How to Play Colonial Marines

[Nikov]

The fundamental question is this: is Colonial Marines a server where we play a top-down shooter and roleplay while we do so, or is it a server where we roleplay and play a top-down shooter while we do so? A number of players view this as a military roleplaying server, others a survivor horror roleplaying server, and still others just go to get their combat on. I wish to speak to this question.

I can understand all of these as valid ways to enjoy the server, but those who exclusively roleplay and those who exclusively fight are working at cross purposes. Joke characters with four-foot purple beards and lime green eyes making Dwarf Fortress references detract from the game of the grizzled veterans and wide-eyed recruits. Likewise, the 'non-combatant' medic refusing to draw a weapon all round and sobbing in the corner is leaving a hole in the line of the stalwart Marines. It needs to be decided which of these two extremes is preferred on the server; I have my suspicions a hardcore roleplayer who is terrible at combat is preferred by the administration, but may be unappreciated by a large group of the player base.

I play as a squad leader and have to be aware of the sort of players the dice give me. Sometimes I get combat-happy rambos with no interest in orders. These people run off from the squad and find somewhere to shoot aliens. Other times I get roleplay-intensive screwballs who I emphathize with but would really like to stop playing General Hospital in the FOB chapel and start treating his squad on the line. Fundamentally, however, the fobbit is writing a story, even if its the story of how much his squad leader thinks he's a waste of radio bandwidth. However, the out-of-character fighter is not writing a story. He is, at best, the guy who died at 5:21 in the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan. Don't remember him? He's waaaaay back in the shot, out of focus, an extra who tripped on an extension cord next to craft services. He was never in-character and his death just adds to a general atmosphere.

The ideal player, however, is a good gameplayer and good roleplayer who's character is a believable Marine. There are some snowflake characters; combat princesses as opposed to combat studs. One's cigar chewing bravado I can believe, one has a very dangerous hairstyle to wear around airlock machinery. There are believable archetypes of all sorts for the learning or casual roleplayer to fit into. Its not that much to ask that the fighters roleplay fighters, not clowns with RPGs.

But what about aliens? The story is never about them. They are the round's antagonist, the monster off-screen, the source of conflict. They exist to push the story that the Marines write. Nobody has written a character dossier about Drone (442)'s slow and steady evolution into a wise and respected queen. A player might have a one-off story about the time they snuck a Hunter into surgery and protected unborn embryos with bloody zeal, and that's well and good. Its roleplaying. But in the end Hunter (541) and Larva (352) are lost in anonymity and only the nurse and wounded Marine who burst into the room to clear them out will have a nod and a wink next round. The game's mechanics and human nature do not lend to memorable stories being written about the expendable and unnamed xenomorphs. All we humans care about are individuals with names who we can relate to; faces and not the faceless.

You can see this in all the classic science fiction. Starship Troopers is about soldiers in nuclear armed armor dropping on planets to lay waste to a nameless, faceless horde of bugs (the communist North Koreans and Chinese). The story is about soldiers struggling against the tyrannical and faceless threat the author saw in Communist expansion. The Forever War is about soldiers in nuclear powered armor landing on planetoids orbiting collapsars to fight a frighteningly capable force of nameless, faceless clones (the North Vietnamese Army). The story is about soldiers returning from relativistic conflict to see the homefront they fight for change into something unrecognizable each time as the author saw after Vietnam. Watch Aliens. The story is protecting a surrogate mother and child from the personification of rape and violence. The characters are human, the antagonist is something Other, and the story is preserving humanity over that otherness.

So here we are. What is the story of a Colonial Marines round? What is humanity fighting for? Survivors? They're killed or stuffed away as minor characters. The corporate liason? Entirely unsympathetic, an antagonist in and of himself. The commander's pride? They're frequently mutinied against. Vainglory? The old German expression for Iron Cross-seeking fools, "sore throat"?

I humbly posit that our story is one of men-in-arms fighting for their brothers-in-arms against the perfect enemy. There are no atrocities save what we inflict upon ourselves, because the alien is amoral. There are no excesses of violence against the enemy, because the conflict is total. As a perfect enemy it does not exist to emerge victorious. It exists to threaten defeat, which humanity will deserve only by its failings, its infighting, its incompetence, its pettiness.

Because of this, when you design and play your Marine, ship's doctor or survivor, bear in mind that the onus of writing each round's story is on you. If you are bad at combat make your character bad at combat in a believable sense. You're the recruit, you're the replacement, you're the butterfingered greenhorn. Better still, take a non-combat role. Likewise if you're good at something capitalize your character around that strength, but still in a believable way. Fight the urge to Mary Sue. Stress out, lose your cool, break down when the pretty face in the squad gets smeared across the wall.

But when you're an alien remember; you're there to be the antagonist. You're there to threaten defeat, to bring out emotion, to challenge the enemy commander's grip on his platoon and test the bonds of loyalty between the abducted squad leader and the squadmates behind him. Don't metagame or powergame. Game-master. Make your nests terrifying and organic, not checkerboards of doors and resin nests. Emote over your captives. Pile them in dark rooms filled with gore and burst hosts. Toy with your victims. Wound, infect, encircle. Smash the lights and growl from the darkness, instead of pouncing and severing their head. Use the pretty one for bait and leave the decapitated body of the purple-bearded idiot to be found in a pile of blood.

You will find this far more rewarding, I promise you.

[Dyne]

Drone[442] that Evolved from Larva[665] is the hero this Hive deserves. o_o7
And any emoting and fairplay alien deserves my respect, same as marine that doesnt shoot cute lizard-dogs on sight.

The main idea Nikov preaches is even more important though- many of us are here to write a good story, a believable one, a scary one.
One of blood and toil and horror and sacrifice.
"Winning" or "losing" doesn't matter that much, if the story was weaved in an interesting way,
with heroic charges and last stands, and some competent corporal nuking it all.

[GingerCultLeader]

As xeno (when I am not playing runner or hunter) I been laying on top of captured marines. I would emote rolling around on them growling and twitching limbs or baring fangs. Funniest response I got was when I was a larva and I laid on this one marine who was stuck to the bed. I rested and emoted something (I don't remember) and the marine emoted "Vomits in his mouth".

[Mycroft Macarthur]

i have to be honest, this is a topic worthy of discussion indeed, as a community i feel it truly is important that we all come together and decide just what the community and the game itself is supposed to BE, what it IS and yet at the same time i cannot help but think of one thing.

i've been here since way WAY back when exadv1 along with a man named Thief Jack ran the show, i've seen alot of shit come and go in my time, Exadv1 always wanted SS13 to be a roleplaying game set in space and now that i see how far its come since the old days before we even had tasers or flashbangs or aliens, now that we have working surgical systems and we've had so many variations of the engine and firearms and vendors and cooking and MORE, i feel it is truly a shame he is no longer with us because his dream for this game has been realised in so many ways, i wonder just what he thinks about what it is he created and brought about, just what is it he thinks about where SS13 ended up as and became.

and yet i have to think of another thing.

SS13, was never meant to be a roleplaying game in the beginning, not in the way you are thinking, what i mean is SS13 has always been incredibly unique as a roleplaying environment in ways i have never seen in ANY other roleplaying environment, ever.

the funny thing about SS13 is that in spite of being a roleplaying game very few people actually do it in a traditional manner, in the places roleplay is typically carried out it is not done anything like how it is here in my opinion, let me explain what i mean.

you see in SS13 the vast majority of our playerbase both past and present does not roleplay, alot of them dont even know what roleplay IS, oh you could try to explain it to them as a concept, you might say roleplaying is like acting, we try to insert ourselves into characters as part of a script but unlike acting we create the characters ourselves and there IS no script, we ALL write the script together and we are all simultaneously actor and director at the same time, and that wouldn't really cover things completely, if they dont grasp the concept it can be akin to describing color to a blind man.

and thats okay because due to the way SS13 works, you dont have to actually know what roleplay is to be doing it on even a basic level.

you see in other environments or games we dont actually do much of anything directly, in D&D we can try to heal the injured but all we ACTUALLY do is roll a dice and the dungeon master tells us what happens, in an MMO we can try to craft something but its the same thing, an animation plays and various numbers bounce off other numbers and decide if you succeed or not and the quality of your finished product whereas here we have to actually DO things, we dont just get shit in our inventory and select "craft item", we have to actually perform the various procedures and carry out the individual tasks made up of doing ANYTHING WE WANT, to set up the engine we dont just roleplay the act of setting up the engine, we have to ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO DO IT and we then have to actually carry out that task and due to the randomness inherent in SS13 itself any number of factors both bugs and intentional can change the way things go, it says alot about the medical system here in that i have to actually PAY ATTENTION in order to treat the sick and wounded who come to medbay.

but what does any of that have to do with roleplay? its all gameplay mechanics, thats true but those mechanics inform us and change our behaviors, if we're a cargo officer and we actually try to do our job we might give stuff our willy nilly but over time we're going to realise we have to manage our points so we cant order everything we want, we have to prioritize what we need with what we can get, we have to limit how much we give to each marine or change those priorities based upon how high ranking a given marine could be or how capable a warrior are they, is this a player KNOWN to be badass or is it some rambo scrub who will die two seconds in? if we dont we cant give anything to anyone because we spent all our points and gave all the weapon mods to the first people there and now all thats left is crap no one seems to use or want.

roleplaying is about inserting yourself into a character and mindset, about seeing things from an in character perspective, essentially trying to be an all new person or even being the same person in an all new setting forced to deal with changing experiences and circumstances and thats where SS13 is unique and at its best.

in other games and MMO's, we pretend to do things, in SS13 we ACTUALLY do them.

i dont roleplay out whether im a badass or not, i dont let dice decide things for me, that is completely up to ME, i cant act like a good doctor, i have to actually BE one in order to treat people, the only things we can REALLY influence are our own personalities, backgrounds and our interactions with the rest of the playerbase, we cannot at any time truly know what will happen or not happen, every round has the capacity to have a million new, wondrous things happen and the admins cant really control or influence it, the admins in SS13 are like Dungeon Masters in D&D, they can try to influence where things go but they have NO fucking clue what the playerbase will do or where they will take things and that random element is part of what makes this game special, alot of people whine that this sort of thing takes away from the roleplay but to me its the real magic of SS13, making the game formulaic in any way or trying to make it so every round is the same kills what makes it great just abit more.

you may say its important we all craft some legendary story and work together and it IS important we try to make the most out of the game that we can, but in a game like this a focus on gameplay mechanics does not have to take away or detract from the rest of it, if someone is doing the best job they can to perform their assigned duties and tasks then even if they dont have an interesting backstory or some legendary history, even if they're just some random dude who walked to a recruitment office and ended up here they're still adding to everyones story just so long as they actually try to do things and someone else is either affected or notices, other roleplay environments are so scripted or so restrictive, we can do so little or have so minor impacts, so little we can actually DO that we're little more then soulless marionettes with very pretty wrappers of our own designing, but marionettes all the same who only play at being characters without actually being.

this was a very strange ramble on my part and i doubt any of it made any sense to anyone but thats okay, it felt interesting to type it.

[Dyne]

Y-yeah, you tried, we felt your...something.

EDIT: No offence, friend, I kinda re-read it three times, and if you wanted to tell you love this game- you managed.

[Nikov]

He does raise an interesting point. Roleplaying in this game is a very natural step in this game, much like roleplaying in a well-structured milsim community. I often joke my Arma group is a bunch of roleplayers playing 80's army men, and every time we execute a Soviet battle-drill line advance with people, unprompted, shouting in-character nonsense I grin a little inside. These are really fast-paced roleplaying games where avatar actions replace a bulk of the chat-room verbage. I had a similar experience in WoW a decade ago, but there people had to set their mind to roleplaying. Here the game is so very social that being in-character is an organic gameplay requirement to get your papers stamped.

[Felkvir]

"A number of players view this as a military roleplaying server, others a survivor horror roleplaying server, and still others just go to get their combat on."

I'd imagine it's more or less a mix of all at this point, though the horror part is becoming a minor element now IMO.

You know that could just be my time here talking, but i feel like the aliens are always missing something compared to humans despite us having the most advanced xeno code out of any server so far ...

[UNDUS]

I have a long past in roleplaying (D&D, etc.) and I don't see the Colonial Marines flavor of roleplay as the same kind of thing. The focus isn't so much on assuming a role. Roleplay here seems to just be a way 'unfair' things are disallowed - eg. you can't rush the alien base because roleplay. Whenever I see people actually developing a character they get called a snowflake or whatnot. Any kind of roleplay that gets in the way of the action is automatically omitted.

I think it would be better if it were either heavy roleplay or no roleplay at all. There are plenty of other, better ways to discourage or prevent people from doing the unfair things that we call metagaming/powergaming.

[Jack McIntyre]

First off, props to the Arma Group guy I love that game and know exactly what you are talking about and I also have to admit that although it is hard for this server a bit more to roleplay because you are fighting off waves of aliens or marines depending on your side, there is always a bit of that character that can come out. For example, I just joined sure, but I brought over a character that I believe should be the marine I would be, a cigar smoking, drinking, vet who although is tough on the new guys he is always willing to go head first into the enemy to save a fellow marine, does it usually find him trying to drag a bleeding and wounded soldier away from hordes of enemies and end in his head, of course, but if he is a bridge officer or even just a low level marine he is going to look after "his" guys. He was the mindset I had when I played in my mil sim units in arma, willing to sacrifice himself if it would save the squad or if someone hadt to be left behind to make the last stand because the helo was full and the enemy was hot on our heels after a raid or mission he was willing to smile and accept a true warrior's death (because after all, true heroes face death with a smile am I right?) He also hates corporate, because I mean a guy who sees his comrades as just pawns on their chest board he is going to hate them, and props to whoever played the corporate guy who is named Nathan, I enjoyed some of the banter we had, with me yelling at you for risking my marines and you just being the perfect liason.

I will also state I have had some good role play with some aliens, when I get taken captured, I usually have the mindset of the marine of, you are not having me be a baby factory, I would rather die on my feet fighting then let you have a alien come out of my guts. My favorite is when the aliens will come by and role play with using the claw up the arm or talking about how a sister will be born soon from my body, but the best one I had was a pAI was in the nest where I kept breaking free and a hive lord and myself were usually throwing punches and being thrown back on the nest. While my taunting of the hivelords strength and my words being translated from alien to human and human to alien, he ended up taking me out of the nest and we were throwing fist and claws as true warriors, granted wish I had a knife, but it was fun, just two warriors testing strength, granted I lost when he decide to eat me finally, but I will always remember that honor of the alien being insulted by the lone marine bridge officer that he decide to give me a man to beast fight over just leaving me in the nest and ignoring the taunts that the ai was telling him I was doing.

[Dreviore]

I like to try to roleplay.

As a xeno player though it gets difficult when the vast majority of marines shoot the second they see an alien, cause everyone knows marines just open fire on what appears to be non-hostile wildlife.

I've had one round where I was able to roleplay for a few minutes. After shouting at a marine in looc for shooting at us, myself, and another runner roleplayed behind a fence with seven marines for around two minutes, just pretending to be completely harmless, and just curious as to what they were. The roleplay ended when the marine I yelled at in looc decided it would be wise to shoot at the other runner, so I immediately pounced at him, and dropped an alien to take off his helmet. Then we rode off into the sunset.

I believe my beloved runner friend died ten minutes later, but it was a fun few minutes.

[Stivan34]

My job is pouncing and severing their head and roaring, Hissing elevator music too. XD