We had a wonderful turnout at the opening of the Diversionarium last night, and here (from Eris) are the pictures to illustrate! (For anyone who hasn’t read my earlier posts or heard about it elsewhere, the Diversionarium is Eris Fallon’s and my non-commercial spot for social games and creative play. It has a bunch of activities and games run through scripted objects that use words, ideas, and building talents.) When I say wonderful, I don’t just mean that we had a lot of people show up, although we did, but that the people I met last night were the kind of people I love to run into in Second Life. Many of them were habitues of the second_lifers Livejournal group, and I was delighted to meet them in person.
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Eris and I wore Thai sampot dresses for the occasion |
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A good turnout |
There were Chrysocolla and Mahoro, who tore through clues in our word game, Quoste, like bears tear into bee hives. There was Seven, who in his purple-haired Harry Potter avatar kept half a dozen people or more entertained with his builds in our Mystery Build game (my favorite was “carnival”. It seemed like it took him about 15 seconds to build two carnival tents with little flags on top); and Grizzy Griswold and Gira Bryant, who both took time away from their respective, wonderful venues to visit the Div; and many other fascinating people.
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Seven at Mystery Build |
We had glitches, certainly. It turned out that our Avisleuth game took great exception to players not filling out their notecards; and Mystery Build refused to deliver challenge tasks, giving only the easier standard tasks…but we made some fixes right in the moment and no one much seemed to mind the occasional scripting hiccup. Conversation galore, certainly.
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Devo hats were all the rage … |
When I finally got a challenge task out of Mystery Build, it gave me George Washington. In a few minutes, I was to use prims and colors (no textures allowed) to build something that people could recognize as George Washington. It think it was Caliburn who actually guessed it:
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Maybe because the teeth, while undefined, appear to be wooden? |
Next up, perhaps this coming weekend, will be a Whose Line Is It Anyway? comedy improv event. Eris and I are working on a conversation piece slide show where anyone can submit captioned pictures, and a month or so down the road, we should have fireworks sculpting. If you’d like to be kept up to date on events, please join the Diversionarians group or IM me!
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Avisleuth! At left you can see Grizzy and Caliburn. |
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Me, Gira, her lovely friend Leia, and Eris’s and my friend Chris Luna |
The Winged Girl Blog 
Oh, my, it looks like you had a great start! I’m sorry I missed the opening, but I was too busy fretting over my friend’s RL computer problems to make it. 😦
I’ll deffo look it up when I’m inworld again.
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Dear Kate and Eris,
A woderful opening,
I came late, but thoroughly enjoyed myself playing the quotation game and enjoying some conversation too.
nice as it is to get my name up on a picture caption in the last picture, I think someone else might be upset, because it is not me.
here’s to more success
Natsuki
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I’m very sorry, Natsuki! I’m fixing that now. Hope to see you again. 🙂
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Oh it sounds like it went off really well. Congratulations!
As soon as I get my computer back I hope to come and check it out. I don’t expect to be any good at the games but rather I look forward to socialising 🙂
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I love your place. I would have stayed longer but at the time I was dealing with something in rl that was hurting me and leaving me emotionally drained. I’ll share on SL if you want to know.
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OMG! mystery build! so. much. fun. we had a grand old time and much gasping for breath was done by all. in mystery build you had to give the answer like — “i guess:…” and the first to answer correct won. there was lots of “i guess: a box!” sorry, kate but it was also the least confusing. at least for me, maybe i just needed to look at the instructions a little more.
thanks for a great time! love the pic of me smiling in my butterflies and devo hat.
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Grizzy, thanks so much for coming to it. 🙂 And I think you’re right that Mystery Build is the easiest game to get into. We’re working on making the other games a little easier to understand and are hoping that as more people try the games, they’ll be able to help new players.
We added a whole bunch more tasks for Mystery Build the other day and we got the Challenge Tasks working later that night, so there’s more fun in store. For future I’m thinking a Build-Off, a competition among skilled builders taking turns at Mystery Build, with a voted winner. If anyone knows anyone who might be willing to offer prizes in exchange for mentioning their business and their contribution, let me know!
Oh, and this Friday is “Whose Line Is It Anyway”-style comedy improv games. 🙂
^^^\ Kate /^^^
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Kate,
Thanks for a wonderful evening of fun. I think you are well on your way to achieving your goals for the Diversionarium. It was a real delight to meet some intelligent and witty people from outside my usual circles. I will definitely be back for the improv games.
Best,
Mahoro Korobase
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The friendly girl whose name you didn’t catch was my friend and lover, Leia Crimson. 🙂
I have to say we both enjoyed ourselves *tremendously*. So much so that in fact we came back later that night after a different event, called a couple friends to come over with us and played games for a couple hours by ourselves.
Then Saturday, I insisted that Barry and I bring our girls over to play and we had a splendid time as well. I have some comments for you about the games and ways they might be improved and also would like to touch base with you about perhaps helping you host, or scheduling events at times you can’t be there so that it can be attracting people more often.
I think it is a fabulous resource, I love playing games, and I would love to help word get out about your venue so I have more friends to play with there! 😉
I’m looking forward to your future events with great anticipation.
Two thumbs up!
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Thanks for sharing the good word with me!
HI KATE AND ERIS!
Yes, I wanted to say a gracious thank-you for writing to me, Kate, about the Diversionarium that you and Eris have created. It brings a good feeling to my soul (define that how you will), in part because I think of my early SL days, how I used to attend lots of fun social events and just hang out… and pause… take a deep breath… ah. It’s quite the design too, I like how it appears impossible to recreate in “first life”, at least from the air, and the map is well-constructed too.
I just stopped by in the WindLight viewer and it’s nice up here in the blue skies.
I also shared word of this with Robin Linden earlier; I know she loves hearing about such public spaces being enjoyed by people!
From the comments here, the warmth is radiating outwards too… fantastique! =)
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Re: Thanks for sharing the good word with me!
Torley, thanks so much for stopping by and for the thoughtful words about the build 🙂 …I can imagine your to visit list must be about the size of the Oxford English Dictionary!
We get a chance to talk to Robin on Thursday, and I’m looking forward to that. I’ve admired what I’ve read of her thoughts on Second Life’s culture, its role in the world, women in Second Life, and all the rest.
I can hardly wait until we’re all looking up at those same blue (and watermelony) skies you’ve been seeing. 🙂 I keep trying to steer clear of getting the WindLight viewer just yet because I know (think?) it isn’t finalized and I’ve been having some instability…but it’s so tempting… 🙂
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Thank you *so* much, Gira. I’m delighted that you had fun, and we’d love to talk to you about improvements and hosting. 🙂 More through IM!
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