[Arianya] Arathian Kebabopoulos - 14 days server ban - 30 day ghost role ban

[Arathian]

BYOND account: Arathian

Character name: Random ashlizard name

Ban type: 14d server ban, 30d ghost ban

Ban reason: As a ghost, scouted out path to station and local area for ashlizard spawn, then discussed with another player in ghost chat about optimizing their gameplay to get to station quickly. On spawn immediately spouted "BRUDAS TIS TIME TO BANGA BANGA DA SPACEWALKAS" without even the faintest pretense of roleplay. Then proceeded to beeline to the station with their pre-determined path. Consider this your rule 0 ban for powergaming.

Time ban was placed: 2020-02-09 01:00 server time

Server you were playing on when banned: Terry

Round ID in which ban was placed: 129891

Your side of the story: I was ashlizard. I did ashlizard things. Random ban out of nowhere. That is what happened.

Why you think you should be unbanned:

Because I didn't, at any point, break any rules. Either written or unwritten. The fact that this is a rule 0 ban rather an actual rule basically proves the point.

As a ghost, scouted out path to station and local area for ashlizard spawn, then discussed with another player in ghost chat about optimizing their gameplay to get to station quickly.

Ashlizards know the layout of lavaland. Players are allowed to at least check where the spawn is and the surrounding area, which is what I did while the ashstorm was going on. Ashlizards can't rcd their way above lava. Ashlizards don't have shelters or gamer gear, or full-healing medicine. But they do have the "knowledge of lavaland". As someone correctly pointed out in the peanut thread, multiple admins have said that in the past. Scouting the land is absolutely allowed and I have never been even *bwoinked* for it before, nevermind banned, nevermind banned for such an absurd period of time.

On spawn immediately spouted "BRUDAS TIS TIME TO BANGA BANGA DA SPACEWALKAS" without even the faintest pretense of roleplay.

Terry is not Manuel. Fuck your digg RP server. I don't like it. I don't play on it. Fuck off with your RP shit. I have exactly 0 obligations to "RP". Fuck off to manuel if you want to people to do the exact same thing but also say "Oh I sure wonder what will be on the south and west of lavaland. Nothing good I imagine!!!" I swear, if we get mods who start enforcing manuel rules on every server, tg is about to die quick. There is no "you have to RP" rule about any role, nevermind ashlizards who are antags.

Then proceeded to beeline to the station with their pre-determined path.

I assume we are forgetting the part here where we killed a bunch of fauna and secured the tendril by killing the miner and sacrificing him and disabled the base, right? I was so beelining to the station that I stopped for multiple sacrifices, killed the miners and looted their stuff before properly disabling the mining base.

Sorry, what is your Appropriate(tm) Standard(tm) for Roleplay(tm) as ashlizards? Stay in base for 30m, then when you see a miner, run to him to say hi, get silently murdered, then get banned for respawning in another egg?

Consider this your rule 0 ban for powergaming.

That does remind me of the conversation I had right before you banned me! You know, the one where I was explaining we should only abduct 1-2 people and bring them down to sacrifice. While we were using spears. Wow, what absolute powergaming that is. I must have had a durand in my other pocket, while I was subverting the AI and plasmaflooding seeing how you just had to intervene in a server you never step a foot on at 3 in the morning.

This is the 2nd ban appeal since I made an woopsie in the other one. You said you will "further explain your ban". And I would love you to do that because all the """reasons""" you listed are not against the server rules. Banning people because you don't like how they play is absolutely absurd.

[Ezel]

Im not an admin but.
I like to point out that ash walkers have all the shelter and can rcd their way over lava.
They can also smelt ores with their campfire or using lava to refill their rcd
They can create an shelter everywhere as they please also making it ash proof with create area button usually you only need to dig a hole and place down a sandstone door to be safe

[Arathian]

Im not an admin but.
I like to point out that ash walkers have all the shelter and can rcd their way over lava.
They can also smelt ores with their campfire or using lava to refill their rcd
They can create an shelter everywhere as they please also making it ash proof with create area button usually you only need to dig a hole and place down a sandstone door to be safe

I forgot about the RCD. That's fair enough (although I don't think it's central against my points).

And I don't know how to do the shelter thing, but good to know you can I guess.

[SkeletalElite]

Ash walker flavor text for reference since it's what they have to follow:

You are an ash walker. Your tribe worships the Necropolis. The wastes are sacred ground, its monsters a blessed bounty. You have seen the lights in the distance... they foreshadow the arrival of outsiders that seek to tear apart the Necropolis and its domain. Fresh sacrifices for your nest. Drag the corpses of men and beasts to your nest. It will absorb them to create more of your kind. Don't leave your nest undefended, protect it with your life. Glory to the Necropolis!

[Arathian]

Thank you skeletal. Mods please don't delete that one, it's relevant and something I would like to expand upon.

Ok, my initial appeal is a bit on the >MAD side, but 2 days passed and I calmed down a bit.

There are 2 main reasons I am upset by this ban:

1) I was online and active when this ban happened. I have no notes or bans relating to metagaming or abusing lavaland roles before. Yet I was never bwoinked by Ari and I got instantly banned. I was never given the opportunity to explain myself or even given an explanation besides the super vague ban text which will be expanded on later (apparently).

2) I still hold that I did nothing wrong. To clarify, I don't mean that I did "whatever everyone else does so it's ok lol". That is not my argument or my feeling. If I broke a rule, fair enough, ban me and we can debate why and how I broke the rule.

Ashlizards, as their text indicates, are a long established tribe. In the peanut thread, someone (correctly in my opinion) stated that the eggs are not literal but an abstraction to show the tribe existing and how they come "to being". If they were literal newborn spawns, they couldn't speak or use and craft stuff or have seen the miners etc.

It's been a long established principle and precedent that ashlizards know the layout of lavaland. That means they know of the huge lava river right below them running across lavaland. Players *are* the ashlizards so it follows players are allowed to at least check the general location of the ashlizard nest and how to proceed from there.

When I play other ghost roles with no such stipulations (f.ex. malf. Sleeper) I do NOT check the layout of lavaland.

If I am getting banned for this (which I am not entirely sure is the case) then it goes against precedent.

Truth be told, I have no clue why I am getting banned for half a month + a month from ghostroles. I am still waiting for ari's explanation. The ban, even if I did blatantly break the rules, is extremely excessive. That is a sentiment I have seen shared from almost everyone who commented on this.

[Arianya]

So - this is gonna be a bit of a long one because, well, rule 0 ban's generally require more justification. As I intimated in the previous ban appeal, there was a reason for my decision at the time, and I'll expand on that in my conclusion.

First, to clarify, the bans in question are a 2 week server ban and a 4 week lavaland ban (this is distinct from a ghost role ban, as there are some ghost roles which are not on lavaland)

Why did this catch the attention of an administrator?

Spoiler:

The previous round, Arathian made a ticket on Terry asking for ashlizards to be spawned. No administrator was online at the time, but when I hopped on I saw it and rejected it. This interaction is not noteworthy in and of itself, but it does colour the events of the next round, when this ban occurred.

Arathian then said the following in OOC, at the start of the next round:

[2020-02-09 00:41:55.167] OOC: Arathian/(Arathian) "I JUST WANNA ASHLIGGER" (start area (8, 174, 1))
[2020-02-09 00:41:57.640] OOC: Arathian/(Arathian) "FOR GOD'S SAKES" (start area (8, 174, 1))
[2020-02-09 00:42:00.770] OOC: Arathian/(Arathian) "BUNGA BUNGA TRIBE" (start area (8, 174, 1))

(Source is https://tgstation13.org/raw-logs/terry/ ... 1/game.log - no parsed logs available due to parser issues)

Again, nothing particularly noteworthy about saying this, but colours future incidents.

When I actually started paying attention was when I saw the following in deadchat (comments of another player in deadchat removed):

[2020-02-09 00:42:28.230] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "BOIZ" (Unexplored Location (91, 150, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:42:29.543] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "LIGGERS" (Unexplored Location (91, 150, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:42:30.816] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "IT'S TIME" (Unexplored Location (91, 150, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:42:31.445] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "COME" (Unexplored Location (91, 150, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:42:41.374] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "AND CLOSE TO BASE" (Mining Station Starboard Wing (69, 33, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:42:42.726] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "WEEE" (Mining Station Starboard Wing (69, 33, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:43:38.624] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "it's" (Lavaland Wastes (91, 143, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:43:41.419] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "not the greatest" (Lavaland Wastes (91, 143, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:43:43.947] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "but I can make it work" (Lavaland Wastes (91, 143, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:43:46.239] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "we just dig to the left" (Lavaland Wastes (91, 143, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:43:51.562] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "also holy fuck" (Lavaland Wastes (96, 151, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:43:53.267] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "megafauna" (Lavaland Wastes (96, 151, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:44:01.678] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "LOLLLL" (Unexplored Location (92, 147, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:44:05.172] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "nah" (Lavaland Wastes (85, 147, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:44:07.431] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "we can still dig left" (Lavaland Wastes (85, 147, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:44:08.591] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "it's fine" (Lavaland Wastes (85, 147, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:44:12.939] SAY: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) (DEAD) "join me" (Unexplored Location (89, 149, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:44:14.267] GAME: Arathian/(Arathian Kebabopoulos) became an ash walker

Once the initial messages were sent, I started observing Arathian's ghost to see what exactly they were doing - including mapping out a path to the miner base so as to avoid lava rivers, and noting megafauna and tendril locations.

Arathian then spawned, and after doing some basic ash lizard stuff (first feed, grabbing a pickaxe, etc) they headed to start mining out their path to the miner base while another ashlizard killed mobs to spawn more eggs, and between them killed two miners. A third ashlizard (seemingly unrelated to the earlier discussion) spawned in and was told, during an ashstorm:

[2020-02-09 00:52:38.691] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "BRUDA!" (Unexplored Location (90, 149, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:52:42.862] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "Stay in" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:52:46.281] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "after the ashstorm" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:52:49.147] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "we kill the spacewalkers" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))

I'll also highlight these quotes, as they play into later points:

[2020-02-09 00:47:06.030] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "I know da way" (Unexplored Location (90, 147, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:38.162] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "dis way" (Lavaland Wastes (61, 150, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:45.666] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "here" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:47.404] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "these mushrooms" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:48.454] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "we gotta" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:50.562] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "dig straight down" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:52.540] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "for quite a while" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:54.847] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "but it will take us" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:47:56.781] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "to base safely" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:48:04.028] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "grab a pickaxe" (Lavaland Wastes (56, 136, 5))

[2020-02-09 00:53:38.127] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "we need to break every apc" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:53:41.865] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "except the restroom apc" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:53:49.492] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "restroom apc power the 2ndary shuttle" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:53:56.055] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "so we invade through the backdoor" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:53:59.659] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "but miners can't get back" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:54:01.475] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "when they come down" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:54:05.429] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "also no cameras" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:54:12.998] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "stick together" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:54:14.864] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "never run alone" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))
[2020-02-09 00:54:20.249] SAY: arathian/(Seeba-Azum) "they can't with apc broken" (Unexplored Location (89, 148, 5))

At this point, the ashlizards had invaded the mining station, broken all but one APC, and simply debating which shuttle to take. I was still watching, and waiting to see if they committed to going to station before making a decision on what punishments to dole out.

As they did, I issued a ban to Arathian per what I mentioned before, and used IC tools to nudge the other two ashlizards home.

While it has no relevance to the ban appeal itself, I will note for context that in invading, the ashlizards caught a disease (if a minor one), and that a third miner killed their egg tendril which was unguarded.

What factors played into the decision to issue a ban?

Spoiler:

Aside from the obvious metagaming of ghost information, which in and of itself is a bannable offense, I also note the following from our rules page:

Unlike the rest of the rules, these roles are very much defined and guided by roleplay rather than a system of "valid" or "not valid."

And for completeness sake, I quote this user who posted the ashlizard flavour text:

You are an ash walker. Your tribe worships the Necropolis. The wastes are sacred ground, its monsters a blessed bounty. You have seen the lights in the distance... they foreshadow the arrival of outsiders that seek to tear apart the Necropolis and its domain. Fresh sacrifices for your nest. Drag the corpses of men and beasts to your nest. It will absorb them to create more of your kind. Don't leave your nest undefended, protect it with your life. Glory to the Necropolis!

While you did act in ways other then digging towards the station, in my evaluation none of them were taken for reasons other then setting up your ability to invade the station. This is admittedly a subjective judgement, but one made while observing you for pretty much the entire length of your time on lavaland.

These factors, along with the single-mindedness of your pursuit of invasion of the station, were also coloured by the fact that you had made a policy thread fairly recently about the results of a poll - https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 33&t=25479 - and suggesting discussion about what policy should arise from that poll.

Generally speaking, it would be in extremely poor taste for a player who knows that policy has not changed to act against that policy, with the possible intent to use the poll results to stir up drama if they should be punished. Obviously I cannot prove intent on this, but I will note that Arathian is a user of nearly 600 hours of gameplay, with active involvement in the forums and codebase. This along with the fact that they posted the thread themselves, inclined me to believe they were aware that they were not acting in good faith.

Why was a ban issued?

Spoiler:

So, a ban was issued for 3 reasons:
a) Metagaming of ghost information (Rule 2)
b) Powergaming - the treatment of the game more as a TDM then a roleplay game, especially in a "roleplay guided" role
c) The perceived intent to use a poll as cover to break the rules (Rule 0)

It should also be noted that the user broke the ash lizard policy on leaving the nest undefended, but that this wasn't taken into account for their ban as I felt the other offences were grave enough.

Addressing counter-arguments

Spoiler:

Because I didn't, at any point, break any rules. Either written or unwritten.

• Demonstrably false - rule 2 was broken, as was the general unwritten rule of treating this as a roleplaying game, not a team deathmatch game. Also, despite your insinuations otherwise, rule 0 is still a rule - albeit an open ended one to allow admins to cover things that are not specifically covered by other rules.

Ashlizards know the layout of lavaland

• There is a large gap between "knowing the layout" i.e. that the mining base is to the south, the necropolis to the north, etc and scouting out specific locations via ghost - the latter is not and has never been okay - in fact the lore of lavaland itself is that the terrain is constantly shifting. I will note that your ghost path specifically avoided lava rivers/lakes pre-emptively which you would have had no way of knowing about ICly. Let alone whatever fauna mega or otherwise was avoided. Short of an existing headmin ruling there's not much else to really be said on this point

Terry is not Manuel. Fuck your digg RP server. I don't like it. I don't play on it. Fuck off with your RP shit. I have exactly 0 obligations to "RP". Fuck off to manuel if you want to people to do the exact same thing but also say "Oh I sure wonder what will be on the south and west of lavaland. Nothing good I imagine!!!" I swear, if we get mods who start enforcing manuel rules on every server, tg is about to die quick. There is no "you have to RP" rule about any role, nevermind ashlizards who are antags.

• While it's definitely true that manuel practices a higher standard then the normal servers, this does not mean that there is no expectation of roleplaying on other servers - and as noted above, ashlizards and lavaland roles in general are expected to be more roleplay orientated then the average ghost role.
  
  Frankly this is one of the worst comments you've made in this thread. I would sincerely suggest you reconsider this opinion, whatever the outcome of this appeal. There is very unlikely to be a future for you on /tg/ if you feel this way about RP, even the lower standard held in non-Manuel servers.

Wow, what absolute powergaming that is. while I was subverting the AI and plasmaflooding seeing how you just had to intervene in a server you never step a foot on at 3 in the morning.

• Aside from your weird assertion that I somehow "never step foot on Terry", you seem to be of the belief that powergaming requires some specific level of power to be an issue - to quote another source:

  Powergaming (or power gaming) is a style of interacting with games or game-like systems, particularly video games, boardgames, and role-playing games, with the aim of maximising progress towards a specific goal.

  I leave it up to the reader to consider whether Arathian's actions would fit this description.

I have no clue why I am getting banned for half a month + a month from ghostroles.

• To clarify, the timing of the lavaland role ban is in part longer because a "2 week" roleban that is served concurrently with a server ban may as well not exist. The server ban is as long as it is because metagaming ghost information is a serious offence, and one that a player with your playtime should have no unfamiliarity with the rules regarding. Also playing into the timing is the fact that you were exposing other players to your playstyle - including one that had a fraction of your hours. If they saw you do this without punishment, why would they not think it was okay to do in future? The roleban exists since your actions showed such a fundamental lack of understanding of what lavaland ghost roles are about - even the antagonistic ash lizards, with the hope that a period without them will incentivize better play.

Conclusion

Spoiler:

Given the above, and given that the majority of your ban appeal is asserting (mistakenly) the rightness of your actions, I don't see any particular reason to reduce or remove this ban. However, I do acknowledge that it is a rule 0 ban with some amount of subjective judgement, so in light of the possibility that you genuinely thought that policy had changed regarding ash lizard invasions as a direct result of the poll, and weren't acting in bad faith on that point, I will offer to strip down the role ban to being ash lizard only, and limiting it to 5 actual non-serverbanned days (so 2 weeks and 5 days in objective timing)

Of courses, I am always open to headmin oversight if needed.

[Arathian]

You weren't kidding about the long response.

I am extremely busy IRL today and tomorrow so I will possibly not have time to respond in these 2 days. I do intend to though, so this appeal remains open until then.

Nevertheless, I will agree that we will probably need a headmin ruling on this. I just ask it waits until we both finish saying our peace.

[Hulkamania]

A reminder that Arathian has requested to wait until they have said their peace, and it has been some time. If this isn't resolved soon I'll be leaving a closing remark and making a ruling.

[Hulkamania]

I'm going to be considering this thread denied given there was never a proper response.

I'd also like to add that at the ORIGINAL (now deleted) time this ban was appealed it was mentioned that a large part of the justification was that "the policy had been changed on ash lizard invasions" which it had not, we had only had a poll about how people would like them to be treated, no proper policy on the matter.