Soul stuff

Discuss the details surrounding the station's lore and how things work in the universe. What is Redspace? Why does Phoron kill you? Why does Nanotrasen have a station where people eat each other? Are there any neat colonies or factions worth mentioning? Pitch your ideas and get feedback!
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Soul stuff

Postby Scree » Wed Dec 23, 2015 12:14 am

We should probably hash some of this stuff out because we've seen a couple of people doing stuff with it.

Basically, I'd prefer if the "lore" for souls and other spiritual stuff be loose at best in order to leave things as open as possible. Basically, it's something that people generally don't know anything about, and arguably can't know everything about.
There are soulstones in the game (generally not outright public knowledge to most people in the setting, especially when it comes to anything about how they work) and there's debate over whether souls interact with cloning, on account of the way clones will spit out a mental interface failure if you try to clone someone who's still alive, but the mechanism by which it works is by no means understood. Many people have their own theories, with varying levels of plausibility, but the waters are muddied by other philosophical (and naturally religious) debate on the entire subject.

The reason I prefer it to be loose, wibbly, unknown and unknowable?
Because it allows people to come up with their own little ideas and twists on the subject. It allows science to come up with bizarre experiments and roleplay things out, whether they get results or not. It allows strange things to happen and develop from this. If it's bizarre and unpredictable and people are generally unfamiliar with the entire topic, it makes it interesting.

That, and it's somewhat jarring thematically for a science-fiction game to be openly supernatural. If nothing else, for people to be talking about soul manipulation in public like it's no big deal means that it cannot be a big deal. It pulls the teeth out of it, so to speak. When we had Snag as the only tame Xeno, for instance, Snag was interesting to interact with. When people started getting staffs of change, or bringing facehuggers back from the xenostation so they could all play friendly xenos and we had three or four at a time on the station some shifts, that basically meant Snag was no longer an interesting thing - by making "friendly xeno" a commonplace concept, the idea ceased to be any good as a story hook. Some things are only interesting when they're rare. when they're flooded and everyone's suddenly familiar with them, it kills any possibility for interesting RP to come out of it.

Now, personally, as an admin I don't particularly care about what people wanna RP out in private. If you wanna be a succubus or whatever and go soulsucking or play scenes out with other consenting players in a dorm or whatever, go nuts - However, try not to go announcing your headcanon over the public comms or openly discussing it in the bar like it's gospel truth. That's the point where it gets jarring, and essentially comes across as forcing your canon over everyone else's.
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Re: Soul stuff

Postby arokha » Wed Dec 23, 2015 12:16 am

Honestly I'd rather canonize it in a way that makes it such that each player can only decide how it works for their own character.

Basically say that "well each soul can be different", and therefore make it IMPOSSIBLE for someone to say their headcanon is how it works and have them be correct. Right now there's no lore and it means anyone can say anything and it's potentially true.

I'd like it to be so there's no specific lore and anything people say is automatically false unless it's about their own character.
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Re: Soul stuff

Postby Gramzon_the_Dragon » Wed Dec 23, 2015 6:56 am

arokha wrote:Honestly I'd rather canonize it in a way that makes it such that each player can only decide how it works for their own character.

Basically say that "well each soul can be different", and therefore make it IMPOSSIBLE for someone to say their headcanon is how it works and have them be correct. Right now there's no lore and it means anyone can say anything and it's potentially true.

I'd like it to be so there's no specific lore and anything people say is automatically false unless it's about their own character.


I kinda like where this is going, as it leaves room for people to decide if their characters are even compatible with soul things based on preferences. That way you can have an IC excuse for why that demon character can't go doing weirdness to you.
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Re: Soul stuff

Postby warbrand2 » Fri Jan 01, 2016 4:15 pm

The way I see it the more malleable things are the better.

The thing is, RP wise there are so many variations on the soul that nomater what something is going to conflict, its just something unavoidible.


I also have a suggestion.

the soul has to be vague, and undefined so I suggest adding an option for "soul"

this option would have 3 choices

undefined
standard, means nothing this setting disables interaction with your "soul" as an item or thing.

physical
this setting makes it so that you have a soul item that can be vored, doing this results in your body becoming just an unmonkey while you are put into the pred like a standard prey. upon release from pred returned to body, can't be cloned unless body is killed.

incorporeal
same as physical but removing the soul kills the body, so upon release from a pred you are a ghost.


Another problem with souls is ghosts, I know they are just spectator mode but yeah doesn't mesh well with the game atleast for the MAGIC AINT REAL bits of this server. (and the intentional vague nature of the souls)

think spectator needs modes, like true specator, mouse, fly, and other minor things. but is unlikely.... sorry rambling.
I think to much.

disclaimer: Unless I cuss, I am generally not meaning to be hostile.
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Re: Soul stuff

Postby Alexandria Illiana » Sat May 14, 2016 9:56 pm

My only real problem, is I don't want to see and Drama Soul Stealing Powergaming fiasco's. I don't know if we still are following the Lore behind Demons being just Redspace beings that I was told 3 months ago. (I hope we're, cause I think that has a ton of RP potential. Such as the Governing Redspace beings on the thrones of 7 Daemon Providences which could be easily mistaken as each 7 being the Aspects of Sin, Greed, Envy, Pride, Lust, Wrath, and Gluttony and the realistic territorial fights that would hold.)

However this /doesn't/ mean we shouldn't have souls, we should have souls, and we should have cultists, we just shouldn't have people ICly who are able to play creatures who rip souls out of peoples bodies willy nilly and Security can't do shit or NT, especially when drama then happens leading to stunts in effectiveness at work and other issues like people being ordered to punch others and they have to obey their master because LOL no Soul. >_> worst part is I see alot of this Soul stuff in the past (Although it hasn't happened alot sense I was told about the change to them being Redspace being.)

We should keep souls though IMO opinion because that provides reasoning for Religions, Cultural Differences, and discussions such as Scree said involving Theory's of Cloning and the Lore behind Whitelist Antags like Cultists.
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Re: Soul stuff

Postby Aces » Mon May 16, 2016 6:47 am

Soul vore just isn't a mechanic I will ever even consider adding because its presence will encourage problems.

However we have canonically had scenarios with souls involved before, mainly surrounding Redspace. Scientists still argue the everliving fuck out of it, but what happens when you obtain a weird looking red rock, shove it in someone's face, and suddenly their body drops limp and catatonic, while this so-called "soul gem" takes all of the information about the individual? Their memories, their personality, everything. What is being stolen? Is their brain being copied and then fried in the process? Or is it the same consciousness?

Or we could just leave it to interpretation.

Then again it's hard to explain ICly why cloning machines won't clone someone who isn't dead unless we scientifically know souls exist and can now detect them.
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Re: Soul stuff

Postby Wickedtemp » Mon May 16, 2016 2:43 pm

Aces wrote:Soul vore just isn't a mechanic I will ever even consider adding because its presence will encourage problems.

However we have canonically had scenarios with souls involved before, mainly surrounding Redspace. Scientists still argue the everliving fuck out of it, but what happens when you obtain a weird looking red rock, shove it in someone's face, and suddenly their body drops limp and catatonic, while this so-called "soul gem" takes all of the information about the individual? Their memories, their personality, everything. What is being stolen? Is their brain being copied and then fried in the process? Or is it the same consciousness?

Or we could just leave it to interpretation.

Then again it's hard to explain ICly why cloning machines won't clone someone who isn't dead unless we scientifically know souls exist and can now detect them.


There are characters who claim to have done experiments on souls, saying that they've pretty much proven their existence, or at least are in possession of convincing evidence. It... isn't exactly argued in-game because people do soul-vore RP, and use their personal RP as a way to prove that souls exist. Normally you could just do the whole bit about how personal testimonies aren't exactly viable evidence when it comes to this kind of thing, but there's a handful of people who've all done soul-vore, there are people who claim to already know about the soul-gems, people want to have supersmart characters, etc.

And as for a possible IC explanation as to why the cloning pod won't clone someone unless they're actually dead (or off-station)... The cloning scans make it possible to monitor someones vitals using the cloning monitor. You know if someone's dead or if their implant is gone. That's the safeguard. Unless you're dead, or the implant is gone, you're not getting cloned. If the implant is there and it detects a pulse, it won't clone you. Simple as that.

However, even that explanation can be tossed out the window because of the way people have made their characters. I know at LEAST one person who claims that they're the hundredth or so clone of themselves, and there's a clone stockpile somewhere that's used for endless genetics testing and essentially free labor, meaning that they're alive, yet they're being cloned repeatedly, every day.

I'm not saying "We have to police players and make sure their backstory and roleplay fits the lore!", but it IS kind of tough to say "Hey guys, we don't know much about X, okay? We're still debating the existence of X." when there's people who say "Oh, X, I roleplay with X all the time, X is totally real, I did an RP where I actually ate X so that proves it, my character's a superscientist!"

...Also with the new vore panel, soulvore can totally be made a "mechanic" if they're creative with it.
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