Metagaming
Metagaming is a cardinal sin in round-based, role-playing games like SS13. It come in several flavours:
Out-of-game communication
Chatting on Skype with your bros is OK, but telling your 'friends' in-game or IC info is forbidden, e.g. telling them you are a traitor, ganging up together to kill people, calling for help over team speak if you are attacked, etc. Even telling your buddies that you're dead is trouble - after all, what kind of friend wouldn't try to come to your rescue?
A huge part of the gameplay of SS13 hinges on lies and deception, and that goes all to hell when you've effectively got two pairs of eyes and ears. If you want to communicate with another player, use the radio, PDA messaging, or the mail system (nobody uses the mail system). Sure, we don't know what other programs you're running, but when one players starts getting robusted, and another one IMMEDIATELY comes to his rescue when not a word was spoken and the second person had no way to know the attack was happening - yeah it's not hard to tell what's up. If you are caught doing this, you will likely receive a permanent ban.
In-Game Stuff
Don't use information you 'shouldn't' have or otherwise break the round
This kind of shittery occurs in many different scenarios. It mainly entails doing preemptive actions to make the lives of antagonists harder, it is widely considered to be a dick move, and can make the round boring on top of everything else. Here are a few examples of what not to do:
- As Security, using your spiffy thermals to immediately roam around the station to sniff out traitors, and scream your brains out describing what's occurring. Generally, give things at least a few minutes to brew or go out on patrol with your normal eyes or responding to radio calls.
- As an AI, you find a suspicous person walking around, and decide to lock them into a room and scream for security to arrest them, refusing to let them out for any reason. This one is most definitely not okay, and will be violating your laws if that person or anybody else orders you to open up. Your laws can be stretched but not broken like this, and it's just really shitty anyway.
- As a Head, you decide to take all of the AI laws in Module Storage and hide them to prevent people from using them. If the red-suits are showing up and causing trouble, though, it's possible to upload a law targeting them; obvious antagonists can be targeted with laws, and it's a little shitty, but only if they're already causing havoc or the AI and Borgs are getting in your way.
- Going over to the Wizard's Den or Syndicate Satellite at the start of the round
Overall this generally boils down to the fact that you shouldn't talk about the current round outside of the game and you shouldn't start off the round by doing things whose only purpose is to screw over the bad guys. Doing reasonable things like an AI bolting its satellite, or a Captain trying to hide the fukken disk in his box, are okay, but otherwise, acting as though you're not expecting to be brutally murdered in four minutes will make things more enjoyable when things do start to happen. Use your judgement and if most people think it's metagaming, then don't do it or risk everyone's wrath. People really hate this.
Note that lots of people on the Goonstation servers like to keep a persistent name, character and/or gimmick running round after round; it may be easy to target them for actions taken in previous rounds, but don't do it. That's metagaming too. If the person is a shitlord for ten straight rounds, adminhelp it instead of trying to deal with it in-game.