twisting around

New Orleans: WoD is a roleplaying sim based around the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG. It’s set in a post-Katrina New Orleans (kinda makes all the water surrounding the sim a little creepy), and because it’s an ‘immersive’ roleplaying area, visitors have to wear a ‘tourist’ sign when they come to look around or shop. Yes, you can shop. There’s ALWAYS shops in SL.

Here’s an overview of the sim:

The sim doesn’t include all the city–just the French Quarter and surrounding area. But no Jackson Square!

The build is really detailed and fun to poke around in. Lots of tiny alleys, some leading to courtyards and some dead ends (probably good for vampire attacks or the like).

The street layout is pretty much the same as in RL, though the streets are very narrow! The buildings aren’t the same, but the feel is close and some of the colors/shapes are quite similar. I looked at a few comparisons with google streetview, which was fun.

One thing I just love is when builder’s put random poseballs around their sim. Here’s one that said ‘loiter’.

Being a west-coastie, I went kind of late and there weren’t any vampires around (which seems kind of wrong, doesn’t it?). The game premise looks interesting, but it is very much based on the paper RPG which I don’t really know anything about. There’s a forum for the game here.

So lots and lots of people went to hair fair. LOTS and LOTS. And everything says not to wear prims and HUDs and all that stuff that can slow things down. Like, you even get a card when you arrive saying to reduce your prim count.

So I turned on avatar rendering costs and took a few snaps.

The Cousin Itt look was all the rage.

This lady’s name tag advertised her shop. In fact, lots of people wore tags advertising various wares. They probably figured they’d get all blinged out in their hottest outfits and go show them off where there was sure to be a ton of people. I don’t think it worked out the way they imagined.

This shot says it all, I think.

For the record, I took off my hair and my shoes and went with an avatar rendering cost of 1. So nyah!