ROLE PLAY GUIDELINES

While it's rare to find a sensative role-player on the servers these days, these guidelines should be kept in mind...

• Open channels fall under the guidelines of Blizzard's policies

• Any Alliance Chat channel (should it exist) will abide by the alliance agreements

• Guild Chat will accept role play equally along with the strange gutter slang commonly refered to as "out of character" -- we are still people behind the screen, after all.

• Full Dagger Groups will abide the same rules as Guild Chat

• Dagger Groups accepting non-guildmates should take care to inform them that your fellows may lapse into the aforementioned the strange gutter slang and to pay them no mind as they usually snap out of it quickly -- this preserves the RP environment while informing non-clansfolk of what they can expect.

• Grouping with non-Clansmen, Daggers will of course abide by the guidelines of the group

• Be respectful, always, of those wishing to play their role...while keeping mind that 'role-playing a jerk' is not an excuse for someone to be a jerk. And conversely, be aware if you think role-play may have gone too far and someone's feeling hurt. In either instance, don't be afriad to send an OOC /tell to try to straighten the situation out, player-to-player.

GUILD CONDUCT GUIDELINES

• To quote one of the founding members oh so many years ago: "Have fun! If you don't like this guild, or aren't having fun, get your happy ass out!"

  The quote isn't meant to sound flippant. The Daggers are a family but family or not, games change, personal goals change, paths change. When a Dagger explains this to his guildmates (or just talks with an officer) they are wished well and reminded that they are still family, no matter the game or guild tag.

  If, during the probationary period, a new recruit decides that the Daggers aren't for them, they need only inform an officer and discuss the differences (just so the officers can refine their application review methods) and they are wished well and recruit and guild part as friends.

  That said, just vanishing is considered the height of bad form.

• Per our original charter, you must be 18 or older in real-life, to join. (Any exceptions to policy on this issue will be addressed by the guild officers on a case-by-case basis)

• Kill-stealing/Griefing: Kill-stealing and Griefing are a guild-bannable offenses. By Kill-stealing we mean deliberate and repeated acts of taking another person or groups kills out of turn, or "hogging" all the kills in a contested area, either by intentionally attacking all mobs in the area, or power-dumping damage spells onto anything that moves, or by "Grief Helping".

  Bragging about doing so, OR threatening to bring a load of higher level guild characters in to make sure you take all the kills is ALSO wrong. Even in a situation where you are the victim of kill-stealing, you do not and SHOULD not threaten to kill-steal in retaliation. You are free to challenge the offender to a duel, call a GM, or try to resolve the situation by discussing it in /tells.

• Personality Conflicts: The forums and in-game channels are not to be used for personality conflicts. It would be foolish to think that personality conflicts will not occur among the guild's members at some point. As far as the guild's officers are concerned, unless it reaches the level of harassment, what happens between two people is their business and they are expected to work out the situation as adults. At minimum, that means treating each other with respect in public channels and when grouping with them. If a member feels that discussing the situation with an officer will help, an officer should be contacted.

• Officers: Personality conflicts arise with officers as well. In the Daggers, Officers (including the Guild Leader) occupy positions of responsibility and are entrusted with commiserate power and authority. Any mis-use of a position of authority will absolutely not be tolerated and will be dealt with severely. Officers are required to exercise good judgement and fairness in the execution of their responsibilities at all times. Personality conflicts, should they occur, must not enter into the execution of their responsibilities.

• The Wine Cellar, Private Reserve forum is a private forum that can be used to work out conflicts and misunderstandings. This is with an eye to working together as adults to resolve the problem and not for airing dirty laundry, character assassination, or bringing a private issue, disagreement, or personality conflict into the public eye. Disciplinary action will be taken against any member misusing this forum or any forum in this manner.

• Alternate Characters (alts) may be tagged with the Silver Daggers or remain unguilded -- this applies to all characters of the chapter's faction on the chapter's server(s). (Any exceptions to this must meet strict guidelines and be approved by the Guild Leader and Officers; this includes a "non-guilded" char that desires a guild tag just to ward off random guild invites)

  Keep in mind that character names do say something about a guild. While we're fairly tolerant there are some lines that we will not cross. If you have an alt named "usuk" or "gaksu" or "balzosteel" or something else that's not fitting with putting SD in a good light, it won't be tagged under SD (see Clan Reputation)

• Clan Reputation: Each member is linked to each other member by the clan's reputation. Reputation is hard one and quickly lost.
  
  - Every effort upon the part of every member must be made in the preservance and furtherance of the clan's reputation.
  
  - Members must be in control of their character's actions and able to prevent or expeditiously halt actions that contravene guild guidelines or those related by Blizzard's representatives or contained in Blizzard's policy documentation.
  
  - Mistakes and accidents that occur regarding game etiquette or that result in infractions of game policy or guild guidelines must be immediately addressed and corrected with the injured party at the first instance. (If a satisfactory result can not obtained, full documentation should be submitted to the guild officers with all dispatch.)
  
  - Members should respect those outside the guild, follow any rules laid out by raid leaders without complaint (if you disagree with them, don't go on the raid), and handle conflicts in a mature manner.

• The guild is NOT to be used to commercially promote anything in real-life a person may be doing. That means no promotional posting of URL's for other web sites in the forum, no using the guild's name for commercial ventures, nothing that doesn't concern in-game is to be sponsored or supported by the guild.

  Ok, that's the boilerplate, "our lawyers made us," type of announcement. Sharing information is one thing, we are family after all, but solicitation is another matter.

• Verbal abuse: No member of the Silver Daggers should engage in verbal abuse. This means public verbal abuse that can be heard in /broad, /say, anything that can be overheard by anyone other than the two participants. No member should also engage in private verbal abuse, and any logged instance of said abuse will be adjudged by the council of officers and ombudsmen and treated accordingly.

  The caveat to this is, of course, role play and even then only in good fun and good taste. If the situation gets out of hand or the other person involved becomes upset, the role play should be dropped and every effort made to rectify the situation.

• Treatment of guildmates and alliancemates: Guildmates and Alliancemates are to be treated with respect at all times. This is the core of the Dagger Spirit.

  Direct or malicious indirect contravention of this guideline will result in disciplinary action. Repeated or flagrant contravention will result in expulsion with prejudice from the guild.

  This is, as always, a subjective issue. In this, the Officers will be the arbitor, unless an Officer is involved, in which case the Guild Leader or a quorum Officers will arbitrate the issue.

• A person not in the this chapter of the Silver Daggers should never be allowed access to a character in the Silver Daggers.

Discipline can be administered by:

• Guild removal
• Probation
• Demotion of Full Members and loss of privileges
• Demotion of Probationary Members (which means that one more disciplinary action will result in removal from the guild)

Bannable offenses:

Some examples are:

1. Intentional or hurtful kill-stealing
2. Cheating
3. Trading illegal, obscene or copyrighted material using World of Warcraft or Silver Daggers as a trading vehicle. This includes pornography, warez or anything else traded between two people. Guildsay is not the place for this, and the guild has NO connections to this. If you are caught doing this, you are on your own.
4. Harassment. This includes sexual, verbal or any type of harassment that can get you banned. We are here to have fun, and there is no reason to destroy another's fun, whether in the guild or out.
5. Flagrant or repeated disregard for Clan reputation, Clan guidelines, or reasonable directions from Clan Officers.
6. Real-World Politics or Religion being brought into the guildspace/partyspace/raidspace/gamespace. Infractions of this provision will bring hard and swift reaction: it will not be tolerated in the least amount.

Any actions that are considered bannable, actionable, or not allowed by Blizzardar's core game rules, policies, or official statements by Blizzard Representatives or Community Coordinator are not guild-endorsed and may lead to disciplinary actions.

GUILD TREASURY GUIDELINES:

The guild treasury is to fund guild-related activities and, when given to members in furtherance of that aim, the funds must be used and accounted for according to the guidelines set down by the Treasurer

MATURE ACTIVITY

Being mature adults, we created this guild also to develop mature friendships and/or relationships. Being mature adults gives us license to act and voice ourselves as such but only if such verbiage is invited by the targeted member of the guild. As in real life, we understand too that there are REAL PEOPLE behind the keyboards with REAL FEELINGS and we are sensitive to this. We also understand that this is a game, and as such HAVING FUN is the order of the day.

DUES

There are none. Donations are appreciated and encouraged. Instead of monetary "dues", the Daggers prefer to gather together for "social hunting" where we donate the evening's proceeds to the guild to meet guild-related expenses if-and-when donations fall to a point guild expenses are not covered. All such expenses must be accounted for and reported to the guild via the Treasury page and Guild Meetings.

>>>DISCLAIMER<<<

One warning that the Silver Daggers must give is that neither the Silver Daggers, nor Blizzard endorses, condones, or allows the trading or solicitation, of any material that is pornographic, including any such material that is considered illegal in the United States. Any member found trading for, or soliciting such material using Guildsay OR World of Warcraft in general, will be expelled from the guild with extreme prejudice. What you do outside of World of Warcraft and the clan is your business... but your conduct in-game/in character reflects directly on the clan and can affect us all.

SPECIAL PRIVILEGES

• Any full guild member may, at any time, post a recall poll for any Officer (including the guild leader). This privilege (perhaps more correctly called a responsibility) is intended for situations where it is necessary to recall a sitting Officer for cause, in fractions of rules or guildelines, or poor performance and negative impact on the guild's reputation, life-blood, and sprit.

  This confidence vote will be by simple majority of the guild in a reasonable amount of time. This, it goes without saying, may not be responded to by any retaliatory actions by any Officer, lest that Officer themselves face disciplinary action or expulsion from the guild for misuse of authority.

  Note: If a recall poll is posted for malicious, injurous, or other-than-the-most-honorable-intent, the requestee will face a disciplinary hearing among the Officers and may face expulsion from the guild.

• All active members in good standing, probationary or full members, are invited to vote on guild policy.

• "Once a Dagger, Always a Dagger" as the saying goes. The individual chapters tend to welcome full-member Daggers among all chapters without needing the full membership process. Each chapter maintains strong recruiting techniques and thus if another game tugs at a Dagger's desire, they may move to that game and become a member in that chapter.

  Caveat: This is not a blind-transfer, it is a privilege and applies to current full members in good standing. It is done at the discretion of the chapter's officers. Disciplinary history, actions in the guild, or other necessary factors may be considered in a the decision not to accept a transfer from one chapter to another. It is the responsibility of the Officers of each chapter to protect and preserve their chapters and one chapter can not speak for another.

  NOTE: Current, Active Full Members in Good Standing wishing to transfer to the THIS chapter are required to submit an application as any other probie would. If the application is worthy and references check out, they are immediately welcomed as a full member.

HOW TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE SILVER DAGGERS

First, you must meet the Guidelines for Guild membership:

1. You must play the game well, either by role playing, or hunting, or exhibiting good group hunting tactics, and you must be in the game to have fun in a teamwork environment.
2. Be at least 18 yrs old in real-life and fully fill out the Membership Application. (see the membership application for information on waivers if you are under 18)

The Process:

• The Daggers are committed to having a mature and fun family of guildmates who can trust and rely on each other. To ensure and safeguard this, the procedure for becoming a Dagger is neither quick or taken lightly. It is our hope that this process, while not egregious or difficult, is enough to both show the high level of commitment we show to our guildmates and our guild culture as well as weed out those who aren't committed enough to be patient.

  If you want to be a Dagger, the process is easy and straightforward. If you just want "a guild" then the process will seem daunting.

• A word about Sponsorship. Sponsors vouch for the Applicant and take an amount responsibility for them. They're also the Applicant's advocate with the guild leadership.

  Talk to and get to know the Daggers. If you impress the Daggers you know you may find yourself a sponsor before you apply. A Sponsor is required for the application to be given full consideration. (On rare ocassion we will accept an application without a Sponsor if there are special circumstansis.)

The Steps are as follows:

1. Applicant fills out the application form completely and (most importantly) honestly.
   For your own sanity SAVE a copy of your answers just in case your browser eats the form, your 'net dies, the e-mail gets lost and you need to resubmit, etc.

   The application contains a field for a Member Sponsor. If a full member of the Daggers has opted to sponsor the Applicant, that name should be supplied, otherwise it should be left blank. (Sponsorship is verified prior to accepting a probationary member. If a Dagger hasn't said "I will sponsor you" then do not put their name in that field. If you have talked with someone about the Daggers, put that in the last section of the Application, "Why do you want to join the Daggers (as opposed to any other guild)?")

2. The Application is reviewed informally by the Recruitment Officer and Guild Leader. This is just a cursory review to ensure enough information was included for the guild officers for review. One of three things will occur:
   • The application will be accepted and posted for review of the guild officers.
   • The Applicant will be asked to either re-submit the application with more information or be asked to clarify some points of the application. This is not anything to be concerned about and no prejudice is attached, sometimes written communication is just a difficult medium.
   • The application will be rejected. If this happens, it will be because it is clear from the application that the ideals of the Applicant and the guild are at serious odds. If you feel this is not the case, please feel free to discuss it with either the recruitment officer or the guild leader -- everybody makes mistakes, even officers.

   PLEASE NOTE: If you do not receive an acknowledgement that we have received the application within three days, please e-mail vincent@silverdaggers.net Things do on occassion get lost in the ether (sometimes it's the e-mail, sometimes it's the recruitment officer)

3. Once the Application is accepted for consideration it is posted into the Application Review forum for the officers to assess and determine if the Applicant would make a suitable recruit.

   Please note this may take up to a week (or more in some cases) as each officer must supply a review and with RL work schedules being what they are (and some officers being out of town on occasion) this may take a bit of time -- though we try to keep to the turn-around much tighter.

   The application seems pretty daunting, doesn't it? Historically very few serious applications are rejected. The calibre of prospective member we are looking for is evident from these guidelines and our charter, so many who know they wouldn't be accepted never even submit an application.

   The application proceses takes stock of a variety of things far more than just the distilled and sterile answers to the questions. The more effort you put into the application, the more effort the officers will put in to evaluate it; consequently the less effort you put in, the less effort they will put in.

4. If an Applicant is approved, they receive an acceptance e-mail and are placed in the "tagging queue" and will be brought into the guild on a probationary basis. Once an Applicant receives their guild tag in-game, their Probationary Member period begins.

   Once brought into the guild, the Sponsorship forum receives a thread regarding that Probationary Member (Probie) and all full members are encouraged to get to know the Probie and post their thoughts and experiences. If unsponsored, a full member may wish to provide Sponsorship for them.

   Please note: Probationary Members must have a minimum of three sponsors when their Probationary Period ends to receive a probationary review. If you do not get to know your guildmates, you won't have a sponsor. (Note: do not ask fellow guildmates to sponsor you while you are a probie, let your actions speak for themselves)

   How long does the Probationary Period last?
   Typically this period is about one month from receiving their guild tag -- depending on the scheduling of guild meetings. This may seem like a long time to be a probationary member, however there are few things restricted from probationary members and during this time more of the guild can get to know the applicant -- this especially serves those applicants who do not have heavy play-schedules -- and more easily gain Sponsorship. (To be honest, most recruits fit in so well and are accepted by the guild members so easily that we forget that so-and-so is still Probationary...)
   How are Probies treated?
   Like family. Respect is the cornerstone of the Dagger Spirit and Dagger philosophy. Daggers are a fun bunch and the like to tease each other from time to time (the guild leader is a favorite target of the Daggers) but Probationary Members are treated as one of our own. The Daggers don't have a strict hierarchy and even the officers and guild leader approach the guild as members first, wearing their "responsibility hats" only when necessary. Probies have no grouping restrictions, item restrictions, and have full voting rights within the guild. Some examples of things that would be restricted from Probationary Members would be those that give license for guild funds and wearing the guild emblem -- the latter is more for something to look forward to, to mark the Applicant's full membership.
   What can probies NOT do?
   Use guild funds (however, they are welcome to access the guild treasury) or wear the Guild Tabard (wearing a Guild Tabard while a probie may get you detagged on the spot)

5. When a Sponsored, In-Good-Standing Probationary Member's probationary period has concluded, they will be formally inducted into the guild at the next guild meeting, granted all the rights and privileges of a Full Member, and forever be part of the Dagger family. (Depending on scheduling, this may take place before the full probationary period would normally elapse.)