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Found within the poorest slum district of Haven, amongst the maze-like warren of narrow streets, ramshackle buildings, and dark alleys, Isesi has found a table from which to conduct a friendly game of poker upon. Scratched and scrawled into the noticeboards up and down Haven, the following message can be found: Ya heard it here first people, Poker! Survival in the Doldrums is tough and hardening, here be your chance to escape that harsh life and make a king, or queen outta’ yourself! You will have the chance to make so many silver coins that it should be made ILLEGAL! Be speaking with Isesi for more information. OOC: This Sunday (8PM GMT+0), on a table somewhere in Haven a game of poker will begin. Buy-in: TBD

'' I am Sir Alistair Roux. Former Knight-Commander of the Grand Alliance and the ninth legion. Loyal member of Her Majesty's dreadguard. Veteran of the First, Second and Third Great Wars. Veteran of the Northrend campaign. I was the son of Darius and Morganna Roux. The husband to a beautiful wife. The father of two wonderful children. I have fought in life and in undeath, and I have fallen. Twice. I stand in front of you now as a Knight of the Ebon Blade. An abomination and a monster, but a knight nonetheless. And I'll fight again, so you don't have to. ''

Here, we present to you… the project guidelines! These guidelines and rules that we are about to present are to be used for player character projects. Some examples would include researching to get teleportation to work in the Doldrums. Perhaps you are aiming to make a special type of cannon ball? Basically, anything a player would like to do that isn't mechanically represented, but does require time and effort to be invested. These are to help promote RP more on the player than the Keepers hand holding them, and allows staff to keep track of things better. Payboxes can still be used, but they should no longer be the primary resource for projects: RP should take the spot, instead. The Project Guidelines Players are meant to make a thread, either publicly or privately on the forums. Public ones go into the journal section, and private ones into the private journals section. It is the players' responsibility to post any documentation related to the project for Keepers to handle. Any checks, emotes, conversations, sumaries of what happened… are all aceptable. But these need to be available in the forum posts. If a player does complete a project publicly, it will also be publicly known that the project has been completed. For example, Staff will make a rumour about it, giving the PC credit for it. This is done so in order to encourage posting less sensitive things in Public, so potential players see that things -do- go on. There won't be any negatives for keeping things private. You are to be informed, however, that you may be forced to find other players to help you with your project, as we do not want projects to be a "one-man army" kind of deal. (You can NOT use an army of your own characters to carry out these projects, and -must- find other players for them). These threads should have the 'Project' Tag. Players may ask DMs 'plausibility' questions. These are OOC questions you may ask to avoid getting your time and the DM's wasted. Here we have some extreme or simple examples, so that you may get an idea. Player: "Can I control the Old God and make him dance for everyone?" DM: "You really don't think that's possible for any single person." Player: "Can I raise a few skeletal dogs to be my friends? :3" DM: "That's plausible, but you'll need to learn how, before you can do it." Player: "Can I tame this raptor and make it my mount?" DM: "Currently, Shores does not allow mounts in any form." PC Knowledge Levels A PC's IC knowledge comes from several factors. Even a profession would allow a character to understand things naturally. For example, a level 45 Mystic would understand that runes need to be altered to deal with the mana drain The Doldrums has and know how to alter it, whereas a level 15 mystic would only know that runes need that alteration, but not know how it needs to be done. Knowledge may also come from things learnt about in events, discovered in the world, or however the overseeing keeper thinks. If applicable, it might even come from a character's background! On the topic of the plausibility questions mentioned previously, you must not expect an outright OOC answer, but, rather, a light nudge or some hint that might help you. Here is another such example! Player: "Can I build a submarine?" DM: "That's not a bad idea, but you are going to need to experiment with it, and learn the best methods over time." Here is an example of how one such project could go (Redacted to prevent Lore Leaks):

If the guy was banned for being toxic, but was being a contributing role player - then why don't you just ban him from the forums and discord, but keep him able to remain with his character in game and IC. If he misbehaves in game as well, you can always ban him from there as well. We recently had a discussion about character killing in discord. If you can make a "sacrifice" by not killing a character at your feet to hopefully contribute to a better narrative, why not give the guy a chance to do the same if he only broke ooc common courtesy rules and not role playing fundamentals? EDIT: I read posts above about people leaving over the toxicity of people like McDankus and Dascombe. I find that hard to believe, I'm not sure if I remember McDankus, but Dascombe is one of the best role players I have met during my time, and he always brings a hella lot of reasoning and constructive criticism during an argument/debate.

Thanks for all the sober arguments and replies, it is clear that this is a community that has an interest in transparency and fairness, and as a trial staff member I hope I can help contribute to this even further if I am fully accepted into staff. I hope my colleagues will look into replying here as well, even though this is a case that has burdened some of them greatly, due to work overload and other personal issues. Thank you all for taking an interest in Unknown Shores and how we run this community together.

I wasn't going to comment at all to avoid any issues, but I felt having a statement from the person who was banned matters at this point. Looking back at the whole situation with the ban, It could have been handled much better. On my end, perhaps my vulgar tone of language could have been reduced a bit, but on another note the way I speak is just how I speak unfortunately. Many here will know I use such colorful language often to emphasize points, sometimes a bit too much. The situation started after speaking to Lang about the NPC prices system, something which at the time myself and a few individuals disliked for a number of reasons (which currently aren't the focus of this thread.) This divulged into a debate about how a certain NPC faction (not too important to the topic) would have to pay for all of their NPCs in conjunction with the system, due to a number of IC/OOC angles. The situation escalated when a number of people chipped into the discussion, and some tensions were high when shitty comments were made on either side. What fueled the fire in my belly was the general attitude of a certain Head Keeper, who's response to our critique was essentially "if you don't like the way things are, uninstall". For me, this coming from the Head Keeper, was immensely insulting and such an immature attitude to have. A server with such a small playerbase should not have this as their ultimatum, and instead should be looking at working with the players rather than against them, something I see often than not. Admittedly I made a comment or two that maybe shouldn't have been said, but apologized later on in LFRP for it. After the Head Keeper slapped a 72 Hour Ban warning in LFRP for anyone continuing the discussion (something I found a bit over the top and seemed to be an act of "I can do this because I can") I decided to poke the subject still, more so annoyed that the Head Keeper was behaving in such a manner. It really speaks volumes when the curator has to warn the Head Keeper on their behavior towards players, publicly, in LFRP. I was banned of course for 72 hours, I still felt that was a bit much especially over a verbal spat. The discussion itself did not deserve a 72 hour ban warning, and staff shouldn't be trying to force bans on people in an effort to silence their disagreement with a system. Everyone is entitled to their opinion regardless of who they are or what people think of them, and to behave in such a manner is downright wrong. As Skippy said, it's reasonable to ask OOCly how NPC or Player Factions are operating in conjunction to systems, to ensure there is transparency and also consistency towards all groups. I'll take responsibility for making a small ruckus in discord post-ban, although after a few minutes I stopped talking and let the discussion flow after some people were angry I was banned. Eventually it lead to Elle stating "I know how to stop this" and abruptly banned me from the discord. No warnings, no one pulling me to the side and going "cool your shit man", just a straight up ban. Should I have called Elle a petulant child in PMs? Probably not. But if the chat history of that was to be shown here, people would see that Elle had more than enough time to block me. Instead, they responded with: "No. I'm just not dealing with shitting attitudes. Please, insult me again, because I don't have to allow you on shores. It isn't your right. You don't get to act like a shithead and keep playing here like it's acceptable." Elle, Head Keeper, 05/16/19 And there lies the problem, in red highlight. That clear display of goading because someone -CAN- stop someone from coming on shores. I'll be honest, I don't like Elle, but I probably shouldn't have insulted them the way that I did. But at the same time I must stress, like others can agree, this is has not come without similar behavior on Elles end. There was a quite sensible issue we had a week prior, where Elle contacted me about not taking the piss out of Haven as much being the Argent Dawn 2.0 etc. I complied, politely explained my reasoning behind it and expressed it was a joke, however I would tone it down. We did not have any issues since. Moving on though, as this is not all about Elle (nor is it a personal attack on them), I look at how Varen handled the situation. I reached out to Varen, as I believed Elle had been a bit heavy handed in the dishing out of bans. Admittedly some of my language and the way I came across as quite angered, hostile, something I should have toned down. But after being treated in such a way by another staff member, it's sure to make your blood boil. A few minutes into the discussion Varen stated that I, personally, was making people not want to play. I asked for validation, even though I may have come across a bit strong. Of course Varen tried his best to handle the situation, stating that it wasn't an issue with staff attitude as I had claimed, but an issue with my attitude. Perhaps to some degree, he was correct. However, the next thing he said was something that really did make me feel unwelcome, and made me believe this ban was truly unjust: "The point is we've had several players quit the server over people being dramatic as you've been, and ever since you, dascombe & co of people who acted in that manner on a daily basis left, we had a fine relationship with players. And that's what I'm looking at right now. People who tell me "McDankus and dascombe are back?"" In my frustration, I challenged the statement, as it seemed to me that this amount of players were just a small clique or bubble together. Varen claimed it was five people who openly spoke to him about their dislike for myself, dasc and others. He also claimed "the rest just doesn't want to deal with the drama". This would make me believe that a good majority of the server were against myself and dasc, and it sounded like perhaps a reason for the ban was to get rid of myself to allow these players who had quit to return? The further I delved more into the discussion, the more it sounded like this was server politics. This was further reinforced by another statement Varen made: "Who's more important, you or 5 people?" This quickly became an issue where it was clear that this miraculous group of 5 players were having a bias impact on Varens decision making. I could understand if I was warned about this behavior before, however since the ban no staff have approached me about warning me for -anything- other than Elle with the Haven stuff a week ago. There has been no documented warnings of what I have done, and if there are, staff clearly are choosing not to disclose this for whatever reason, even to me. So how can I improve and stop people from leaving, when staff are not telling me? This raised the question now that, if 5 players disliked a staff member, should they be treated with the same sort of bias when handling disciplinary issues with them? Now, Varen stressed that the bar they want to uphold is (in his words) "Sensitive", and even confirmed that the environment should be PC, which apparently is stated in the rules. The issue, so Varen went on to say, was this: "The dripping sarcasm, the outright insults towards all these things we've been working on for ages now, that's the problem." Many people here should know that such sarcastic attitudes can be seen from many others players, some of which go relatively unpunished as well. It seems to me that a few individuals are normally targeted because, as others above have identified, they don't fit the bill for the clique that is being fleshed out in this server. This is further proven and reinforced by another line Varen said: "You change the way you speak or leave" This has slowly started to become an environment where someone has to tiptoe around people because of their feelings, no matter the discussion. Further in the discussion, Varen stated that insulting the server systems is a personal attack on the work that people have done. If this is the case, and I say "Oh, the RPG Combat system is shit", does that mean I am to be punished for a personal attack? The other problem I see here is the emphasis on the rules, as if they are the 10 Commandments. The problem with that is certain members of staff seem to be getting away with not showing respect to their fellow player. Respect is earned both ways, not given through right of attaining a position of power or authority. I will be 100% honest and state this is not the entirety of the conversation myself and Varen had. I am willing to clarify anything or any points, or speak to people privately about anything that might have been missed and said on my side and Varens. But these are key points that contribute to the situation that you, the players, should know given staff have only given their side of the banning. All statements above, highlighted or not, can be proved and justified, but I will not do so publicly since I don't want to make this thread a screenshot dump. Moving on, this whole fiasco has outlined major issues in Unknown Shores. Firstly, the relationship between player and staff. There's been quite a divide as far as this goes. You tend to boil down this into two groups: 1) The people who are liked by staff (considered to be in the clique as we know) 2) The people who are disliked/tolerated by staff (the ones who are told "change or leave" essentially) This causes major friction because the latter group are often people who, like myself, are honest and very vocal when we need to. This is mainly because as roleplayers, we are passionate about what we do, and when we see an issue you're damn right we point it out. I'll admit I could do it a lot less crudely, but I will stress the fact it is who I am. It sadly won't change, I can only try to be somewhat politer, but it won't change the fact I'm a blunt, honest and sometimes crude person. People lack faith in staff, primarily because of general hypocrisy. We've seen examples of staff members break rules and get off with no punishment at all, and yet when players have similar issues, the problems get dropped on them like a ton of bricks. I understand the "my way or the high way" attitude, staff have a vision they want to deliver, but when your player ultimatums are "don't like it, leave", especially for such a low pop server, you're really asking for trouble. The method of punishment is also, at best, ludicrous. From what I am told, there is a warning system in place on discord, but rarely ever have I seen a warning system implemented for server disputes. Throwing a 72 hour ban warning, especially over a verbal dispute, isn't a warning process. It's an effort for someone to silence a group of people because they don't like what they're hearing, and that's that. During this entire process, other members have staff have told me firstly I've been considered for a perma over called Elle a petulant child. Additional questions have come to light over metagaming and allegedly spreading false lies and hateful rumors OOCly, yet little proof has come to light to say I have and should be judged for it? Regardless of that however, it is clear staff aren't properly executing their disciplinary procedures. I, for one, have not received any official warning points or cooldown periods for -any- of the issues I'm being banned for. Metagaming? No warning. False lies and rumors? No warning. Making players quit? No warning. Yet when something happens like this, staff (Mainly Varen and Elle) decide the best action is to find as many faults to me as they can to justify giving me a perma ban with a 3 month wait to appeal? That's not punishment. That's witch-hunting and considering what's been mentioned above about peoples opinions on myself, I'd go as far as to say it's bias to a degree. I'm not saying I'm innocent. I've mentioned multiple times I should have handled things better and not in the ways I did. I apologize to Elle for the insult to them directly, and also to Varen for any sort of attitude I had at the time. This is not to say I'm begging to return. I deserve a sentence of sorts but anything more than 2 weeks for me is silly. I can't say I can change 100% to your "ideal" community member, but what I can do is make steps to avoid drama. That is why, should staff consider lifting my punishment, I would be fine to remove myself from OOC channels. Retain a discord rank where I can make tickets and have no input in OOC stuff, and remain out of LFRP or OOC in-game channels. I do apologize for the long, daunting post, but when I got into this I was told to be honest and speak my mind and how I feel. I don't want a giant drama fest, and I sure as shit don't want the server to struggle over this. But one thing I will not accept is a one sided argument without the facts from all sides being lay bare for the community to see. They deserve to know how staff are handling this as much as anyone here. No one is free to believe what I put, or support me. None of that matters, but everyone is welcome to come up with their own conclusions. I just want to RP, and bring Horde RP here, as I always prefer to do. Lok'tar!