Rules

Hey! Important Server Information! This is information used by Admins on-server! Please make sure to read these contents and understand them; ignorance is not an excuse!

Looking for Standard Operating Procedure or other in-character policies? Check Jobs for a comprehensive list of roles (including Antagonists) and our policies regarding them, or Space Law for a list of all in-character crimes and the Guide to Security.

Bubberstation Rules

Authored by Dr. Fragenstien#5867, Nut#6378, Floof Ball#0798, Snaffle15 and Bangle

For past and present headmin rulings, see Headmin Rulings.

Maintained by rin#0142 and Zender.

OOC Conduct Rules

Core Rule 0: Discretion and Intervention Rule

All rules are to be followed to the spirit, not the letter. Enforcement of these rules is at the discretion of admins. In-game administration rulings are final. Admins are accountable for any consequences if they use this rule. Admins are also allowed to intervene in rounds when it is in the best interest of the playerbase.

If you regularly come close to breaking the rules without actually breaking them, it will be treated as if the rules were broken.

Core Rule 1: Mutual Respect Rule

Don't be a dick. Show respect to everyone, regardless of their origin, beliefs, kinks or identity. We're all here to have fun, and this community is to be a positive space, so keep that atmosphere when playing here. Hate speech, harassment, or otherwise abusive/toxic behavior is not allowed. Going out of your way to seriously negatively impact or end the round for someone with little IC justification is against the rules.

• No slurs of any kind, regardless of intention, background, or reasoning.
• No prejudice based on the background of a person's sexuality, race, or religious beliefs.
• No fighting in OOC channels; not limited to, insulting, false accusations, active aggression.

If told to stop arguing by staff, you are expected to drop the topic. If both parties take it to private DMs, that is their choice--but continuation may result in bans/timeouts/mutes.

Core Rule 2: Mis/Metacommunications Rule

Avoid metagaming. This includes:

• utilizing information that your character wouldn't naturally possess within reasonable limits.
• assuming the intentions or goals of any antagonists or enemy players without witnessing them or being informed in-round.
• Actively communicating with others players OOC about the events of the round, whether on the server or on any other server, during that round. This does not include plans to join games together, or talk in-character, particularly if they do not have negative consequences.

This is one of the only rules on Bubberstation that enforces on actions in other servers, be careful.

Core Rule 3: Misused Mechanics Rule

Deliberate abuse of unintended mechanics or exploits, outside the game or within it, to further your in-game means is considered to be an OOC rulebreak. This rule operates on good faith, namely, that there is interest in leveling the playing-field where appropriate to other players.

Additionally, it is against the rules to:

• Use ghost roles to significantly impact the station or raid ghost role areas. Any significant interaction between the station and ghost roles should be pre-approved by submitting an OPFOR request or contacting staff.
• Hide on the interlink to avoid consequences, such as Security hunting you, or an antagonist seeking to assassinate you.

Core Rule 4: Good Sportsmanship

Conflict is a core principle of Bubberstation’s roleplay; Suiciding or raging ("salting") because you got caught or converted is against the rules, and will result in administrative action.

Additionally, It is against the rules to respawn as the same (or very similar) character in the same round without permission from an admin. Looting people who are SSD before they are valid to be placed in cryogenic storage is against the rules, with exceptions allowed for things like antagonist objectives and station critical items like the nuclear authentication disk.

Not everything will always go as planned, and things may happen that you couldn’t predict or didn’t want to happen. We encourage players to play along in unexpected scenarios, but we can’t make people play when they don’t want to. If you find yourself converted to be an antag you didn’t want to play, you should LOOC your new “team” to let them know and cryo. Cryoing or ghosting over a simple brig sentence is considered bad form; it’s the risk you take when you play antag.

If you think that other players are forcing unreasonable punishments on your character, ahelp for a ruling.

Core Rule 5: OOC Forgiveness

This is a policy that extends across the rounds and is inherently integral to the life of round-to-round situations. It entails from harassing someone over OOC concerning their antagonist actions within the round to other failures. If a Doctor botches a surgery in one round and you refuse to be treated by them in another one, it isn't fair to that player to deny them the opportunity and hold something against them for the actions of a prior situation.

However, in the regards of antagonists, this means if an antagonist carries out actions against your character, you are not expected to remember this in future rounds. Such as the example of

• Antagonist Methods (An antagonist killed you with a trap, so in a future round, you see them setting up a similar trap so you immediately deduce from your out of character experience that they are an antagonist this round)
• Player Failures/Mistakes (Give fellow players the opportunity to correct themselves)

Special Rule: EORG

EORG (End of Round Grief) is essentially a deathmatch at the end of the round. This is only at the following times and areas:

• Central Command (the place the shuttle lands at)
• As soon as the 'round end' timer begins and credits begin to roll (not during any transit period).

EORG prepping to a severe extent is frowned upon: the difference being when you do it 30 seconds to a minute before landing, and just bringing things onboard to do it.

Roleplay Rules

Roleplay Rule 1: Storytellers

It is the responsibility and expectation of all players to create an ideal environment for roleplay, where players cooperate to create a fun and engaging story. Attempts must be made to preserve roleplay when possible. This means that you are in violation of this rule if you:

• Violate the description of your character in roleplay (Also known as "breaking character,") for any reason, though exceptionally so if it is harmful to others,
• Have not put in minimum effort to create, and play, a character. This means that your flavor text needs to make a minimum attempt (300 characters) to describe your character; your OOC notes should make a reasonable effort to communicate your OOC preferences, and none of your character descriptions should contain memes, or references to them, in place of real description. Expect that if you have egregiously low-quality descriptions, admins will request you leave the round and re-write them in order to play.
• Do not assume, at all times, that any interaction with another player is going to involve roleplay first and give them the space to do so. This is a blanket rule covering people interrupting/ruining roleplay situations.
• Have NSFW descriptions not properly contained in NSFW flavortext.

Roleplay Rule 2: Intent and Escalation

Before ending roleplay and transitioning to combat mechanics, you are required to use either LOOC, an emote, or the Combat Indicator to indicate clearly that the situation will now be resolved with mechanical combat.

You do not have to wait after using the combat indicator to initiate combat, but do wait for at least 2 seconds if the typing indicator is still up.

Note: The 2 seconds requirement is not rigid, it is a rule of thumb. The standard allowance for the requirement, if you need a number, is ±1/2 seconds.

• This is a rule specifically against attacks with improper or low escalation that interrupt roleplay. Surprise/spontaneous attacks or ambushes are never permitted, unless both of the following criteria are met:
  1. You have strong IC justification to attack the player in the manner that you are.
  2. The player is not roleplaying during the time of the ambush.

_{It is important to note that though it may seem so, activating CI alone is not sufficient to make an attack not spontaneous. You need to wait at least 2 seconds for an attack with CI to be considered not spontaneous, with the usual standard deviation.}

If any party involved calls for assistance from other players, attempts to flee without indication, or otherwise attempts to use this rule to gain an undue advantage in combat, that is a violation of this rule and repeat offenses may be handled administratively. If this happens, it can be considered an escalation and attacks can be thrown freely.

For admins: The way this is chiefly enforced is by checking the Speech Indicator log for the current round. If there was no indication beforehand, and the exceptional circumstances are not met, then there is a rulebreak.

If you do not wish to continue combat, you can use the ‘surrender’ verb, but do not hold it against anyone if it isn’t honored in the heat of the moment.

TBD: De-Escalation Policy

Roleplay Rule 3: Round Removal

Do not do anything that would prevent a player from playing the round as their character. This includes, but is not limited to:

• leaving their body unrecoverable,
• making drastic alterations to their character without their consent
• leaving them in a location they cannot reasonably escape or interact with any other characters.

Functional round-removal is still round-removal.

This rule does not apply if it is unreasonable to contain the character, such as antagonists who revive themselves, teleport, or have explosive implants, and Security Officers that keep rushing to fight after being revived; when in doubt, adminhelp for a ruling.

This rule does not apply under certain circumstances, such as if a security officer repeatedly returns to the fight more than twice. For example, a sec officer may come after an antagonist twice, before being subject to the threat of round removal, i.e. an antagonist may, after killing the same security officer three times in a short period, (30 minutes), round remove the officer to prevent them from returning again for another attack.

Roleplay Rule 4: Station Integrity

Unless directly related to your objectives, do not intentionally and excessively grief, or intentionally make the station generally uninhabitable, as an antagonist or otherwise.

Examples of this are:

• Filling the air distro with plasma
• Destruction greater in radius than one (1) Syndicate Bomb or Maxcap
• Shocking all doors as AI

Roleplay Rule 5: Believable Characters and Self-Antagonism

The following must be true about any character you play on this server:

• Is at least 18 years of age and physically and mentally mature
• Is not a copy or direct reference to an existing character in media or a real person.
• Is a species from, or written to fit, the setting (You may draw inspiration from an existing character, story or species as long as this is true)
• Takes actions that are believable for someone existing in the setting. Self-antagging and validhunting are two examples of activities that are not believable, presented below, but they are not the only examples.
• Does not use netspeak when speaking aloud (LOL, Lmao, :3, gyatt, etc. This is fine over PDA.) and properly uses OOC and IC channels.
• Values their job, their life, and the lives and feelings of others.

Out-of-character feelings or behavior should not be a factor in interactions, conflict with characters should be fueled by IC reasons that come through interaction and reaction. Essentially, treat people in-character based off of who they are in-character, not based off of their role, or their status as an antagonist.

If you are displeased with the reputation your character has built with another character, you are expected to communicate out of character and come to an understanding before involving admins.

Rules vs Policy, how do they interact?

Space Law and Job Guides are in-character documents and violations should be handled by the appropriate roles where possible, such as crimes being solved by Security. However, repeated violations to the detriment of others’ experiences, especially as Command, are punishable with a job or server ban. Command staff, especially, are expected to act reasonably, as they are vital to the round and hold a lot of power over Crew.

Self-Antagonism

Self antagonism is where a player, that is not an antagonist, breaks Space Law or Standard Operating Procedure, effectively making themselves an antagonist by pitting themselves against the rest of the station. In order to do this, a player must have strong in-character reasoning to do so, or have an accepted OPFOR. Exceptions may be made at admins' discretion for cases that apply the Discretion and Intervention rule.

Valid-Hunting

Valid-hunting specifically refers to pursuing a perceived antagonist or event character (though they need not actually be one) in order to disrupt them, as any role not specifically meant to be doing such, outside of Red Alert.

It is always reasonable to defend yourself or someone close to you from imminent danger, or a station-wide threat, such as nuclear operatives, blob, and more. Should the danger not be imminent, it is at most permitted for a player to arm up, barricade and prepare to protect themselves.

Roleplay Rule 6: Victory is Secondary

Players may not take actions, or play in a way that prioritizes their own power above, or to the detriment of, all else: two examples of these sorts of actions, Godmodding and powergaming, are present below, though they are not the only examples of a violation of this rule. Any efforts to make the normal player more powerful should come with an equivalent contribution to roleplay.

Godmodding

Godmodding is where a player puts themselves into a state in which they are so powerful that they are effectively without counter, outside of cases that are designed to do such like Heretic ascensions.

Any role (including antagonists) is allowed to prepare and use what is available through that role to defend itself, assuming the situation warrants it, with some notable exceptions due to their ability to make a player nearly impossible to defeat.

Powergaming

Powergaming is the the act of using in-game mechanics, external information, and/or roleplay concepts to favor their own character/story, and give an undue advantage.

Powergaming can take several forms, but it is generally rooted in “playing to win” or a focus on the game as a game to the detriment, or instead of roleplay. Playing your character, and allowing others to do so, should always take precedent over gameplay, no matter what position you are in. When a player extends beyond their role, or goes beyond what a reasonable character would do in order to gain an advantage, they are powergaming.

Remember, you are on this server to engage people and make stories. It is your responsibility to be considerate of, and contribute to, others' fun, not just your own.

Murderboning

Murderbone is where a player plays a role (such as a non-round-ending antagonist, guard, or Security) for the express purpose of killing other players. Murderbone applies if and only if the player exclusively kills, without any real reasoning or roleplay, OR if the player intentionally acts to bait escalation and force other people to attack them, in order to try to prevent this from counting as murderboning.

While powergaming is rooted in "playing to win," this is more accurately defined as "playing to ensure everyone else loses." Defending oneself is almost never murderbone, even if many people die.

ERP Rules

ERP Rule 0: Player Consent & Preference Breaks

When an action is committed that violates the sexual preferences of another player, players, or group of players in a manner intended to purposely disgust, harm, or otherwise harass, this is called a preference break. Intent is the most important element, as accidents happen-- however, a preference break is a serious violation of our rules, and is met with harsh punishments both to deter them from happening in the first place, and to rectify issues caused by them. Preference breaks are always a ban on a clear, first-time offense. The length will vary, though most cases will be permanent. For the safety of our players and the environment, we take players' consent very seriously. You should, too.

ERP Rule 1: Content Warning

Bubberstation allows players to roleplay sexual content alongside violence and disturbing themes in SS13. Players must acknowledge the possibility of encountering uncomfortable content. Kinkshaming is prohibited, and any observed rule-breaking should be reported to staff. Witch hunts are strictly forbidden; let admins handle investigations and punishments. Disable ghost ears and eyes if you wish to avoid seeing unwanted content. All scenes featuring non-con, dub-con, gore, vore, watersports, monsters, and scat must be filtered with Subtler Anti-Ghost. If you intend to RP a fetish beyond vanilla and are unsure where it falls, ahelp.

ERP Rule 2: Character Eligibility

To use a character in an erotic context, they must adhere to the following:

• Being that is sapient, and player controlled.
• Being able to communicate in some form.
• Being of sexual maturity for its species. All characters must be mature and over 18 years of age.
• Station Pets, such as Ian, Poly, Paperwork, etc, are not allowed.

ERP Rule 3: Closed Doors and Foul Deeds

ERP protections can be classified into 3 levels depending on area: Public, Private, and Protected. Abusing these rules to harass people engaging in ERP or to avoid IC consequences for your actions is forbidden.

Type of Space	Public	Private	Protected
Definition	Places people are expected to be or need to be in, such as departments, operating theaters, brig cells, or the SM engine room.	Places that the average person has no reason to be: locked, windowless rooms, private offices, abandoned maint rooms, remote places off-station.	Rooms on the Interlink, Ghost cafe, and the hotel.
Policy	No protections. ERP is allowed here as long as it’s generally vanilla. Sexual violence, unsanitary fetishes, or niche interests considered uncomfortable by most are not allowed here.	You are still considered to be a part of the round. If a scene is intruded upon, the intruder must leave if asked unless they have strong IC justification to be there/interrupt. If your objective target is in a scene here, you must ahelp to get a new target.	Should never be intruded on under any circumstances.

As a member of Command, you shouldn't leave the station's Z-levels in a non-emergency without clocking out and returning your job-specific equipment to your locker. This includes going to the Interlink. Failing to do so repeatedly, especially if it leads to the displacement of the nuclear authentication disk, will lead to administrative action.

Reading through the rules before you whitelist? Check out our Guide to Whitelisting page for help filling out your application.

Frequently Asked Questions

What about [insert specific scenario here]?

The rules cannot possibly cover all possible scenarios. Like always, admins reserve the right to make rulings in the best interest of the server and its community. That said, it’s entirely possible that we missed something important! Always be asking questions, and if we see the same thing happen repeatedly, we can add that here as an example.

What counts as “IC justification” to interrupt an ERP scene?

First of all, if you’re not flexible enough to pivot if your ERP is interrupted you should take it to the interlink. The game will not stop for you if you’re on the station.

Now, what is and is not an okay justification? In general, you shouldn’t have an issue if you follow the guideline of “if you need someone or something in the space or the space itself and there are no alternatives” you’ll be fine. Here are a few examples:

Okay

• The supermatter is going critical, and the only person with engineering access is in a scene. You can drag them out to do their job.
• The beds are full in medbay and you need to use the operating theatre, but there’s a couple making out in there. You can kick them out.
• You’re a detective and you return to your office to a couple assistants making a “mess” in there. You can kick them out, or work around them, but you do not have to give up your office to them.

Ahelp

• You have a kill or theft objective but the room they’re in is being used for sexy time. Ahelp to get a new objective, or use wall peirce LOOC to check if they can be cool with your disruption

Not Okay

• Barging into a dorm because you “need to take a piss”
• Breaking into the HOS’s office while they’re in a scene to handle a single prisoner while the warden and other security is available.
• Remodeling a maint room people are hiding away in for their scene.

Discord Rules

Discord rules apply to all OOC chats, and vice versa. It is not necessarily exclusive to the Discord.

Please note that Discord bans are community bans, and if you are banned from the Discord, it's likely that you will also be banned from the game. Permanent Discord bans may be accompanied by a server ban at the banning admin's leisure.

Rule 1: Age and Safety

If you are below the age of 18, you are not allowed to play here. For the safety of our playerbase, we set the minimum age at 18. Should you be suspected of being underage for any reason (valid or not,) the admin team reserves the right to perform an ID check. If you fail this ID check, you will not be allowed to play.

This is not only for your safety as a player, but for the safety of everyone around you.

Bubberstation reserves the right to send any whitelists, or other information that is received, indicating that you are below the age of 18, or have joined a 18+ server while under 18, to other 18+ servers.

Rule 2: Adminhelp

Should something occur that requires staff intervention, you understand that you are expected to create an ahelp ticket in-game, or if no admins are online, an ahelp on the Discord.

Additionally, our staff are volunteers, and are entitled to listen to you in-so-far as you follow our guidelines (see the Rules page, specifically core rule 1) on conduct while reporting.

If you fail to properly cooperate with staff, or don't report at all, you understand that your issues may go unheard.

Rule 3: Content Warning

This is by far the most important Discord rule currently in effect. Read this and do not run afoul of it, as it is the most likely to cause a permanent ban immediately.

Our server allows a wide variety of roleplay, erotic and otherwise, and may have adult content that some find disturbing or "triggering," such as:

• extreme violence and gore,
• foul language, and graphic imagery.
• sexual content.

You are expected to expect this from the server.

Secondly, discriminatory comments, both in OOC chats and on Discord are not allowed, including but not limited to:

• Disparaging comments or statements against sex, gender, race, or kinks
• provoking other users

If you have issues with any of these three rules, you are free to leave the Discord server.