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The two pieces I'm publishing today (the other on popular fashion store Nyte 'n Day) are supposed to serve as companion pieces of sorts, to the shared question posed by this month's theme of "Third Life;" of what exactly roleplaying is, and how this answer is sometimes getting sharply redefined within the context of Second Life. One of the traditional ways to answer that question, for example, and one that's still highly popular in the grid, is that roleplaying is when you 'inhabit' the character of a being that can't actually exist in the real world, from an elf to a vampire to a wizard to a space alien. These are the shared interests, after all, of the first round of creative roleplayers to rise in our popular culture, the obsessive fans of JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" (to cite one example) who went on to invent such things as Dungeons & Dragons (to cite another example), arguably the first commercial product to ever single out roleplaying as a unique medium for creativity and entertainment.

Like I said, there are loads of such communities within Second Life to this day -- in fact, one could argue that traditional roleplayers might in fact account for most of the regular day-to-day traffic of the grid, once you subtract all the millions of new players who log in once and never come back. A typical one, that I had the opportunity to visit for the first time last night, is a sim called Darkside [Darkside 151/109/35], a vampire-heavy community (although not exclusively for vampires), with a strong, dark, Gothic tone throughout the entire 64,000 square meters.

Now, Darkside works like a lot of these private sim-based roleplaying communities do, which is through a mixed-use system: how that island will most often have a series of private estates along the edges, one for each of the people helping to pay the bills of that sims; combined with an often breathtaking public space (a town square, if you will), for actually accomplishing the roleplaying that those roleplayers are there to do; and also a commercial section for the general public, where you can often buy clothes based on that island's theme, objects, attend a themed danceclub, etc. Here in this bottom photo above, for example, I'm at the commercial area of Darkside, being helped by one of the many very friendly, very sexy vampires I was always coming across this weekend.

And so here's what the people at Darkside have put together, to serve as their big public roleplaying space; a gigantic Gothic cathedral, quite apt for the theme they have going at their sim, complete with spooky rotting graveyard outside. Once you go inside, then, you can see that the space serves the same function as the multitude of danceclubs that now exist in the grid as well; as a central group space for which a crowd of like-minded people can meet, and all talk in a friendly group environment. Really, when all is said and done, a community of vampires in an abandoned cathedral in Second Life is really no different than a group of middle-aged women in a discussion club at their local chain bookstore; even though I've now probably offended both groups simultaneously, what I mean is that the main enjoyment people get from it is the social environment full of like-minded people. In fact, I'd say that this constitutes almost a full half of what makes such a place so enjoyable for roleplayers; that even if everything else was removed but the cathedral, and the chance to regularly get together with fellow dark friends, most of them would still enjoy the experience at least halfway.

What was happening at the cathedral that night, by the way, was the group's annual formal Winter Ball; I received an invitation to it, which is what took me to Darkside in the first place. And sure enough, once I got to the ball, yet another friendly and sexy vampire was ready to answer my questions and give me a tour; in these shots above, for example, we were just about to head into the cathedral's lower "catacombs," where roleplaying of a decidedly different kind can take place. This is probably the biggest surprise to most about such roleplayers -- that although they are generally private people, who have taken on the costs of an entire sim precisely to live in an insular environment, they are generally also the nicest residents of Second Life you'll find, if you're sincere and don't mock the roleplaying environment they maintain.

But alas, my tour was cut short; it was Saturday night, after all, a time so busy in the grid that my poor little Mac Mini can barely stand more than 20 minutes or so at a time before crashing. Ah, but lo and behold, the next day (er, night) that I came back to finish my photos, who should I run into but Nigel Riel, one of the co-founders of Darkside (along with Fangs Craven, considered the "head honcho" of the entire sim). Nigel and I got to talking, where I learned some interesting things about the community's infrastructure; how there are a total of 14 people, for example, who somehow or another chip in on covering Darkside's bills, with some of them owning mansions on the land and some not. Now, I'm not sure if all of them are paying the same amount, given that some own estates and others don't; but if you had 10 people, for example, equally splitting the costs of a sim, that would come to around US$400 apiece per year (200 pounds, 300 euros), or about $33 a month. And sure, I think it's safe to say that there are a huge amount of people in Second Life right now who would see this as a good entertainment expense; $33 a month to maintain their part of such an immersive environment, in an age where satellite television can easily cost the same amount or more. (Oh, and for the record, their group is officially known as a 'family' instead of a 'coven,' in that not all their members are vampires.)

Now, as mentioned, one of the most powerful draws for such roleplayers to a private community is the land opportunity it affords; how if you can find a large enough group of people to go in on a themed community idea, you can often walk away with a huge parcel of dramatic land for a price lower than the mainland. These above photos, for example, are all from one such private estate found at Darkside; all this space you're seeing, in a typical roleplaying environment, would be owned by only one or two people, with plenty of space to throw big parties and the like, or just to futz around with building the more and more perfect vampire estate. And this is really the other half to the question I posed earlier, of what makes things like this worth $33 a month in the first place to a dedicated roleplayer; that if half of it is the opportunity to mingle socially with other like-minded people, the other half in Second Life is definitely the opportunity to build dramatic things on dramatic pieces of land. This should never be discounted, I think, when discussing what makes the grid so enjoyable to its most habitual residents, even though it's something I think often overlooked; that a great pride is shown there for finding/creating a great piece of land, and especially for building something impressive on it using your own skills. Since the building process is so easy in Second Life, almost everyone you meet dabbles in it in one way or another; it really is used as a showcase for one's talents and interests by a lot of residents, and thus it is that great pieces of land are so important to begin with.

Anyway, I hope you've liked this walk through one particular roleplaying environment within the grid; and like I said, I hope you'll get a chance to check out my profile of fashion store Nyte 'n Day as well, coming a bit later, for a radically different view of what online roleplaying exactly is.