What motivates residents to create an environment?

The current law society study of the sims based on the Gor novels led me in another post to wonder why that particular set of novels had motivated a fairly large group of residents to recreate the culture and setting of those novels. This of course leads into a wider consideration of what fan or subgroups might be logical candidates for recruitment into SL.

I'm not aware of LL doing any targeted marketing to specific interest groups, and perhaps our discussion might point to some opportunities.

The popularity of the Gor sims is somewhat surprising. The series of books, written under the pen name John Norman between 1967 and 1988 in a pedestrian style and largely borrowing from other better known fantasy works, made little impact when they came out.

Science fiction conventions, which attract large numbers of dedicated fans of particular worlds and series, seldom have any reference to Gor. Given the organization and prevalence of various fan subcultures at SF conventions - Dr. Who, Star Trek, the browncoats of Serenity, etc., the absence of any organized Gor groups in an otherwise welcoming environment speaks to a minimal following.

Yet in SL Frank has documented a very active and enthusiastic group who put in a great deal of effort to recreate that environment. Is it the opportunity to give visual representation that attracts these people? Does the absence of any strong story line in the series (unlike, say, Lord of the Rings) provide an open-endedness that attracts adherents to create their own story lines?

In terms of other potential fan groups that could successfully transition to SL, some of the popular TV series, such as Xena, or Buffy or Dark Angel, which have active fan organizations, would be logical possibilities. The vast world of anime, with its own stream of conventions, also seems fertile ground. Has anyone seen Inuyasha avatars, or Lum in a tiger stripe bikini, or his/her Ranma characters?

Perhaps it's time for LL to investigate creating a whole new series of "space" sims to attract this kind of audience.

Yup. The Inuyasha avatar I saw was remarkably authentic looking. There might be more out there too. Lum's bikini is cute but unremarkable compared to the hot outfits on some ladies at SL clubs! The cosplay store has anime themed merchandise, but I don't know of any themed sims based on an anime series. Perhaps it's because a typical amime has one major protagonist or a very small team of heroes. Attempts to recreate that in SL would afford distinctive roles for only a very small number of residents, and everybody else would have to be a hanger-on. Not much draw in that.

From what I've seen, the Gorean sims have a structure, but it's based on social roles and position as delineated in the novels, not individual characters, so there's no a priori limit on the number of people who would be welcome to join. Also there is considerable latitude in how the groups on various Gorean sims embody that culture.

Gor appears to be a lifestyle that allows its participants to actualize their inner selves, particularly with respect to sex and gender roles. I've read a couple of very illuminating forum posts explaining how the female's motivations work, and some in-world writings that hinted at the male motivations -- a desire for the role of the male in society to be robust rather than hemmed in with social expectations to be simpering and sensitive. But Frank's observations suggest that panther huntresses get to be robust too.

Personally I wouldn't ask your original question: why Gor? I'd ask why base a themed sim or group of sims on somebody else's fictional idea of a society? Wouldn't it be more fun to base it on your own ideas? Even more generally, why would anyone want to come to SL and be a cog in somebody else's system? Surely we get enough of that in FL. SL gives each of us the opportunity to think up our own system, and live that way.

The most interesting themed sim would be one in which hand picked individualists each bring their own system into the mix or aggregate. Think of a sim populated by monarchs and CEOs and spiritual leaders and at least two architects, each of whom is stridently pioneering an entirely new style or school of architecture! : P

Ferren and Traxx, I think you both have identified some of the things that make social groups like Goreans gather in SL. Goreans have been active roleplayers online as long as I've been (over 10 years), so they have a well-established coterie of folks. Once the word spread that SL allows player-created venues, it must have struck many of them as attractive. The result has been multiple creations of Gorean cities, in which the role player can act out.

Without the pre-existing base of role-players, I suspect the other themes mentioned have a much more uphill struggle to achieve "critical mass." I think that just making an environment and some costumes similating those other themes gets boring fast for many folks, compared to the constantly changing possibilities of RP by live humans.

Others' thoughts?

Hmm, I don't know if I am able to answer your question, but I'd like to have a go. Why Gor? I think there are a large number of reasons.

Firstly, although I agree with you that the books are of variable quality and readbility, what John Norman does do very successfully is provide a believable world, which is populated by humans and like earth, but not earth. His vision for the culture and workings of the world seem to be complete and coherent, even if his writing and plots are sometimes...not.

Secondly, the society in the books allows people to assume very strong roles. Whether they are Masters, Slaves, Free Women, Warriors, Scribes, there is very little room for doubt about the role chosen and the message it sends to others.

One of the things which SL does really, really well is to allow people to explore themselves, their taste, likes, dislikes, in a really safe environment. I am not saying that it is impossible to get into trouble in SL, I am sure that is just as possible here as it is anywhere on the internet. But the ability to leave or TP home, to choose to participate or not, is a powerful one. You have the ability to choose not only your appearance, but whether to be male or female, slave or free, in SL, and that allows you to choose your role and explore it.

Not that I am asserting that everyone is role playing...some people are very serious about their dedication to Gor.

Rape fiction is widely outlawed on the net and elsewhere, and for good reasons. The difference when pursuing a Gorean life in SL is that you must make an original choice to be slave, and then may surrender to the whims of your master or masters. The choice makes a huge difference.

Thus the people joining the Gor comunity in SL can choose a role, and explore it. If they dislike it, they can choose another.

When I was helping to run Slave city in Bragg, I tried a few times to get the BDSM and Gor communities together. What I discovered then, and I think it is still true now, is that there is no one BDSM or Gor community, there is a complex web of people and groups involved in both, sometimes with overlap, sometimes not. There is a measure of scorn between the people who only pursue their interests in SL and not in RL, and there is a measure of hierarchy introduced as a result.

I think people enjoy being members of groups, and the group system in SL encourages that. I see that as a positive and life-affirming chance, to explore the things that are out there and see if they speak to us.

Thirdly, I think Gor is attractive to people, not because the works are great literature, but because John Norman was accessing something quite primal and deep in his personality, when he wrote the books, and the purity of that vision does come through the books. Some ideas which are frankly very alarming if seen in the context of normal life, begin to make sense in Gor.

Perhaps I should give up on the number of the points. but I think that the emergence of Gor in Sl gives people permission to explore thing which are unacceptable in our culture, and maybe to learn things about themselves and about other people which are hard to learn in any other context.

For people who enjoy hierarchy, and like to have a structure in their worlds, Gor is brilliant. It has such a diverse number of cultures and areas to choose from, and it has the freedom to set up your Gor sim exactly as you would like it.

If you can point to a science fiction series, or any other, apart from things like Lord of the Rings, which is so complete in its structure and civilisation (or lack of it) I would like to know what it is.
Cali

Excellent, well developed observations, Cali.

Good points, Cali. This type of analysis helps when I'm interpreting what I see on a Gorean sim.

My innocuous alt was originally going around looking for forms of governance, but kept getting sidetracked by not understanding the motivation of participants, and that turns out to be a barrier. For example, approached by a slave girl on a Gorean sim, my alt listens to her suggestive dialog, but this slave is owned by someone, so surely that master would not appreciate his slave speaking that way to a stranger?

Regarding your points about the coherent, well-developed SF civilization worked out in advance, Numbakulla had some of that, did it not? I'm assuming that the fictional basis for that excellent project is original, and presumably tailored to make the most of the strengths of the SL platform.

My only complaint about Numbakulla is that it was not designed as an ongoing stream of content; it was a complete package with beginning, middle and end. Perhaps a game of that type would benefit from an open-ended storyline, particularly if that storyline were partitioned into threads, each being the responsibility of one person who may bring in subcontractors as required to meet production committments.

Well that depends on the type of slave lol. In Gor there are many different varieties of slave. Indeed, basically I feel that John Norman assumes that all women are slaves at heart, and certainly one of the weak points of the whole culture from my point of view is the mobility of slave to free woman and free woman to slave, which makes any notion of a distinction between the two temporary or subject to change at a moment's notice. It seems that a woman on Gor may always be subjugated by a man, and her position in society may change for the worse or the better. Of course, this was also true with real slaves in Rome, and it is instructive to remember that much of John Norman's structure for slave rights is also applicable to Rome, except there was not a division between men and women as he suggests, and it was unlikely, although not impossible, for a true Roman to be made slave.

The really extreme Gorean attitude does seem to be that women are submissive and men are dominant and if you don't fit into those categories, you're wrong. In SL I expect there are people who think that way, but most are more liberal in their attitudes. It is often said that a vast majority of Gorean women are free and not slave, although I should say that isn't really reflected in the characters in the books, it is something that is said a few times.

In Gor a personal slave attached to a master can be exclusive to that master or not. That is up to the master to decide. He may impose restrictions on what the slave may or may not do, and they should act accordingly or be punished. A slave on a Gor sim may be required to welcome and offer themselves to visitors, or may not be allowed to interact with visitors at all. The former would be more likely though. In SL a slave will usually carry the restrictions or freedoms in their profile.

There may often be sim slaves, attached to particular places or particular jobs, rather than a particular master. In Gor there is quite a lot made of the role of the Paga slave, who serves wine in the Tavern. The slave comes as part of the bargain and may be used as the customer sees fit.

Slaves who offend and do not serve their masters well may either be sold or deliberately set to distasteful work.

For those who are extremely unlikely to be in a position to be or own a slave, SL offers an opportunity to explore the person you might be in that circumstance. There are instances around SL of more liberal Gor places where it is possible for Free Women to own male slaves, but I think these are the exception rather than the rule. Male slaves are not regarded or treated well in Gor, and often meet sticky ends. I would speculate that it is possible that a submissive man in SL would be likely to play as a female slave in Gor.



The main theme for Numbakulla was originally mine, but developed by the team who worked on the project. It did change often as we built the game. It became coherent rather than starting out that way lol. It is incomplete and one dimensional as it stands...I would have loved the time and another four sims to develop it properly.



Well, we have had ideas about developing Numbakulla for some time, but when it was built we were under a strong time constraint. Moopf had lent us the sim for a limited time and we had to have the game up and running to a deadline. We missed the deadline, but mainly because SL scheduled an update on the day we were scheduled to open.

Partitioning into threads is an interesting idea, but it is very difficult to see how that could work in terms of the way the game was scripted. We found it quite complicated enough to ensure that we weren't expecting someone to fetch something from a room which they had no key for, and that the sequence of finds and clues was strong enough to lead the player through the game with one thread...

However, one of the original ideas was for the two cultures on Numbakulla, the tree-huggers and ancient technophiles, to lead a player through two entirely different games, woven together. The idea was that a preliminary game would offer the player a choice, and their choice in that game would determine their path for the game. At its simplest it might be a choice between opening one door and getting water to water a plant, or opening another and switching on the power...or similar.

We rejected this, not because it was a bad idea, but because we didn't think we could complete it in time. I may return to it in the future. I certainly hope to return to Numbakulla and develop the game further, but the enforced absence of our talented scripter has made any planning for Numbakulla rather hard to do recently.

I am still very proud of what the team achieved, and also of the fact that the love of the players for the game both purchased the sim and paid the tier fee for six months. The sim is now held on behalf of the many players who have donated, by Oclee Hornet, my SL partner, who is covering the tier, and plans to set up something more permanent to keep Numbakulla open.
Cali

Caliandris Pendragon wrote:



Some very valid points. The similarity to Earth is probably a key point, since it would not be possible to recreate a number of very detailed SF series that are set on markedly different worlds or primarily in space (e.g. Honor Harrington). Perhaps another factor for suitability (I haven't read the Gor books so I can't say) is the absence of an apocalyptic showdown between wildly dissimilar races (like Ringo's Posleen series). If the books focus on specific and individual plots within an unchanging structure, that also might be a situation that is adaptable to SL.

The aspect of recreating a highly ordered society is a factor that deserves study across a number of these themed sims. I have come to the conclusion that the majority of people, even in a laissez-faire society like ours, really prefer a very structured culture. At one time, organized religion provided that structure for most people. Today it may be politics, sports, civic groups or Internet based communities. In each of these, you will see people trying to create a rule-based, ordered society in which they can feel comfortable.

The Gor sims probably represent some of the people on the most highly ordered end of that scale. We may not see anything equivalent set up for the other end of the scale - I can't imagine a sim where devotees of Ayn Rand would come together to create a sim world; that would be entirely contrary to their nature.

I have to say I'm much more on the Randite end of the scale; I can't imagine being a slave or owning one - they both sound like way too much bother!

I don't know too much about Ayn Rand, but a quick google elicited the following quote from her:
***begin quote***
My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses) is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man's rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
***end quote***

I can see some problems with try to set up sims which follow this philosophy, not least that it IS a philosophy. While it is difficult to make judgements on the basis of short summaries of the plots, it seems that her novels do not provide a coherent world and world view, but look at the philosophy from different angles and different realities.

Some aspects of the internal workings of SL mitigate against important elements of the philosophy too, especially in the area of commerce. Many people do harm with their practices, and these while allowable under the TOS for SL, would seem to be precluded by "neither sacrificing himself to others, nor sacrificing other to himself".

In fact, I see no inherent conflict between the philosophy and Gor, once you accept that the initial step for anyone involved, is to choose this for themselves. If participating in a Gor sim fulfils a need in an individual, and it not only does no harm to others, but may help fulfil a complementary need in another, it would still fit within the philosophy, even if the concept of Master and Slave is in itself anathema to the philosophy! Only in SL....

As for your final comment...20 months ago I would have agreed with you. Not only that, I would have violently disagreed with anyone espousing any different view. And argued that the whole concept of slavery, whether in a role playing environment, or in SL, was disgusting, repellent, completely foreign to my beliefs and ideals.

I am not a Gorean, but I now have a slave in SL, and have explored things which I would not have had an opportunity to explore in RL, which have enriched my life considerably. I have learned things about myself, about relationships, and about the balance of power inside a relationship, which have informed my real life, and increased my ability to understand and empathise.

I believe very deeply that we all have our own path to follow in life, and that knowing yourself, and being true to your inner leadings, is an important part of that. I have to say that from that standpoint alone, SL has been invaluable to me. I have learned a lot, and the world which is being created challenges me to think in a way that no other occupation has done.
Cali

I don't think you can extract more meaning from this than "Gor is not popular within the SF community". I realize that the spine of the book is marked 'SF', and that it's generally shelved in the SF section - but that marking and shelving matches the classification by the publisher, not the community. (Equally, when vampire fiction started it's rise, it could be found marked and shelved in SF, Romance, Horror, and general fiction.)

Prior to the rise of 'commercial SF' (defined as "Madison Avenue marketing appealing to the masses post Star Wars", the SF community was exclusive - not inclusive, (in my experience.) Trekkies for example were a distinctly different community, though one with broad overlap to be sure. Roleplaying was a distinct rarity, as was wearing costumes. The steady rise of D&D and it's imitators in popularity, combined with a overlap between the SF and gaming communities only slowly introduced that concept to conventions. (Conventions have grown more inclusive also as they have grown more oriented to the mass market commercial SF/comics/games rather than the harder intellectual core that initially characterized the SF community.)

Thus, during the period the Gor books were being written, they appealed to a very different audience than that intellectual core. They (the books) had a substantial following, but it overlapped very little with the SF community.

I've watched with great interest the exchange of views about this. One thought I didn't see expressed is the pre-existence of an established community *online* of role players in a text-based environment. One reason I think that the Gorean culture has been successful is because a lot of people have for years participated in text-based role playing in this theme in IRC and other web-based "rooms."

This has meant a substantial number of folks ready to migrate, with little training or familiarization, to the more graphically rich environment of SL.

Add to that SL's liberality with respect to "adult" themes and venues, and its facility for allowing users to create content specific to a theme. This allows the pre-existing "culture" to be readily translated to SL graphical and animation elements, which then have a ready market and consumer application. For example, in Gorean fiction, warriors ride "tarns" which are giant war birds. In the leading Gorean sims, one can ride a tarn from point to point in "tarn transit" services. Flying over the city provides a visual feast like that of riding a hot air balloon. Another example are the classical poses of "slave girls" that are easily translated to SL poses.

Combine a receptive, established audience with a liberal, open source host and you've a receipt for success. How many other themes, apart from dance clubs, have these elements going for them?

Frank