I was a lot more ambitious than I'm capable of accomplishing, and it turns out I don't quite have the support I thought I did. My peoples are lovely and awesome, but I was asking a LOT. So I've got to do a bunch of stuff on my own, or acknowledge that it's too much. I'm much more likely to go the former route.
Take the risk. Pay attention. If at any point you become uncomfortable or uncertain about the appropriateness of his behavior, let Hellfrog know immediately. Do not, under any circumstances, let anything iffy slide. Don't hold it against him or develop a grudge, don't change your own appropriate behavior, just deal with it promptly and efficiently. If he crosses lines, he will be corrected, and if he cannot be corrected and does not learn that inappropriate behavior will not fly (I do believe that he will learn what he can get away with, if nothing else, and will stay within the boundaries of appropriate behavior) I am positive that staff will take the appropriate, reasonable actions to remedy the situation. My own situation was resolved immediately, and his friendliness and willingness to work with me did not change.
Yeah, I'm definitely very slow. Slow slow slow.
I think this behavior is as inappropriate as what he is accused of, personally. Kind of gross, tbh. Two wrongs don't make a right. I very much think that any issues here can and will be resolved by good staffing without people taking things into their own hands like this.
Both getting rid of the merit and adjusting the cost would also be house rules.
Just to throw this out there, I've been speaking with @Gingerlily for a while now; we've talked, and mended our fences, and she knows I 
her. I do firmly believe that she means what she's saying, here. The game is something else entirely, but this apology is genuine.
Yeah, I haven't seen it either. I've seen a couple of asshole PCs, but it's not something that's been in my face at all. I guess one person randomly snapped at my PC, but she made a joke about it and that was the end of it, the next scene it went from 'asshole' to 'it's something we're joking about'. Maybe the dynamics have changed? I dunno.
@icanbeyourmuse said:
I think I tried Kushiel's Debut. Or some Kushiel game. The players weren't welcoming nor were staff. At least towards someone who has never read the books. I was gonna try it out because a friend was there.
I totally do not think it could have been KD. The players and staff there (there are two of them) are the most helpful, friendly bunch ever. My mind has been blown, seriously. It's probably been one of my best new-to-a-game experiences, right up there with Leading Edge, Redemption, and Second Pass.
I really like the idea of a Dragon Age game, but including FCs at all seems to me to be missing the point. 
I wish y'all the best of luck with this, though!
2 ) The assumption is, if you are not wearing tailor-made clothes, that you are wearing something non-special. So if you want to be wearing something fancy or well made or whatnot, just posing it isn't OK -- because these objects exist for a reason, silver makes the world go round. That said, I pose my PC's clothing all the time rather than going with the coded stuff. The coded stuff comes out for fancy occasions, but most the time she's wearing 'simple' clothes, so I do pose that.
1 ) My character swears. In private, or when she is very, very, very mad. It's more manners than anything else, though -- I have seen other people do it, particularly some of the saltier Lycene characters.
I know I sound super cranky about it. I do wish them the best of luck, I am just disappointed that it has this setup, since I'd love to play on a DA game and this factor kills my interest.
Many things you have suggested in this thread are things that are already in the game.
Whelp, sorry, @surreality, I've lost my ability to be mature about this.
I just received this e-mail from Skaldia, titled 'Good Riddance'. Me.
I cannot keep quiet on this any longer. I was trying to keep quiet, and hoping you would do the same, but apparently you just can’t help yourself. I refuse to apologize to you, or to give in to your “demand” that we apologize to the playerbase. First, the Longest Night is not “fluff”, it is the biggest social event of the IC year for the setting. The fact that another small scene was taking place at the same time to wrap up a plot that has been going on for almost two years, or maybe more, does not change that. And that small scene was not all “staff alts”, as you claimed, but the scene was small because given the nature of it, and IC attitudes toward the occult in the setting, it made sense that there would not be many people involved. If logic offends you so much that you have to throw this sort of hissy fit, that is your problem, not mine. Not everyone will be involved in every plot, so you really should get over yourself. In your jobs, and Aviana’s, and Lanval’s, no mention was made of looking into a way to undo the ritual. It was all stuff about the Yeshuites in the city, whether they were possibly going to cause trouble or had Black Cross leanings. It is not Asherat’s fault, nor Shemhazai’s, nor mine, that none of you were clear about what you were wanting from those jobs.
And if this was, as you said, a matter of other issues coming to a head, then why did no one, including you, bring those issues to my attention before having a temper tantrum and rage-quitting? Too cowardly? Or would that not feed your martyr complex enough? This is the biggest issue, for me, with the way that you and your little posse left the game. Not one of you had it in you to bring your complaints to the attention of the headwiz. Not one. Instead, you stayed in your little echo chamber, where you could complain without other voices present to explain what was going on or that could possibly do something about your issues. Then you leave in the middle of an event you were supposed to be running, without a word to me or Asherat? Your nattering about ethics is so hypocritical at this point it nearly makes me want to vomit. This is why your characters were in the freezer, because there was no way in Hell I was going to be able to put up with you in the game any longer. Go infect some other game with your toxicity, please.
Personally, I think the spread of information is a good thing. It means that people are getting included. If you start bringing down actual consequences on folks for sharing? They stop sharing, plots grind to a halt, blah blah blah.
The best part is, I never bitched. I never took part in the gossipy crap. I complained quietly to one person when I was frustrated, a couple of times. When Avi and Lanval blew up and quit, I tried to smooth the situation over. I tried to talk to Ash about my problems in good faith. Then I logged off to take a break, and Ash shared the conversation we'd had with somebody else, and that somebody else came after me for it with inaccurate information, off of the game. I still wasn't saying anything nasty about them, just that we'd had a disagreement. Then I logged in and was in the freezer, apparently because I'd pissed off Skaldia beyond reason enough that the thought of me being on his game disgusted him.
I didn't do anything wrong. At no point. I spoke my mind directly to Asherat. There was no toxic anything. What they did was WRONG.
Yes.
Okay, the party arrives in the high tech office building's meeting room. There's a newspaper on the table, several workstations without computers hooked up to them, and the table is clean.
Investigation happens, players decide there's nothing in this room and they move on to the next.
Later...
MAN. I was so clear, the clue was so obvious, but they didn't even LOOK at the newspaper. Why would there have been a newspaper in a high tech building?! Wouldn't they have realized everyone had a computer or whatever to look at the news???
Like, what? Yeah, in this case the assumption itself was very obviously faulty, but even if it wasn't, you just do not know what knowledge/information the players are coming to the table with. They might not KNOW that in places like this, newspapers are rare, for all that you think it's common sense. It's not, and not because your players are dense, either.
I don't really think 3 downvotes is particularly hammering.
I used to think it was lazy storytelling to do things like 'hey, you know guys, don't forget you saw X at the last crime scene, too...' as a GM, but it's not. It's really, really not.
Anyway, the sum total of this is that you can pose a character being subtle without being subtle as a player. Being subtle as a player does you absolutely no favors, because people miss it and then you just never get to explore those things. And that sucks.