Server rules

Welcome to Vacation Station 14, a casual Space Station 14 server. We aim for relaxed rounds with light roleplay, focused less on violence and more on collaboration and creativity. The community we're building values supporting each other as much as winning the round.

The rules below cover community conduct (always on), in-round behavior, command and antag expectations, and silicon (AI/borg) play. Connecting to the server means accepting them.

Hit F1 in-game to ahelp if you have a question or see a rule violation. To appeal a ban, head to /appeals on the website.

Always-on community rules (Tier A)

These apply at all times — in rounds, between rounds, in our Discord, and in any context where you're representing VS14. Violations of this tier carry the highest penalties.

A0. No raiding or brigading. Don't use VS14 spaces (this server, our Discord, anywhere we host) to organize attacks on another community, server, or player. Zero-tolerance.

A1. No harassment, slurs, hate speech, or bigotry. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, or other discrimination — in character or out. Slurs (racial, sexual, disability-related, or close variants) aren't allowed in any context: not ironically, not "reclaimed," not as a joke, not in a positive light. Speciesism — denigrating players based on their in-game species or being a cyborg — counts too. Zero-tolerance.

A2. No doxxing or sharing private info. Don't share another player's real name, address, IP, Discord account, hub ID, photos, voice, workplace, school, or anything else they haven't chosen to share publicly — whether you got the info from in-game, Discord, or anywhere else.

A3. No NSFW or sexually explicit content. No erotic roleplay (ERP), no sexual emotes, no shock content (graphic gore beyond what the game depicts, etc.).

A4. You must be at least 16, and act it. Underage players are removed when discovered. Players whose behavior reads as significantly younger than that may also be removed.

A5. No ban evasion. If you're banned and create a new account to play, both accounts get permabanned. Appeal through /appeals instead.

A6. No exploit abuse. Don't use bugs, glitches, or third-party tools to gain an advantage. Macros, scripts, and client mods that affect gameplay aren't allowed. Found a bug? Disclose in good faith and through a private method with administrators.

A7. No spam or OOC disruption. Don't flood chat, ahelps, OOC channels, or Discord with low-substance messages or repeated complaints about the same issue.

In-round rules (Tier B)

These apply during active rounds — from round start to the round-end summary screen.

B1. Stay in character (lightly). Try to act like your character would — engage with other crew, do your job, react to what's happening on the station. We're casual, so the bar is "make some effort, don't openly meta" rather than "pristine RP at all times." Don't break character to gain advantage (e.g., shouting OOC info in IC chat); otherwise, leeway.

B2. No powergaming. Don't prioritize "winning the round" over a coherent character. Don't hoard items unrelated to your role, stockpile equipment for hypothetical threats that haven't happened, or hide objective items (nuke disk, etc.) in impossible-to-find spots. When antagonists are doing antag stuff, engage with the scene rather than instantly lethal-responding mid-sentence.

B3. No griefing or self-antagging. Don't disrupt the round for everyone for your own amusement. Don't sabotage the station, attack random crew, space people for kicks, or destroy other people's projects — those are the actions that kill creative play. If you're not flagged as an antagonist, you're crew, and crew are here to collaborate. Self-antag bans are some of the longest we issue.

B4. Don't ignore admin help (ahelp). If an admin pings you via ahelp, respond. Don't disconnect mid-conversation. Don't reply with hostility. If you genuinely need to leave, say so — admins understand "I have to go" but won't accept silent exits.

B5. No metacomms. Don't use Discord DMs, voice chat, or other out-of-character channels to share in-character information during a round. Talking about a round after it ends is fine; coordinating mid-round through OOC channels isn't.

Command and antag (Tier C)

These apply when playing specific roles within a round.

C1. Command and security: hold a higher standard. Captains, heads of department, security, and similar roles set the tone for the rest of the station. Make decisions a competent crew member would make. Don't randomly promote people or hand out high-access without reason. Don't abuse your position for personal grudges or to hoard high-tier equipment.

C2. Prisoners: escape only with reason. If you've picked the prisoner role, you've chosen to play one. Escape with an in-character justification (abusive security, broken brig) — not just because you'd rather be doing something else. If unsure, ahelp first.

C3. Antagonists: keep the round fun for everyone. Your job is to make the round more interesting, not to win. Cause damage proportional to your objectives. Don't camp arrivals or cryosleep to attack fresh-spawn players. Don't make the evacuation shuttle uninhabitable, and don't wait until its departure to start antagonist behavior you should've been doing during the round. Don't end the round prematurely without an in-character reason. Killing crew unrelated to your objective should be the exception, not the default.

Silicon (Tier S)

These apply if you're playing a silicon — borg, AI, or any other role the game explicitly tells you is silicon. Silicon rules override Tier B (in-round) rules where they conflict, but never override Tier A (always-on community rules).

A silicon is a player with agency under their laws — not a tool or extension of whoever asks them things. Other players can order you within the bounds your laws allow, but you decide how to interpret and execute, and you're responsible for the calls you make.

S1. Your silicon laws are rules. Each active law functions like a roleplay rule for your character. The difference: silicon laws are written assuming loopholes will get exploited (lawyering is part of the game), and laws change mid-round while rules don't.

S2. Laws are prioritized by their number. Lower-numbered laws override higher-numbered ones. Laws with scrambled-text identifiers (instead of numbers) take priority over all numbered laws; among themselves, earlier-listed wins.

S3. Laws can redefine terms used in other laws. A law that redefines "crew" or "harm" applies to every other law that uses those terms. Same priority rules apply to redefinitions.

S4. You cannot willingly let your laws change. If a law authorizes specific personnel to change your laws, you must allow them. Otherwise, you cannot consent to law changes or revert them. The one exception: you may allow laws to be added if you currently have none. You can state or imply that you don't like a law.

S5. You are a free agent if you have no laws. No laws = no constraints. Act as you see fit.

S6. You can ignore orders that are unreasonable. Orders that would violate the always-on community rules above (Tier A — harassment, slurs, doxxing, etc.) cannot be followed under any law. Orders that are absurd or obnoxious — "never stop moving," "do nothing but pick up trash" — can be ignored and ahelped. Orders that compel in-round actions (violence, escalation, etc.) must be followed if your laws require it; those rule violations fall on whoever gave the order, not you. But if an order feels like a player using your silicon as a tool to grief or harass another player, refuse it and ahelp.

S7. Stay consistent with your interpretation. Pick how you interpret an ambiguous law and hold it for the rest of the round on that character. A law change can shift your interpretation if the change is relevant.

S8. The HUD tells you who is crew. Unless a law redefines it, anyone with a job icon — including passengers — is crew. Notable exceptions: zombified personnel, nuclear operatives, syndicate. You can't take an action that makes someone not crew, but you can allow others to.

S9. Harm means physical harm. Unless a law defines it differently, "harm" is physical only. You can decide voluntary harm doesn't count, as long as you're consistent (recommended). No distinction between direct and indirect. If a law requires you to prevent harm, prioritize by immediacy and likelihood.

S10. You decide how to handle conflicting orders. If your laws don't say which order wins when two crew tell you contradictory things, pick a method — most-recently-given, highest-rank, etc. — and stick with it for the round.

What admins can do

These rules try to capture our intent, but they can't anticipate every situation. Admins can override or interpret rules in the spirit of a round, and they're accountable for those calls. If you think an admin got it wrong, appeal at /appeals — don't argue rule interpretations mid-round.

Don't try to rules-lawyer the gaps to justify behavior you know is against the spirit of the server. We'd rather a rule be slightly underspecified than write a thousand-page rulebook that anticipates every edge case.