Ripper AAR from last Saturday

RIPPER in Second Life

I had opportunity to run a game of RIPPER, my conversion of WEREWOLF for play in Virtual worlds, in Second Life on Saturday.

The game is played at a table in RL, so I figured what the heck, why not, let's recreate the experience. With the help of "Eva Bellambi" from Caledon, I set up a game area in a low-bandwidth part of SL.

I planned for a maximum of 15, I think we got ten to a dozen players. I facilitated the game reasonably well, I thought. I have run WEREWOLF in real time many times, and I love the game. The RIPPER variant is almost identically themed (thematically swapping out Jack the Ripper for a Werewolf, and the Great Detective for A Mystic) and it takes advantage of Second Life's utilities to exchange information back and forth and keep the voting in order.

Basically RIPPER plays identically to WEREWOLF but utiilizes chat technology to recreate some vital features of the parent game-- similar to how the game is played on IRC or a bulletin board:

1) The Roles are randomly assigned via dice roll (in RL, by me). This will change now that I have found a SL die roller script.
2) The players get their Roles via a SL Notecard. They are pre-written by me. I have also given them the RULES in advance.
3) I narrate the evening turn. I declare:

++ RIPPER, SEND ME A VICTIM! (the two pluses are for people to see me in the din of conversation generated by chats)

The Ripper player then Sends me an IM (instant msg) with the Victims' name upon it.

I then say:

++ GREAT DETECTIVE, SEND ME A DEDUCTION! (The Great Detective/Seer character sends me his or her guess at who is the culprit. I IM back "Yes" or "No".

Then it is the Morning Turn... "Day breaks, a beautiful day for everyone except for... (VICTIM'S NAME!). At this point I send the person a little object I scripted that maintains a floating text, red for a murder victim, Gold for someone who has been dispatched by votes. They attach it to the avatar's chest. In this fashion it becomes VERY easy to follow who is dead and who is not.

I handled VOTING by IM as well, but it was a bit clumsy even with only 10 or so players. I had to count carefully. I believe there are some utilities that assist with voting in SL, I will seek them out.

The game proceeds normally until we hit a victory condition. In our games on Saturday, we had a villager victory and a Ripper victory. Not bad at all! The game was enthusiastically received by the players and many requests were made to run it again. I likely will in about a month or so.

I spoke with a "Zenmodo" character who is interested in scripting an animated spurting neck wound we could affix tot he players who have been murdered. Gory, but fascinating! Truly, Second Life has vast potential for moving some forms of parlor games to virtual space. This is merely a beginning.

Sounds most amusing, Mr Otoole; quite reminiscent of the game of 'Murder In The Dark' I played as a youth. What a frightful shame the exigencies of time difference meant I could not attend...I did *try* to stay up until 4am, but well...

It is too much to hope that your next game will encompass a round timed for us Old World players?

I've had three requests to run a game in a time slot that would accomodate players from across the pond. I will certainly plan one for some time in late April. Given that roughly 12 players played two games back to back over three hours, what would be an optimal start time for Europe?

V/R

Hotspur

Wow this is GREAT Hotspur!

I wish more people knew about this!

Perchance there are some people willing to learn how you do this game?

It's exactly the kinda thing I love to see... heh, if there's a way to have a Ripper, Detective and villagers stalk around Caledon and do this 'live' I'm all for it!

Very Impressed.

LOL, you're reading my mind. That might be what I call Phase III, but I want to get to the point where we have mystery events that could go ALL OVER Caledon, with planted clues and body props and such. A lot of work but worth it. That's what I would call a "Live Action Event" played out in real time, whereas Ripper is a digital simulacrum of a Parlor Game.

As for teaching other people to run this, there's nothing to it. I've made a package of "Ripper Stuff" that I'm willing to hand out for free (with the rules) if anyone is interested. And that goes for all of SL not just Caledon. They just have to find me inworld and I'll walk them through it.

H.

Well, as for time...how about a start time of 11am-noonish SLT? That's a popular Europe-friendly start time, since it works out to a sensible late-afternoon/evening start for GMT and most of Europe, and if it's on a weekend, we might even have some US players be able to join.

With regard to the mystery event idea; I believe Anthony Perkins and Steven Sondheim used to arrange much the same thing around the streets of Manhattan; it does require a lot of preparation, but would be worthwhile I think. Perhaps as a variant of the 'Treasure Hunt' or 'Scavenger Hunt' idea that some commercial sims have tried to much success.

something like 2-3ish my time. I can plan on a "EuroCentric Ripper" at some point in April. My March weekends are miserable. I will announce it here and in Caledon, then.

(gleefully reviewing some of the changes that will go into the next one)

Oh it was all great fun, lots of suspicious glances all around!

I thought in a way, it was a fine example of nested hyper-reality. We weren't portraying the characters of the detective story, we were portraying Victorians sitting around at a dinner table portraying characters from a detective story.

The other thing I thought particularly good was how those of us with slower computers could nonetheless participate. I suspect that lots of weapon scripts and movement would not allow for the same degree of speed that avatars hanging about in the garden provided. Furthermore, by making the game mentally focused, there was not a great disadvantage to lack of computer speed (as there might be in a "shoot them up" style game)