No offense Ryu, but: People, why are we dragging random people into these forums? I mean, this particular board is a board about other games, but the SS13 and the Haven & Hearth threads seem to be full of getting random other people onto our boards and then arguing with them. It's a bad trend. At least point the newbies at Dwarf Fortress so they don't have ALL their posts in one thread in the "other games" board, because that just seems weird.
As for the "interact / don't interact with AFKers", in my experience RP kinda falls into three camps depending on game style. In a very RP heavy, action light system, that is not particularly realtime, you wait for the AFKers if you were involved with them, and if they weren't involved in your scene, yeah, you avoid them--because it's reasonable that even if their avatar is in the room, their character isn't there at the same time as your RP is going on. In action-light RP heavy systems that are time-critical, you kinda have to make excuses for the AFKers, and if they're important to the setting, maybe you emote for them because their character wouldn't really be mute. SS13 is neither of these. Instead it's action heavy and realtime. It's not like a MUSH where if one person goes AFK, well, okay, they aren't taking part in the conversation maybe their character stepped out to the bathroom, or maybe they weren't really there at all. It's realtime, you're all on a station that's probably going to blow up, everyone IS in the same scene and you can't pretend they're not. That's the difference, that's why you can't just ignore someone.
Ah, Sowelu. are you never not wise?
Anyway, that problem was just a jumble of misunderstandings, which lead to anger, which is never nice. So.. Everyone calm down, unless its just me, this game has a knack for making people angry, at everyone.
Also, sorry about not having the server up, my PC was acting up a little bit, its all fixed now, though. I'll get back to
my slave mines hosting our server now.
Should be up as soon as you read this.