Loading the Canon: Economics 425b

This is another one of those entries that will span a bit of both Firefly Canon and gaming. Economics is something that most gamers really just don't want to deal with and, I suspect, Joss didn't want to deal with very much in the course of writing for the 'Verse. Numbers didn't make for good story, while glossing it over made it easy to write.

In fact, it seemed he liked to employ the classic Game Master trick of keeping his characters poor as a motivation to get them onto the next job. We saw a lot of that in the series. Serenity's crew was always living on the raggedy edge of being dead broke. It didn't matter how much the take was on the last job. The money never lasted long. They would take whatever job came their way, rather than running the boat either as a strictly mercantile operation or as a strictly mercenary operation. For Player Characters, that actually makes sense. It lets you tell a broader range of stories and that is what Firefly was all about.

The problem is, it gave us a very murky view of what the economy of the 'verse actually was. We know, for example, that a lot of commerce on the Rim and Border worlds was done in cash rather than through credit. The 'coin of the realm,' so to speak, being small Platinum tokens. There was also scrip, and credit, and probably several other forms of currency we didn't see come into play on-screen. What's important, is that it appears that the 'credit' was a consistent unit of currency across the worlds we see.

There was never a case where we see, or it's even implied, that they are changing from one form of currency to another. We don't have Pounds Sterling on Londinium, Marks on Ariel, Yen on Beaumonde, Dollars on Blackburne, or Sheckles on Persephone. It's all the same currency. It's implied that the costs for various items would change across worlds, but you'd be paying for it with the same units of cashey money. They were evidently on the Platinum standard.

The problem is, we don't know what the relative values are for the money we see changing hands. For example, the ultra-concentrated food Our Heroes salvage from the derelict in the pilot was worthless to Badger because of it's Alliance markings. The assumption being he couldn't fence it or sell it off himself if it had such obvious markings. That leaves Mal to sell it to Patience for a bag of coin. We have to assume that the coin was at least as much as Badger was going to pay them for going out and getting it, otherwise it makes no sense for Mal to sell it to her.

There are numerous other examples of these low margin jobs and crimes that, quite honestly, don't make a lot of sense except as a way to keep our characters poor and searching for the next job.

And people wonder why Firefly is so attractive to Gamers?

Anyway, Joss didn't give us a lot to work on when it comes to figuring out the actual values involved in the Firefly economy. Realistically, we can probably treat the economy like we treat the science: It made Joss's head hurt, so whatever worked for the story is going to be the way it is. We don't really worry about the details so much.

I'm sure someone who's an actual economist can shed more light on the subject, but the fact is Firefly Canon is vague on Firefly Economics and we're going to have to wing it. Though, to be sure, I'm going to hit a few implications later in this piece.

Unfortunately, that's really not very satisfying. Worse, as gamers, we're kind of stuck with trying trying to make this vague backstory fit in with a concrete set of numbers in our Second Life reality. A GM can toss out something vague like "It's a heafty chunk of change" without needing to specify a number, where a couple of players trying to haggle out a price are going to want some kind of actual number.

While I don't have a specific conversion of Plats to Dollars to use in game, we do have some basic real-world economics to work from which we can extrapolate into something we can work with in game.

At it's most basic, economics is easy:

1. Acquire or produce a product.
2. Sell it for more than it cost you to acquire or produce it.
3. Profit.
4. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That's it. Seriously. There's a whole lot of ways to interpret the word 'product' in this case. It may be an actual object, like guns, bombs, food, or fuel. Or it may be a service, like transporting said food, fuel, guns, or bombs. Our Heroes were in the service industry most of the time. Either providing transportation or firepower for someone else.

It's when you add layers that things get complicated. For example, between the linked stories in Shindig and Safe, we see just how complex this can be, and see just how difficult it is to get a good handle on Firefly economics.

The premise is that Badger has hooked Mal up with a local Persephone Noble who wants to get some livestock off-world where they can be sold at a greater profit and with lower taxes than they can be sold locally. Simple. But what are the implications?

Badger, as we know, is, as well as being a snarky little twerp, a ruthless profiteer. He's going to be taking a Finder's Fee from whatever Mal gets paid for the mission. We can surmise that Badger's going to want to cover the costs, be it in favor or cash, for the tickets to the Shindig. How much is that going to be? We never really know.

Now, Lord Harrow needs to get his herd of cows to Jiangyin, where they can be cunningly concealed before being subsequently sold. Why is he moving them there? Because he can turn a greater profit by selling them there, of course. That's after paying Mal for transporting them there too. So we can assume that the local taxes on Persephone are high and the profit margins are pretty thin.

We also can surmise that Mal was able to at least turn a modest profit on this mission, or at least break even, even after paying for food, fuel, maintenance, and everything else it takes to keep Serenity in the air.

Now, to come back to the real world for a moment, basic economics tells us that for it to be worthwhile to transport any product anywhere for sale, it has to cost less to produce in Location A and transport it to Location B for sale than it does to produce and sell locally at Location B. There's issues of availability of course. If A is the only source, it will be a matter of transport it or do without. But the point is the Producer needs to make their profit. The transporter needs to make their profit. The final seller needs to make their profit. At each step, someone needs their cut and at each step there's people trying to cut costs.

This is why Maersk operates massive container ships rather than a bunch of small freighters. Economy of scale.

So, before this gets too freaking long (OK, I know, it already is too freaking long), I'll bring it back to what it means to us as gamers.

One: Firefly Canon doesn't give us a lot to go on for what constitutes "a lot of money" vs "barely breaking even." The numbers are abstract at best.

Two: This campaign 'verse is about Characters, not economics. A character's motivation may be to turn a healthy profit, but we don't need specific numbers to do that.

Third: Everyone is going to have a different idea of what's valuable, what something is worth, and how much is "a lot." We can use real world prices to figure out a range, with, just to grab some numbers based on what we've done so far, say $10 = 1 Plat - Subject to a great deal of variation depending on who's story we're in and other factors.

Forth: Second Life currency (L$) is, effectively, real money. Negotiate game pay, in either direction, at your own risk.

Fifth: FFRP currency is useful for giving real numbers to in-story transactions, but may or may not be suitable for all occasions.

Sixth: There is no number six, because he is number one. (Oatie bar to whoever gets the reference)

I know what you're thinking now. "Is she done yet?"

Yes, Virginia. I am.

For now.

Loading the Canon: The United Alliance of Planets

This is another entry that I've been working on for a while. Hence the fairly broad span between the 'Posted' date and when you may actually see it here.

One of the great things about the Firefly campaign is the perspective of the Characters. We see the 'Verse through the eyes of Mal and his crew, each of whom had a different perspective on the Alliance, Unification, and what they wanted out of life. Mal and Zoe were both ex-soldiers who fought for Independence. Jayne didn't care. Simon and River were young and living in the Core and probably didn't have a lot of exposure - much like 'Nam would have been for children of the 60's, or Desert Storm to children of the 80's, or the current wars to children of the 90's. Inara was actually for Unification.

Different characters, different perspectives. For the audience, it was mostly Mal's perspective. He didn't really seem to consider the Alliance as Evil. He just wanted to be left alone to go his own way. We could easily imagine that if the show was about characters on the IAV Magellan we'd have a very different view of the United Alliance of Planets.

In-Series and BDM Canon is fairly vague about what the Alliance is really about. We know they're referred to as Federals, thus implying some kind of Federal government. We also know they're main governing body is a Parliament, suggesting some sort of democracy. Given that the Alliance was founded on the shoulders of "Earth's two last Superpowers: China and the United States" it's hard to imagine just what sort of unified government is running the show. The United States was (well, at least is now) a Two Party state with elected leaders, while China is (was) a One Party Communist state with a heavy Capitalistic influence. Given my early 21st century perspective on these things, the only sort of state I can see coming out of that is, well, kinda messed up.

Where'd the Parliament come from? Who knows. Parliamentary democracies are popular in Europe and some Asian states, but don't really tie back to the founding super powers. Given the context, like other things in the 'Verse campaign, we just take it as something that is, consider it Canon, and move on.

See how I glossed over that?

The Series doesn't really give us much more than the existence of the Alliance. There's no specifics other than the implication that regional commanders have a fair amount of autonomy and various officials are somewhat limited in their scope of operations. The BDM gives us only a little more to go on, introducing 'The Parliament" as something who's power could be broken. I always took that to mean the sitting government, rather than the body itself. Like the Tory's or Labor or the Rhino Party. Whoever's in charge will face the wrath of the voters and have to deal with the fallout.

Of course, it also implied that 'this' government was the same one who was in power when the Pax was originally used. Otherwise, they'd just pass the blame off on their predecessors like the politicians they are.

One thing that the Federal system implies is that the local worlds could have a lot of freedom in just how they handle their own local governance. We see a glimpse of that in the episode "Shindig" where we see that Persephone has an actual Noble class. In other instances, such as "Our Mrs Reynolds" we see that the local elders have a great deal of control, and in the pilot, we have Patience as the de-facto leader of the entire colony. That, incidentally, is where I based the concept of the elected leader of a small colony's main township being the de-facto leader of the entire world.

We see this autonomy in a number of places, but there's also a lot of places where it's kind of confused.

The main 'presence' we see of the Alliance is through their troops and Marshals. In several scenes we see anything from a two man patrol to a platoon strength unit. Sometimes it's soldiers in the classic "Purple Belly" infantry armor. Other times it's the bland gray uniforms. While we never see a lot of them at once, we see them in a lot of different places, which implies a broad presence, if not a major one.

Though, in contrast, and often in the same episodes, we see examples of local law enforcement officers, which again implies some autonomy. Or, at least, the Federals aren't the only game in town. Though, in the BDM, we have the Alliance paying local security companies to handle security duties on some remote colonies. Why don't they have a local Sheriff? Who knows. I put it down to Drama and Joss needing a hook to get Our Heros involved and a vault to hide from the Reavers in.

So, where does that leave us as players?

Good question.

Near as I can tell, "The Alliance" wasn't detailed out enough during the course of the show and movie to give a definitive answer. We do know there were implications of Self Rule for the colonies, with the Alliance sending in some Federal presence to 'show the colors,' so to speak. That leaves us, as Game Masters, a lot of flexibility to run our local sims as we see fit. It also gives us, as players, the flexibility to have our personal experience with the Alliance be what we need it to be. If Mal and Inara could have very different views of the Alliance, it's perfectly acceptable for us to as well.

What is canon here? Hard to be sure, but I would go with: "The Alliance is a Federal system with a varying level of influence depending on where you are. All of the colonies in the Verse are, at least on some level, encompassed by the Federal system, and the Federal presence on any given world could be quite varied: from total control, to the occasional patrol on the ground by Uniforms from the local Cruiser."

Too vague? Maybe. But it's the best we can do given the source material.

Playing the Game: My character is my own

I was actually debating whether to put this entry under the "Loading the Canon" series or under the "Playing the Game" heading. There's elements of both here, but, in the end, I decided it's more about Gaming than specifically Firefly cannon. In fact, what I'm going to touch on here could apply to any campaign setting, not just Firefly.

Over at Chrysalis, my friend Imrhien's Character blog, she did a recent OOC post about players dictating terms to other players. It's well worth a read. The basic gist of it comes down to the only people who can tell you what you can and can't play are the Game Masters / Admins of the sim you're playing in.

In other entries I've talked about Cooperative Story Telling. In an environment like Secondlife, it's all about cooperative story telling. The Firefly sims, more than some of the other genre I've looked at, allow and expect a lot of ebb and flow of characters playing in multiple places. Even when a player doesn't take their character to other sims, all of the sims are treated as existing in the same campaign universe. When Lily Snoodle (a favorite example) spends time on MacLaran's Drift, or Washtown, or Londinium, or Hale's Moon, it's the same Lily Snoodle. Same character, same campaign.

If an individual Admin/GM has an issue with any given character or concept, they can feel free to tell the player that character isn't welcome on their grid, and to personally ignore any story lines involving that character. Or, probably better, since their players may be involved with the character they don't like, they can 'filter' story to better fit their own arcs. It's something I touched on in the post on Set Pieces.

Imrhien's post was about one GM/Player/Admin essentially declaring control over an entire archetype of characters in the 'Verse campaign. Since I don't have any direct experience with the Companion's Guild as it's being run now, though have RP'd with Companion characters in the past, I can't really say anything about how the Guild is run. Though I can say, from multiple perspectives, that anyone declaring they have an over-arching position that affects everyone else's slice of the campaign, is a Bad Idea^(tm).

An example?

Firefly's Canon established that the field commanders have a fair amount of leeway in how they handle their commands. In the Firefly game in Secondlife, that lets Alliance in each sim (or set of cooperating sims) to have the Alliance military act appropriately for their story, without adversely affecting the stories that happen in other people's sims.

Your "Alliance Commander" is "An Alliance Commander," not "The Alliance Commander." You want to play a high ranking Alliance Official or Military Officer that isn't directly associated with any particular Sim? Sure. Why not. You'll just be "out of your jurisdiction" and any "power" you have is strictly with the cooperation of the other players. Not to say they won't play along! A lot of our players are quite good and will be willing to run with something new, but they don't have to.

So what does it all mean to us as players?

Ultimately, we have control over our own characters. The only person/people who can make us change anything is the GM/admin for the game we're in, and even that is only in the context of their slice of the 'Verse.

A GM can say "Don't play that here," but they can't say "Don't play that anywhere." Well, they can say it, but they can only enforce it in sims they work with.

Though, I will add that if any of the GM's tell you "your Furry Klingon cyborg hybrid probably doesn't belong in the 'Verse" you might want to heed their advice. A lot of the admins and GM's at least try to work together to make it easier to play across multiple sims. While they may not have authority on other parts of the grid, their opinion may well have some weight.

To be fair, it's probably best to not declare yourself in a position of power over other characters without working with other people first. Declaring yourself Cruiser Captain with an NPC crew, or putting together a PC crew, is one thing. Declaring yourself a Fleet Admiral in control over all the Alliance Military in an entire star system is another.

You get the idea.

Playing the Game: Setting the stage

I thought I'd actually done a post on this previously, but it turns out it was just a series of conversations between myself and a number of other players. When Jai pointed out that I hadn't actually written anything about it in this venue, I decided to rectify that.

It's actually a subject I've been thinking about for a while, but never really known just how to write up. The subject in question is "set pieces."

I've touched on this tangentially in other entries on playing in Secondlife, but never directly: using other people's sims as sets for your own RP. Given the footprint, prim, build skill, imagination, etc., limits, there'll be a lot of times when you simply can't create the set you want for a particular scene. It can take a lot of time, effort, and prims, to build, say, a high tech medical center or really convincing derelict spaceship. When your own sim's set up as a mining colony or City Center, you might not have the resources to build the set.

That's where the use of set pieces comes into play.

The gaming community in Secondlife has created a broad, broad, range of sims for people to RP in. They span the full range from High Fantasy to seriously high tech Science Fiction, with everything else in between. Want a medieval forest? It's there. High tech ship yard? Got it. Run down urban chaos? Yup. Desert? Airless rock? Space station? Derelict ship? High school? Castle? Tavern? All there. Every one of them and probably twenty more I didn't mention.

In many ways, this is a huge opportunity for the players. But it also comes with some serious perils. Each one of these sims was built for a specific reason, usually as the setting for some specific game or RP campaign. Each one of these sims will have its own paradigms, rules, expectations, staff, regular players, etc. Some of these sims will be more welcoming of outsiders than others. Where some are actually designed for general purpose RP in, others can be very hard core about it being their setting.

In general, Rule Number One of using Set Pieces is always respect the staff of whatever sim you want to use. Chances are, if you ask first, they won't mind you coming in and using, say, the MedLab on Babylon 5, to represent a high tech medical facility on some core world. The thing is, ask first.

Rule Number Two should be never interfere with the local RP. If you've followed Rule Number One, the locals may be willing to participate as extras in your plot. If they're familiar with your campaign ('Verse, B5, Trek, Star Wars, etc) they may even be able to do a credible job of it. Even then, if you can keep campaign specific references out of it, you can probably interact without issue.

There are a lot of sims out there that are sparsely populated when the "scheduled game" isn't going on. If you're looking for a set piece, it's often possible to simply borrow a space when no one else is using it. That doesn't supersede rules one and two, but it may well give you the option of popping onto an empty set, doing your piece, and popping out without interfering with anything the locals have going on.

Finally, there's running with a bit of 'temporary integration.' Being a little more flexible in your own RP when you're on someone else's set may open up even more possibilities you wouldn't have otherwise. You can always retcon out the inconsistencies added by the locals when it comes time to move your story on.

For example, from the 'Verse perspective: There's a lot of crossover between the Firefly players and the folks on Al Raqis - a Dune sim. The Firefly players can, for the most part, treat Al Raqis as if it's just another world in the 34 Tauri system and ignore the obvious inconsistencies when they're home.

This is a topic I may return to later. One of the recurring, closely related, themes in some off-screen conversations has been how to best maintain Campaign Consistency, while still allowing enough crossover to keep an active player base. Honestly, it's not something I've entirely figured out but is something I plan to explore in future posts.

Playing the Game: Why combat meters byte

Note: I started this quite a while ago, then got wrapped up in other things and forgot to finish it until now.

Yeah, I know, mildly provocative title. But I've never made a secret of not being a fan of First Person Shooter style combat in Secondlife. It all comes back to SL being a Virtual Reality simulator and not a Combat simulator. Seriously, if you are into serious FPS combat, go play Unreal or Halo or Counterstrike, or any of the many other games that do a far, far, better job of simulating combat. It's what they were designed for.

Secondlife has its own built in combat system, which is usually left off in most sims. It has one advantage of being integrated into the server itself, but has some serious flaws. Not the least of which is that when you "die" you're teleported back to your Home location. Obvious drawback there. As far as I can tell from the little research I've done, they included it more or less as an afterthought because some people really wanted it. It's just not all that good.

From my own observations, the most commonly used Combat Meter system in Secondlife is DCS2, the Dynamic Combat System. DCS2 is, admittedly, a versatile system but, in my not entirely humble opinion, suffers from some glaring flaws. Though, to be fair, the flaws aren't unique to DCS.

Like many other systems, DCS is biased towards a Class and Level sort of setup. Characters fall into a class of one type or another which gives them a default set of "skills" or "powers" within the DCS context. They level up with experience and, as they level get, to add more skills and stats. Experience can be based on time in game (common, but lame), combat kills (also common, and lame for other reasons) or by GM fiat (less common, but actually appropriate). There's a limited mechanism for other players to award someone experience for good RP, but that's really it.

I don't mean to rip on DCS, not even for their 'setting up a sim to use it is free, but we charge for the meter' model. They've got to pay for the server that hosts their back end, after all. The problems I see with it are common to any sort of game mechanic that uses character classes and levels, something I glossed over in the post on Cooperative Storytelling. Essentially, Secondlife lends it self much more to a Freeform style of RP than to a hard and fast Game Mechanic based model. When meters are level based, you're automatically tied into whatever sort of character progression the meter's designers thought was best. Even when character progression is secondary to story progression.

On a purely operational level, separate from the game mechanics, there's the issue of making any meter clean and fast and hard to cheat.

There's two main "models" combat meters used in SL, not counting SL's own built in version. The first I'll call "Avatar Local." In these, the AV has an attachment that handles everything: Damage tracking, healing, special effects, are all handled locally on the participating avatar. These are usually feature limited, but are fast and don't have a major impact on sim performance or suffer from external sources of lag.

The second major model I'll call "Remote Server." These use an external server somewhere in a sort of client/server model. When you're hit, the meter on your AV calls the remote server and has it process the damage based on whatever mechanics it has set up. The server then kicks back the results and your meter is updated. This is the model DCS2 and FFRP both use. There are a number of advantages, like being able to modify things on the server side and have the changes come into play without having to update everyone's client. The biggest disadvantage, and one I've always found glaring, is that you're now adding a set of calls to an external system. This adds in another layer of latency and lag, not to mention potential security concerns.

I don't particularly like this model.

Where does this leave us?

Well, given my preference for text based interaction rather than FPS combat, or at least a mix, and my opinion of current alternatives, I'm going to come up with a Wish List of sorts of features that would make a good Combat Meter system. It's essentially a combination of the best features of the above models.

1. A client / server model that lives entirely on the local Secondlife simulator. While it will increase the load on the server somewhat, it will reduce possible security risks and make sure Meter-based lag affects everyone equally.
   
2. Open source for both the client and the server.
   
3. Anti-cheating functions that are compatible with it being open source. It is possible. It just takes a little extra work.
4. Compatibility with most, if not all, weapons available in SL, including freebies and "enhanced" weapons designed for other combat systems.
5. Optional recognition of enhanced weapons, where there's an available API.
6. Inclusion of a simple game mechanic that lets players customize their characters, but is both fair and easy to implement.
7. Optional experience systems, or at least a way for players to update their characters as they develop.
8. A way to let the same combat meter work across different sims using the same character.
9. A way to play different characters from the same account. (e.g. Alternate AV's representing different characters, rather than creating separate accounts.)
   
10. Optionally recognize armor and special weapons types, like sniper rifles or heavy weapons. (Armor appears to be unknown in most of the systems I've looked at.)
    
11. Compatibility with, or integration with, a vehicle combat system.
    
12. Expandability to incorporate special features as needed.
13. A way for individual sims to tweak things to suit their needs while still being cross-sim compatible.

Not really all that much of a list? Ok, so it is. But none of it can't be done and none of it wasn't in mind when I started my initial work on a cross-sim in-world combat meter system. There's more I'd like to see, but I think that Baker's Dozen is a good start.

Does this meter exist? Given the vast resource jungle that is SecondLife, it's entirely possible. I just haven't found it. Could I code this myself? Technically, yes. I could actually get this to work, though there are other folks in our group who're more skilled coders. The question, of course, would be whether I had the time to write this beast. And the answer to that is, "probably not."

Players will use whatever combat system suits them best, whether it's a meter or text based or the delicate balance of both. Some sims in the collective 'Verse will require one or the other, but with one possible exception, I'm pretty sure that none of them will force someone into combat if they don't want to participate. If a sim owner decides to force the issue that Meter/No-Meter is mandatory on their part of the grid, and combat is not optional, then the simple solution is to simply not play there.

Ultimately, what happens to your character should never be forced upon you by the limitations of some arbitrary combat meter system.

Playing the Game: Virtual Worlds

After an initial burst of activity I've somewhat neglected this blog. There was a lot to be said about Canon in the Firefly/Serenity 'Verse, at least from our perspective as gamers in Secondlife. There's been a bit of disagreement and fractioning of the community over Canon too. Pat of that, of course, comes from folk having the own perspectives on what should and shouldn't be in canon and what should and shouldn't be allowed in game.

I tried to address a lot of those issues in previous posts. It's hard to have strict canon with only 14 episodes, one feature length movie, and a few comic books that tie things together. There's just not enough information to go on. Doesn't stop people from arguing about it though. Just watch the Trekkers going at it some time.

In a restricted pencil and paper gaming environment, you have the luxury of setting canon for you and your group and not having to worry about accommodating a broader crowd. As I tried to get across, an open environment like Secondlife provides doesn't afford that luxury. Unless you plan to be snobbish about it, of course. In that case, go ahead and be as restrictive as you like.

But this post isn't about that. It's about dealing with the vagaries of translating our games into the realm of virtual worlds. Specifically, Secondlife.

In the last post I talked about cooperative story telling. The concepts there apply whether you're playing a game in Secondlife, on a forum, in IRC, or pretty much anywhere else that there's an ongoing give and take between players. Work together. Build on each other's stories, and everyone has a grand time.

But what about assembling the environment you're playing in?

I remember some years ago, lounging around a friend's room at a gaming con, one of the better game masters, a fellow computer geek, talking about how he'd really like to have adaptive voice changing software for everyone. That way you could speak as the character or NPC or whatever, and people would hear that voice. The scared little kid. The angry cop. The megalomaniac bad guy. This has to be 15 or 18 years ago when the technology was close, but not quite there. The conversation went on to what would be really cool, and described something like a cross between Secondlife, Neverwinter Nights, and Halflife.

We're actually fairly close to that 'really cool' state with Secondlife. But it has its limitations. Some of them are pretty glaring limitations and often lead to issues that actually affect the RP as it's happening.

One of the biggest limitations in SL is the footprint problem. A standard region (sim) is 256 meters on a side. Virtual, scale, meters. That's really not a lot. While it's usually enough for the kinds of combat most RPG's simulate - melee, close quarters gunfights, urban brawls, jungle ambushes, etc., - it's not an awfully big space. Yes, you could drop, say, Candlestick Park into a single sim, but you couldn't include the parking lot. On a 'city' scale, a sim is roughly a city block or so square.

I'd say it's enough for in-game combat because most RPG firefights take place over fairly short ranges. But not military ranges. Once you're out of an Urban or Jungle setting, engagement ranges go up dramatically. And we won't eve talk about snipers. The current world record for a confirmed sniper shot would cross 11 full sims.

The small footprint precludes exploring large areas unless you either layer vertically, since the sim is four kilometers high (effectively - you can go higher, but can't really build above 4Km), which has it's own issues, or you get multiple sims and spread out. The problem with that, of course, is the sheer cost of it. Sims run in cost from less than $100 a month for an "Open space" to around $300 for a full performance version. That's a lot of money to dedicate to gaming.

While there are alternatives to Secondlife using OpenSim, the open source version of the Secondlife server, there's not a lot of people there and you'd have to recreate many of the objects, textures, scripts, etc., that we have in the main Secondlife grid. The upside would be the fact that sims are dirt cheap, like $50 a month for full performance, or less if you have the capability of running your own.

Yes, I've considered it.

Cost aside, there's the issues of physics, limited prim counts, limited terraforming, lag issues, player limits, and all the other issues we've come to know and "love" in Secondlife.

Now, it may sound like I'm just bitching about the limitations of Secondlife, and I'm not. Well, not exclusively. I'm ultimately pointing out some of the known issues that keep it from being the ultimate RP platform. On the plus side, there's the radical customizability of your avatar, a very versatile (though limited in some key areas that would be useful to us) scripting system, and the ability to build some pretty elaborate sets to suit your needs.

How does this relate to us as players in a virtual environment?

The most important thing to remember is that what you see may not really be what you get. Examples?

• The entrance to the mines are really a couple kilometers away, rather than 120 meters from the bar.
• The tunnels leading from the mines actually go out into the wilderness, and go deep, rather than running under the church as they appear to.
• There really are four hundred people living in town and not just the dozen or so player characters you see.
  
• Some doors are locked, whether they're coded that way or not.
• Just because someone's combat meter says "Noble" or "Mutant" or "Mercenary" doesn't necessarily mean your character knows that - or it's even accurate.
  
• The Colonial Viper isn't really a Colonial Viper. It just looks like one - because it's what we have.
• The person's name you see floating over their head may not be who they're actually playing at the moment. Remember, not everyone is going to create a different avatar for each character they play.
• The space station is really in orbit and not at 2500 meters as it appears.
• The completely out of place Darth Vader avatar isn't really there (unless someone's wearing a Vader costume in-character. Which would just be weird.)

You get the idea. We have to adapt what we see to what should actually be there. When it's something obvious it's usually easy to treat it as the Designer/GM/Admin intended, rather than what you're seeing on screen. When it's more subtle it can be harder. But that's where the GM's and the experienced players come in.

Secondlife gave us a versatile but limited platform. It's up to us as players, and GM's, work within those limitations and create an environment we can all share in. Even when it means ignoring what we see on screen and accepting what we're told is real.

Playing the Game: Cooperative Storytelling

It's been a while since I've done an entry here, and I admit it's overdue. Of course, I haven't done an entry in Children of Earth in a while either. But that's neither here nor there. This is about gaming and now I'm going to shift away from Firefly Canon for a post or two and talk about Role Playing in a collective environment like Secondlife.

Role Playing in Secondlife ain't your grandpa's RPG.

Every RPG rule book has a little blurb in the beginning that talks about what Role Playing is and what you can expect from that particular game. It usually runs at least a couple paragraphs, up to a couple pages, and is the same real concept no matter who's writing it or what setting they're in. It boils down to you're one character in a cooperatively told story, and the Game Master is directing the action for everyone.

Simple, really.

Most pencil and paper RPG's also come with a ton of back story, resource materiel, game mechanics, and everything else you need to play a coordinated, cooperative, story with your friends. In our Secondlife setting, we don't have all that.

While the overall campaign setting is based on the 'Verse and its Canon, which I've been writing about, our individual settings are unique and were developed by a number of very creative people. Like a lot of conventional games, we've taken what was originally published and run with it in various directions.

What we're usually lacking, is game mechanics. While some areas might use a dedicated "combat meter" for first person combat, many areas, and players, don't. Game mechanics, such as they are, are usually very abstract and revolve around agreements not to metagame, god mod, be a dick, etc. It puts an emphasis on the Cooperative part of Cooperative Storytelling. It's a style of gaming sometimes referred to as Freeforming.

Another aspect that puts an emphasis on Cooperative is that the role of the Game Master is often very different in a Freeform environment. Where the GM in a conventional RPG is effectively required, in our's they serve more as moderator when a disagreement arises between players than as the driving force of most stories.

Yes, there are some stories that are Game Master run, but overall most of the story arcs we encounter were spawned by other players.

Getting good Player Generated story arcs can be somewhat tricky, since there's no one Game Master to maintain a balance between keeping everyone involved, maintaining the flow, and making it exciting for everyone. Again, it comes back to the whole cooperation thing. Working with people behind the scenes and telling whoever's "in charge" of the environment - be they a server admin or GM - can go a long way to making the story work for all involved.

But those points are important. Most players have a natural desire to tell their character's stories, where a Game Master is usually telling a broader story. Properly done, gaming is more like a well developed TV show, where there may be a star, but the rest of the cast is important too. The difference, of course, is that an actual Game Master has a responsibility to keep everyone interested and involved where a Player generating Story doesn't. What the 'Player as GM' should be doing, is giving people the opportunity to get involved and have the flexibility to let the story flow as more people add their characters to the mix.

It's not always easy.

Tips? First and foremost, be flexible. Sure, you may have things that're important to the arc you're working on and you may not want to let another character mess that up, whether it's rescuing you from the baddie, taking a bullet, or killing the baddie in his sleep. Sometimes, your carefully laid plan gets a crowbar tossed in it. When it does, think like a Game Master, not a Player. It's not just your story.

Another option is to bring the other player(s) in on your arc. If they know that you need to be shot, or kidnapped, or lost in space, or something, they.re much more willing to work with you than if you keep them in the dark and treat them as Extras.

Also, there's things that can be taken off-camera. Sure, you were rescued by the Other Heroes and that messed up the kidnapping that was part of the larger arc, but you can work around that. While it may not be as exciting in real-time, from a story perspective it's just as workable to have the baddies somehow execute their plan while everyone else is asleep. You snuck out and went for a walk and didn't tell anyone and bang, you're caught. Story goes on, and the other characters don't feel like props.