Misty Rookstown

I noticed that the lighting and such did look better in the official SL viewer which is partly why I asked. I was going to install the firestorm viewer for open sim and look about there.

There were other forum topics but they seem to have vanished such as Games within SL an forum about animesh etc? Did they get moved? I Was following some of them.

Coca Cola also stopped using cocaine as well .. .but I understand they still use coca leaves for flavor

Yup I don't have insurance because I am self employed and because affordable health care isn't affordable. They never tried in the first place ie starting with the costs.

Weird. My reinstanted Avatar Sorina Garrigus picks comes up blank and no tabs in the profile. But when looking in Firestorm it works fine.

Cola is not made from cola nuts that often anymore. They get the caffeine from other sources usually. I believe the key ingredient anymore is coriander. It might be closer to trying to say Facebook is a game or youtube.

Your example really doesn't work on any level. In a role playing game with you as the game master you are not making decisions for the players and you are not the player yourself. Its actually hard to reply because you don't seem to understand what a role playing game is at all. So let me explain the basics. A role playing game is a game in which you have a game master or dungeon master (the title judges from game to game but the job is the same). You will either buy a premade adventure campaign or write one yourself or maybe even just improvise the story. You then have other people that create characters with various physical and mental statistics set by specific sets of rules usually. The Game master describes what is going on, guilds them on a specific quest. The players makes decisions based on the situation presented and utlizing rules will resolve those situations using skills and dice rolls and various charts and rules. The goal is basically to complete the quest or mission. In second life there are no rules, no quests, no progress. There are guidelines for behaviors both for ethical and legal reasons but no rules on how to play Second Life. If you choose to role play in Second Life ... that isn't a game. A role playing game has rules and structure and goals sometimes lose sometimes not. Is Jack Nicholson a gamer when he is filming a movie? Of course not that is silly. But he is playing a role. Because I own a game store is a perspective of being literally exposed to thousands of games. It gives one a much wider understanding of what a game is. More so I would say than some hobby board gamer types even. Because there are a lot of things they might not call a game that are a game. If there are zero rules, zero goals, zero winners it does not really approach being a game. Keep in mind role play and a role playing game are very different things. You are right I don't set the definition ... but they are set.

Odd topic I would move out of California if I could. Cost of housing is insanely out of control, taxes are crazy high. Don't see moving out of the country but definitely to a different state.

I have Firestorm and use the LL current browser ... the current browser I am lost on coming back into SL. Where are picks? I select profile and can't see people's picks for instance. But if I go to Firestorm I can see the classic profile. Someone also suggested Singularity. What is your favorite and why? Without trying Singularity or any others I have to say Firestorm because it is best for building for me with options to copy prim locations sizes etc. Also are there things I should open up on the LL official browser?

I always use this argument to be snarky Which is why I like saying it's like comparing apples to thumb tacks or something along those lines.

This is closer. An activity is a bit closer, virtual world encompasses all of the above though. But to some it is an escape, to others a way to socialize, to some it is a creative outlet, to others well ... to express kinky desires and fantasies (we have to be honest i and to some others it is serious literal business. Pretty sure land barons think of it more of a game when they are making their car and house payments in real life with it.

I own an actual game store. Roleplay isn't a game unto itself ... an acting exercise possibly. Role playing games have objectives, experience points ways to progress though there are some exceptions on the experience points part but there are always goals or rules at the very least to the game. If you think hiring someone to work on your house, paying rent and watching tv is a game ... remind me not to invite you over to game night. That is what everyone does outside maybe the homeless.

I use to work at a local news station years ago. We ran a couple stories from a sister affiliate about Second Life. The described it as a virtual world ... which did roll of the tongue. No point adding online and 3D since that is redundant. We ran it a couple times ... guess it was a time LL was trying to market heavily through the media. That and we had idiot producers who ran stories about White Castle on Valentines day in California where the nearest one is 542 miles from here currently ... at the time the nearest one was probably a thousand miles away. We also ran a very stupid story about saving gas by turning off the car and coasting. Thank goodness the CHP guy was on following for a traffic report and said umm no don't do that.

Those are traffic devices that are within SL. Level up means you get experience points and upgrade skills and such as in actual or computer RPGs. And you ended up with effectively describing a virtual world.

Sure for marketing reasons it would be good to not call it agame. But just telling someone about it casually to someone and saying something like "have you checked out the game called Second Life? You should check it out". They will go to check it out with a game in mind but basically find a big 3d chat room where you can buy clothes. You don't have to be wordy ... just say virtual world. If they don't understand that you can ask them have they seen Ready player one or the Matrix ... kind of like that. Telling them it is a game will set them up for a lot of disappointment and confusion.

Well there isn't a description that fits the definition for the word game ... because it isn't one. It's pretty simple. Take a slot machine in a casino for example. It is a game of chance where you pull the handle you risk financial stakes in order to possibly win more money. But what is it if you take the money away. It would no longer be a game. It would be a device which you watch reels spin and hear sounds and lights from it. I don't come at this from a video game perspective but also for owning a physical board game store for roughly a decade. Calling it a virtual world is the best if not only description. But just like the actual world ... there are games in it. When people call it a game they are just in error for lack of an understanding on what else to call it.

Well Jigsaw cheats at games basically. I am really surprised that someone hasn't bought the licensing rights to produce home escape room games based on those movies.

Your second defintion you came up with doesn't work. It actually partly defines something as not being a game. There are a lot of people that do use SL for financial. In hobby board game circles some will call a game without strategy or the victory conditions don't matter not a game but an activity. The party game Telestrations is one example mostly because people disregard the points and just play it for laughs. Of course the more snooty board gamers will apply that idea to party games as a whole. The only reason people mistakenly call it a game is because without context it resembles a game that is in a 3d game. But without goals and quests of any kind provided by Linden Labs itself it simply is not a game. But there are games within that virtual world. To those that been in SL for a long time it would be as silly as calling Facebook and Twitter a game.

Second Life would make a good tool for table top RPGs showing the space in three dimensions. In my game store in RL we have a TV table in the RPG room which uses maps including something like Dynamic Dungeon which uas animated maps. I have various tools on the computer in there and. If you have any links or references I would be interested in checking that out. I saw mesh made people with animated skeletons and such the other day using animations like avatars use. This could be a great possibility to use in RPGs in world. I would be interested in making some kind of RPG system in SL though I only have building skills and not so much in. I have a good number of ideas which could in theory unique RPG experiences on a big and large level. Utilizing a kind of instance system. But to work right it would need a system that doesn't rely on collision for combat. There are too many ways to exploit that in SL. I would love to work on something like this if only I could find a good outside the box scripter and some good mesh builders and the like. I think there are enough tools to make something passable in SL rather than the gimpy stop motion creatures we seen int he past which tend to be laggy and wonky. So far I just set up an old school arcade area to get things going. LL was kind enough to let my other avatar Sorina Garrigus out of SL jail. Hopefully I will find a way to break even using ad boards but not sure yet. Just experimenting for now. If I find a way to make it work I will open some board game builds. Some of the stuff I have seems to no longer be available. Do stop by at least to check out the asteroids game Komikaze. It is one of the most impressive real time arcade games I ever seen in SL I was afraid it wouldnt work anymore. It seems to still work though ... it has some too many sound issues going off while playing but it worked just fine.

I noticed that some do that as well ... the ones I see will also call it a horrible game in some of their videos ... well that's because it isn't a game by any real definition. They also come off as someone super super new to SL.

I sell Dungeons and Dragons and other RPG books in my RL store. And even if you are looking at something limited like a World of War Craft MMORPG SL itself really has no role playing game elements at it's core. Some may engange in role playing ... but that doesn't make it a game. A real role playing game has elements like a quest/mission, has elements of leveling up and tracking progression etc.

They are small but part of that is likely because of the limitations and how easy it is to cheat. Which is why a multiverse approach would be a good way to grow RPG communities to have more proper tools specifically made for that that would exclude any easy exploits. Which is why I think a browser that has sub browsers to enter diferent Second Life universes if you will like a RPG world. would help SL over all. It could have a level of expectation comparable to what one might expect from a dedicated RPG or survival game or shooter game and have less of a gimped feeling experience. Having a multiverse approach could turn things around for LL in a dramatic way. I also think they should rethink mainland. That is the first place people will discover when they come in to Second Life. Especially along the road ways. If it appears active in those areas instead of mostly being absentee owners and spinning signs. Also Shopping malls use to be a huge part of SL but LL's answer to Amazon kind of killed that. It makes sense to keep the online shopping kind of experience but having exclusives at in store shops and direct them there would help build in world activity. LL doesn't necessarily need to head such changes up but they can oversee it a bit and they can have people and groups within SL work on such projects for a win win scenario.

Also harder for older users that been away for a long time. It's not just broken or problematic issues it is accessibility and having an intuitive interface. In board game design game testing is critical unless the game is super basic like trvia. Obviously video games it is also critical. But with board games you have to have very clear information or they will easily play the game wrong and likely have a bad experience. Board games probably don't do this enough but they really need to hand the board game to a group of people and not say a damn thing and let the players figure it out without helping them in any way then sit back and take notes on what they are doing right and wrong and how long it takes them to figure out something etc. If they did that test in Second Life it would be likely not go so well.

Calling it a game people would be deeply disappointed if they are expecting it a game. Second Life has nearly zero elements one can think of as a game. Now there can be games within Second Life and are. But to experienced Second Lifers it would be just as silly as calling Facebook a game.

I "bristle" when Second Life is called a game myself because ... well I own a game store. Previously one in SL but now one in real life. Games have some form of objectives, win conditions, structure and some form of end winner. Even so called Sandbox games have some of these things. Second Life is basically tools and a blank slate to create and socialize. People call it a game because they don't know what else to call it I think. It has some trappings of a MMO RPG but without structure, goals and the like it is like that scene in the Empire Strikes Back. Luke goes into the cave and says to Yoda "What's in there" Yoda replies "Only what you take with you". Which is a fair description of Second Life.