Is SL a RPG??

I dinner a vegetable?
Or is it better than jello?

Dunno - the original question sorta skews off lopsided for me.

I CAN be - it COULD be - for some it's nothing like.

I look at SecondLife as a MOO with only the default starter database - it could be ANYTHING... what it becomes is kinda up to you.

If we all join forces and start to call a tomato a role-playing game. Then the dictionary will add the definition.

Lets do it folks. For humanity and the sake of sanity!!!


Tomato - A role-playing game.

Then we can come on the forums and ask "Is a tomato a RPG?" and all shout in harmony the word "yes". Oh how wonderful life would be!

But then Europe and the US may argue over this and the dispute over the meaning of the word tomato could escalate into a world war and then we'd all die.

So no. Don't do it. Lets just leave things as they are.

Tomato - A veg... I mean a fruit!

Second Life - A forum where people talk bollox all day long.

In order for SL to be a good place for me to play differerent roles in the way I would find enjoyable I would need to be able to make different accounts at will.

The Linden's clearly don't want people using SL in this way, since they won't just let you pay ten bucks and get another account whenever you feel like it.

I have already discovered I am not good enough at acting to be able to do the kind of role playing I would find amusing, so it is a moot point in my case.

The role playing I am talking about is where you are actually concealing your real identity and trying to present yourself as a different sort of person than what you actually are.

It's a shame there isn't a child's version of SL. Kids get into role playing real intensely, not that they need a computer program to help them do that, but when I was little I was able to enjoy pretending to be this comic book hero or that. A properly computer literate 6 to 8 year old could have great fun with a superhero costumed avatar, chatting with her fellow superheroes in the Hall of SuperHeroes they built themselves.

Oh that's a sweet idea, little ones running around pretending to be superhero's. I bet they would be more interested in a simple prim box than whats in it hehe

Cat

As for rpg vs none rpg. Does it realy matter? I don't think it really does. Well IW anyway. I don't go up to a fox and say "are you role playing?" I don't walk into a club and yell "Hey you all role playing?" I don't walk up to any AV and ask them; "Is that your real face or are you role playing?" None of us are exactly who we are in RL. and isn't that nice.

Cat

When I tell people about SL, I merely say that it's a "3D virtual world", and leave it to them what further aspects they wish to experience within it.

The whole idea of pigeon-holing SL further is a bit pointless.

SL is intended to be the start of something big, the distributed online metaverse that everyone is always talking about, and thus to encompass all of mankind's online activity, ie. the virtual counterpart to the physical world.

And just like asking whether the physical world is an RPG or ABCD or whatever is not very useful, so it is with that future metaverse, and in a small way with the current SL.

Don't pigeon-hole SL. At least in concept, it's too big to fit into any little box.

From: Rax Jessop

SecondLife Cannot be whatever you want it to be like everything else it has limits. That answer that it can be anything you want it to be is just lazy.

Sorry I seldom reply to questions who interpret my answers literally. There is such a thing as understanding through context or reading between the lines.

Besides, it's not like the others haven't tried explaining it. I've only just summarized it.

90% of the world's English-speaking population don't know what 'crescendo' means, although they use the word.

A game has a goal. Every game ever invented has a goal. Either to score more points, to achieve an objective or to outwit the game designer, or a mixture of these. SL doesn't have a goal, therefore it is not a game. It might contain rôle-playing, but it cannot be an RPG.

SL might want to be a platform, but it isn't one yet. There's two reasons why. First of all, nothing in SL is high quality enough to make it worthwhile playing unless you like SL in its own right. This is normal for emerging platforms - for instance BeOS had some good applications, but nothing that would make you use BeOS if you didn't want to for its own sake. But SL's problem is that it's nearly to make anything that the open market would see as high quality enough, because of SL's technical limitations with regard to lag and graphics. The thing that draws people to SL is the ability to create, but that can't be true for a platform

Secondly, is the meta-game of SL business. Imagine that you bought an Xbox, and you could make your own simple games by programming the Xbox and send them to others on the internet, and get credits that you could use to buy games - real, commerical, off-the-shelf games. Suddenly what was a platform - a means for running commercial games - becomes a metagame of trying to earn as many games as you can without taking out your wallet. You don't have to play, but if you don't, you have to pay.



I'd disagree. You're seeing things from a content creator's perspective. From a content consumer's perspective - the people who are key to the whole platform thing - they are forced to choose from the clothes that are available to them. And that does bring some obligation to roleplay - imagine how confusing it would be if an avatar behaved like a punk rocker, but was actually wearing a business suit. And if it was impossible for them to get punk clothes, they'd be effectively blocked from playing that role. (Note: I have no idea if you actually can get punk clothes in SL or not, but there is always going to be some kind of thing you can't get, so that's an expample.)

ROFL! Yes, but for some of us our rôle is talking bollocks.

Ah, but there are people who make a living by selling items & characters from other Online Games like WoW, Guild Wars, EverQuest, etc. Search Ebay & the like, you can find lots of it. Whats sad is someone actually BUYS their character.

BUT, what sets SL apart from the "Games" is that it has a working economy. We all know the going rate for a certain amount of L$. It varies from day-to-day. Yet in a game such as W.o.W. or EverQuest, it's the seller who sets the 'value' of the item. In those same games you can not buy a plot of land in "the evil dark forest" as they don't intend for people to do so. LL allows the users to buy land, virtual, and it is theirs to do with as they please. So in a way, SL is a virtual extention of RL.

Um, when selling gold, there's a free market with an exchange rate. It's inevitable any time there's more than one seller.



Just like Protected Land?

From: Tod69 Talamasca

Ah, but there are people who make a living by selling items & characters from other Online Games like WoW, Guild Wars, EverQuest, etc. Search Ebay & the like, you can find lots of it. Whats sad is someone actually BUYS their character.

True. As strange as it sounds, some MMORPG publishers usually grade the popularity of a game not by how many players, but how many people can live off it (studying the off-line economy). SL is the only 'platform/3D environment/"Game" that I know that actually allows it's 'players' to profit from it legally.

From: Tod69 Talamasca

BUT, what sets SL apart from the "Games" is that it has a working economy. We all know the going rate for a certain amount of L$. It varies from day-to-day. Yet in a game such as W.o.W. or EverQuest, it's the seller who sets the 'value' of the item. In those same games you can not buy a plot of land in "the evil dark forest" as they don't intend for people to do so. LL allows the users to buy land, virtual, and it is theirs to do with as they please. So in a way, SL is a virtual extention of RL.

Online business, role playing, 3D socializing, building tool, are just aspects of SL. In the end it's really the individual who decides what SL means to them. For technicality there's always a Linden to ask.

The answer is yes its an rpg and no its not an rpg.
Like mentioned in some replies its not black and white.

Secondlife is listed under two categories:

1) MMORPG

2) 3d Chat World



So Yes Your friends are right and Yes your friends are wrong.

Confusing and Complicated? Hell Yes. But remember life is confusing and complicated too.
Hence the name....2nd Life.

Let me redefine then: Virtual World.



Well if you're talking about making this to get that as a game, then life is a game. It's a game to go to work and make money to get food. I say the difference between virtual world/life and a game is that a game sets out a goal for you while a virtual world/life you make the goals for yourself. No one says you have to be a content creator, no one says you have to roleplay in Darklife, no one says you have to club all day, people choose this themselves. Secondlife itself does not choose for them, second life is just there as a medium to let them do it, therefore second life cannot be a game.




I Highly disagree, you're thinking too much in a consumer prospective that there's this mystical gap between creator and consumer that no man can cross without the seal of the content creator. ANYONE in SL can be a content creator, ANYONE. The difference between content creators and content consumers is that when content creators say "Man I really wish there was a punk outfit out there that fit my style" they go out and learn to use photoshop and build or whatever if they don't already know and they make it. Content Consumers go "Man I really wish there was a punk outfit out there that fit my style" and then say "oh well" and get something remotely close because they think the thought of doing it themselves is too hard. Maybe they tried once or gave up or have been doing it for a while and can't get it right. But it's all about practice and I firmly believe that every person in SL can be a content creator, just most choose not to be one whether it be a conscious decision or whether they chose to give up on practice. When I started my store I started it on the basis that there was no cyberpunk clothing in Second Life and I wanted some clothes that fit my style, I didn't know how to make clothes and it shows in my first few outfits, they suck, but I learned how to make clothes and can make what I want to wear in SL now.

And on another point, you're not obligated to roleplay just cause for some reason you're forced to buy a suit (not like there isn't tons and tons of punk clothes out there but that's besides the point). I have NEVER seen a hardcore punk guy fail to find punk clothes, go "oh well, I guess i'll have to roleplay a yuppie now" and buy a suit and run around talking about fortune 500. I have seen however, guys who say they're furries but can't afford a furry outfit so they wear what they have but still be furries. And guys that say they're cyberpunk but can't seem to find any good cyberpunk clothes in SL, but they still talk like they would normally.

Now this is the idea again, there is roleplay in SL, of course. But that's the difference it's IN SL not IS SL. A person can go into Second Life make their avatar look however, but ONLY chat and NEVER mention their av, this chat would be something that comes straight from their character and personality and is something they would say in real life. How can that be roleplaying? Like I said, it'd be the same thing as talking on the phone or using a chat room objectively.

SL is an open ended virtual world that gives you no push in one direction or another when you enter it. This is what makes the difference between genres in a game, what the game does with you in the very beginning. If they ask you to shoot everything up, then it's a FPS, if they ask you to quest and level up and give you some huge backstory, then it's some kind of RPG, if they ask you to move a few hundred troops strategically then it's an FPS, a game can be a mixture of all of these but they will always have that as a basis of the genre even in a mixture (i.e. FPS/RPG: Shoot things up and quest to level up with a huge backstory). However, where in SL when you log in does it give you a gun and tell you you have to shoot a path through the clubs, or quest to fight Philip Linden the evil head bad guy (but don't try and take him on before level 1337), or move a squadron of newbies to take back the Welcome Area from the people who squat there. It doesnt. You can do all of these things (in roleplay), but Second Life never gives any notion to it or mention of it when you log on.

This is because SL is open-ended you're not forced to do anything, you don't even need to make money. There's no goals. Anything you do in Roleplay or in play is because you wanted too, and because you wanted to do it makes it your choice and not a universal standard for the program itself.

Just like a guy who likes to play tennis can't say "Well Tennis is the meaning of life for everyone everywhere", they may reply "well maybe for YOU but I rather don't like Tennis and no one is forcing me to play it."

Catch my drift?

Back in the '70s and early '80s, a role playing game was one where you played a role, interacting with people... other players and the game master. If you wanted to try something the creator of the scenario hadn't thought of, and it made sense to everyone in terms of your role and abilities, you could do it.

You also had these things called tabletop wargames, with strict rules about what every unit could do. Most were large scale, but they went all the way down to unit and individual soldier level.

Computer "role playing games" are no such thing. They're war games, with strictly limited flexibility, automated versions of "Sniper!" rather than "RuneQuest!". less than that, really, because in war games you had a variety of victory conditions and didn't have to proceed through a fixed set of levels or along a fixed storyline. They, at best, simulate the tabletop-wargame component of role playing games, but abandon all the actual role-play.

MMORPGs loosen the tight and limited plotting, but otherwise are barely changed from the tabletop unit-tactics and individual tactics wargames. They're more complex, but don't really give much opportunity for role play.

In SL, you can play any role you want, pick any victory conditions (if any) that you want, you can primarily socialise, you can play "for fun", you can role-play in-character or just be yourself, you can even "for keeps" - staking significant amounts of real money in the game. And this works because you're playing with and (if one is motivated that way) against other people... not a faceless and soulless computer program throwing monsters at you. It's much more like the original meaning of the term "role playing game" than any so-coled MMORPG.

Well, we're just getting stuck on the definition of a "game" here. I don't believe a game has to have fixed goals. Castle Marrach doesn't have fixed goals but is a role-playing game to all intents and purposes.



Well, I won't get into the "need for god-given talent" issue. Whether anyone can be a content creator or not, fairly large numbers of the player base choose not to. A friend who's involved heavily with new folks said she believed 75% of the player base never creates anything. Now, you can say "well then, that's their choice if they don't get what they want", but they are your potential customers - and LL's.



Or maybe they don't enjoy doing art or building things, and they just want to hang out on SL and play and enjoy being in a virtual world, so if they can't get what they want by buying it, they're happy to do without or do something else with their leisure time. Furthermore, what does it mean that there's no punk outfits available? It means that no-one else is interested in building punk things, and probably therefore there's no punk community. And if you aren't going to integrate that role with a community, then why bother wearing the costume? You can try and start the community yourself, you might succeed, but again it's something that many people just aren't going to want to do.



Sure. Not being able to afford an outfit is not the same as there not being one. If there are outfits you can't afford, you know there's a community because the outfits exist. If there aren't outfits, you know there's probably no community, or at least a community without any builders in it (because if there was, what would the first thing they made be?)



Well, even if they are playing themselves, they are still in situations that are unreal and that are being set up for them. (And that they don't necessarily have full control over.) If there really are people who are completely ignoring their and others' AVs, completely ignoring their surroundings in SL, completely ignoring stuff that happens to them in world, and just talking to each other as RL people, then they're basically just using SL as an IM program on the same level as ICQ and it's not clear if they should be considered to be participating in SL at all. Certainly, the fact that people do that on WoW as well doesn't mean that WoW ceases to be an RPG.



Well, that's whether a game needs to be a universal goal. Dictionary.com defines a game as "an activity providing entertainment or amusement", but that's not quite right since that would mean that decorating your lounge is a game as long as you enjoy it. The second definition is "A competitive activity or sport in which players content with each other according to a set of rules"; SL business fits this nicely... but so does RL business, which most people don't call a game. So I have no idea what it means.

I know people who pretty much do that when playing traditional FRP games, either never initiating anything and just rolling dice when asked to, or not rolling up a character and hanging out. Because they dig the D&D thing or they're hanging out with a group that does D&D but don't actually like playing D&D.

And one day back in 1979 or 1980 our gaming group got together and the GM said "You're sitting around playing D&D, and all of a sudden the lights go out. No, not in the game, in the real world. <player1> goes to the door, and the street's gone, and there's a castle outside... pull out a new character sheet, and write down what you think your stats are. Yours, not your character's...".

That was a fun game, I miss that group...

What is the goal of SimCity?

reading all these posts really, really makes me want to go play WoW again. =P

The goal directed rule oriented use of the word game is modern, only a few hundred years or so old.

I think of blowing the puffs off a dandelion blossom as a game. Kicking a can down the street till you get bored with it is a game.

The Online Etymology Dictionary has this to say about the origins of the word 'game'.




This is from the url http://www.etymonline.com

Do you Know of any better (or even other) etymology search sites, or better dictionary sites than dictionary.com or m-w.com?

I think you kinda missed the point of what I was saying, and that is that you CAN look exactly like yourself in SL they've done it for a few people and you don't even necessarily need the talent (you can just pay someone to do it), and the point I was getting at is that you wouldn't be playing a role then would you? If you looked exactly like you and acted exactly like you in RL.




Roleplaying by definition needs the self to join in on it or it isn't roleplaying it's just being in the midst of roleplayers. If I go up to a bunch of furry roleplayers and saying how their dragon avs didn't look realistic they're not going to go, "hey you're a good roleplayer". Like I said, roleplaying is about consciously taking on a role outside of your normal behaviour, this usually means manner of speaking and for more intense roleplayers it might mean behavioural traits and for looser ones it could be just wearing period outfits. Which is why the WoW analogy doesn't work, because the characters in the game are forced to wear outfits that fit the enviornment (you can't be yourself, you can't put a t-shirt and jeans on your human warrior character). However, even in WoW there's a difference between RPG and "Roleplayer", since joining the game does not automatically make you a roleplayer. It makes you a member of a RPG, which means you have a loose goal, a set of rules to follow, and stats and all that, but being a roleplayer means that you would say things that fit your character more than you.

That's the catch there, Roleplaying is a loose definition and if you get vague enough you can roleplay your entire life (without realizing it) because after all, we put on different personas at workthen we do at home, or with friends, or with lovers. But would it be correct to say that everytime I go to work i'm roleplaying a person who's interested in what the customers have to say? I don't think so.

Let's give a little experiment here. RPG's don't need tons of people to be an RPG. After all, RPGs have been around since well before the internet was widely availible to the public. So let's say that in any MMORPG if you take everyone out except one, it's still an RPG because there is still land and forests and monsters and quests and stats and levels and all that. So take everyone out of WoW except one and you still have an RPG. Take everyone out of Second Life except one and what do you have? You have a Welcome Area and about 1,000 sims of nothing. No NPCs to give you quests, no monsters, no dark forests, and definately no stats. You will be utterly alone in a grid full of nothing.

Therefore, SL in it's basis is not an RPG but a virtual world that has no genre identity from the start like say World of Warcraft which when it's released has all this stuff.

PEOPLE however can make it into an RPG if they want, there's Darklife after all. But as proven in the experiment that doesn't make SL ITSELF an RPG nor a Roleplaying game.

And that's what this whole thread is about, "Is SL a RPG??".

True, but I didnt know those games allowed you to build your own scripted content from scratch either. Or do they? Is it all user created content?

And Protected Land in SL reminds me of privately owned land and national forests in RL.


SL has aspects of RPGs & online "games", but unlike a game, lacks a goal. Thats up to the person & their avatar to find their own goal. An RPG lets you take on the role of a character, such as your avatar. But I haven't run into many people yet who only talk like 14th century knights or like Grog the Orc King. There's sims I've seen with a Theme, yet most of the people I've run into still talk in modern day terms. This isnt taking into account places where RP'ing is required, like BDSM clubs, etc.

Its an RPG in the fact its not ME as in the real life me being portrayed. Therefore, it is an rpg, no matter how you twist the definitions and words. Whetehr you choose to view it as such is your choice, but I will never state that SL is not a rpg, as the statement is untrue.

I'm going to have to take this into a philosophical context so stay with me.

Basically, you're saying that your physical self is the only thing that makes you. After all, the person on the screen doesn't look like you, therefore he isn't you. However, he does think, talk, behave, react, and feel like you since you are the one who outputs all those communication matters. So essentially, you're saying that how you look defines who you are more than how you think, behave, and feel right?

After all, unless you've actively decided to roleplay a different behaviour, that person is you in everything but appearance (and you can make him you in appearance if you truly wanted but we already went over that).

Basically then if you are disfigured in real life, then you are no longer you, you are someone else. Either that or you are now roleplaying someone else until you are returned to normal.

Think about it like this, a boat leaves port with a crew of sailors and enough planks of wood to fix every board on the ship. As it goes along at sea the crew gradually replaces every single board on the ship with the planks of wood. Is the ship the same ship that left port? And what if the old boards the ship dropped are picked up by another ship and used until their ship is replaced with your boards. Is that ship your old ship now?

The answer is no to both questions. The reason is even though no one else may recognize the physical continuity of the ship, the crew was there and never left the ship, and they have memories of replacing the boards and how the ship was and that this is how it is now, even though physically it's totally different. This of course is symbolic, the ship is your body and the crew is your consciousness. It's not your body that makes you the self, it's your consciousness, your stream of memories. If someone inhabitted your body (don't ask how, just say it as a physical situation) and you inhabited theirs, would you say that that body that was once yours out there is you and you are them?

The point i'm getting at overall is that it's the stream of consciousness that makes you, not what you look like. It's how you think, it's how you behave, it's how you feel, ALL of these things can be translated into your avatar which means that effectively the avatar is a representation of you and not another person.

It's something of a psychological mirror, that person in the mirror isn't you, it's a representation of you.

And besides, if SL is an RPG because the character on screen isn't an exact physical representation of you in real life, then how come every video game ever released isn't filed under RPG?

We can fly.
We can Teleport.
We can be what ever we want to be as freely as we want to be.
We time out.
There is a quit button.
We can make our play money, or real money.
We can be captains of industry.
We can play house.
We can play games.
We can try things we never would in rl.

We are bound not by the ground benieth but the stars in our eyes.

Yup I'm still a dreamer. As long as I am the one paying my subscription I guess I can decide who I want to be or what I want out of SL.



In rl I believe our bodies are just shells of our souls, and I have met some beautiful souls.

Cat