With regard to the OP, there is still the Stonehead tavern and the one in scaly-wingy reptitile town. Both are wide open for players to use at will. At least, I don't think Illyisa et al are haunting the stonehead anymore. I could be wrong.
A while back, Illysia attempted to create a sort of "peaceful" (or at least moreso) environment located in Amdeneir during a particularly violent role play. I would say that currently, with the help of the GMs, this is really coming to fruition now. With the Learning Hall and the Hospital situated there, there are many plans to generate role plays which are not necessarily combat oriented. There will be antagonists, but they won't be person against person (typically,) rather conflicts of ideals and so forth. Of course I'm not saying no violence will ever occur in that city, but as it's been arranged (ICly speaking as well,) it should tend to be very minimal.
I've not always been the best at sharing the proverbial sandbox. I've learned a lot over the years about compromising on certain topics and compromise really fuels the growth of a community. It's part of why I've been trying to develop a more diverse environment of role plays to attract people with different interests. I think people tend to try to drift to opposite ends of the spectrum and then turn a nose up at others: if you prefer antagonistic role play you get reduced to a troll, if you want something of a plot you're a snob, and if you'd just like to engage in more day to day activities (or maybe social drama-related things) you're not really trying. None of these are true. Each type of RP is perfectly valid, but all of our preferences are coming to life on one server. Just because something might not be my cup of tea doesn't mean it's bad, same goes for my interests as opposed to someone else's.
My answer to this is to be courteous. If a role play is to be extremely violent (as in not your typical rogue attack like the GMs and players have done on occasion), have it happen in a group or out in the wilds where it isn't likely to be stumbled upon. This is also just logical, honestly. With the number of guards in the city, it wouldn't make sense to be dragging tons of corpses through the streets. (I say that as non-accusatory; I've
done that before, though not to an extreme as some, and while a lot of folks enjoyed the story, some did not.) If a role play is to be explicit as Ascomanni pointed out, it should NOT be done in main chat. Move to tells or to a group for that as well.
For the most part, people (at least recently) have been very good about these things. Thing is, that's not always the case. I've seen instances where characters make comments that are extremely inappropriate about children (I will not go into details as this is a public forum, but if you want specifics shoot me a pm.) I've seen someone role play that a witch enlarged his *you can guess* for the purposes of intercourse (and that he no longer had any control over his "urges.") Both of these were done smack in Kada El's, for all to see and for potentially younger players to hear. Now, me, personally, I don't think there's room for that sort of thing at all, but at the least I really do think it should be done out of main chat. It's incredibly disturbing and upsetting to some folks. I've role played my characters through things like depression (mostly therapeutic really) and been asked to not do so in a public setting, and rightly so, so I really don't think it's too much to ask to keep that sort of explicit material away from the public eye.
In regards to this specific instance, I think that compromise too, can be reached. If I'm correct, I'm thinking Damola doesn't want particularly violent RPs happening at the Den. That's valid. Instead, the Den should be somewhere where all types of characters would tend to be on good (or at least weapons-sheathed) behavior. People engaging in a bar fight would get thrown out onto the street, maybe denied admittance for a while. This winds up letting you role play hiring bouncers: they're not all rough and tumble people with scars. There are plenty of folks who role play perfectly lawful characters or characters who will do precisely what they are paid to do: keep out the rough-housers.
Echoing Ascomanni's statement, I don't think the place should be OOCly controlled to only allow "lawful good" characters access. If someone a little shadier can ICly work their way in with wit and charm, I really don't see an issue. Issue a warning that if they abuse that capacity by stealing items, they will lose privileges and potentially face other consequences. The thing is, a "good" bad guy, played well, wouldn't be one to sit there and stir up trouble, drawing attention to themselves. Instead, they'd blend in, probably be quite inviting, and when they saw a character they thought might be interested in "criminal" RP, they would likely speak to them directly.
Thereby any potentially violent (or criminal) RP related would happen
outside the Red Crystal Den.
The location of the place is a hub. It's somewhere that new players could potentially find the people creating the types of stories they're interested in. I have no doubt we could find a way to make it work so that everyone gets what they want out of it.
