Greetings from roleplaying month here at ITG, known collectively at the blog as the subject "Third Life." (Here's an introduction to the subject, by the way, for those who originally missed it.) Throughout the month I'll be highlighting a series of different roleplaying communities all over the grid, as well as "rogue" (groupless) RPers and the makers of corporate "alternative reality games" (or ARGs). For those who have never participated in a roleplaying environment, though, I thought it'd be good to actually delve into one of these communities in detail, to the point of even making myself an "embedded reporter" there and playing an RP character myself. I haven't done such a thing in awhile, although I admit that my past is littered with roleplaying experiences: first with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in the '70s, then moving on to the more complex sci-fi RPG Traveller, as well as TSR's early-'80s espionage RPG, Top Secret. I know what goes into being a full-time roleplayer, so thought it'd be fun to immerse myself into such a thing again for a month, to show non-RPers out there how it can typically be done.

I decided in fact to concentrate on the 'steampunk' community of Caledon, for several small reasons: because they're well-regarded, because they're larger in nature (14 sims and growing), because several well-known SL people choose to have land there (including famed RL science-fiction writer Warren Ellis UPDATE: Mr. Ellis wrote in to mention that he doesn't actually own land at Caledon, but is simply a fan), because steampunk is a natural interest of mine, etc. An amalgam of Victorian-Age science-fiction and the influence of postmodernists, steampunk posits an alternative form of history: one where computers were actually invented and put into use during the 1800s, not after World War II like in real history. There's a precedence for this, in fact, to inspire such speculative dreams; a man named Charles Babbage actually did invent a working computer in the Victorian Age, that was finally built in the 1990s and proven to work, just that fights with the royal family prevented him from securing the money to build it in his lifetime. This has inspired an unrelated group of writers, artists and thinkers over the years to ask, "What would the Victorian Age had been like if Babbage had secured his financing, and been allowed to build his 'difference engine?'" Given the vision of such real Victorian artists as Jules Verne and HG Welles, it's easy to extrapolate in the mind's eye into pretty amazing territory: wooden and brass robots powered by steam, mobile phones converted from church organs, the mind can go in a lot of different directions in such an environment.

The rise of steampunk in the popular culture can actually be traced back to the 1960s, as an offshoot of the larger secret-agent craze of the era; see such TV shows, for example, as "The Wild Wild Wild West," remade in the '90s into a pretty crappy movie with Will Smith. The ideas behind steampunk, though, didn't coalesce into a school of thought until taken up by the so-called "cyberpunk" writers of the 1980s and '90s, including such seminal projects as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, and Alan Moore's delightfully twisted The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (itself remade into a pretty craptacular Hollywood movie); hence the particular phrase "steampunk," a play on the term originally invented for these artists. The success of these projects, then, inspired such things as the Disney movie Atlantis and other such 'marquee' films and television shows, which has led to steampunk now being part of the popular culture in general.

If I'm to be a roleplayer at Caledon this month, then, one of the first things I need to do is invent a backstory for myself; this is a fictional universe we're talking about, after all, something that can almost be seen as a living novel, and all good characters in a novel need a complex backstory. This is where such roleplaying games as D&D and the online World of Warcraft can be particularly helpful, in fact; most will actually write a certain amount of the backstory ahead of time for you, so as to get right in and playing that much quicker. (For example, an RPG might say, "Here are all the races and species in our fictional universe, and the history behind each of them. Now you have the choice of being any of these races or species you want.") No such common rules exist for steampunk, however, in that it's more a cultural phenomenon instead of the product of one creative team; and even the owner of Caledon enforces no strict roleplaying rules, and in fact doesn't require you to be a steampunk character at all to live there, merely to adhere to Victorian-style architecture and etiquette.

In this case, then, I had to come up with a backstory for myself. And here's what I came up with...

While at Caledon, my name is still Miller Copeland, but this time I come from a radically different background: I'm a space alien, in fact, known in English as Arcadians because the native word is too difficult for humans to pronounce. Her planet had been one of perpetual warfare and strife for hundreds of years, with the total population approaching extinction levels because of constant genocidal attacks; then her world was suddenly visited one day by a mysterious stranger, one claiming to come from London on the planet Earth. He had built a machine that could cross time and space, he said; a curious and ornate machine, complete with traveling mahogany valet and full tea set.

The traveller, Henry, stayed for awhile and taught the Arcadians all about the Victorian society in which he was from; as the intellectuals and politicians learned of the Victorian ideals, they realized it might just be the thing to save their own planet. The principles behind Terran Victorian ideas were quickly put into practice, known there as "Neue Victorianism;" Miller is a child of the second successive generation, who has grown up with the Victorian ideal firmly in place her entire life.

Miller believes in God, Queen, and Empire, although the order can change on a daily basis. She believes that the only way for Arcadians to not be animals is to not act like animals; that they are the only creatures on her planet capable of being civilized, and therefore it's civilization that must be the thing that can save them as a species. An uneasy world truce has been in effect on Arcadia for the last 50 years, held through a complicated series of international treaties that prevent any one faction from gaining too much power; like most young Arcadians, Miller believes that this can only work through a complex and rigidly-enforced class system, with a properly defined space for all and with important decisions made only by those with the Higher Virtues worthy of making such decisions.

As a steampunk, Miller has never actually visited Earth herself; she can get into Second Life easily enough, though, in that there's an Arcadian client out there just like an English or Japanese one. Given that her world took almost all their Victorian dress and etiquette cues off the English to begin with, she feels comfortable here in the grid and interacting with the humans; in fact, about the only difference is that Arcadians are generally more androgynous than humans, with it being common for women to wear men's clothing and vice versa.

So, that's my backstory; and then as I travel and explore the Caledon community this month, this is the unspoken story that will fuel any roleplaying conversations I have there. (For example, I'll be writing the Caledon photo essays in a Victorian voice, my Deare and Humble Readers.) Next step: go find some people to actually talk to! That will hopefully be happening soon, so I hope you'll have a chance to join me again then.