The deal, in plain English

Short, because it is a family Minecraft server and not a bank. If any of it reads as unclear, that is our fault and worth telling us about.

Who you are dealing with

Sculklantis is operated by Bandy Strawn, an individual residing in New Hampshire, trading asStrawn Games. Not a company you can look up — a person, in a house, with a computer in it. Reaching us means reaching him.

What this is

A private Minecraft world, run at home, offered free to family and to friends we invite. There is nothing to buy, no account with us, and no subscription. Your child needs their own copy of Minecraft, which is nothing to do with us.

What we promise

Honestly, very little, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise:

• We do not promise the server will be up. It runs on a home computer on a home internet connection. It goes down. Sometimes it goes down for days.
• We do not promise nothing will be lost. We take backups and we have restored from them, but a world can be corrupted and a build can vanish. If that would genuinely upset your child, this is worth knowing before they spend a month on a castle.
• We do not promise anyone will behave. Children are children, and the world contains AI characters that occasionally say unexpected things. We watch, we filter, and we tell you when something goes wrong — we cannot promise it will not.

The world is provided as it is, with no warranty of any kind. Your child plays at your discretion and your risk.

What we ask

Be kind to everyone

Ours is a scouting family, and that is the standard here — kind, helpful and friendly, including to the person you met five minutes ago. If you would not say it standing next to someone, do not type it. Joking around is part of playing together; the line is that a joke is about a thing somebody did, never about who they are.

It is an open world, and things get broken

Home areas are protected. The rest is survival Minecraft, which means traps, explosions, and occasionally rebuilding a house — that is the game being the game, not something going wrong, and we can usually put back what was lost. What is not the game is wrecking somebody's work on purpose because you are annoyed with them.

If something goes wrong, tell a grown-up

Rather than getting even. The easiest one is your own parent at home, and it always works. The players here are young, and not all of them use the same tools: some are typing hello into Minecraft chat for the first time, and some families choose parent-approved voice while they play. Both are welcome, and part of what you are learning in here is how to be a person online.

What ends it

Bullying, hate speech, threats, intimidation or harassment, in any form, in chat or in voice. Those are not warnings-and-second-chances territory: access ends, and we tell the parent why. Anything that goes further than that goes wherever it needs to go.

Removing someone

We can remove any player from the world at any time, with or without a reason, and without notice. Usually there will be a conversation first, because these are our child's friends. But there does not have to be, and on a world with children on it we are not going to pretend otherwise.

You can also remove your own child whenever you like, for any reason or none, and we will not ask you to justify it.

What we know about your child

Their Minecraft username and server identifiers, what they type in the game, ordinary play records such as builds, inventories and progress, and safety or rollback records if something needs review. How that is handled is set out on the main site — children's privacy and the AI in the world.

If we change this

We tell the parents of children on the server directly. We are not going to edit this page quietly and treat continued play as agreement.

Talking to us

The family who invited you is the fastest route.