Using OOC or IC channels to complain about clear AHelpable offences is not tolerated, and may be treated as a rules violation.
- AHelp can also be used to ask for gameplay clarifications, or request admin intervention in the case of game-breaking bugs or glitches. If you are contacted by an admin through AHelp, it does not mean you've done something wrong.
- AHelp is not for requesting bits or events. These should be sent with a “prayer” through the use of in-game tools such as admin phones or altars.
These rules only apply during a round. A round ends only when the results screen appears, and OOC chat is enabled. All of these rules apply fully whenever the game is not at the lobby.
Roleplay rules do not apply to observers (“ghosts” or “spectators”) while they are observers. Dead chat is considered to be an in-game but out-of-character chat channel.
Your character's actions, feelings, and knowledge in-game should be based solely on the character's experience of the round. Act in character throughout the round, and collaborate with other players to tell a story.
- Actions that have no regard for your character or setting are not acceptable. Attributing erratic character actions as 'insanity' is not acceptable. Act as though Nanotrasen hired you, and that you do not want to be fired.
- Being an antagonist does not allow you to stop playing a character. Determine how your character would react to being given these objectives, and work through it appropriately.
- As a non-sentient or partially-sentient character (such as an animal, vent creature, or zombie), you are expected to have only a limited understanding of space stations and their mechanics. Do not attempt to sabotage station infrastructure if your character would not have the knowledge of its function.
In-character names must not make obvious references, not use random characters, and must not be obscene.
- Theatrical roles such as clown, boxer and mime are allowed stage names with more freedom. Grays using names that reference pop culture are also given more leeway.
- Avoid excessive numerals in names. Synthetic or otherwise artificial characters are not exempt from this rule.
- If you seek to have a name that could trespass onto these rules, contact an Administrator through AHelp or Discord regarding why this name is important to your character. Administrators reserve the right to approve or deny character names at their discretion, and may change their minds at any time.
Examples:
- Good: Tail-Xilia
- Good: Beafstro Ganiff
- Good: A gray named 'Ford Mustang'
- Good: A thaven named 'Touching Grass'
- Bad: Skibidi Toilet
- Bad: Kanye West
- Bad: Isuggest Forcefem
- Bad: Banned-By-Admins
- Bad: Penis Pete
- Bad: Benry
- Do not use the Emote channel to bypass an inability to speak. Use the Emote channel for things that could reasonably be displayed by your character’s physical motions.
- Do not use replacement characters ('0' in place of 'o', '1' in place of 'l', etc.) to bypass accents.
- Do not discuss Out Of Character (OOC) matters In Character (IC). This can include mentioning admins, the fact that one is playing a game, or anything that breaks the immersion of other players.
- Do not use In-Character channels (such as local and radio channels) to bypass a lack of ability to use LOOC or OOC chats (e.g. "Huh, wonder where the captain went? OOC He probably left to get dinner lol").
- Do not use external channels to communicate with other players in the same game.
Do not join the round as a role you don't intend to play, or abandon your role midway through a round. This includes not completing tasks that a role is expected to do, leaving the game because you did not get assigned a role you were hoping for, or requesting that admins change your role.
- If you are not playing a specific role, do not seek to take on the responsibilities of that role. If you wish to be reallocated to a different role, speak to the Head of Personnel or a member of command. This rule is loosened if the station is understaffed.
- Roleplay should be done in tandem with the role you are assigned. Use the responsibilities assigned to you as the means to tell a story, rather than telling a story at the expense of the mechanics of SS14. Consistently spending large portions of the round talking to other characters without engaging with the rest of the game is not acceptable, and will be met with admin intervention.
- Ghosting, suiciding, or leaving at the start of a round because you did not get a particular role is strictly prohibited.
- Antagonists are always permitted to neglect the responsibilities of their department in order to engage in antagonistic activities.
Examples:
- Good: As an engineer, building a bar in maintenance while there is nothing important for engineering to do.
- Good: As the captain, having the chef teach you how to cook while there is nothing important needing your attention.
- Good: Taking a short break from your job at the bar.
- Good: Getting an antagonist role and intentionally not doing any of your objectives, but agreeing to complete another antagonist's objectives if they complete yours.
- Good: Fighting or preparing to defend yourself from someone who has been trying to kill you, while not being a member of Security.
- Bad: As an engineer, building a bar in maintenance while the station has no power.
- Bad: As the captain, leaving the station to go on an expedition with the salvage team.
- Bad: Spending your entire shift talking to someone, even when there is work that needs to be done by your role.
- Bad: Getting an antagonist role and not doing any antagonist activities.
- hunting for antagonists or lawbreakers, or preparing to defend someone else from someone who has been trying to kill a random crewmember, while not being a member of Security.
We are here to tell a story. Being vulnerable and accepting the loss of your character in the advancement of the narrative of the round is important. SS14 is not Among Us, nor is it Call of Duty.
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Engage with players if they are attempting to roleplay an antagonistic scene. For instance, if nuclear operatives are attempting to negotiate, do not immediately shoot them mid sentence.
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Do not "typebait", or coerce players into typing in order to gain an advantage in combat by interrupting them.
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Do not seek out secure or restricted items that have no relevance to your character in the round (such as the CMO's hypospray, or the CE's magboots).
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Do not hide the nuclear fission explosive, or other sensitive items, in an impossible to see/access location.
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If the presence of nuclear operatives on the station is known, crew members may take steps to protect or otherwise secure the nuke. However, the nuke should remain on-station at all times.
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Non-security personnel should not seek to kill or detain threats. You should generally attempt to flee from combat or dangerous situations. Remember that your character likely fears injury or death.
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In certain severe emergencies, normal crew are encouraged to defend themselves and their station. Such emergencies include an attack by nuclear operatives, a zombie outbreak, space dragon attack, a hostile swarm of replicators, or other critical situations.
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Do not seek to make antagonists "redtext", or use OOC knowledge to deny antagonists the opportunity to complete specific objectives. Interact with antagonists based only on the information you have in an individual round.
Conflicts should typically follow a scale starting at verbal and moving through stages of non-harmful, non-lethal, and lethal as necessary, with "round removal" as a final stage that should almost never be reached.
For more information, see the Escalation Table.
- A player should not escalate a conflict without some escalation from the other party involved in the conflict. Players who attempt to de-escalate conflicts will always be given more leniency. Generally, players should not be seeking to escalate conflicts.
- If a party in the conflict goes into critical condition or dies, the responsible party must take them to receive treatment or to security. This is considered deescalation.
Exemptions:
- Antagonists are fully exempt from escalation rules. Non-antagonists who are in a conflict with antagonists are not exempt.
- Free agents who choose to act like antagonists are not exempt from escalation rules, but may be given leniency when escalating.
- Security can immediately escalate to non-lethal force only if it is necessary for an arrest.
- Anyone using or brandishing obviously lethal weaponry (such as Syndicate equipment, a changeling armblade, or a heretic eldritch blade) can be assumed to have lethal intent, and can be immediately escalated against at a lethal level, unless there are the available tools to safely detain them.
- Players are not obligated to follow escalation rules for non-pet animals, such as mice, monkeys, and vent creatures. Escalation rules must always be applied to conflicts with station pets (an animal that is named at the beginning of the round, such as Remilia, Ian, or Hamlet) or Cyborgs.
Examples:
- Good: Being punched, punching your attacker into crit, then bringing them to medical.
- Good: Stealing from someone who stole from you.
- Good: As a security officer, asking someone to stop for questioning, seeing them run away, then using a disabler to stun and cuff them.
- Good: As a security officer, shooting someone wearing syndicate equipment into crit, cuffing them, then bringing them to medical.
- Good: Attacking an unauthorised person who enters a high-security area until they leave.
- Good: Minorly inconveniencing someone for your own benefit.
- Good: As an antagonist, killing someone who got in your way.
- Good: Trying to crit someone who, in a previous conflict, put you into crit and did not take you to medical.
- Bad: Round removing someone who punched you.
- Bad: Wordlessly beating someone who stole from you into crit.
- Bad: Wordlessly attacking someone who is cloaked.
- Bad: As a security officer, asking someone to stop for questioning, seeing them run away, then shooting them into crit.
- Bad: Attacking an unauthorised person who enters a low-security area with no other escalation.
- Bad: Hiding someone's body because they punched you earlier in the round.
- Bad: Randomly picking fights with people.
- Bad: Trying to crit someone who, in a previous conflict, put you into crit and took you to medical.
If a player dies, they forget the specific details of their death. Having completely clear knowledge as to how a player died often makes it impossible for antagonists to get away with murder, and makes the round less fun for all players involved. A borg being removed from its chassis is not a death, and there is no memory loss.
While a player is in critical condition, they are considered unconscious and unaware of their surroundings. If a player is resuscitated from critical condition, they may recall how they entered critical condition. However, if the player dies, they should not recall these details.
- If they are revived by using a defibrillator, they can only recall vague information such as “Someone shot me” or “I was set ablaze”.
- If they are revived by any other method, they forget the last five minutes leading up to their death, and cannot describe their death in any capacity.
Character relationships may form between rounds. However, these relationships should not enable characters to give preferential treatment to characters they have a friendly relationship with (metafriending), or deny service to characters they are antagonistic towards (metagrudging). Please use the AHelp menu to report players who break this rule.
- You may choose to give preferential treatment to characters based ONLY on information from the current round.
- Each round of SS14 happens independently from one another. You are free to personally 'canonize' events that happen during shifts, but these events should be considered to have happened in a more mundane setting. You can never remember a time where another player was an antagonist.
- If you are in doubt as to whether a specific action qualifies as metafriending or metagrudging, consider whether you would do the same thing for your character's best friend, or worst enemy. Unless the current round has justified it, strive to treat all characters equally regardless of your own relationship to them.
Metafriending Examples:
- Giving a character additional access or a job because you are friends with the player who is playing that character.
- Giving a character additional access or a job because you know that the player has a lot of hours in that job.
- Not fighting a character because you are friends with the player who is playing that character.
- Ignoring your objective to kill a character because your character and theirs became friends in a previous round.
- Ignoring characters who you do not have established relationships with in order to interact with characters who you do.
Metagrudging Examples
- Not giving a character additional access or a job because you are mad at or don't like the player who is playing that character.
- Starting a fight with a character because of something that they did last round.
- Starting a fight with a character because they killed you while you were playing a different character.
- Targeting or harassing a character based on anything which that character did outside the current round.
- Targeting or harassing a character based on anything which the character's player did while not playing the character.
As a crew member on the space station, you are allied with Nanotrasen and the station as a whole from the start of the round. Acting like an antagonist as a non-antagonist role is known as 'self-antagonism'.
- Willfully assisting known antagonists is self-antagonism. Leeway is given in the case of bribes, coercion, or other forms of duress.
- Actively seeking conversion or transformation into an antagonist is considered self-antag.
- Behave as if the role you are given is your character's career. Don't exploit the impermanence of the rounds to justify committing excessive crimes, or to excuse antagonism (for example, bringing a changeling on the evacuation shuttle so it can be 'cured').
Please use the in-game guidebook to read the Metashield rules.
Command, Security, Antagonist, and Silicon roles shape the roleplay experience of the server. These roles are subsequently held to a higher standard of roleplay, and are subject to additional rules.
If you are someone who frequently gets overwhelmed or stressed playing video games, please consider that Command may not be the role for you. Command is a role with many additional responsibilities, and you will be expected to facilitate roleplay for all other players.
Free agents who choose to act like antagonists are still beholden to rules regarding escalation and antagonism.
Your character is presumed to be sane, competent in their duties, and able to make decisions to the benefit of the station.
- Giving away sensitive equipment should be avoided in these roles. Your character should value them deeply.
- Leeway is given to making deals with criminals if the deal benefits the safety or situation of the crew and station, or in the state of emergency or crisis.
2. These departments are required to read and follow Space Law and Alert Procedures to the best of their ability.
Circumstances and context may permit you to break laws. However, the fact that this rule is malleable is not an excuse to ignore it entirely.
- Your character is expected to uphold the law and maintain order aboard the station. Do not engage in lawbreaking activity, and ensure all laws are followed.
- Security is expected to intervene in criminal activity where possible.
- Heads of departments are expected to report criminal activity to Security and should cooperate with law enforcement.
3. Do not hire random crew to be your bodyguard(s), or promote unqualified crewmembers to Command positions.
If you require bodyguards or security details, talk to the Security department. If you need new Command staff, talk to the personnel in that related department.
- Do not use OOC knowledge of a particular player's qualifications to justify promoting them. Even if you know a character has played a Command role before, this should not justify promoting the character if they are playing a role without departmental qualifications, such as passenger or intern.
Notify your fellow crew and command via departmental radio and put your equipment in its proper places prior to going to cryo. If you need to leave IMMEDIATELY, please at least send an AHelp saying that you're leaving.
- In the absence of a Captain, a department head may choose to pick a successor and give their ID and equipment to that character.
1. You should seek to make the round more engaging and fun by using antagonistic activity as a vehicle to drive the narrative of a round.
- Succeeding at your objectives or 'greentexting' may be treated as a secondary objective. Your primary objective should be telling a story. Use your exemption from escalation, your antag tools and abilities, and roleplay to try and tell an interesting story for everyone involved.
2. Antagonists are free to complete their objectives through committing proportional damage. Through roleplay and escalation, damage becomes more proportional.
- Killing players unrelated to your immediate objective in a manner that results in their round removal should be avoided. Crew that attempt to interfere with your objectives are exempt from this. Examples of interference include the paramedic attempting to rescue the body of your target, the janitor finding and reporting your secret hideout full of contraband, and security doing their job.
- If you are concerned as to whether or not what you're about to do is allowed, feel free to AHelp for clarification. Lack of administrator response does not constitute approval.
Other antagonists are often solo agents that you may negotiate with at your own risk.
- If you are a team antagonist, you must work with your partners to complete any shared objectives.
- If you have a team leader, such as a Nuclear Operative Commander or a Head Revolutionary, you must follow their instructions unless it would result in your guaranteed death.
4. Purposefully using extreme tactics that have no in-round justification is strictly forbidden for all antagonists.
- More leeway is given to station-destroying antagonists, such as nuclear operatives.
- The Lowpop Clause: In populations of 20 people or lower, remember that your actions will have a much larger impact on the crew. You are encouraged not to kill more than just your targets, and to escalate your antagonist activities in harmony with the crew's response.
Examples include:
- Bad: Letting loose the singularity/tesla without the objective to 'die a glorious death' (commonly abbreviated as 'DAGD'), or similar methods of stationwide destruction
- Bad: Heavily damaging/spacing or camping arrivals/cryosleep
- Bad: Unnecessarily extending the round
- Good: During a lowpop round, opting to purchase less powerful or more subtle gear as a traitor.
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You may choose to create a silicon character with a recurring personality or mannerisms, but these traits should never take precedence over silicon laws. Admins reserve the right to intervene in instances where they feel a silicon character has deviated from the spirit of the role to the detriment of intended silicon gameplay.
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- Laws must be prioritized by their order.
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- Laws can redefine terms used in other laws.
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- You cannot request or actively seek out a law change.
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- You are not required to follow orders which are extremely unreasonable.
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- You must remain consistent with your interpretation of laws.
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- Anyone who your HUD displays as having a crewmember's ID is crew. This may include antagonists, zombies, brigged prisoners, or Syndicate operatives with stolen IDs.
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- Harm refers to physical harm, prioritized by immediacy and likelihood.
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- You may determine how you resolve conflicts between orders.
