http://virtualneko.com/omo_river_navi_neko/

text based rp is alot of fun, and has the advantage of the fact that you actually have to know how to type, describe, and rp, vs. point and click.

That being said, I love just wandering around Pandora by myself sometimes, cause damn it is beautifull. and you just dont get that in text based rp

“I have to agree with Alyx (and yes I do suck at SLRP) and the reason is simple: you are bound by the limitations of SL creation and the creators vision.”

This is true, of course, but in a text-based rp, even assuming that each player’s visions of the environment is exciting and novel and all that, difficulties can arise when *sharing* that vision. Let’s say you have a stiletto hidden in your boot. In text you can either type in out, in which case you have to assume the others will play along and not instantly spot it with their uncanny vision. Or you can not mention it and suddenly whip it out, to cries of ‘wtf!’. (And yes, you could have a refree or something, I know, but then the world is being guided by their vision) In SL, if you have it then it’s there. People can notice or notice.

This happened to me recently. I was dabbling in Gor (and for those don’t like Gor, fine, I get it, I’ve heard it all before) and taken to a sim where they told me to strip and locked me in a cage. That’s pretty typical and I complied – except I didn’t take my boots off. It’s a northern climate, lots of snow, so boots are not unusual. So later I rped ripping the boots apart to find small pieces of metal to pick the lock. Believable? Maybe, maybe not. The point is, I wore the boots, they saw I was wearing them, and no one said ‘hey you’re supposed to be completely naked.’ That sort of thing is hard to do in text based rp.

Another example is I can run through a town or a landscape, usually being chased sometimes i chase them, and there is a chance I can actually elude them. Now it isn’t perfect, there’s radar and the minimap, but that is hard to do with text based stuff in a way that gives you the same feeling of a realtime chase: no time to think! left or right? turn and run past them? is that door locked? can you squeeze past those containers? And you don’t have to worry about whether or not both parties have the same idea of what the buildings and rooms are like. They’re right there in front of you.

Now there is nothing wrong with having a text based rp. I like to read books and that’s text and my own imagination. But for a *shared* experience the visualizations help a lot, and the more people you have the more essential it becomes. I’ll bet in your pen and paper rps you had visual aids. It’s the same thing.

As for the other stuff you mentioned, maybe you have bad experiences with combat because you’re not good at it. If that is something that appeals to you, you probably need to practice, and there must be places to do that. The same might be true of rp sex, not everyone does that well, trust me. So, if that appeals to you then you might need to practice that.

But not all sims have combat and sex. There are some fantasy ones, like Avalon or Avilion or whatever its called that I have been to a couple times. I’ve never seen anything exciting going on there when I’ve been there, but then I like the sex stuff. Insilico is a cool place, very cyberpunk and bladerunner, its supposed to have rp, but I haven’t really seen that. But, in places like that just go with friends and run around and have your own rp. If you’re not bumping into a lot of people you can do that easily.

Go to Insilico and walk around, even inside the big mall area the experience of being there is very powerful and, even better, it can be shared with a bunch of people.

Here’s my visualization of this article’s comments:http://selb.us/feri/Flash/%5BZONE%5D_Konata_-_Miniloop.swf

I’m sure it will immerse you in the “Alyx Stoklitsky comment experience” like nothing else.

Just my two cents about visualizations ruining RP — I think RP is most heavily impacted by what you and those RPing with you choose to do with the tools available to you. Different tools work better in different hands. In addition, a wide variety of people consider themselves RPers and many of them value different aspects of RP. I think the real trick is to find a group of people who’s idea of good RP matches yours.

$0.02 from Mel

(for the slow, that is sarcasm)