From Japan to SL

I did not take any excursion during the summer holidays, so I made global travel in SL and ran into this island, Zolio. Incidentally it was just a beginning of a new role play game, so I participated in it as a visitor.




The time is twelve’s century. There had been a prosperous town. The load was gone, and then big earthquake, storm, and dragon attack destroyed the town completely. I was one of survivors from a wrecked ship, and casted ashore, a foreign girl who knows nothing.




I have not done any RPG, so studied the rule and manner of RPG in a hurry. One of the practices is ‘to emote’ through chat text, which might have been common in RPGs through text. For instance:
“/me looks into her eyes and wants to growl, but only mutters: why have you hidden this information to me all this time...”
‘/me’ will be set at the head of ‘emote’ and colon or quotation mark is set at the start of comment, but some will skip them. Also in the ‘emote’, third-person-pronoun will be used to describe self, but ‘he’ or ‘she’ will be used also for real third person, so it is hard for me…




The characters are; natives living here before the earthquake, newcomers, brothers, dragon that attack human, dark and light elves. The figures on the left are dark elves that were said to be mistrustful evil from human side but they say it is racial segregation. The right is light elf who is accepted in the camp.




There are big variations in human side, such as knight drifted from the wrecked ship, a worrier who tries to be a leader of the camp, a wife who just had a baby, and a lady looking for her missing partner. Also their appearances are unique.




I talked with about twenty characters but still do not see what is going on. The first thing they did was to build up fences around the camp for dragon attack. My summer vacation was over and I cannot log-in at their active time. And I cannot follow the RPG since I am poor at history in twelve’s century. I felt ashamed by asking “Are you from America?” that was not found at that time.




Bird’s eye view of the island. What kind of drama will be developed here in the days to come? They said that they had been running taverns, blacksmith, or pottery shop. Will they rebuild the town? It will be difficult for me to participate in it but I will visit there periodically and ask them to let me see the situation.



http://isleofdee.wordpress.com/isle-of-dee-rp-academy/basic-rp-101-part-13/
If you are interested in, the basics of RPG are explained in the URL above.
If you come in as a visitor, please follow the basic manner. There are some RPGs that will not accept visitors though. In addition to wear suitable clothing, some important matter is ‘metagaming’ that is to use out-of-character (OOC) knowledge that could not be known as a player. I made a mistake to salute watching his name tag. She said “wonders how the lady knew her name who she hasn't met before and smiles "nice to meet you too" (Note that she said “her name” in the emote.)

The difference of RPG from Japanese adventure games such as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest might be that RPG does not have fixed scenario and that characters should be set by themselves. But the text suggested avoiding some characters such as the only survivor of the destroyed village, the last of my kind, security royal, amnesia, or being chased by someone.

It makes me feel a bit insecurity that a firm story and characters are not provided. Especially I am a type of relying on guidebooks, following the story casually, walking around every corner of a town when I entered it. Come to think about it, for someone who considering SL as a different world from RL, SL itself could be a big RPG as a whole.