Greed in Second Life: Part 1- The Viking RP

By Theonlyjohnny Resident

    There has been a huge spike in the amount of greed in Second Life. When I first started Second Life, I saw how most people, in Second Life, didn't care about lindens, they just wanted to have fun. However, now, most people only care about earning lindens, even at the expense of losing their own sims.

    It's not just gaming sims, either, it's also club sims, shopping sims, even roleplay sims. I have personally witnessed the downfall of quite a few sims, due to the owners' greed. In this article, I will tell you about an RP sim that went under.

    I used to roleplay at a Viking sim that is gone now, because no one would join. However, the reason no one would join, was due to the greed of the owners. It was a rule that anyone rping there, must wear the Spell fire (SF) meter. Of course, the SF meter will keep pestering the wearer, if their warmth is too low, which is determined not just by the sim, but also by the clothing worn by the wearer. At this sim you could only wear certain Viking clothes, and the only Viking clothes allowed were those purchased on the sim. This meant you had to pay to RP at the place.

    The greed of the sim owners went even further, when I learned that after I had bought the clothes, for L$ 120, even though the box said it would give warmth, the clothes did not provide even the slightest bit of warmth. Nor would the warmth they were supposed to give be sufficient enough to raise your warmth level. I then bought the next set of clothes for twice as much as the first, and learned that, again, they did not provide warmth. Not only that, I had paid twice as much, for the exact same set of clothes, I had bought previously.

    Of course, this sim didn't last long. The design of it may have been amazing, but the respect that the owners asked for, exceeded the amount of respect they gave to anyone. They asked for, no they demanded, my respect. Yet, how could I show respect towards anyone who has shown no respect towards anyone else?

     Their greed was fueled by a lie, which I found out when I had actually asked them why everything they sold, on the sim, was never below L$ 120. The owner was quoted saying "We have to pay a tier for this land, to Linden Labs. Our scripts, alone, cost us L$ 3000 weekly." At that time, I was fairly new to Second Life, and had to do a bit of research. While they did pay a tier to Linden Labs, they wrote most of their own scripts, and the SF meter scripts are free to use, I know this because I have been to the SF main store. You get the SF sim and region kit, for free, and you only pay for scripts, once, and that's to buy them.

    It is a sad thing to see, when an amazing place is shut down, due to the owners' greed. Let this be a testament to all RP Sim owners, out there, while its customary to have items, on your sim, that people can buy, you shouldn't get too carried away, with high prices. Nor should you lie, like these people did, just to get more lindens.

Theonlyjohnny Resident

"Fallout Equestria" The MLP/Fallout Crossover Roleplaying Game

By Grease Coakes

The fad of MLP which is shorthand for “My Little Pony” has spread beyond the MLP sims and current pop culture. In a roleplay in Second Life, there's a roleplay which combines it with the popular "Fallout" computer game. The storyline has an alternate MLP universe in which Equestria was destroyed by nuclear war with the zebras. A friend got me into the game, which is currently full. Vadise and his friend helped me create my character sheet. I picked the gryphon species and named him Dusty from GI Joe.


Ahead of time Vadise told me to buy a die roller from the marketplace for all of 150L called “Ash’s Dice Roller”. That way I can roll dice within SL for the game. The game play between the characters was in SL main chat and skype. Everyone was laughing at the antics of the game.

The background of the game as I started at level 1 is after 200 years since the nuclear war, ponies and other species have lived in a giant stable or fallout shelter. Ahead of time I had to have firearms, negotiate, persuade, and unarmed 30 or above to be in security.

I made my red brown gryphon well rounded with 7 Strength 6 perception 9 endurance 4 Charisma 3 Intelligence and 3 luck. Like a table top roleplaying game I have to make rolls to see if I make the check or fail. In the MLP fallout game I have to roll under to succeed. So to make an endurance check I have to roll a 9 or under on a D10. Pretty simple for endurance, but I’d have a lousy time trying to succeed on a luck or intelligence roll. I use the ash’s dice roller to roll not physical dice.

As a security officer Vanilla Surprise, my boss asked me to look for some missing persons: a Pegasus, an earth pony, and a male griffin. With another griffin, a female named Vertiga, we went to sub level 6, the level which the three missing ponies and griffin were last spotted. Playing off my intelligence of 3, I played a goofy character who decided to shoot his beanbag shotgun at rats crawling on the ceiling on the sewer pipes. Apparently my shooting the sewer pipes caused a funny situation where pony and griffin waste spilled out onto the floor. Socket, an earth pony mare and the mechanic of the group, checked in on the situation. Xinka, a zebra character with magical abilities and doctoring skill, heard my shotgun blam and came to investigate.

Veritgia, my partner as security, yelled at me asking me for the shotgun and that I’m derpy. Socket made me clean up the mess I made with his cleaning machine. I failed the mechanical skill check and broke his cleaning machine to make things worse. Socket the mechanic was shot by a sleeping dart and almost fell asleep. The group tracked down the dart shooter and chased him down a stairwell. Socket the earth pony mechanic breathed fire down the stairwell, which I thought was derpy.

With the fire on the stairwell no one could go down the stairs to chase down the attacker. Socket went into the fire herself taking some damage, but instead I asked information from my pipbuck or PDA about the dart gun that the attacker dropped. The DM gave me information when I used my turn researching into the serial number on the dartgun and found out the name of the attacker. Alas it was a waste as the fire died off the group discovered the attacker was dead from falling and breaking his neck some distance from the stairwell.

Everyone gained 500 XP for completing the scenario. I asked do I get bonus for killing the poor rats and the DM (Dungeon Master) Razi said no.

When I talked with Vadise who plays Xinka the zebra mare said I played the character perfectly playing off the Intelligence of 3. Here’s what he said:

Vadise Sagukari: "You did excellent for a 3 int character. Like totally absent of reality. You were super fun."

Isn’t that what dice roleplaying is all about?

For more information on "Fallout Equestria", Click Here.

Grease Coakes

Timber Wilds

Recently I was people-watching in Caledon Oxbridge when a couple of wolf avatars I hadn't seen before crossed my path. Asking them where they got their avatars, I was pointed to a place called Timber Wilds.

Timber Wilds is a very nicely done wilderness sim that's perfect for a quick getaway from the madness and insanity of regular SL life. There's a lot to explore, a lot of little nooks and crannies to hide in and wander about, and there's what appears to be a club at one end of the sim.

The avatar itself that was being sold is a wolf (they also have foxes) by Timber Wilds Industries. It's very very well done; had a bit of a "scruffy" look to it. It's about the size of a large dog; not as big as the Werehouse Dire Wolf but not so small as to be mistaken for a puppy or a chibi version of it. The HUD comes with recoloring options for every part of the body (except for the eyes, recolorable eyes have to be purchased separately, but are very cheap) as well as several options for gestures, like sitting and wagging your tail.

Timber Wilds (based in the sim Silent Hills, no relation to the video game) also has a sister sim, Whispering Wilds. This is an RP sim for ferals, and after wandering past the Timber Wilds vendors, saw that there was a sign advertising a trio of wolfpacks, perfect for RP opportunities. Further investigation revealed that the packs mentioned on the sign have been for the most part "inert"; from what I understand the leaders of the RPs got up and left and most of the groups followed suit. Now, Whispering Wilds is home to -some- RP, but my impression was that the RP is "here and there" --- no real main "quest line" or story line is ongoing at the moment.

Rabid Ghost, one of the admins of the sims, had this to say: "Timber Wilds is a public, feral animal roleplaying sim geared towards natural interaction between creatures in the dense forestlands that give the place its name. Also home to Timber Wilds Industries, offering high quality animated & expressive quadruped animal avatars and accessories, geared toward roleplaying and detailed character customization. Free demo avatars are available, as well as two full regions of beautiful scenery to explore with both In Character-enforced roleplay and casual OOC hangout areas."

One interesting thing I saw was that in their sim rules, the Werehouse Dire animal avatars seem to be marked as forbidden in the sim. This I learned was because of a lot of "god moding" while wearing them --- more the result of bad RP by players instead of bad blood between avatar makers, and the wolf avatars of Timber Wilds -do- look a lot like the Werehouse ones.

Both sims, especially Whispering Wilds (In-Character only) are beautifully done and give a good place to relax from running about in SL buying clothes, playing dress-up, or building things in the sandboxes. I'm definitely keeping an alt in the area on occasion; it gets Four Dragon Hoards out of Five, if only because the wolf avatar is a bit more pricey than I would of liked (2000 $L).

Xymbers Slade