I exist only in other worlds.

My, but it’s been quite a while since I’ve made a new post. Almost a month gone by–particularly long for me. What in the hell have I been up to? Truth be told, nothing much. Work for work. Some play. Some work at the house. And an awful, awful lot of gaming.

I’ve had gaming on the brain lately. Between the game I’m GMing, a game going on, and the gaming I’ve found elsewhere… it’s all about some gaming. The cause, mostly, is that I’ve been immersed in an exhaustive study of one Second Life, a hopped-up entirely-open version of The Sims. It started as examination for work, and quickly became a fun curiousity with interesting enough people and places to hang out… and then I found the rpgs.

Second Life sports a great number of roleplaying sims. A certain number are, er, unsavory… preferring less in the area of interesting storylines and more in the realm of lawless combat and willing abasement. But there are–if you look hard enough–finely crafted sites with active and exuberant player characters. Some are purely by-the-book (or books), following the typical Vampire tomes or DnD rules. Some follow entirely different schemas–based on historical novels or popular pulp fiction–and others have entirely new systems generated by the sim owners that come replete with displays and weapon systems and real-time damage. And some are simply freeform… allowing a casual story-only consent-required way to interact. It is interesting to see the massive variety and scope.

The scripting languages and object creation tools give smart DMs an almost limitless ability to set the scene. No longer do you describe the flickering light in a dank basement–you simply create the basement, make light fixtures, and imbue them with the proper inconsistent glow which reflects off the walls according to the laws of physics. Need monsters? Produce skins for NPC characters, and have them act out the proper part, or, better yet, simply allow monsters to exist as PCs and the action takes care of itself. The possibilities, I must say, thrill me deeply.

And, in some ways, the new rp has opened the gates back to old rp. As is our wont, we tend to write our canon into each new character, and even the ones created in SL guise are no different. As ever, I look towards Tremere or Malks, mages and madness. So I find myself looking back for clues. And, too, in the writing and telling of the Dizney game, I’m looking back for Withrow and Bashir, and for some hint to the power that lies beneath the Magic Kingdom.

In the course of my travels from one of our worlds to the next (re-reading old game plot, like a storybook told in two times–memories of both the tale itself and the times surrounding the telling), I collected some links–URLs that aren’t hidden, but aren’t linked obviously anymore. And thus, there is now a simple gaming page. Which would, of course, be only enhanced by any additions any of the many gamers I enjoy the aquaintence of might be able to dig up.

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