Authentic historical sims, time travelers unite!

I have to agree with Jo. Give me authentic scenery and realistic period clothing and I'm happy. Maybe a few places to learn or read about the true Histor and culture. It doesn't ALL have to be RP'd out.

And on a slightly related note,why in the world is it so difficult to find a decent looking suit of plate armor? All I can find are gorilla suits with 6 inch spikes on their shoulders.

I've never tried to find any but, if the armour as in 'knight in shining armour' is what you're after, it does exist in SL. A guy visited my castle recently wearing a suit of it.

Blasphemy!!!!!!!!!!

That's a pretty far leap you're making there and we're getting seriously into nannying the populace, which will never ever work. These things happened and trying to deflect any pretence at the cold harsh realities by accusing people of "getting off on pretending to rape and murder women" is rather troublesome to me.

I'd love to see a medieval sim that recreates a narrowly defined time and place--such as, say, a thirteenth-century manor with its associated village. There is some great archaeological work that could guide building such a sim (Google "Wharram Percy" to get a small idea). I think, though, that doing it right involves either having reenactors volunteer to be on-site to both be "in-character" and act as docents for visitors or having detailed note cards describing what people are looking at so that they're not just wandering around the build going, "Oh, look, it's a house ... and this is ... another house."

Add to that the time and work necessary to research and build something that's realistic but still workable, and you've got a project far beyond what one person could reasonably create and maintain. Possibly if it's a university- or museum-sponsored project that could draft students to snap prims in place and act as docents, it might work, but I bet it would be a huge investment for what is probably a pretty small audience. From experience, I can tell you that people like elves and Vikings and knights swinging sword, but they don't like rents and manoral courts and water-driven fulling hammers. Oh, well.

second cinema had a 50s diner and drive in theatre.. it was on amity island if I recall

Ciaran, I'm not entirely sure what your objections to my post are. We are talking about how we would design a sim that would be both historically accurate and informative, correct?

I am very far from arguing that such a sim should obscure or gloss over the "cold harsh realities" of Whitechapel in the Victorian era: on the contrary, I would want these front and centre, and I'd want the focus to extend much further than the Whitechapel murders. The issue is how best to communicate the grim realities.

Are you really trying to argue that RPing Jack the Ripper -- about whom (as Jo has pointed out) we know next to nothing anyway -- is going to be a good way to either depict or learn about these harsh realities? Do you think that someone is going to sit on a "slit her throat and pull out her innards" pose ball because they want more insight into the plight of the working poor in late 19th-century London? Do people rape RP in Hard Alley or the Crack Den because they wish to learn more about the realities of life in an inner city slum? Surely they do so because they DO get off on RPing that kind of behaviour? How would this be any different in Whitechapel?

I'm also not sure why you accuse me of "nannying" for suggesting that such pose balls should be omitted from a sim like this. Are you implying that omitting to include graphically violent animations from any sim that is purpose-built for reasons OTHER than to provide an opportunity for this kind of RP is similarly "nannying"? Is Jo "nannying the populace" by excluding pose balls that would allow Brown Shirts to beat up Jews in the back alleys of Berlin 1920? Your argument, by logical extension, seems to suggest that ANY sim that doesn't include RP possibilities for violence, sexual or otherwise, is guilty of "censorship."

The ethical issue of the nature, function, and effect of such animations aside, I don't think they do a very good job of educating people about the history or context into which they are placed. So, yes, I'd exclude them from a Whitechapel sim. For that reason, as well as for others.

Please, in Second Life? Graphic nastiness like this simply isn't possible, people RP'ing Jack The Ripper would be doing it for a game of chase or like a game of Cluedo, not for ripping out cartoon innards, which is where trying to tie all RP to RL gets rather silly.

Since child prostitution was a major social problem in London of the 1880s, at least according to the great journalist of the times, W.T. Stead, isn't this quest for realism in a Victorian sim going to run into all sorts of problems very fast? http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/tribute/mt1.php

I'm sure that most of such RP -- as with much RP in general -- would occur in IM. And, as I've said above, and elsewhere, it is neither possible (nor, I believe, desirable) to legislate or curtail that.

As for the suggestion that such "graphic nastiness" simply isn't possible in SL, I am afraid I am going to have to differ with you. There is a whole world of scripted objects out there that are all about graphic bodily mutilation. Most, but not all of it, has been designed for the Dolcet market. I have myself used such scripted/animated objects as a "Debreaster," a guillotine-like contraption that slices off a woman's breasts to the accompaniment of a screaming sound file, and two cute little amputated prim breasts that bounce onto the ground; a special clothing layer is available for wear afterward to show the open wounds on the chest. There are also scripted circular saw tables which, again, include sound files, scripted "blood," and animations that allow one to run a woman (the pose balls for these are invariably pink) through it.

Even more apropos our discussion are scripted "butcher tables," of which I have seen two models, with animations and pose balls for two. These include menus featuring animations that combine mutilation and sex: disemboweling is indeed one of the options. So too, in one of them, are the options "Cut C**t," "Make New Hole," and "F**k New Hole." I have some lovely pictures of my own avi on one of the tables, her bowels hanging out of her torn abdomen, one leg amputated, and one eye gouged out. Needless to say, I am not going to post them here.

Agreed. Which is one of the reasons why I think RP is not the way to go. But there are other means of presenting the facts of such historical horrors without providing the opportunity to role play them. Berlin 1920, for instance, has multimedia presentations available that cover the larger historical context, but I've seen other sims that present this kind of uncomfortable information in even more interesting and innovative ways.

Needless to say, this kind of information has to handled and presented in a way that is both sensitive and non-prurient.

Dolcett is first of all cheating when it comes to sensible boundaries and secondly it's still Second Life imagery which is hardly realistic.

People who get into fantasy roleplay aren't in it for a bloodthirst, nor are the vampire lot.

What do you mean "cheating"? The fact is that Dolcet is actually quite popular in SL, whether you consider it "cheating" sensible boundaries or not: visit Stepford or Rosewood Castle, to name but two sims. Dolcet is also a pretty regular feature of discussion on many of the blogs out there that are focussed upon "dark" role play in SL.

How is it "cheating" if it happens, and is permitted, in SL? That's a rather arbitrary judgment, isn't it? Is it "cheating" because YOU think it goes too far? They would disagree.

The animations and graphics are neither more nor less "realistic" than any other animations and graphics in SL. Some of the mutilation animations use graphics that are very close to photorealistic. And what does it matter if they are "realistic" or not: people are obviously using them because they provide something -- the illusion of extreme violence and mutilation -- that they want in SL. You can similarly argue that sex pose balls aren't "realistic," but it hasn't prevented them from proliferating.


This is a huge generalization. I am sure that the vast majority of those into fantasy roleplay are not, as you say in it for a bloodthirst: I am equally certain that there are some who are. I've spoken to these people, Ciaran: trust me, they are into it because it speaks to a "darker side" of themselves (that, incidentally, is an almost direct quote from one of the Dolcet practitioners with whom I have had quite long and involved discussions).

I am honestly not sure what point you are making here. If you put mutilation animations into an historical sim, I can guarantee that there will be people who will use them. And they won't be employing them learn more about the historical context.

I don't know a great deal about Dolcet in SL (or out of it, come to that), but the original Dolcet pictures I've seen strike me as being deliberately OTT for a sort of sick comedic effect; I take them as being somehow in the same vein as "dead baby" jokes. I find it hard to believe people take them seriously.

Mind you, I once rather upset someone, I think, when I told him I wasn't interested in Dolcet in SL because it made me think of Hansel and Gretel and the Wicked Witch and gave me the giggles.

LOL

I have to admit that one of the more common Dolcet images and animations -- the woman on the spit roasting over an open fire -- usually seems to me pretty comic.

Other stuff is much less so, however. And people DO take this seriously. One Dolcet item featured on Xstreet includes a product review that complains, without any sign of irony at all, that the advertisement seems to imply that an option to finish by "dispatching" the female victim is included in the product, but that this is not actually a menu item available.

Sure hope he got his money back.

Ive been looking for some interesting historical sims of a pg nature.

I would recommend

Kingdom of Usk- Realistic medieval welsh roleplay

renaisance island- Based on tudor England, I think Queen Elizabeth is on the throne.

Minoan Empire- Historically based.. and all the woman go topless, as was actual minoan custom.

I would love to find a sim that was based on the jane Austin time period of England. So that I could play a devious Mr Wickham type character.

Ewwwww! Why????

Now, if you were playing Darcy, we could talk . . .

Because being a lieing cheat is way more fun!!!!

Oh and a Mr Collins type character would be even more fun.

Yeah, but he's kind of icky.

Would you rather be a mysteriously sexy, dark, and brooding . . .

oh my.

/me fans herself . . .

I think you'll find many people take it seriously when they buy a product that's not what they expect. Do people roleplay Xstreet comments?

I suspect more Dolcett roleplay is over the top black comedy than dogmatically serious.

As good guys go, Mr Darcy was pretty interesting, since he was not portrayed in a one dimensional heroic way.

But when I read the book and say the a&e remake i had a sympathy for all the "bad" Characters.

One thing for sure, Jane Austin was screwed over by some guy with a last name that started with "w".. Mr Wickham... Mr Willoughby... I think the other books also contain a sinister "w" character.

Renaisance Island is a pg sim, and they have an execution platform and occasionally execute some poor citizen. Which I dont find disturbing becasue, well nobody is actually being beheaded.

Some may well be. But I can only repeat that I've had some long and very involved discussions with some Dolcet players who are quite dogmatically serious about it, and who have been quite insistent that it is a sexual turn on.

If I could post chat logs, I would. But as I can't, you'll just have to take my word for it that I have done more research in this area than simply sitting on pose balls.

/me goes off to google 'Dolcett' as I have no clue what this is. From your posts here, looks like some kind of dismemberment? I've never heard the term.

You don't want to know.