Playing the Game: Crossing over - part duex

This was actually the last topic I posted on here in the blog - coming quite a few months back. Not counting the unfinished (by request) post that comes in between, of course. I normally wouldn't touch on this subject again, mostly because it's what I did last. But some conversations and incidents in-world and in-story have inspired me to touch on it again and try to clarify a few concepts.

If you're one of the regular readers of this blog, I'm probably preaching to the choir here. You understand the limitations of gaming in Secondlife where we have to take some liberties in how we see the virtual worlds around us and how we interact with people. The folks this, and the last post, is directed at may never see it. Which is kind of unfortunate, since this entire series is intended to help people have fun with us in the shared stories in Secondlife.

I talked about Set Pieces and Crossing Over (without the douchy John Edwards) before, obviously, but one of the things I've realized in hindsight is that crossover, in our context, is kind of a misnomer. A crossover in the Comic or TV series sense, is when characters as themselves show up in a different series. TV shows, for example, use it to launch spinoffs all the time. They also use it when two series can reasonably exist in the same "universe" and share a common continuity.

Crossovers in the Comics are actually closer to what we're talking about than, say, characters from two cop shows on the same network showing up in each other's stories. Superman battles the Incredible Hulk is a real crossover in this respect. They're not from the same campaign. Two wildly different, and mutually exclusives, back stories worked into a comic just to tell a specific story.

I should probably have used a different term in the previous post. Maybe integration would have been better. In the Comic, or Video Game, sense, a Crossover here would really be more like an episode of Star Trek where Enterprise drops through a time-space vortex and has to fight off an Imperial Star Destroyer while trying to find their way back to the Swirly Thing.

For a single story, it works. It really is a cross over between two different campaigns. It's an anomaly for both campaigns, but they've got some kind of explanation that lets it fit into both and become part of the canon.

Ultimately, though, that wasn't what I was referring to in the previous post. What I'd called a crossover, was kind of, I don't know, Crossover Lite, maybe. Or maybe Set Piece Lite. Hard to pin down. You're playing your character, in your campaign, and they're playing their character, in their campaign, and you're just sort of glossing over enough "conflicting details" so it can happen without breaking either story. I don't really have a good term to describe it. But, with a little flexibility on both sides, it can work. Bias goes to the "Locals" so it'd be up to the visitors to adapt, but it's really not that hard. If something seriously conflicts with "your" reality, nod and smile and edit it out of your character's chronicle.

Now, what brought about this revisit, other than not being happy with my own definition of Crossover in the context I was using it, were recent situations where individuals, or groups, were trying to integrate parts of their own character's back stories into our campaign. It's actually a pretty common occurrence. You're wanting to play your character from, say, your pencil and paper Star Wars game in, say, Babylon 5. Obviously, you can't come straight across, but you're a freighter captain, so it's easy to just tweak the details a bit, and viola, you fit in just fine. Your origin may be from somewhere else, but you've tweaked your background so you're appropriate to the campaign.

As mentioned before, some campaigns are much more suitable to this than others. "Big Galaxy" campaigns have a lot more room in them to place "obscure minor races" than do restricted campaigns like Firefly.

So, what is the point of this rehash?

The simple fact is that if you want to integrate into a campaign, rather than just the kind of crossover I was originally referring to, you'll need to adapt. The larger the scale of what you're trying to adapt, the more work it will take. You've been playing the captain of a tramp freighter in Trek, or SW, or Bab 5, and want to play the same ship and crew in Firefly? Simple. Re-image any non-human crew you might have into Human form, drop the FTL drive, and pick a local port of call. Something small scale like that is very easy to do. Individual characters are a piece of cake. But in any case, you're having to make some changes to your back story in order to fit into the existing campaign.

Personal trivia: The original "Seana" character wasn't Human. I adapted her to the Firefly campaign by tweaking around a lot of details in order to fit. I still play an adapted, from a homegrown pencil and paper campaign, non-Human, version of the original, on Bab 5.

There are some concepts that simply won't work. Some things can't be integrated into a given campaign. While you might be able to work the Klingon Ambassador into Babylon 5 by placing Qo'noS somewhere out beyond the edge of known space, you can't do the same in a Firefly campaign. There are just some things that will break the host campaign and the GM's not going to allow it.

There's a couple of things to look at when you're trying to integrate.

• How big is is what you want to integrate, compared to the campaign? It's easy to adapt an individual, single ship, or even small mercenary fire team, without having to make a lot of arduous changes. Businesses are much the same, at least until you're reaching Haliburton or General Motors scale. Your company builds spaceships? Shiny. Unless you're declaring yourself the biggest and best in the galaxy (without having talked to the GM's first), it should be no big deal.
• How much of an impact, in terms of campaign continuity, will it have on the existing campaign? If the answer is "None" than there shouldn't be a problem. If the answer is "it will be a massive change to the host campaign" then chances are you're not going to be able to do it. Adding a small transport company may well alter the RP, but it won't change the overall concept of the campaign. Adding a government to rival the United Alliance of Planets, is a pretty major paradigm shift.
• Finally, how much are you willing to adapt your 'introduction' to fit the existing story? It's your creation, right? Chances are, the GM's understand how much work you've put into your concept and back story. They empathize. But you're trying to integrate into something that already exists - often someone's interpretation of some existing campaign/story/universe and they probably put as much work into creating their campaign and back stories and environment as you did. You're the one that will need to do most of the adaptation. If it's not worth it, then accept that and move on.

In a similar vein, there's the concept of the Incarnation. You have a character that you really like and want to play them everywhere you can. Same name, same AV, same basic character. Problem is, you want to play in Star Wars and Babylon 5 and Firefly and Doctor Who. By forking, or incarnating, the character, you can. While the name and AV are the same, the concept is ever so slightly changed in each separate version so you you can play within the confines of whatever story you're in. In some cases, the differences are so minor between the incarnations that you're doing more Crossover Lite than a fork.

You can do the same thing with back stories. If the homegrown mega-corporation you introduced in the Star Trek story doesn't fit in Firefly, just tweak it a bit. Say, roll back its history so it's a new up-and-comer, rather than the mature Big Dog.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: Most admins are willing to cut people some slack, but unless you're running the show you've got to play by the ground rules the local admins and GM's have set. If you want to play something from "outside" their campaign, it's up to you to not step on their stories. If you want to become part of their stories, be willing to adapt. If you want to do your own thing, understand if you're asked to put it off camera.

Playing the Game: Crossing Over

Yes, crossing over. But not with that douchey John Edwards guy. No, we're talking about stories and characters that flow between campaigns and environments. This is closely related to the post I did back in May about Set Pieces.

One of the recurring issues in using Secondlife for gaming, versus doing it in a pencil and paper "desktop" setting, is that you only have limited control of the environment. Sure, within your own Sim you're essentially god. You can set the rules, build the world, define the backstory, control the main plot arcs, and generally do everything a Game Master does in a conventional RPG. There is nothing wrong with this. It's your sim. You're paying the bills.

If it was a live game, your players would expect nothing less. In a second life region, it's your region. Your visitors need to accept that.

Now, I'm not exactly saying "just go ahead and be as strict as you want," because, if you do, chances are you won't get a lot of visitors. At least not ones that stay very long. Unless they really, really, like your campaign. Which, of course, means you need to allow some flexibility. Find a balance between what you expect from your campaign space and what your players expect to get away with.

There are times when players/characters are going to want to play in a certain environment, but not as a Set Piece. They're going to want to participate in the story that's going on there and then. The difference between crossing over and borrowing a set piece is, often, one of perspective. When you are using a set, it becomes part of your story. When you cross over, you become part of their story.

Examples? When we evacuate the wounded from Hale's Moon to the high tech medical center on Beaumonde and we use the MedLab on the Babylon 5 sim as our set, for that time, to us, Bab 5 is Beaumonde. We're using it not as it is but simply as a set to represent something else. The same goes when the Trekies visit the Mining Colony of Earstwhile 3 and use Hale's Moon as their set. In either case, they've had a quick word with the sim's staff to be sure it's cool, and the event isn't really part of the local story. Local participants are doing so more as actors on the set than "really" being their characters.

The level of "Set" may be different, depending on what's going on and who's playing. When the locals are being themselves, and the visitors are being themselves, you've got more of a crossover.

Different campaign settings, and different story arcs, are more adaptable to allowing crossovers than others. Star Trek and Star Wars, for example, both exist in vast areas of space complete with Aliens and FTL drives. Introducing a new alien race or some distant government is usually pretty easy. As long as you're not directly contradicting established Cannon, it'll probably fit in just fine. The Babylon 5 campaign is also fairly easy to incorporate new Aliens into the mix. Though new Human organizations and governments aren't quite so easy. Bab 5 is more limited in that regard. Finally, campaigns like Firefly are much more restrictive. There's no FTL. No aliens. And everything happens in the same star system.

As a player, it's usually easier to crossover into a "more open" or "less restrictive" campaign than to shift into a more limited setting. For example, some of our players from the Firefly campaign RP on the Al Raquis and Splintered Rock sims, both of which are set, effectively, on Arakis (Dune), but are open to General SciFi. Because of the nature of the different campaign backgrounds, and the general environment, it's easy for them to do. If a local asks them where they're from, they can say "Zenobia" and when asked "where's that?" they can say "around Georgia," and no one will worry about it. In a Dune campaign, Zenobia is just another world and Georgia is just another star. It only becomes a problem if they (either the locals or visitors) get too heavily into the Big Picture. On the local scale though, not a problem.

As long as the visitors remember where they are and don't try to force their story on the locals, it can work pretty well in most settings. It's only when players try to bring in elements that just can't work that you have a problem.

Where does that leave us as players and Game Masters?

As a player, there's always the caveat of "respect the genre." If you want to become a regular somewhere, figure out how to best fit into the environment. If they're open to crossovers, great. If not so much, then adapt your own background as needed to fit in and enjoy.

As a Game Master, figure out a polite way to deal with crossovers. If they're not making waves, it's probably OK to let them slide. You may get some great RP out of it and you can retcon out any conflicts. If they are making waves, then suggest they either adapt or, perhaps, find another venue.

Anecdotaly, one of the most amusing encounters I ever had with a crossover/on-the-fly-adaptation was when some Trekkers showed up on Babylon 5. They were just visiting but were speaking in character and, when asked about their odd uniforms, quickly ad-libed something about being the crew of a freighter who's captain had an odd fashion sense. It was priceless. How they handled it in their story I never heard, but their quick ad-lib let them fit into Bab5 for the visit without so much as a ripple.

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.