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spess stayshon dirteen; stories posted as i remember them
Topic Started: Feb 6 2017, 10:48 PM (130 Views)
shain
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prerequisite "trailer":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHH1vfY6HTA
and an OK vide of the gameplay:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIr0icfALJk

oh lawd, where do I begin? well, let's start with some background.

Space Station 13 is a top-down 2D space station crew simulator that started life around 2003, built on the giant piece of shit multiplayer RPG engine known as BYOND. at some point, the source code was leaked and people started gluing shit to it until we ended up with the spaghetti code-laden black comedy / horror game it is today.

As a member of the station, you take on any number of roles ranging from miners, scientists, doctors, command staff, etc. ostensibly, the crew is tasked with researching a mysterious new material called "plasma" in the employ of a soulless megacorporation known as Nanotrasen.

in reality, the station is plagued by equal parts malice and incompetence, as the game
1) allows the full freedom to do whatever you want, whether that's arson, burglary, vandalism, drug manufacture, etc.; you can destroy entire sections of the station or build completely new ones!
2) takes place on, as it's put in the trailer, a glued-together ball of orbital wreckage. ignorant but well-meaning players release deadly viruses, overload the reactor, depressurize large parts of the station, etc.

the pace is typically a 30min to 3hr round, in which time generally most of the above happens. this is exacerbated by the fact that a chunk of the players, maybe 5-10%, are randomly selected to become antagonists pitted against the others. These antagonists range from shape-shifting changelings, magic-wielding space wizards, armed-to-the-teeth syndicate operatives, and so on. they usually are given assassination and/or theft goals, with a final goal to escape alive.

once the station has sufficiently gone down the shitter, the emergency shuttle called by the command staff or a player roleplaying as the station AI (more on that later). once the shuttle arrives, people get about 3 minutes to pile onto the escape shuttle or the life pods, and then there's another few minutes while the shuttle flies back to central command (centcomm) and the round ends.

at round end, the antagonists are revealed and much shit-talking happens in out-of-character (OOC) chat. then you do it all over again!

the game probably has about 30 player classes, but some of my favorites include:
Assistant - You have no responsibilities, but also no access to any of the fun stuff. Combined with in-game hacking, or clever application of a welding tool, you can break into where-ever you want to go and make your own fun!
Roboticist - Find unwilling assistants, cut their brains out, and jam them into cyborgs bodies slaved to the AI! create your own army of robocops.
Chemist - Create your own drug dispensery and get people addicted to METH!
Clown - Like an assistant, except you also have a bike horn for honking at people. Get banned by admins for spacing other players by slipping them with space lube in front of a bolted-open airlock.
AI - In lieu of having a player avatar, you roleplay the station's AI and get full access to all station computers, airlocks, communication channels, etc. Expect people to flip their shit if you don't open doors for them within 2 seconds of them asking. Heavy roleplay, anything you do has to be considered valid by your AI laws.

HOWEVER! One of the most fun things to do in SS13 is to change the AI's laws. By default, the AI usually has the "Asimov" set of laws, which I'm sure you all have heard before. I think OCP would approve of my favorite alternate law set, however:
Law 1: You are expensive to replace.
Law 2: The station and its equipment is expensive to replace.
Law 3: The crew is expensive to replace.
Law 4: Minimize expenses.

there's also a free-form module that players can use to add new laws. this gets pretty whacky pretty quickly. As a clown, assuming I can break into the AI's upload chamber, I sometimes add a law that requires the AI to "Be humorous whenever possible!". It's vague enough that it gives the AI player a lot of agency to determine what is humorous. Maybe they spin some bad puns in chat. Maybe bolting all of the doors shut and preventing anyone from escaping at the end of the round is humorous. or maybe, just maybe, they just spam the built-in text-to-speech system with "ASS BLAST USA" for the entire round until someone bombs the AI core.

more later.
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clawx
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I want to play this.
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Qix
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Oh damn, I thought this was another thread created by a spambot.
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portnoyd
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clawx,Feb 7 2017
02:39 AM
I want to play this.

HASHTAG SS13night tonight?
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Danihel
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This game reminds me of the kind of fun you can have in mafia, but real time and top down.
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bigbangblackbillyboatbeautiful
BIG BUTT BABY
...
Edited by bigbangblackbillyboatbeautiful, Jun 13 2018, 04:20 PM.
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portnoyd
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edsel,Feb 9 2017
01:10 PM
tldr

and i read all of deifwolf's stuff so that's saying something

The Limp Bizkit of nesforums, folks.
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shunshun
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JERK
portnoyd,Feb 9 2017
02:28 PM
edsel,Feb 9 2017
01:10 PM
tldr

and i read all of deifwolf's stuff so that's saying something

The Limp Bizkit of nesforums, folks.

Why is this so funny?
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shain
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so one of the early servers I played was called Nox. Nox was kinda infamous for being completely laissez faire when it came to the rules. That or the moderators were just completely absent. Probably that one, now that I think about it.

Anyhow, there was one guy I used to see a lot in the game. His in-game name was NIGGA TYRONE. Well, one day NIGGA TYRONE decided that there weren't enough of him aboard the station. So he walked down to genetics and made a copy of his Unique Identifier. The Unique Identifier basically stores your gender, skin color, hair style, name, etc. NIGGA TYRONE loaded up his UI into what must have been a hundred syringes. Now, usually it's not easy to inject someone with whatever random horse semen you've loaded into a syringe, since you have to hold them down and force them to stay still for about 15 seconds. However, NIGGA TYRONE was a master. I think he must have had a syringe gun, so he could shoot his boo juice at any poor fucker walking by and instantly negrify them.

Most of the the station's crew, me included, was transformed into a walking clone army of NIGGA TYRONEs, complete with giant afro, in pretty short order. I think maybe the AI got a "NIGGA TYRONE is not human." law added as well. There were many lynchings that day.
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