I came to Second Life as part of a group of Myst fans migrating when Myst Online: Uru Live closed, again. That was 2008. By 2009 some of us were attempting to unite Myst fans across numerous games and platforms. There was a lot of contention about playing Uru Live anywhere but on official Cyan Worlds servers. But, as there were no official Cyan servers, fans were building parts of Uru in various games.
One of the efforts was titled Devokan. Dot and Paislee were the main movers and shakers of that effort. I got to play in Devokan and enjoyed the RP and beautiful regions.
At the time I was also involved with NoR, Nation of Remembrance, a post apocalyptic RP-combat game in SL. In some forums we had been discussing whether stories from different games could be mixed with the Uru RP. Several of us believed it could. Others thought it impossible.
Since RP is all from and in the mind’s imagination, I believe anything is possible. It is just a matter of skill and/or talent in whether one can make it enjoyable and somewhat believable for other players. Adding a post apocalyptic future to a 1990’s to 2000’s game story really only requires time travel, and Wells thought that up in the early to mid 1900’s. Plus Uru was always a mix of RL facets and game play.
So, in my thinking RL players going from game to game should have some parallel inside the game. I made my Devokan RP an experiment in mixing stories. At a time when we needed to explain the moving of Devokan from Second Life to OpenSim it seemed to work well and have interesting and fun possibilities.
In some ways there are similarities to the Douglas Adams RPG that Ciaran writes about. It wasn’t what people said it would be, but it was possible and fun.
This all comes up as Devokan nears its 5th anniversary. In commemoration Dot has posted: Devokan Storybuilders celebrating 5 years in OpenSim. In her story she links to the archived story of Devokan that numerous people contributed to.
By, the use of journals kept in world the Devokan story was preserved. Dot has taken the time to compile a collection of the journal entries and arranged them in a time line. I’m happy to have been part of that and greatly appreciate Dot’s contribution.
Thanks to all those involved and special thinks to Dot Macchi.
Thanks, Nalates! It was great fun, though a bittersweet time for Paislee and myself.
For anyone interested, the original planning discussions behind the storylines and builds are here: Devokan planning: Storyline ideas (to end Jan 2010) (OOC)