Event RP – What is it and how is it done?

It struck me today (quite out of the blue – I wonder why our minds work like that, suddenly popping an idea or memory up when everything else about us in engaged in thoughts and activities totally unconnected) that I had missed off an important definition of roleplay in SL from my list. Doubly important when I realised that I actually don’t know how it works.

Event RP: Where people get together to take part in a pre-planned event that is in itself an act of semi-staged/semi-improvised RP (as opposed to people at an event deciding to undertake RP).

A good example of this would be the naval battles staged by Steelhead’s very own Master of the Waves, Hotspur O’Toole. Another good example, and one that has always stuck in my mind, is the Martian attack on Caledon in 2007 (one blog extract to illustrate what I mean here).

I can see the end result of the Martian attack in the plethora of Caledon and SL Steampunk blogs (around July 2007) to piece together how people fitted in to the RP, but what I am less clear on is how such an event was organised. Specifically I’d like to know:

1) How many people were ‘in’ on the gig? Was it just a few of the boss/management team or was it a large affair with many organisers?

2) How were people assigned roles? Was it just a free for all come-shoot-at-the-aliens affair, or did people have to report in and be assigned a task?

3) How did the mechanics work? Were the Martian craft scripted bots or were there people behind them? How did combat & damage to people & property work, if at all?

In short, if I (by “I”, I mean Steelhead as just “I” on my own couldn’t do it) wanted to stage a similar event – let’s say a Godzilla style attack on the city – how would we go about it?

If you have any ideas or tried & tested solutions, please be so kind as to drop them below

 

Steelhead Memories (Part 1)

Since moving into Steelhead a mere month or so ago (although it both feels shorter and longer than that – it’s been a strange few months for me in RL ) I have been reading back through various resident’s blogs to learn more about my new home and the events that have shaped it.

I started with Elle’s blog and moved on to Darien’s blog because I am playing one of his characters at the moment and needed to at least look like I knew a little of the amazing and complex backgrounds he had created. As with pretty much all blogs like ours, he mixes his tales with news of SL day-to-day events and it was through these latter posts I began to understand a little of the early days of Steelhead’s existence (a time often referred to a the Dark Times).

But (and I know you shouldn’t start a sentence with a ‘But’, but…) it wasn’t until I started reading Fuzzball Oretga’s blog (this post specifically) that I not only got some idea of how close Steelhead came to not coming out of these Dark Times, but also what a vital role Darien played in ensuring it did.

I hereby propose that Steelhead sets up an award for citizens whose work ensures the city and environs are a happy place to live for all – the Dr Darien Mason Good Citizenry Award!

p.s. Darien, in the comments, says he was involved in many of the events of the Dark Times and the award is not a good idea. Pity I’ve already posted about the idea on the Steelhead Ning… another politcally sensitive clanger dropped then :-/

 

Lost & Found: Chapter 7 – Meeting Frau Lowey

The horse plodded his charge through the city’s streets and alleyways in silence. A strange mood had come over the furry man since he had come out of the scary building. The horse wasn’t surprised, that place made all the animals nervous. He’d never met a single animal that had been inside. Sure some said they had but he knew full well were lying and he’d never met one, not one who’d actually been in and come out again – the whole place smelt of a strange, wrong sort of death. A shudder ran down his spine and he tried to put it from his mind as he trotted on to the Consulate, there all he to worry about was the sharptooths who eyed his sort hungrily. He wondered how they would take to the furry man and found himself snorting in amusement.

****

As he left his son’s laboratory behind, Jeremiah settled into the rhythm of the horse beneath him and allowed his mind to drift, only the occasional shudder or snort from his steed pulling him from his thoughts. He was slowly gathering himself again, repairing the fragile links undone by his time in the lab, and by the time his mount stopped outside the Consulate he was once more in charge of his volatile emotions and feeling, if not normal, then at least a little better.

The Europa Consulate was an impressively austere block of stone and columns set in its own formal grounds. The horse trotted up to the gate but steadfastly refused to enter, eyeing the Jaeger guard with more than a little nervousness. Jeremiah hopped down and walked the short distance to the door which was guarded by a single Jaeger who stared at him with casual disdain. “Vat hyu vant here? Ve not vant heny pegs or lucky hever!”

“I’m here to see Frau Lowey,” Jeremiah replied ignoring the insult, “please be so kind as to tell her Dr Jeremiah Mason is here and would very much like to speak with her.”

The green-skinned guard leered at the upright antelope but remembered well the last broom handle the Frau had broken across his back for being rude to a guest. “Hyu vait here, vurry man,” he said and slipped inside for a moment before coming back as if nothing had happened and pointedly stared off into the distance. Jeremiah looked around, unsure what to do next. He cleared his throat deliberately. The guard ignored him and began to quietly whistle an off key tune to himself. Jeremiah coughed again. “Huh? Hyu schtill here? Hwy hyu not gone hin, bud?” the guard said at last.

“But you never said anything,” Jeremiah said, exasperation clear in his voice.

The Jaeger gave him a toothy grin, all malice and self-satisfaction, “Hy didn’t? Zorry bub, must have schlipped my mind, huh? Hyu’ll be kheeping ze Frau vaiting und sche hates dat, bub.”

Jeremiah shot a furious glare at the creature and pushed passed to enter the Consulate. As he strode angrily through the door, he almost knocked over a women coming the opposite way.

“Oh! I’m sorry…” he stammered but the woman cut him off, “Sir!” her voice was exquisite steel “Please be a little more careful, this is not a race track after all!” She straightened her small, round glasses and patted her hair to ensure the bun had not come loose. Jeremiah proffered another apology and looked down at the handsome woman, “Frau Lowey?” he asked.

“Yes, and I can take it you are the man claiming to be one Jeremiah Mason?”

Jeremiah smarted, “Madam, I am Jeremiah Mason, I do not claim to be him.”

Frau Lowey looked the tall figure in front of her up and down, “Hmm. Please follow me to my office. We can talk more there rather than on the steps like this,” and she turned on her heel and headed up the stairs.

To be continued…
All the “Lost & Found” posts can be read here

 

Roleplaying at Hogwarts with Dio

As regular readers to this blog will know, my discussions a couple of months back brought me in contact with Diogenes Kuhr who I class as a good friend and all round wise woman. A while back she started up a blog to tell her tales of roleplaying in Deadwood as well as muse over other topics as she saw fit.

Now Dio is one of the best people to talk to about roleplaying in SL and her thoughts on the subject have actually influenced me a hell of a lot since we met, but even she would admit to not having tried all of the various styles of RP in SL. So a whiles back she decided to give immersive, rule-enforced fiction genre a go and signed up for the Hogwarts sim and here is her first report as an embedded roleplayer, and it makes fascinating reading if you are in any way interested in how RP works in SL.

If you haven’t already, check her blog out and read back through her wonderful posts – you won’t be disappointed!

 

Definitions of Roleplay in SL

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum… I learnt an important definition of a style of roleplay in SL: Build RP where folks build things to roleplay with.

26th August 2009 EDIT: To clear something up in one of the P.S. paragraphs below I have edited what could be read as negative views about Steelhead’s management because they weren’t meant like that – they were supposed to be positive, but hey ho I was tired and not thinking

When written like that I realise it sounds obvious, but what I’m putting down here is not that I have found a new style of RP, just its definition. And that is important because it helps understand further how RP, the various styles RP, work in SL. It got me to thinking how could I define my style and what others could I spot. I therefore present my shortlist of RP styles-please let me know what you think and feel free to redefine and add more

Build RP is where folks actively build places and things for others to interact with and that is how the story is told.

To give my style a definition, I’d probably use Written RP. In Written RP folks concoct storyline in-world but generally develop them outside in blogs and forums.

On top of that I guess you’d have to have Social RP. In Social RP folks generally live as their characters, interacting with others as their characters would.

All these then go to make up Community RP where a community builds, writes and lives the RP. Of course no one is confined to one style, we all crossover from one to another, but it seems most folks prefer, or find their strengths, in one style over the others.

p.s. This post came about because of a very interesting event in Steelhead – someone from New Babbage opened a factory that was going to cut down all the trees around Steelhead and there was a protest. Eventually a storm hit the city and, ironically, a large tree blew down and crushed the factory. The New Babbager who started the venture returned to Babbage complaining about the tree huggers from Steelhead (I am paraphrasing, of course). Now to many this smacks of RP, but to some in Steelhead this form of RP was new and that fact, combined with the management’s decision to deny all knowledge to ensure the tale seemed real and fun, meant that not everybody in Steelhead felt they could/should take part. This forum post explains more, but really it’s a learning exercise for all – Steelhead maybe an old city in SL terms, but it’s a small one that has grown slowly and it is a city of written & social RP rather than bulid RP. Build RP *does* exist in Stelhead, but not really in a big RP sense – but I suspect this is about to change

p.p.s. Change is a funny old thing. I really don’t envy the job of Steelhead management. The city started off as Wild West, quickly moved to Weird West and is now more Gaslamp Fantasy with a curious blend of real life (like Deadwood) and fantastical (werewolf for a sheriff, dragon taven owners, evil tiny kitty cat geniuses) where RP is just about to take off in what feels like a big way. This is not to say it hasn’t had RP before, but it feels to me like a tipping point to a more RP-themed community is close, and this makes some of the residents feel nervous – not everyone in Steelhead wants to RP or feels confident enough in their skills or social place to get involved. Management are looking at ways to allow folks the chance to get involved (and the example above was a learning curve for them too) but I can’t help but feel that as with so much in life, to RP means that at some point you have to stop looking at the half-open door waiting for someone to open it and just walk on through all by yourself.

p.p.p.s. Social structures are a funny old thing too. Part of the heffalump in the room in the Steelhead forums (and even in my last paragraph if I’m honest) is that of people feeling they are not in, or have access to, the people in the group that makes the city work. There was an unspoken undercurrent in the forum post that actually some folks felt they were less important in the grand scheme of things and therefore would never be invited to play. I think it’s a half-open door again where you have to reach out to folks and build honest friendships, but also sell yourself a little. I dunno, I find that to get noticed by the folks that run things, you have to a) approach them and b) prove you can do it, whatever it is. Most groups are open to new folks coming along in my experience and that’s how I always approach new groups – like I’ll be welcomed politely but kept at a distance until they’ve worked me out. Basic pshychology isn’t it?

p.p.p.p.s. I may be rambling now – it’s 5am and I’ve had 2 hours sleep tonight on top of not much sleep of late thank to jetlag and a toddler who now won’t sleep alone after his holiday bed with mummy & daddy. Oy vey.

 

SL Wierdness: Sculptie Lag

I love how the small section of folks I know and half-know in SL and SL Blogsville know so much useful stuff! Thank you to Emily Orr for this great comment reply about sculpties and the lag they cause (which even on my slightly old but still powerful desktop PC can take many many minutes to rez).

 

Meet the TSMGO Stars: Comrade Bumble Bee

Although the management of the theatre usually compile and compose these short biographies, but in this case Comrade Bumble Bee from the Glorious Soviet Socialist Republik Hive has provided us with the text himself(1):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear all western pigs, capitalist dogs and your childer! Greetings from the Glorious SSRH! We bees of the State wish you and your filthy capitalist ways well and hope your pathetic health services are succeeding in keeping you healthy. Nice things said, we move to tale of Comrade Bees, yes?

In Glorious Mother Hive, all Comrade Bees are equal. In Glorious Mother Hive I learn music and dance from workermother for pleasure of Glorious Leader Bee. This is what we are bringing to you, flabby westerners. Yes? Dance and music in air above you all with faces of wonder and smiles.

With music in air, we dance for joy of Communist Utopia created by Glorious Leader and her many, many Glorious Purges and Pogroms. This is happy for us, yes? No! We never happy while trivial things coming in world! Not like westerners with their smiling faces and clowns. Hello Childer, enjoy show yes?

In end, we Glorious Communist Bees of the Hive State equal, You not. We better and dance from joy of knowing and for the small childer with their fat faces and laughings, yes? Goodbyes!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There you have it folks. And thank you Mr… I mean Comrade Bumble Bee.

*******************

(1) Which we are contractually obliged to reproduce, god help us.

 

Books Wot I ‘Ave Read…

I found an old meme on Darien’s blog here and decided to rescue it for use on mine – I mean, what’s a year between friends

The plan is I tag 5 people and they do the same (and so on, of course) and everyone tagged has to use the list of books below and alter it to reflect what they have read and loved: BOLD means you have read it, ITALICS means you loved it (just normal text indicates you haven’t read it). Here goes!

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I did read The Brothers Karamozov)
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce (I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man then tried this one. Failed after the first few pages.)
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare (isn’t this redundant with the Complete Works?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (abriged)

What this proves to me is:
a) I have not read many books although I am always reading – how odd!
b) I tend to love what I read… or read what I love – this could expalin point a)
c) Lots of books were not there that should be – my addition would be The Star of The Sea which is the most beautiful, terrible book I have ever read.

Now… for my tags I choose the five wisest, smartest and funniest women I know Osprey, Enjah, Young, Dio & Nish – go ladies, show me what you’ve got

p.s I would have liked to have included LisaHot, Mossant, Marriane, Iliannexsi, Latok, Juko, Kumi, Bettina, Calli, Lucy, Molly & Violet in that round up but some don’t have blogs and you can only pick 5 people

 

Meet the TSMGO Stars: Pheobus

Little is known about Pheobus’ background. We know he has a funny accent and is very careful with his money(1) so it’s a safe bet he’s either Scottish or from Yorkshire, but no record can be found to back this up. Still, he’s never bought any of the other fleas or circus hands a drink ever. Not once. Not even a coke. Tight fisted little sod.

Anyway, the first records of him seem to be those of the Linden Youth Offending Board (Corn Field Division) where he was reprimanded for a series of griefing attacks in which unfortunate noobs were set on fire moments after setting foot off the ferry. These poor noobs were heard to say “Hey! What’s going on?” and “What? What’s this fire? HELP!!!1”and “Babe sex please me?” before he pushed them into other noobs setting them on fire too.

Clearly a troubled soul(2), he was sent to the Corn Field which he promptly burnt down. He was then sent to a secure facility in a Linden Lab server farm which he burnt down. From there he was sent to an underwater containment facility just off Nautilus which he burnt down.

The exasperated Lindens held a special secret meeting (delayed three times due to fire alarms as Pheobus tried to burn it down) and decided upon their most radical solution yet. Exile to Prokofy Neva’s Free Tibet! Here amid the snowy wastes the young Pheobus was to be schooled by one of the grid’s most renowned pacifists, The Great and Benevolent Guru Swami Bernard.

Although Pheobus managed to burn down two mountains, one party of hikers and several of Guru Bernard’s best beards, the good Swami’s patience and fatherly concern slowly worked their magic on the dear little troubled soul and within a year the old Pheobus was gone. Instead, in his place, stood the new Pheobus! Focused, caring, dedicated and 90% less dangerous! A tough regime of mental and physical training had yielded great results and the young Fire-Flea was almost ready to rejoin society(3), all he had to complete was Guru Bernard’s final task – a three week long blindfolded hike through the mountains juggling five blazing termites in which he must never stop for food or sleep or drink and he must never, ever drop a termite or allow it to go out.

And so it was that one day from the end of this mammoth task the exhausted Pheobus came to trip over a snoozing Professor Antfarmoffski and drop all his termites. The rest, dear reader, is history…

*******************

(1) It’s rumoured that his purse contains groats and the small desiccated bodies of moths…

(2) In this case, code for ‘right little arsehole’

(3) Probably as a stoker on the Caledon Light Steam Rail Network.

 

Lost & Found: Chapter 6 – The Walls Have Both Ears And Eyes…

Jeremiah was stunned. He had a granddaughter? It was all too much; a son, a granddaughter, the laboratory, the pentacle, demons… he staggered back against the window as the world span around him. He couldn’t breathe, the room was hot and small, the machinery clanked and hissed, subtle vibrations reached up through his feet and turned his stomach. He had to get out, get away from here, from himself. As he staggered forwards and out of the doorway, he was unaware he was being watched by several interested parties.

**********

Above him, the eyes of Amarantis Belfire, his granddaughter, bored into him with distrust and curiosity in equal measures. She didn’t know who this stranger was or why he should use her zaide’s name, but what she really wanted to know is where her grandfather was and what this stranger had done with him. As he climbed the stairs to the doorway, she was still weighing up whether to follow him or not…

As Jeremiah walked into the bright sunshine a nun, concealing herself by the kennels across the road, watched his reappearance with a keen interest. She was one of the best surveillance nuns in Steelhead and was going to make sure that Mother Superior and Sheriff Ortega were proud of her. She made a quick note in a small book and prepared herself for his next move…

Further away, deep in the shadows of an alley across the water, a figure watched the unfamiliar face of his most hated vrag through the optics of a much used sniper rifle and felt his finger automatically curl around its trigger. With great force of will he moved it off and carried on observing: he had to be sure, after all this time he had to be sure it was him…

Much closer to him than he knew or could have guessed, a singularity of green light as big as the universe and as small as the void itself danced unseen as it bided its time. It was angry and sulking and had no intention of revealing to Jeremiah what it knew of recent events. No, it would just wait and watch and that would show the ungrateful wretch…

On the deck of a wooden ship, a hideous creature gazed into the entrails of a freshly gutted fairy, its wings still flapping helplessly, and tried to decipher this most curious turn of events. The Elemental had retreated, the Chosen was no longer the Chosen, the Seal was broken yet the barrier remained. Curious. It would need to speak to the traitor and have him find out more. The creature snarled an order and was passed a small cage woven from the darkness between dreams. It reached a clawed hand inside and pulled out another terrified fairy…

**********

Jeremiah braced himself against the walls of the lab and made his way around to the horse he’d tied up. Struggling into the saddle he said “I don’t suppose you know where the Europan Consulate is, do you boy?”. When the horse whinnied and began to trot off, he laughed out loud, but it was a hollow, joyless sound. Nothing made sense, why should a horse that understood him be any different?

To be continued…
All the “Lost & Found” posts can be read here.

Links to other blogs and stories:
Ama listens in and regards the new Jeremiah with distrust here.