Transparency - Player Bans

[Vincent07]

The purpose of this thread will be to publicly list the reasons for any player bans. This is to hopefully halt the often damaging rumor-mill that has been problematic in the past.


Those with questions may contact one of the admins privately.


EDIT:  As a follow up.  Those players who are banned from  the server, if they continue to be a nuisance on the forums, will be banned from these forums.

[Fire Wraith]

Tenor_General, banned due to OOC harrassment of other players, staff, and generally being obnoxious on multiple occasions to the Admins.

[Vincent07]

The Red Mage has been removed from the sandbox.

[Edge]

Magoon has been banned for repeated disruptive, trolling, and setting-ignoring behavior following multiple warnings by staff.

[Edge]

Dom101/Bass has been banned due to repeated instances of disrespect toward other players, insults and disrespect toward staff and administration, and general unpleasantness and hostility toward the community.

[Edge]

Unbearable and Dia de los Muertos have been banned for being Calabask ban-dodging.

[Edge]

Player CrawlingChaos63 is banned for repeated incidences of harassing players and staff, disregard of server rules, and disregard of NPCs (such as guards).

The admins do not tolerate players who mistreat, insult, and berate their fellow players or our DMs, and our patience for such things is exceptionally thin. We are not required to endure player abuse to do our jobs, and we are quite happy to remove players like this from the server for such behavior.

[Fire Wraith]

Player drow1983/nightsong has been banned for repeated hostile behavior towards staff members and other players, refusal to accept consequences, refusal to accept/abide by server rules and admin decisions, and just generally being completely obnoxious in every interaction.

As we've noted before:
"The admins do not tolerate players who mistreat, insult, and berate their fellow players or our DMs, and our patience for such things is exceptionally thin. We are not required to endure player abuse to do our jobs, and we are quite happy to remove players like this from the server for such behavior."

[Fire Wraith]

As admins, our primary responsibility is to protect the emotional and mental well being of our player base.  While we never like having to resort to severe consequences, there are times where it is necessary to fulfill that responsibility.  As such, we've decided to ban Shalvenay for repeatedly violating the personal space of others with unwanted physical emotes and affection (both ICly and OOCly) in game and in Discord.  Shalvenay was repeatedly warned and directly told that this was unacceptable behavior; he was given explicit instructions that any such interactions should only be done with the express permission of the other parties involved.  However, recent interactions demonstrated that these warnings were not taken seriously.  Additionaly, his responses to the warnings and directions further convinced the Admin Team that we ultimately could not trust him to adhere to the restrictions and boundaries we set.

We don't believe that Shalvenay meant anything untoward or ill by their actions.  However, at the end of the day, we recognize that our role is to enforce boundaries and consent rules, as well as making sure that CD is a place where players can feel comfortable playing.

[Vincent07]

The Ban for Korlash has been rescinded.

[Fire Wraith]

Wilkins1952 / Kerine has been banned from CD.

The short and sweet reason is for: Flagrantly disregarding the consent of other players in their RP under Rule 10 (mature content). 

The long explanation is as follows, and we hope as a team that it may shed some light as to prior decisions made by the administration regarding the actions of Wilkins, their character, and an offered attempt to smooth RP in-game.

As many players know or may hear of, there have been issues with the character Kerine. Most of these had come from various factions - for example, the Red Wizards being upset that this character had been claiming to be one of their own, despite numerous attempts to tell them otherwise. Various factions either blacklisted or wanted to end this character, all ICly, for various reasons. The Elves of Deepingdale wanted this character banned from their lands. Various mercenary guilds did not want to be involved with them. The administration received reports of this and had decided a few weeks ago that action was required. We offered Wilkins a choice - Either the character remains as is (And would be likely permanently killed by one of these factions after the next offense), they be retired at that moment to become an NPC/travel elsewhere, or else they go under a heavy disguise and start a new life, as it were, which has been a past option for characters attempting to avoid permanent ends. This would come in the fashion of an IC disguise via name and (visible) race change. At this time, the administration only knew about public outcry against the character and one particular person with a personal complaint against Wilkins/Kerine. Wilkins was, at this point, ordered to avoid any/all contact with those they caused trouble with in the past under threat of losing their character permanently with no recourse.

We have since learned that problems went far deeper than we originally knew about or suspected.

As explanation, the staff on CD prides ourselves on protecting player privacy and consent at as many places as we possibly can. For example:

• DM's do not snoop on private RP. We are not allowed to peer in on inn rooms, player homes, or people off doing their own thing. This is for the DM's protection as well as that of the players.
  
• Players are given chances to consent to various IC actions - They can choose to be in events or not, or have certain outcomes happen to their characters as opposed to others. DMs cannot ambush you in a dungeon, or unfairly pick on your character alone.
• Players are allowed to freely report, compliment, or condemn any actions they do not like, be it from another player or staff member, at any time, and we do read/take such reports seriously.

Unfortunately, we did not receive nearly as many reports as people had issues/complaints about the character in question. Either through mistrust of staff, feeling that there may be IC repercussions, or a multitude of other reasons (We will not pretend to read minds or push motivations onto players), a good number of complaints went under the radar as to any private RP that went on. To protect the privacy of the players involved, we will not be naming anyone.

Suffice to say, Kerine did not stay away from the characters they were told to under the offer of this 'new life'. They ingratiated themselves back into groups they were not welcome in, using a different player login and character name. They broke the consent of those players, as well as that of staff, and have been banned for it. 

We would like to use this opportunity to ask - to plead - with everyone. PLEASE don't be afraid to send in reports. Please let your concerns be known and heard.

We can only make decisions on information that we know. We only know about problems we either see or are told about. In protecting player privacy, we may miss things. We may only have half a story. 
If you have something to report, please use the form here to send in anything you'd like us to know about. Good, bad, neutral - We record and read everything we're given, even if we don't act on it in public immediately. Sometimes it may take a few days, or weeks, while we try to debate and understand a solution. Sometimes we may try to fix problems behind the curtains, where it doesn't bother the playerbase at large. But we can't fix what we don't know about.

Thank you all for your time and patience while we try to keep CD a place where players can enjoy themselves and tell an amazing story. Please direct any further questions you may have to myself or the other admins.

[Fox²]

Ethika is banned for explicit griefing/trolling with real world racist character names, racist and homophobic usernames, for spamming racist nonsense in both Arabel Square chat and in tells to online players, and for attempting to grief the server/interupt player's roleplay by way of PVPing players and killing NPCs.

Needless to say, we have a zero tolerance for real world racism, and this player joined the server with the sole intention to only grief the server.

[Fire Wraith]

So bans of this type are generally the most difficult, because they're less about a clear rules infraction, and more about a pattern of past and ongoing behavior. We don't require that people agree with us, or like us, or kiss up to us, in the slightest - but when someone has an ongoing pattern of causing problems and out of character conflicts with so many players and staff members that it gets to the point that enough of us just want absolutely nothing to do with them in any way, we end up having to ask them to leave, because they're just not welcome at the game table anymore.

That is the case with SinisterOmnibus/CanticleOfCocytus and ClockworkMayhem/TheLuidaeg.

[Fire Wraith]

LurkerAbove has been banned for violations of the rules on mature content, as well as for unacceptable conduct/behavior towards other players.

First, we'd like to reassure people that this was in no way a ban due to ERP, which per the rules is entirely fine, with three conditions. One, that certain specified topics must not be included, Two, that everyone involved is okay with what's being RPed out, and Three, that it be kept private. (And also that everyone involved is an adult, though that's presumed since the server rules require this to begin with.) In this case, we're dealing with violations of stipulations one and two, specifically.

That's the short version. The longer version includes content that we're going to spoiler under a caution warning due to the subject matter.

SPOILER: Click to show

In this case, we became aware that the player's behavior went far beyond simply doing a lot of ERP with multiple players, and having something of a 'harem' of partners, and had gone well over the line into what we realized was a predatory pattern of targeting new players with female characters. In numerous cases reported to us we learned that this wasn't a matter of people simply being invited, but rather several instances of behavior that we'd best term as manipulative, with players being coerced or pressured ICly and OOCly, and where anything short of a hard and emphatic "fuck no" was brushed aside or ignored. In particular, a number of vulnerable players were pushed hard to engage in mature topics they didn't feel comfortable with, including violations of the mature content rules.

Now, normally we prefer to address problems with player behavior or rule violations with warnings before we move to simply ban people - because we don't like banning anyone. We'd much rather fix the problematic behavior or rule breaking, and only ban people when they prove they cannot or will not alter that behavior. Unfortunately, in the case of behavior like this, and with such a clear and consistent pattern, we feel that a warning, no matter how strongly worded, is insufficient to protect the other players affected by this behavior. We do not feel that any action short of a ban will be enough in this case, given the particular subject matter, the OOC aspect/components to it, and the number of cases involved. I should note too that we're not mentioning the names of the affected players, for what should be obvious reasons of shielding them from potential retribution.

So to answer the question of "How can I avoid getting banned for the reasons this person was banned for?", don't manipulate/pressure people into ERP, don't manipulate/pressure them into aspects/topics of ERP they aren't comfortable with, don't ignore people trying to say "no", don't make a pattern of jumping on new players and trying to get them to join you in ERP, don't violate the mature content topics rules, don't pressure others to do so too, and so on.

As always, we're happy to answer any further questions, either publicly or privately, regarding this.

[Fire Wraith]

This is a post regarding the Discord. In short, we tend to be pretty lax about people that don't play, or only used to play, or play very intermittently, joining us in there. However, when it comes to rules, decorum, and such, we're a lot less inclined to put up with disruptive conduct by people who not only no longer play, but have openly expressed their intention never to play again due to disagreement with staff decisions.

And as such, based on repeated conduct requiring warnings from moderators, the Admins and SDMs have decided to remove Illy from the Discord.

We are also aware that there are a number of other issues with Discord and our rules enforcement there, and this is part of a larger review, so there is more to come as far as that goes. As always, please let us know if there are any questions.