prisoner RP is a daycare half the time

[Lyndomen]

Description

Prisoners are the most behaved people on station because our rules have set them up that any activity without security abuse = self antag. Surely there is a middle ground

Reproduction
Click prisoner, spawn in, beg sec for cooking supplies & backrubs

Screenshots

Additional context
I am making a PR to make prisoner antag eligible. I dont think this will solve the issue, but rules are modifiable via GitHub >:)

[deltanedas]

guards should get a backbone and not immediately rush to logi when daycare resident #3 demands exotic seeds or a toy box or a wt550 or whatever

[perryprog]

I think this is a really interesting problem, and it definitely is occurring more than it should. As a player, I do want to go over some of my own experiences I've had. (I've only been prisoner about three or four times, though when I'm on sec I usually interact with perma fairly often.)

• Prisoner meta says start of round you make your list of demands to give over to sec. I have seen this go over two ways:
  1. Sec does daycare duty. This can be okay, depending on how the roleplay works out. If the guard just tosses in a crate of your stuff wordlessly then that's no good. However, if they then use this as a medium to engage with the prisoner (you request instruments, guard asks "what got you into performing music", conversation goes from there), then I think this is fine.
  2. Sec half-heartedly goes through your list and attempts to get you things but either because of Actual Things happening in the station proper they don't get to it until like an hour later. Or they just forget that prisoners exist. I have seen this lead to interesting roleplay: round-start I ask for some light replacements, a trash bag, and some space cleaner. It takes an hour and a half for that to get fulfilled despite repeated reminders. This round particularly led to an interesting dynamic where we ended up having three wardens (revolving door go brr) and various issues with security neglecting prison so much that an attorney eventually recommended my unconditional release. I really enjoyed this round, even if it mainly arose out of a string of accidents.
• What DOESN'T happen is the guard/warden says "no you can't have a few plushies, you're a prisoner, you don't need plushies". This is somewhat interesting, but I think this comes from the idea that (from the guard's side) we want to make sure the player (not character) who's in perma is getting some form of entertainment. Yes, they did pick prisoner, but that doesn't mean you picked... real-life prisoner. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I'm not sure if it's something we can change in a way that leads to compelling roleplay.
• Despite the current rules, I have consistently seen certain players who choose prisoner self-antag to an extreme, taking every chance they can to escape. If we were to imagine this as being allowable in those instances, I do want to point out that in every single case it led to significant OOC frustration. While a part of this is likely attributable to the fact that it was a blatant self-antagonism, I do think a decent part of the frustration is that... dealing with people who are simply one-dimensionally hostile against you simply because you're in security is kinda annoying. I have mixed feelings on this since... yes, it does make sense for prisoners to despise security, it is also consistently leading to out-of-character frustration which would make me concerned if this sort of behavior was encouraged.

So, what I can imagine for a middle ground: I do think prison escapes are interesting gameplay, but I don't think prisoner escapes that are just... "slip sec and stab stab stab" are. Maybe we can encourage prisoner escapes where avoidance from security is encouraged instead of confrontation. Could we introduce a non-syndicate antagonist role that is basically... arrive at CentCom unrestrained, but you have a pacifist implant? A pacifism implant might be overdoing it, and the alternative is that the rules are revised to be something like what the wiki currently (falsely) suggests is allowed: escape attempts where you do not kill are okay, and if you crit someone, you get help for that person immediately.

Also, I do think that prisoners should be antag eligible. I have to admit I (somehow) didn't realize this was the case, and the above suggestion is written with the assumption that they are—this would simply be another antagonist role that prisoners would be opt-in eligible for.

Anyway. These are just my rambly thoughts as a player—hopefully they help.

[Aikakakah]

I've played perma plenty of times and I've escaped plenty of times. I agree that it actually gives security something to do, especially on those greenshifts where babysitting perma ends up being the most boring thing in the world. I should point out that in all my escape attempts (there are a lot, don't look into it), I've never resorted to violence against an officer, as that would give them the excuse to utilize solitary confinement, stasis, etc.

My most recent escape was with Garf. A situation with the guards led to Ramona convincing an engineer to help them out, and once they had escaped perma, they hid out in Da Big Cheese's shop in a closet until he was able to get them disguises. That's how an escape should play out. No violence, just fun shenanigans. At least until security tracked us down via the trackers.

On that note, the roundstart trackers that permas have do make a passive escape difficult, and frankly, with the current rules about permas escaping, we shouldn't have them. Fugitives don't spawn in with trackers, so I do think permas should get the same treatment. An implanted tracker prevents a perma from truly slipping into the crowd disguised, and if security keeps finding them via the crew monitor, I can see why some players would resort to violence from frustration at that point.

So I think that the rules on escaping should be adjusted. Allow for more leniency to escape, but allow security to punish more heavily for violent escape attempts, such as critting an officer. A pacifism implant would be overdoing it, as it would prevent you from throwing soap. I don't think that it should be made into an antagonist role, as that might be metagamed by some players, plus it might lock other permas out of the chance to escape even if they have a very good reason to do so.

Another suggestion to combat the violent permas: an opt-in, whitelisted antag role for permas that you are either very likely, or always going to get. I'm aware that there are plenty of people with a whitelist that will play the game simply to win, but there are more players who play the game to roleplay. And escaping perma and avoiding additional violence/murder charges on your sentence? Sounds great!