Rules

Core Rules

These rules apply at all times, including between rounds.

1. Admins Have Final Say

These rules are not perfect. The rules attempt to clearly communicate what the admin team intends to be allowed and prohibited, but there are likely loopholes or other flaws that can be "lawyered". Don't attempt to manipulate the interpretation of the rules to suit your personal goals or to degrade the experience of other players. If you are unsure of something, follow the more restrictive option until you are able to ask an admin and get clarification.

Admins can override rules if they deem it in the best interest of the current round, server, and/or community at large. Online admins are able to make final interpretations of rules during a round. Even if you disagree with how an admin interprets a rule, you must still follow the interpretation they provide for you. Admin actions and interpretations of rules can be contested through staff complaints. If admins believe that you are an overall negative impact to the community or rounds, you will be banned. Admins will be held fully accountable for their actions if they exercise this privilege.

2. Don't Be a Dick

• Don't do anything with the goal of negatively affecting other players. Not everyone is going to enjoy every round. Killing someone is allowed in certain situations even though it might negatively affect them, but no one should be doing anything for the purpose of harming someone else's experience.

• Do not interact negatively with SSD/AFK players. Interactions to complete antagonist objectives or duties like security searches/arrests are always permitted.

3. No Sexual Content / ERP

Erotic Roleplay (commonly abbreviated as "ERP") and sexual content is not allowed. This includes direct and indirect mentions of sexual behavior or actions. Slight leeway is given to insults, but this rule is otherwise strictly enforced.

In-game romantic relationships should not become the focus of the game for you and anyone else involved.

Things that appear to be intended to or are likely to disturb players out of character are considered shock content and are not allowed.

Allowed:

• Telling someone that they are being a dickhead.
• Telling someone that you are going to kill the captain, as long as it is clear that you mean it in character.

Prohibited:

• Emoting sexual acts.
• Erotica content.
• Erotic or sexual memes.
• Memes which contain sexual content.
• Dedicating significant portions of rounds to romantic relationships, dating, or similar things.
• Emoting defecation or related acts.

4. No Metacommunication

Do not utilize any external means of communication to talk to other players who are connected to the same server, or who were connected to the same server during the current round. This is referred to as "metacomming" and includes any means of communication including text, voice, images, and video. This includes applications such as Discord, Steam, and other platforms, along with in-person communication.

Even if information is not being shared or abused, it may still be considered a violation of this rule. Due to the difficulty of determining if information is being shared, it will almost always be presumed that people who message another player they are in a round with, or who are in a voice call with another player during a round are sharing round information. Due to the difficulty of determining if users are abusing information that they are sharing, it will almost always be presumed that the information is being abused.

The only exemption to this rule is when all players are in the server lobby.

5. No Ban Evasion

Almost all bans may be appealed on our forums at forum.ss14.io in the ban appeals section. This is generally the only acceptable way to contact the administration team to discuss your ban and revise it if it is inappropriate, including if it is mistakenly applied.

Any attempt to circumvent or bypass a game ban will result in a voucher ban. Attempting to evade role bans by gaining access to or working in the capacity of a job you are banned from will result in a game ban. These bans are applied even if the evasion attempt is unsuccessful.

There are no exemptions for evading or attempting to evade game bans. Antagonists who impersonate or take over a role which they are banned from to aid in their goals are not considered to be evading their role ban.

6. Use Mostly English

You must be fluent in English enough to be able to not cause game issues, and to be able to communicate with game admins when necessary. You can use other languages in OOC and ingame IF the people you are talking to speak the language. If a game admin does not feel that you are fluent enough in English, they may kick you.

7. No Exploits / Cheats

The following are prohibited by this rule:

• bugs and exploits which have effects that persist beyond the current round,
• intentionally used bugs, exploits, and unintended behaviors which give the user an advantage over players who do not use them, even if their effects do not persist across rounds,
• evading or bypassing afk detection,
• anything which results in gaining elevated privileges, including admin permissions,
• external tools and client modifications, including macros, and
• anything which prevents another player who is not game banned from being able to play on the servers, not including in-character actions that do not persist across rounds.

Both attempts and successful use are prohibited.

8. No Multiaccounting

Use of multiple accounts is referred to as "multikey". the rule applies even if the accounts are not used at the same time, including if the old account is abandoned. All accounts may be banned if this rule is violated. You are responsible for everything done on and with your account. You are just as responsible for actions taken by other people using your account as you would be had you taken the actions themselves.

9. No AHELP Abuse

Admin help, or "ahelp", is the system used by admins to communicate with specific players in the game. Only use admin help for things requiring admin attention. If you ignore messages admins send to you via ahelp, or disconnect during an ahelp, you may be banned. If you urgently need to leave during an ahelp, you may do so but will likely need to continue the ahelp on the forums. Do not admin check, be hostile/aggressive, request events, or spam. IC methods of contacting admins, like prayers, faxes, red phones, and banana phones, should be used when there is not an issue.

Admins are not always online, but all ahelps are automatically relayed to discord. For various reasons, admins might not respond to an ahelp even if they've handled it. A lack of response does not necessarily mean that an ahelp was ignored.

Should I ahelp X?

You can ahelp anytime you genuinely think a player is breaking a rule. Not all ahelps end up being for something that an admin needs to intervene in, but that's ok, admins would rather have people occasionally report things that turn out to not be an issue than miss reports for actual issues because someone was unsure, or get those reports late because someone waited until the end of the round to be more sure.

The most common reason players give for not ahelping issues is that they don't want to waste admin time, but it only takes a few seconds for an admin to check if someone is an antagonist. If you are ahelping too many things, an admin will let you know. If you're not being told to stop reporting something or to report less things, then you can safely assume that you aren't causing any issues.

What should I include in an ahelp?

At a minimum, admins need to know what the issue is to be able to address an ahelp. Don't send ahelp messages with no information about what your question or the issue is. Messages like "hello" are often considered admin checking.

If you can, an ideal ahelp message includes what the issue is along with who is causing it and their character's name if possible.

Appropriate uses of ahelp:

• reporting people who you think are violating rules,
• asking questions about rules,
• asking for a temporary exemption from a rule, and
• request a minor gimmick, like a TC trade or item spawn.

Inappropriate uses of ahelp:

• checking if an admin is online, including sending messages without any information about the issue like "hello" or incomprehensible messages,
• being hostile or aggressive,
• requesting events, and
• spamming messages about the same issue.

10. No AHELP threats

This rule covers out-of-character (OOC) and in-character (IC) actions. Don't threaten to ahelp a player, don't tell them you are ahelping them, and don't tell them you did ahelp them. You can argue in character about Space Law, but do not argue about whether something is or is not against the rules. If you think someone is breaking a rule, ahelp them. If you don't think someone is breaking a rule, don't ahelp them. Either way, the best thing that you can do after is to continue in-character.

11. Minimum Age 16

All players must be at least 16 years old. Additionally, all players must act at least as mature as a 16 year old. Admins may ban someone who they believe is acting less mature than a 16 year old, even if the player is known to be significantly older than 16 years old.

Anyone who connects to the servers is a player, even if they don't actually play in a round.

12. Use Realistic-ish Characters

• No names of people or characters from the real world, you can do variations though.
• Must follow all other rules (no slurs/sexual names/etc)
• Usernames, objects, random characters, very "low effort" names, "meta" names, or otherwise implausible names cannot be used as names. See examples below.
• Admin rulings on IC names are final and disputes should be done through the forums, not by refusing to comply with an admin

Bad cannot be used by any species. Acceptable names can be used by any species.

Humans typically use the Firstname Lastname convention.

• Acceptable: Tom Fisher

• Acceptable: Spacey Chapman

• Acceptable: Jonald Drump

• Bad: Donald Trump

• Usernames, objects, random characters, very "low effort" names, "meta" names, or otherwise implausible names are not permitted.

• Bad: XxRobustxX

• Bad: SDpksSodjdfk

• Bad: Lkdsoisgoieun

• Bad: F4ith H3arth

• Bad: Greytide

• Bad: Passenger

• Bad: Urist McHands

• Bad: Admin

• Bad: Game-Master

• Bad: Joe Mamma

• Bad: Middle-Aged Man

• Bad: Operative Whiskey

13. No IC in OOC

Local Out of Character (LOOC) and Out of Character (OOC) channel are meant for things that don't relate to the current round. Using these channels to share round info is often referred to as "IC in OOC" or "ick ock".

Roleplay Rules

These rules only apply during a round. A round ends only when the round summary has appeared. All of these rules apply fully until the moment that the round summary appears, even while the arrivals shuttle is in transit.

Note: "Chad Mode" games are exempt from these rules. Roleplay rules do not apply to ghosts/spectators/observers while they are ghosts/spectators/observers. Dead chat is considered to be an in-game out of character chat channel.

1. Roleplay a Nrmal Person

• Do not use texting/messaging acronyms (ex: "lol", "wtf", "brb", "lmao", "thx", "sgtm") or emoticons (ex: ":)", "xD") in-character.
• Do not mention out-of-character (OOC) concepts like game admins or developers in character.
• Do not use emotes to bypass muted or accented speech.
• Do not use extremely low effort or impossible emotes.

Things you should not do:

• Say "lol did u c wat just happened" using in-character chat.
• Say "an admin exploded him" using in-character chat.
• Emote "can you give me some cheese" as a mouse.
• Emote "motions for you to order guns" or "asks you to order guns in sign language" as a mime.

Things you could do instead:

• Say "haha did you see what just happened?"
• Say "god blew him up" or "centcomm must have bluespaced a bomb to him"
• Point at cheese
• Point at the cargo order console then emote "shoots finger guns"

2. No Metagaming

Something that is "shielded" cannot be known by your character during a round until the "revealing condition" happens. This also means that your character cannot do things based on "shielded" information. Knowing or acting on something that is shielded before the revealing condition is met is referred to as metagaming.

Revealing conditions reveal the shielded information for the round, not for a specific instance. This means that once a revealing condition is met in a round, the shield no longer applies in any case for the remainder of the round.

3. No Round Stalling

This applies only on gamemodes with specific roles. Does not apply on Nomads gamemodes.

Rounds are intended to end eventually. Don't hold a round hostage by preventing it from coming to a natural end. If a majority of players in a round want the round to end, don't prevent it from ending. Recalling the shuttle or preventing it from being called can contribute to round stalling, but is not always round stalling. Leaving the station with the nuclear authentication disk while nuclear operatives are trying to get it is almost always considered round stalling. Leaving the station on the evacuation shuttle is not round stalling.

4. Respect Teams and Teamwork

Do not take or enable antagonist roles that you do not want to play. Solo antagonists and team antagonists are intended to cause issues for non-antagonists or the station. Antagonists are not required to exclusively cause issues, but their net impact on non-antagonists or the station should generally be negative.

Do not cause issues for your own team as a team antagonist.

5. Listen to your team leader

Captains lead all departments and other members of command. Department heads lead members of their department. Certain antagonist teams have team leaders, like nuclear operative commanders or head revolutionaries. You are not required to perfectly follow orders given to you by your leaders, but you should generally allow your leaders to lead and not interfere with their ability to. You can choose to ignore unreasonable orders, including ones which are will result in your death unless you are an antagonist with an objective that requires you to die.

Team antagonists have to listen to the leader of their antagonist team. Team antagonists do not have to listen to any other leaders, including leaders of other antagonist teams. Solo antagonists do not have to listen to any leaders at all.

6. Follow Reasonable Escalation

Antagonists are fully exempt from escalation rules. Non-antagonists who are in a conflict with antagonists are not exempt. Escalation should typically follow steps or a pattern of conflict types similar to:

• Verbal
• Non-harmful
• Non-lethal
• Lethal
• Permanently lethal

All new conflicts should start at the first step. A player should not escalate a conflict across steps without some escalation from the other party involved in the conflict. Players can skip steps to match the level of escalation that the other person is at, but should almost always not skip steps other than that. Players who attempt to deescalate conflicts will be given more leniency in escalating if the other party continues to escalate despite the attempt at de-escalation. You do not have to try to deescalate conflicts, but someone who watches you over the entire round, or over multiple rounds, should not feel that your goal is generally to escalate conflicts.

Conflicts or escalation can be indirect. When someone steals someone else's ID, the theft is a direct part of the conflict, but if the victim becomes trapped as a result of not having their ID to open a door, that is also considered part of the conflict and escalation. Do not randomly steal IDs from people.

Escalation does not have to be directed at a specific player to enter them into a conflict. Nuclear operatives who are trying to destroy the station are considered to be at the permanently lethal level of conflict with all crew on the station. Someone who kills a station pet has started some degree of conflict with all crewmembers. Someone who kills a mouse that a chef was caring for has started some degree of conflict with that chef.

You will be considered to be violating this rule if you escalate a conflict based on a poor or unreasonable assumption.

7. No Role Abandoning

This applies only on gamemodes with specific roles. Does not apply on Nomads gamemodes.

Do not join the round as a role that you don't intend to play. Do not enable antagonist roles that you don't intend to play. Abandoning a role includes not completing tasks that the role is expected to do, in addition to things like leaving the game. Members of command should almost all stay on the station until the emergency shuttle arrives. Enforcement of this rule is more strict for command and antagonist roles, and less strict for less important roles like passengers.

Violations of this rule typically result in temporary or indefinite role bans. We understand that you may need to leave round early or unexpectedly. If you are in an important role (which is relayed to you in chat upon receiving your role), you should notify command members so that they know you are leaving and attempt to cryosleep if possible. Space Station 14 is a game. Do not endanger the safety of yourself or others, and do not neglect important things to avoid leaving a round early, even if you have to leave immediately without notifying anyone. Role bans for disconnecting are typically only applied if there is a pattern, and are almost always temporary.

"Antag rolling" refers to a player abandoning their role if they do not get an antagonist role.

8. Stick to Your Role

This applies only on gamemodes with specific roles. Does not apply on Nomads gamemodes. Requesting job changes is not prohibited by this rule. This rule is loosened if the station is understaffed or if there is a significant threat to you.

Don't perform other people's jobs, especially where the relevance to you personally is low. This also covers performing the role of security.