VIP

CIVILIAN DEPARTMENT
VIP
VIP	Difficulty: Easy Requirements: None Access Level: Bridge, Handling of Contraband Permit Additional Roleplay Access Level: None Supervisors: None Subordinates: None Responsibilities: Tour the ship/station Guides: None

Have you heard? A VIP (Very Important Person) is visiting Space Station 13! It's crazy enough that people actually have to work in this hunk-a-junk, but for someone to willingly visit it is notable enough on its own. Why could they possibly be visiting SS13? Who knows!

This role is essentially a really fancy Tourist. It has a random chance of appearing in each round, it's only available to those who latejoin (joining a round after it's started) when it does appear, it doesn't get a lot of gear or access, and it's mostly for roleplaying and/or doing shenanigans than anything particularly serious. In-game, this role goes by one of the following names: Senator, President, Board Member, Mayor, Vice-President, and Governor. (There used to be a CEO title, but this was removed to fit revamped lore surrounding the Nanotrasen CEO.)

What Do I Do?

You're in an interesting position, because if you think about it, your job title doesn't actually match what you do in-game. In theory, as a government official/corporate executive, you perform important administrative functions and further the goals of your government/business. However, Goonstation isn't exactly a political/business simulator, so you actually don't see any of this in-game unless you roleplay it. For example, as a Senator, within the game's fictional world, you propose laws and sit on committees, but this is not what you see when you join the game as one.

In practice, your job duties are freeform, and you need to provide them yourself. If you're the glass-half-empty type, you could say you don't actually have any duties, but you could also say you have the freedom to choose your role and do whatever you can imagine, within the limits of the Rules. Here are some ideas on what you could do:

• Claim some section of the ship/station as your personal office and spend the shift trying to get the fanciest decor possible. Hire bodyguards, personal chefs, secretaries, etc. so that you can lounge in your office doing as little as work as possible. (Plus, it's nice to get other people involved in your gimmicks.)
• Ask for a tour of all the different departments, whether it's because you want to know what things are like for the average working Joe/Jane/Jamie or because you're secretly just an exceptionally well-dressed Tourist. This can be quite fun even if you don't actually know anything about the various jobs, because sometimes, the only thing funnier than someone in SS13 doing wacky stuff is an outsider commenting on it (e.g. "Why does the Chef have a loaf of bread with a Elvis hairdo? And why is she making it into a sushi roll?")
• Promote your company/political agenda, whether it's it's something serious (higher wages) or something silly (fill in the Trench with concrete and pave the entire planet Oshan Laboratory is on so that everyone can race cars 24/7). Collect signatures, pass out pamphlets, and so on.

Whatever it is, don't let your title go to your head, and don't forget to follow the Rules. For example, you can't demand that Security kill the Clown because they said you had a funny-looking nose. It's one thing if they tried to assassinate you, but a little joke isn't cause for the chopping block. If you're on the Roleplay servers, don't forget the RP Rules as well. For instance, doing Geneticist duties would break "stay in your lane".

Your equipment

As VIP, you do not enter the station/ship wearing a jumpsuit, like a working-class crew member. Instead, you come in decked out with all the duds of the upper crust: a top hat, a high-class monocle, and a grey pinstripe suit. (Sadly, you get regular black shoes instead of dress shoes.) All of this is functionally useless, but how else will the crew know how fancy you are?

In terms of things that are actually functional, you get:

• A fancy stun cane, tucked into your backpack, for your own self-defense. Similar to the stun baton, hitting someone with it (while it's on and you're not on Harm intent) knocks out a significant chunk of their stamina; you need generally need at least 2 hits to bring someone down. At max capacity, it only has enough charge for 4 hits, so it's best to use it wisely.
  • Unlike the stun baton, it slowly regenerates battery charge, at the cost of having a smaller battery (100 PU, instead of 200 PU) and being unable to fit inside rechargers (so you can't use one to make it charge faster) or have its cell swapped out (so you can't upgrade the cell or replace it with a fresh one for an instant refill).
• Two bars of stamped bullion, which are generally worth a pretty penny on the Quartermasters' market and can be sold to certain NPC merchants for lots of money (in other words, cash for even fancier duds). Have you noticed that you spawn with sparkles around you? That's because the bullion is so valuable, it shines even when inside someone's briefcase.
• A secure briefcase, which stores said stamped bullion. It starts unlocked, so if you want to keep the bullion safe, you need to click on the case while it's in your hand to set the code and lock it. You unlock in the same manner. If you want to access its contents, it's a little tricky: you need to click-drag its sprite onto your character's.

Villainous Individual of Prominence: Antagonist VIP

Getting antagonist as a VIP is extremely rare, as VIP is a latejoin role that does not appear each round, but nonetheless, you can be quite powerful. For one, since you start with a Handling of Contraband Permit, security scanners won't report your Contraband. Also, the stun cane is a very powerful tool, and with some handcuffs that you can grab on the bridge thanks to your access, you can kill pretty much anyone. Lastly, rare are HoPs that refuse to give a VIP some additional access, and if they do, you can always put on them some pressure by threatening to use your connections to ruin them or by brandishing your stun cane.

Since you're an antagonist, you have free reign to be a corporate bloodsucker/corrupt politician/generally evil asshole with way too much power. Steal the entire budget; bribe anyone sent to recover it. (After all, how is the crew going to pay them?) Murder the Captain (or even the entire Heads of Staff), declare yourself the crew's new overlord, and rule with an iron fist. Claim the Space Diner as your personal fiefdom, Colonel Kurtz-style; launch raids on the crew for riches and glory.

Vermilion Instigator of Peril: Traitor VIP

Is no one listening to your demands? Maybe you simply need to say them louder. When it comes to raising your voice, look no further than the black-market megaphone, the one job-specific Syndicate item you can purchase. This sleek red and black gadget, when held, renders whatever you say appear in very big text, both in-person and over the radio, making it practically impossible for those peons to ignore you. If they still won't obey, perhaps you need to resort to force.