The Wild West Roleplay: Part Two - Meet The Natives

By Bixyl Shuftan

In January, the Newser wrote about the Wild West Roleplay, a twenty-three sim area of connected roleplay sims with Old West themes that ranged from desert to mountain to forested to town. There are a variety of roles one could play, from cowboy, to soldier, to outlaw, to American Indian. The first article dealt with getting started, getting the HUD and a few freebies at the starting point in Colorado, and how one can make a little RP cash by mining and smelting bars, and make a few basic items. But a roleplay is more than just making money and things, and there's more to the place than being a miner or a smith.

It was probably appropriate that the first people of the roleplay I came across after Goneigh, the owner of Titingham or "Indian Wilds," were representing the Old West's original inhabitants: American Indians. The first two people he introduced me to were Grey Wolf (Fairy Randt), and Ipa-Cik-Ala (Spiritkiss Snook) two shamen of the Ogllala Lakota village. They had moved to the sim this month, previously making their home area in the Oregon sim, having created their tribe two and a half years ago.

So what's life like in an Indian village. Usually it's peaceful enough, Ipa-Cik-Ala saying, "As shaman, I do my prayer morning and night. My husband like to go scouting, and I cook." But it turned out earlier things were not typical, "Today we had some action, a stupid pawnee like to make trouble and say bad things. My husband Tashunke Witka and war chief Lone Wolf captured him. We interrogated him and then he got away (TPed out). But I learned a lot. ... I had a feeling who he was." So what would they do next? Ipa-Cik-Ala answered, "The natives have a council every week. They are usually good to go to."

Ipa-Cik-Ala described typical council business as, "matter of events being planed, training, wedding, who is fighting who." I asked how many weddings happen around the place. She answered, "There was one last week in Sonora." Grey Wolf told, "I have done approximately seven weddings." Ipa-Cik-Ala commented, "(We) Oglala, we take our time. There is a ritual you have to go through." ?
"Same with tsa la gi (Cherokee)," Grey Wolf added. Asking what the ritual involved, I was told, by Ipa-Cik-Ala "The weddings are all alike, except the fast way where the chief blesses the wedding by there tepi. I was married in Cherokee, very magical. ... I like helping in the Cherokee way."

I asked about the trading of goods between the tribes. Ipa-Cik-Ala told me, "A Oglala warrior named truc. He travels to all the lands an' trades. He is the best at it. There are also G & S items here." When the question of how many tribes there were in the Wild West Roleplay came up, she answered "Five or six, I think." It turned out some of the tribes down south were what Goneigh called "German-speak" tribes, "It is a bit of a fad in Germany." Ipa-Cik-Ala added, "Yes, I began here with the Germans."

Talk turned to other things about the roleplay. Goneigh commented, "As an animal, I stand on a pasture to eat, and stand on a lake to drink,  and try not to get injured from wild predators." Among the hazards here were what Goneigh called "static predators, bison, boars, gators and rattle snakes..  and active RP predators , wolves, mountain lions, bobcats and jaguars. All things that were around in the wild west days. The HUD allows for health and damage control and the weapons used will register hits on your health. Animals can combat using their teeth and claws, and hooves." Ipa-Cik-Ala remarked, "The wolves respect Goneigh."

Goneigh went on, "The humans will need to mine minerals and gather wood and ingredients to make necessary things. Some things that they make take considerable time to build." "Traps are the hard job," Ipa-Cik-Ala added, "I make them for my husband. He traps an' gives me the meat."

Goneigh reminded, "This is not a shoot-em-up place. (The) roleplay must be consistent with genre. And random attacks are not allowed without some kind of RP first. Once a fight has started properly, it is actually a running shoot-em up. Not uncommon to see several soldiers and several Indians in a mass fight. ... If you register too much damage you fall unconscious for a preset time limit." Ipa-Cik-Ala added, "And you can be captured."Yeah. if you are unconscious, people, friends or foes, can drag you off. If you fall to a wolf pack, they can drag you to their den." "As a healer, I can sneak in an' drag off people to heal them."

Ipa-Cik-Ala went on to say some of the roleplayers were child avies, "There are about six active kids in camp, but some more than others." So how is camp life for the kids, Ipa-Cik-Ala smiled, "They love the family part. We are like a big family and watch out for each other." Grey Wolf spoke up, "It is time for learning and growing." Ipa-Cik-Ala told me, "Grey Wolf has story time here." Grey Wolf went on, "Each tribe raised dinyotli (children) in different ways based on culture. Usually the grandparents did a lot of (the) teaching, parents busy working do their jobs." "All the women were like Mother an' cooked for anyone hungry." "Dinyotli (children) would help depending on their ages." Goneigh added, "Some of the tribes even have story hour each week." "Stories an the elder tell lessons," Ipa-Cik-Ala told. "My daugther Feather, she had school and told native ways. She is on break, but when she comes back we will do school too. ... Many of the months have ceremonies. A good time to dance an' give thanks."

We soon parted ways, and later on Goneigh would take me to a couple American Indian roleplayers of the Cheyenne tribe, also in Indiana Wilds. They were Taigi (moonstonelust) and Uhaya, the chief. Uhaya was the one who would show me the mine area described in the first article. Besides mining, another way to make cash, Taigi explained, "you can shoot rabbits and sell the skins." One would need a knife of course, either making one, as explained in the first article, or purchasing one from an NPC merchant. Uhaya saying, "If you shoot a rabbit, you need a knife to get the flesh for meat. So you make a blade in the forge, then make a knife from it at the workbench. You need wood for the knife too. You gather wood, like outside of this trading post, then make a log out of it, then use the log plus the blade to make a knife. Because a knife has a handle of course, thus the wood. You can also make axes and traps for animals, and so on. You can get a boar with a trap, and get the meat from it. You can use the axe for melee fighting. So all the different things you gather and make sort of cross-reference each other in ways like that."

So where can one find wood?  Uhaya showed me a few places where wood pieces spawned just outside the trading post and a tree not far from it, "wait a few minutes and new wood will appear, which you can also pick up. So you can gather wood until you have 20 (pieces), then go make logs out of that, then come back and get more wood, and eventually you'll have both wood a logs full in your hud. ...  I like to keep my log and wood stores full. You need logs to make sawdust, which is also a component in dynamite, and other things. Some things take more time and effort than others. Other things are more simple."

There were other things near the trading post one could pic off the ground too, an apple, a tomato, some herbs, and, cannabis? Uhaya explained, "Yes, cannabis is used for some medicines and I think rope too." Further away was an apple tree, which more apples spawned at the bottom. There was also a spot in the water, where one could click a few times and eventually the HUD would show you as full.

Eventually, I would part ways with Chief Uhaya and Taigi, and rode off into the virtual sunset. So that's all for now from the Wild West Roleplay. Until next time, happy trails.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Colorado/190/105/944 

Bixyl Shuftan

The Wild West Roleplay: Part One - Getting Started

By Bixyl Shuftan

There's just something about the Old West that has a deep appeal to people, and not just to Americans. Here, a man could make a new start for himself, whether someone from a large family wanting his own farm, an immigrant wanting more than a factory job but his own home, former slaves and freedmen looking for new opportunities not available in their old home, prospectors looking to strike it rich, businessmen looking to make a buck, adventurers looking to make a name for themselves, lawmen trying to bring order and justice to the frontier, and more. But where there are people, there are always opportunists whom would rather rob or con others than work at making their money honestly, and so there were the outlaws or badmen. And the land wasn't empty. The place was the home of American Indian tribes, either whom had been here since the dawn of history or perhaps having moved here after being forced from the east. How to adapt to the changing times, and yet still preserve their traditions and culture?

Becky Shamen had originally wrote in 2016 about the twenty-three sim Wild-West themed roleplay area she simply called "The Wild West Roleplay Lands." I was recently approached by Goneigh, or "Gone" as his friends call him, who usually goes about in a feral horse avatar. He owns one of the sims of the place, Tittingham, or "Indiana Wilds." He told me he was just one of a number of sim owners there, some owning one, some two or three, whom had banded their locations together so their roleplayers had a huge place to roam around in, from the flat prairies of Oklahoma to the dry desert of western Texas and northern Mexico, to the Rockies. "One sim is nothing," Goneigh told me, "but 23 sims offers much adventure. We have green places, snowy places, and red-dirt places." The entire area combined had no official name, though "Wild West Roleplay" would do for now.

While you can find the RP HUD in most sims, it is recommended that new players start at the store area above the Colorado sim at (190/105/944). follow the gold arrows to a cavern. There you will find a few recommended items for purchase, and a few freebie outfits and weapons. Click the stagecoach, select "to join" and then teleport and go down a tunnel, which leads to a board where you can get the RP HUD, an observer tag, and a copy of the rules. Goneigh felt two rules deserved special notation. One was that this was a plot driven roleplay and not just a "shoot-em-up." Anyone whom just went around shooting people would be treated as a threat by everyone. Goneigh did say there were a few examples of attacks by such people that were later talked about "in character" as attacks by unknown lone badmen. Another rule was one that fans of nonhuman avatars would likely dislike. Like a number of other historical RPs, there's a rule about having to look like someone from the time and place, both in appearance and dress. So one is limited to human avatars, wearing styles of clothing that could be seen in the Old West, or feral animal avatars of domestic and North American animals, such as horses. So while furry avatars aren't within the rules, neither are obviously out of the time period styles of clothing such as punk rock outfits and hairstyles.

The HUD is in a box that has to be set down and opened, but fortunately you can do that in the entry area. It has a number of symbols on the top row, a red bar and a green bar in the middle, and more symbols on the bottom row. The red bar is the health meter, and starts out low when first activated, but soon builds up. When hit by bullets, weapons, or animal attacks, it goes down. When it reaches zero as the result of a fight, the player is considered "defeated," and must wait to recover, or be healed. The top buttons are for, food (such as apples and tomatoes), fluids (such as water), plants (such as herbs), tools, objects, components, and medicine. Two smaller bars under those are for hunger and thirst (okay at the start). On the bottom row, the first button brings up the players coins. The second button takes the player in and out of OOC mode. The third button is for putting the player in a melee position. The fifth button can also put the player in melee mode and toggles male/female sounds. The sixth button brings up webpages explaining some things about the game: meter usage, inventory usage, inventory description, and RP Object description. On the very bottom is a button showing how many coins the player has on hand. Over the player will be displayed the player's health and condition, red when low, orange when medium, and green when good.

In the part of the beginner's area where you get the HUD, you will find a list of some of the administrators. If you have some questions, feel free to answer some questions.

So how can one make money in the RP? At Tittingham, there is a mine in the north, center part of the sim. One can reach it, by going along the river next to the mountain, waliing into what at first looks like just a dent in the mountain wall, but turns out to be a hidden cave. There are spots where one can mine coal, iron, tin, copper, silver, and gold. To mine, get the pickaxe in the hand of one skeleton on the ground and wear it. Then sit on the spot you want to mine. Coal doesn't take long to mine, just 15 seconds to break off a chunk. But each metal takes longer, iron 30 seconds, tin 45, copper 60, silver 90, and gold 120. When ore is mined, it's recorded in your HUD.

There is a furnace nearby where you can smelt ores into bars, and forge the bars into items, such as blades and axeheads, and can also be used to make "blanks," which are used to help make certain other items. Items you make in the furnace are also counted in your HUD. There's also a couple tomatoes that spawn here, as well as some plants and a couple peices of wood.

Along the road in the western part of Tittingham, there are a couple shops. The one slightly further away from the road has some NPC merchants and workstations. NPC characters here will buy and sell certain items at a 50/100 percent cash value. For instance, the blacksmith will buy bronze bars you make from the cave furnace for 23 coins. But it takes 46 to buy one off of him. The merchant will buy your gold bars here for 43 coins. So you could make a little cash here as a miner. But you can also use the bars at the mine to forge items like blades and axeheads at a furnace, and use the workstation to make those items into knives and axes. You'll need wood, which besides in the mine spawns in a spot just outside the store. Five wood pieces can be combined into a log, of which you'll need one apiece to make items like knives, axes, and shovels, along with a "blank" which needs one bronze bar and a coal to make 10. Both items will raise your melee strength in a fight.

Should you meet anyone, remember that you're expected to act and behave like someone in the Old West. Any Out of Character chat is recommended to be in parentheses, or otherwise obvious that it is. These people may include cowboys, lawmen, American Indians, or possibly bandits. The latter may leave new players alone out of courtesy, though there's always the chance encountering them may lead to the player being demanded "Stand and deliver."

So there are a few details about getting started. Later on, we'll discuss more about some of the groups of people, and more. For now

"Gotta head out for now, pardners. Happy trails."

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Colorado/190/105/944

Bixyl Shuftan

Breezes Thoughts: "Twas an Old Lady ..." Part 3

Breezes Babii is back with the third part of her story about a lady who ventures from home to find more than she bargained for, this time coming across some balloons.

Read the next "Breezes Thoughts" in Extra.

Breezes Thoughts: "Twas an Old Lady ..."

Longtime readers may remember Breezes Babii, the creative spirit behind "Breezes Thoughts" of the original Second Life Newspaper. She sent in this little tale, one that starts like a familiar nursery rhyme but quickly takes a different turn.

Read Breezes' tale in Extra.