Darkwind Marshal
A Darkwind Marshal, or just Marshal is a player who serves as an ambassador of the game. Marshals are not game masters, or system admins, they are just players who volunteer their time to help new players learn the game.
They do, however, have some small, moderator-type responsibilities when they are in the Game Lobby or Forums. For the most part, these involve trying to keep the conversations civil, limiting the amount of swearing and offensive language, and limiting any 'chat spam' that crops up.
Powers and Perks
In support of their Lobby Moderator duties, Marshals can:
- Mute players for various amounts of time
- Kick players out of the Lobby
- Edit forum posts partially or in their entirety
In support of their Game Ambassador duties, Marshals:
- Have unlimited timeouts during events (regular players are limited to 3)
- Receive 5 extra gang members that are tied to Somerset
- These members allow the Marshal to use his 'real' gang to play as he sees fit, and still have characters available to help new players in the Somerset region
Duties
Marshals are subscribed players of Darkwind who have taken an oath to the responsibility of helping any new player learn how to play and conquer the steep learning curve that Darkwind provides.
They will also take new players out into the wilderness to allow the new player a 'relatively' safe experience with the hazards of scouting the wild roadways outside of the more protected towns and relatively safe town events. It should be noted that while scouting with a Marshal or any 'Veteran' for that matter increases the possibility of survival in any combat situation, the outcome is NOT a certainty! Scouting with Marshals and Veterans in general DOES NOT guarantee your survival!
Marshals can be identified in the client Lobby and the forums by asterisks bracketing their name. ie: *player*.
Marshals also have limited moderation abilities in both the client Lobby and the Forums.
Any Forum post can be edited by any Marshal if the content is found to be outwardly offensive either by derogatory language or intentional personal verbal attacks on any player. In the client Lobby, there are 2 moderation sanctions that can be imposed on any player.
(1)Any player can be muted. (They cannot post anything in the lobby to be viewed by others. They can still play any racing or wilderness events).
(2)Any player can be booted. (the player is removed from the server altogether. They cannot enter the lobby at all nor can they play any racing or wilderness events).
The sanctioned player may still access the Darkwind web site and forums if they have been 'muted' or 'booted'.
These 2 moderation sanctions are set timed events against the offending player. Depending on the amount of time the Marshal deems the infraction allows. It could be a time frame from 1 minute for minor offenses, to many hours for the most grievous infractions.
These sanctions on players are NOT often used and there will, more than likely, be more than one Marshal involved before these punishments are used.