I’ve been working on and off to recreate a Marlowe-esque office for my Bay City PI, Bryce Carter. This is it so far (although the av’s look and AO have changed now)
This it the old Bryce look:
This is the new (the one above looked very odd in profile):
I’ll keep tinkering and posting 
Loki Eliot’s been a busy lad of late – he’s rebuilt his Goonie Island and started up a new Babbage-based RP called The Black Heart. Like his previous Shadow of 13, The Black Heart has its own website (
http://babbagechronicles.co.uk/
) and it was during my search for this site I found a posting on his personal blog I’d missed and boy does it give a great run down of his previous stories. Oddly enough, given my love of shared RP in SL, I’ve never taken part in one of his – despite stumbling across them all in one way or another(1). I don’t know why this is, but I put it down to three things:
1) I’ve always wanted to do my own thing – at the times I’ve come across Loki’s RP I’ve been busy doing my own stuff and that brings me to…
2) I simply don’t have enough time! I never have had enough online time to do what I want to – not just in-world, but externally as well. This blog is as important to me as my stuff in-world. Some of you might not see why and that’s fine because to me it is and that’s all that matters. I can be in-world more but write less, or write more and be in-world less – the line has to be drawn and quite often writing and blogging win out. But under all that lies the fact that…
3) I’ve never felt part of the Babbage community. I tried back in late 2007, but it’s always seen like the preserve of builders and creators and so I just have never followed its development much. Same goes for Caledon really. In fact all steampunk. In truth I don’t much care for Steampunk – it just doesn’t interest me in the same way Star Trek/Wars doesn’t (2).
Anyhoo because I didn’t follow Babbage and because I had ideas to do my own stuff and because I have never been in-world as much as I feel I need to be I tended to miss the stuff that went on in the telling of the tales and that sense of ‘going it alone’ doesn’t do it for me (see my recent rant about Call of Duty Black Ops). This is why in the recent Steelhead RP I wanted to collect all the posts from everyone and make a “Story In Full” list so the whole thing felt like a collaborative effort.
Yet my personal foibles aside (3) I really want to get involved in this one, partly because I know some folks already involved (Myrtil and Miss Chernov) and partly because I want to learn more about multiparticipatory RP (as opposed to the other type of multiparticipatory activity this blog is famed for) and who better to learn from than the master (4). I’m sure that in a year from now Steelhead will be putting on this kind of RP – I have, you’ll be unsurprised to hear, several good ideas I’ve already pitched to the bosses ;-D
****{*}****
(1) This post (
https://headburroantfarm.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/in-other-news-murder-most-foul/
) is from 3 years ago and shows how even then I was looking for a RP experience (as well as being quite keen on eldrich horror, a fact that hasn’t – and I doubt ever will – change).
(2) I still haven’t found my perfect world in SL, but when I do it’s going to be horror and/or 1940s LA detective noir based
(3) None of which have anything to do with Loki, who I’ve never met, or his excellent work, which I love.
(4) Although his building, texturing & scripting skills will always be beyond me – Loki is the perfect package for RP!
p.s. You can read more of my RP waffle posts here.
Thanks to the Heliograph, I was alerted to a thread on the New Babbage Ning about a simply stunning piece piece of work to map New Babbage in a style that befits its steampunk heart. Pop over to the Ning and see for yourself just what a wonderful job Mr. Elika Sieyes has done
New Babbage Map (as of 7th Jan 2010)
p.s. While I’m at it, TY to Breezy Carver for alerting to me to what looks like a very interesting roleplaying development in New Babbage – pop over to the Shadow of the 13 site for more details.
You heard of the Aether Salon? I hadn’t until recently, but I’m really glad I did. The Ather Salon is a traveling symposium of Stempunkers, Victorianas and other assorted thoughtful SLer-types that recently came to Steelhead Shanghai for its December 2009 meeting. I happened along and found it incredibly informative and entertaining.
First off Riven Homewood (who runs the Steelhead Public Library) gave a great slideshow and talk about the history of Chinese people in the NW US (Steelhead being in Oregon, you see). Now as it happens in August last year I was in Vancouver, BC and found myself in a small museum in Steveson’s post office. The museum contained much about the history of the Japanese and Chinese immigrant workers who came to and settled in the area and as Vancouver is very close to Oregon I found Riven’s talk highly illuminating indeed. I’m trying very hard with my ‘Dr Beck in the slums’ tales to relfect as faithfully as I can what life was like for the poor sods who worked in the canneries and lived in the ghettos and slums of the time so I drank in all the wonderful details Riven presented to the Salon.
Next up was Elegia Underwood (who created and owns the Dragon Lands in Shanghai, more about which I posted here) who talked about roleplaying in Shanghai, as well as in SL at large, and launched a wonderful contest in which she is searching for people to pen a mystery that can be played out in Steelhead.
Lastly was Lunar who talked about his (and Tensai’s) hard work and vision for Steelhead. Anyone who is thinking of visiting or looking at moving in should read what he says to whet your appetite – they put so much thought and love into their building and management of the sims and it really shines through.
The full unedited and edited transcripts of the Shanghai Aether Salon are on the blog. Riven & Elegia have some pics here.
Check out Elegia’s great buildings for rent here and read more about her wonderful contest here (the closing date is the 15th January 2010 so why not enter?)
For all my Steelhead related posts click here.
For all my Shanghai related posts click here.
*****{*}*****
Now that HBA is a crispy chip, I’ve decided to resurrect my old roleplaying av, Ryne Beck. I created Ryne in 07 so I could RP in somewhere like Toxian City but I never found a place I actually liked so I retired him. He came out briefly for the CSI sims and for a murder mystery Enjah ran in Grignano, but these were brief excursions and all too soon he was one again consigned to the assert server of forgotten avs.
So when I decided HBA needed a rest (and a shit load of salve) I turned to Ryne. But he needed some work. The clothes had to go, and the hair and skin – the new Ryne was to be from a ruined Manchester in the 1880s, and his beefcake, tough, black NY cop look just didn’t fit. So here is a pictorial record of his metamorphosis…
Ryne, or Dr Rynehold Beck, will be moving into Steelhead’s Shanghai slums to look after the poor of the parish – look out for his tales appearing here soon
If you’ve been following my blog for the last few months you’ll know I’ve been musing on the nature and mechanics of roleplaying in SL. Indeed, it was those conversations that led me directly to leave HBA Island and join Steelhead. Once in that fair city I immediately set about embroiling myself in a complex storyline of lost memories, assumed identities and exploding laboratories and is this experience I’d like to talk about here.
To start with the “Lost & Found” tale was just collaborative writing RP with a few photos thrown in which, bar the collaborative stuff, is meat & potatoes to me as that’s how I’ve always done all my RP, simple tales told by a simple bugger on a simple blog with some pictures sprinkled hither and yon for good measure.
Apart from plot ideas from Darien, the collaborative bit wasn’t, at first, really all that collaborative. I merely approached the other folks involved with IMed or emailed requests to involve their characters and then asked them to OK the draft results to ensure I captured them correctly and that I hadn’t dropped a ruddy huge clanger. I was bowled over by people’s enthusiasm to read through a post and agree or amend & agree it – this meant not only was the turn around time for posts really quick, but I knew that they were all happy with their ‘parts’.
Collaboration really began by accident. I was out taking pictures of Steelhead just near the lab when TotalLunar Elipse, the estate manager, turned up. We got to chatting and IMing about OOC issues. I asked him about the pentacle in the Labs and bang! we fell into IC RPing – it was my first time and he was very gentle 
I gained a lot from this – in fact it altered the direction of the tale as Lunar downloaded a lot of history and information in that one encounter and I began to plot immediately how I could work it all into a post.
From there I had some very fruitful email conversations with Annechen Lowey and Amarantis Belfire – both were kind enough to read my draft offerings and help flesh them out until I could see the finished post before me.
So far so good – writing and photographing on my own, emailing to & fro with others and even an in-world, in-character exchange. This was, using my earlier definitions, Written and Character RP in action and was obviously producing some small measure of Community RP as a small handful of other Steelheadians had linked to my tale in their own, a big result for me I should add But what of Event RP?
Well, dear reader, let me enlighten you as to my plans right from the start – the destruction of Mason Labs and cruel injury of our hero, HBA. And to do this I wanted to burn down the lab in an act of community supported Event RP (in the end I opted for an explosion, but the plan was the same). I talked to Darien, Lunar, Anechen & Amarantis right from the start and then nearer the time IMed & emailed my neighbours to explain my plans and to ask if they’d be willing to help out by allowing wreckage to be strewn across their plots and even damaging their buildings. To my amazement all but one replied and all those said yes! The only problem was I had no idea how to do it* 
In the end it proved easier than I had imagined – I deleted the lab on the land (I couldn’t edit the pieces as they weren’t mine and the person they belonged to is no longer in SL) and used my PrimFinder tool to make some simple jagged shapes which I them textured as metal and scattered about. I also bought some smoke scripts and bunged them into transparent prims to make the wreckage look hot.
I then tested out some explosives I’d bought for the end of <a href=”http://headburroantfarm.wordpress.com/category/the-lost-journal/”>The Lost Journal</a> and I found some excellent free sculptie fire that grows, smokes and dies all on its own.
It was as I was testing this lot that I ballsed up. I was showing my friend Warren Daines and, in the spirit of goofing about, we announced FIRE! in the group chat. Within 30 seconds we were involved in the roleplay I had planned, except it had all been arranged with my neighbours to take place three days later! They then had to rush about placing wreckage and damaging buildings – I felt a right berk!
Anyhoo, as it turned out it went well and people enjoyed it – it even got a mention in dispatches:
** RANDOM ACTS OF RP IN STEELHEAD **
Mason Labs in Steelhead Harborside was accidentally blown up. Several pieces of debris landed on homes, the bridge, and underwater. We ask that you not try to move the objects as they’re being tested to make sure they don’t have any sort of contaminant and we don’t want someone accidentally squishing themselves.
So what lessons have I learnt?
Communication is vital and planning is a must. But don’t pop your cork earlier than you promised
Now… Let’s get one with another, shall we?
* Lunar had a good tip for destroying a building which I would never have thought of – turn the pieces of the building (or in my case, the wreckage) physical and watch it fall, then turn them all non-physical… et voila! One destroyed building. I recently saw a good example of this here.
I managed to find some scupltie cogs and bolts – let the wild rumpus begin! and by wild rumpus, I mean lab blowy upy time! Yay!
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
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.
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