Open Question: What's your fantasy theme sim?

I'll resurrect my Paris-themed cafe and you put up your cafe and we'll switch off days to show up at one or the other at the same time?

(or we could just choose a cafe already in world, show up there at the same time every day, have coffee and chat...)

There might be interest in your vision of a vampiric gritty cyberpunky city, Alcott. However, I'm interested in overthrowing your vision of the Palace.

Think Vampire Hunter D, Bloodlust. That looming ominous castle was also *attractive* in its own way. It had Art Nouveau influences as well as gothic, and a studied elegance that reflected the style of certain main characters in the anime. Since your obsidian palace is a symbol of power why not make it both monumental and supremely elegant? This would contrast with its vampiric/gritty/cyberpunk surroundings. The contrast would be more effective than having those same surroundings overlooked by a visually unpleasant palace. By visually unpleasant I mean clunky and clumsy like a big assemblage of boxes and cylinders with cones on top. And let's not forget the coarse texturing with blobby rocks and cheesy theme motifs!



You'd need to think about the urban planning for a sim with all those elements. My professional advice is to use dramatic terraforming to separate elements that might conflict. For example, retail designers seem to want many, many events happening on the sim in order to bring traffic and boost sales enough to cover their rent. If you feel obliged to have the conventional event spaces on your sim, as well as having the more interesting combat and conflict events, well planned terraforming and structures can separate the two types of event spaces.

Heh. Check the sim now.

The little tree grew up...

You know, random aside, like 3.5% of the entire world population is related to ghengis khan.

And back on topic... Hill Valley, circa 1955

Elfquest themed sims- with two moons and all.

AWWW YEAH. I have just the vehicle for that too, hehehe.

We need more moons... and suns (like Tattooine). A lot can be done with changing the skybox alone, like how draping over a new texture can totally change the tone of an object.

I've actually been thinking about this recently.

1. A recent crater, more or less round, covering most of the sim. Blackened earth, flattened trees, etc. Possibly some water in the center, and possibly some signs of alien or mutant life-forms or alien technology. When you enter the sim, it is via TP to a point from which the crater is not immediately visible, and you are given some form of media explaining the backstory of the impact - a notecard, texture, or website newpaper, or audio of a radio broadcast, something like that. Could have a rather frazzled looking individual introduce it also. Could be a good basis for roleplaying... or just the crater, in which case I could live in either the blackened ruins of a house nearby, or the similarly blackened wreckage of a spacecraft.

2. An underwater city. Does such exist? Either a dead, abandoned city, or a thriving one.

3. Ruins in general. Roman perhaps?

4. Parts of the setting from Revolutionary Girl Utena, particularly the dueling arena from the movie, under the stars.

5. A castle in the sky. Possibly like the one in Laputa.

I'd totally make it be... like, a place where I could find a billion dollars and it would be immediately transfered to my paypal account. Yeah. That'd be awesome.

-Inca or Aztec sim.

-Native American theme (pre-white boy)

I also really enjoyed the Old London sim when it was up. The underwater city sound nice also.

I'd build a Wizard of Oz themed sim, with munchkins and all!

WOOT!

I'd like to see Smurf Village sim (preferably surrounded by forest sims). I've already made the well and a mushroom house and am working on a windmill and storehouse. I have smurf avatars too. http://tnlc.com/eep/sl/ for more info.

Ooooo, I like that idea!



Mine would be a "Swinging London" sim where the 1960s never ended.

As Austin would say. " Yeah Baby Yeah!!

I would love to see a desert themed sim where middle eastern or nomadic bedouin wasn't the primary. Adobe homes with sun bleached framing, cactus gardens, mandala-like tiling on patios in a series of relativly flat mesas. Yes, apparently I want a new sim called Arizona but to be honest when I started this post I had Mos Eisely and Tattoine on my mind.

~Bella

That'd be *awesome*. I'd hang out there, make my own elf avatar, ride around on a prim wolf. X)

Seriously, I'd love to see this.

ancient rome themem complete with praetorian guards, a senate, and THE COLISEUM, with gladiator battles.

and all the other assorted bachannalia and such.

M-rated of course.

Just reading through this thread and looking around SL shouts out to me that SL needs concept-themed sims that are easy to find and the will serve as community hubs.... all we need now is for someone to start handing out the building contracts.

Well, yes, but we still have this problem...
People aren't going to play house forever. If we're going to achieve long term retention, we're going to have to demonstrate some constructive uses of the software. Even constructive entertainment, such as mmorpgs, would be better than selling simple shadow boxes. But then we're back to Jeffrey's comment.

There is a way to combine the two. People socialize either in large groups or small groups, you have to plan for both. I would love to do a "vacation sim". Divided into maybe 4 sections, each with a different theme and a neighboring sim that would be a lot like Aasim used to be when Schwan was running it (busy club and great shopping). The vacation sim would have areas almost like resort rooms that could be rented for up to 2 hours and would have a privacy feature of sealing them off from all camera spying and seal all chat within the "bubble." All areas would be open to explore unless rented for privacy. One section might be a tropical oasis, one might be futuristic, one might be fantasy, etc...

SL does have just such themed sims.

The elven themed sims are growing and busy with marketplaces, active interaction, residences and internal rules, without camping chairs or gaming.

The Gorean themed category of sims have markets, libraries, residential units, even physician's clinics and seem to be growing, adding cities, jungles and separate houses regularly, and have significant traffic without camping chairs or gaming.

These are characterized by groups of people with like minds as to the lifestyle that they would like to role play in SL (or extend their RL lifestyle into SL for long-distance realization).

Are these hard to find, or are they just not the styles you had in mind for yourself?

Both are examples of how a small group of people were able to pool their resources and creativity to create active communities that also support very exciting visual realizations. All without LL tools other than those commonly available. They did require an investment of money to acquire a good-sized private island or a major chunk of an island.

Slootsville. That's my favourite sim. Theme: Sloots. Does exactly what it says on the tin!

Frank, in answer to your question: elven, yes... sort of and gorean, no. I was thinking more in terms of historical themes, sci-fi/space themes as well as culturally-specific themes (aztec, roman, byzantine, moghul, norse, etc., etc.). I could also refer you to my earlier post:

1) A cross between the orbiting station from 2001, DS9 & the B5 station... (definitely M)
2) A Futurama-style sim (M-rating)
2) A Martian sim
3) Titan (or one of the other Jovian moons)
4) Extraterrestrial sims complete with city, landscape and alien pr0n
5) A Transmetropolitan-style sim.