Week 1: Screen shot Journal

With an interest in narrative storytelling within Virtual worlds, I went into Second Life looking for something that related to that topic. I discovered that at one stage there used to be groups of people on second life that used the game to virtual act out tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons and The Call of Cthulhu. Unfortunately I had a hard time finding any that were still up and running.

After speaking with Darryl, I decided to direct my focus towards another Virtual World MMO game that has been highly praised for its storytelling capabilities - Funcom's The Secret World. The Secret World allows players to log into a massive online universe, join a secret society (The Illuminati, The Templars, The Dragon) and travel the world alone or with their online friends as monster hunters, killing off and learning about every nightmare you can think of.

This week, as a beginner to the game, I started off by visiting the first area of The Secret World that opens up to you. Kingsmouth - a small fishing town in the United States which seems to be an amalgimation of horror writer's H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Stephen King's The Mist and good old fashion Zombie apocalypses.

Welcome to Kingsmouth:

I turned up in this small town and discovered something horrifying was happening. A mist had rolled in from the water, people had been turned into flesh eating Zombies...

Being an expert warrior from The Dragon faction, I dispatched of them easily...

I also visited the local Church and learnt about how The Illuminati had hidden secret clues all over the town.

I gave the Sheriff's office a helping hand against the Zombie invasion...

I visited the local Diner. Unfortunately it was closed for the Apocalypse.

Also found this creepy fucking tree!

Next, I helped this lovely old lady kill the undead and burn bodies on her bonfire....

...Before jumping into another dimension, to The World Tree - a kind of warp room for players between different areas of the game -

...And had a chat with some of these wacky folks about how and where to find a group of online friends to roleplay with, seeing as I'm fascinated by emergent game narrative at the moment and how players commandeer established game rules to create their own stories.

I got a few tips from different folks, so will be following those up in the next week and see what happens.