let me spin you a yarn for a cent

Ken Lowery offered a suggestion on Twitter some few days back: "Take a real blues song title, with the world 'blues' in it, and replace 'blues' with 'feels'." What happens when you do that? This.

So, as happens some days, my attention drifts back to Doomed...I think mainly because I know people who play there, and there seems to be this nigh-constant battle between the RP the creators want, and the RP SL avatars give them.

Today, I want to go over the basic rules for the sim.

F(from the haunts album; interior corridor of the Doomed Ship)

Welcome to Doomed Ship, one of SL's largest and most immersive sci-fi/horror environments.

What is Doomed Ship? On one hand it is a role-play environment where players can immerse themselves in a space rescue/salvage mission gone horribly wrong. On the other hand, you can think of it as a haunted house in space, where visitors are free to wander the dark corridors, with friends or alone, exploring SL's most interactive environment, avoiding the dangers, and discovering the secrets of the NCS Persephone.

Now that it's been rebuilt, there are more hidden levels than ever. And you're free to wander the ship solely as an observer, just to experience the Persephone; but the owners of Doomed do ask that if you want to participate in the roleplay, that you accept the few rules that exist for the ship.

Namely...

(from the haunts album; Doomed Ship's...resident??...raver kitten)

The Rules:

1. Do NOT disrupt the role-play of others.

This, to me, would seem self-explanatory, but apparently some people miss it. For example, some people insist on showing up as petite kittens garbed in a modern logo t-shirt and a denim mini instead of, say, something that actually makes sense on the ship. Why do these people play on Doomed? No one knows.

2. There are scattered adult elements but this is not an adult sim. If you are looking for sex-focused RP I recommend Necronom VI.

Now, this is somewhat new--as in, only in the last six to eight months or so. Prior to that, the owners of the sim had Adult playtoys scattered about the sim, but the owners saw a distinct diminishing of ongoing storylines in the RP, and fewer steady players. Any RP sim wants steady players, as well as an influx of interesting new ones, but without that, sims get pretty desolate.

Play on Doomed gets dark, frequently, gets frightening frequently--it is, after all, a survival horror sim--but as the owners sat down and evaluated what they wanted the sim to be, they decided that keeping the dark and horrific aspects were fine, they'd just eliminate the sex. (And to be fair, most people weren't treating Doomed as a gang orgy sim, anyway.)

(from the haunts album; the child of darkness at play atop the dome above Doomed)

3. No child avatars in inappropriate situations as per the SL TOS.

What determines a child avatar, anyway? Because I'd as soon toss out the raver kitten as inappropriate, than this particular child, as long as she stays in non-Adult zones...but still, I'd have reservations about her attire.

Some side by side shots for comparison.

--=APPROPRIATE=--	--=INAPPROPRIATE=--

Seems fairly self-explanatory, right? Let me see if I can find more.


Seems to work.


See what I mean? Their point isn't that you can't RP a child on the Doomed ship, but come up with a good reason why a child would be on the Doomed ship. Like...a generation ship drifted into the Persephone's path, limping along on one engine, and the crew frantically scrambled aboard via [something scientific sounding]. Ergo, children on Doomed.

Or an entity was drawn to the distress beacon (alien origin)/an entity came through the portal (demonic origin), and proceeds to wreak havoc on the ship. Thus, children on Doomed.

Pick your poison; with a little bit of creativity, it can work in your favor, but you have to commit to the position. The position, in this case, being no happy, bouncy, lithping kids poking lollipops into the faces of the corpses in the halls; there has to be a solid reason for a child to be on Doomed, and it has to be a specific kind of child.

And you can't do anything not authorized by the Lindens; so no children in zones with Adult toys, and no children ageplaying with adults in sexual ways. Keep that in mind, and you'll be fine (and the owners of Doomed will breathe a great sigh of relief, too).

I think this one's getting long, so I'll do more with it later. Look for part II soon!