Commentarii/AleksoMinotaur
From ROMA Scribae
ROMA In Their Own Words
September 2010
Alekso Minotaur
Born 8/19/2008
- How and when did you find ROMA?
The same day i first logged in, i thought that SL was sort of WoW and got my very first avatar banned from several sims eheh so i searched a roman friendly place, thinking to find a reconstruction of RL Roma (where i live in RL). After a couple of gorean like sims, where i got disgusted of gor-styled places, for their environmental inaccuracy and sexually oriented behavior, i finally landed to this Roma, where i found friendly people, and an historically oriented community. Not only a place to play, but also a place to learn several interesting things.
- What attracted you to ROMA? What made you come back?
People in Her and the going on activities. All groups have an educational purpose in their background, covered with a nice "blanket" of fun. Learning through having fun is the most powerful and effective tool to educate people in my opinion.
- What do you do when you’re in ROMA?
Well, i roleplay, and build things to fit the environment within the land limits i'm constricted to. For bigger projects i move outside, but my heart is always in Roma. With my friend peter, we also opened a group that collects the most favorite games of the roman citizenry, the LVDI ROMANI group. Lately, also the roleplay family i belong to has been re-founded under the leadership of my RP sister, Airedale Magic, and I. When i first approached ROMA, i was interested to the Sejanus family as my RL family was tied to that, since i proudly am one of the few RL romans with a genealogical tree that is 1864 years long back in past. Now i (try to) lead this family in SL and i am proud of it!
Also, on another side, with my two friends peter and Airedale, i run a pretty successful business of historical reproductions of roman stuff, within the SL building constraints, and developing architectural design skills as if the romans would have continued to develop their engineering skills, adding roman-derivative complements from other historical ages. I'm very happy with Roma stirring me up in learning lots of things, either culturally speaking, like history, related stuff and architecture, either modern tools to get the best results in building, like 3D modeling tools to import my creations inside SL. I'm so hard headed that i could learn how to get the very best results out from sculpted prims to be used in architecture, along with learning image editing programs at a pretty high level. Eventually, when arbitrary meshes will become available to be imported into SL i will go further and beyond my own imagination creating extra detailed things (always within the SL limits), until i would be able to finally make it my main RL job, becoming a Computer Graphic designer. And all this, giving thanks to ROMA. I would probably never have got to this point without Her and all the people in this wonderful, thriving Community. Because ROMA is not a bunch of Sims, She's made so great by Her Community.
- How would you describe the ROMA Community?
Hum maybe i wrote about it in the previous question's answer, but the core is that all people here is not tied to a fixed behavior (strict RP), until it is respectful and the common sense, proper of adult people, is carried on. Everything has its time to be. The social factor is what drags all the rest, and all the rest has its time to come up. Role Play, learning, discussing things (philosophy, architecture, techniques, etc), all is welcome here in the most open way, with freedom to keep our own behavior as we feel it is appropriate at the time being. Alright, the "purists" of Role Playing wouldn't understand /agree with this, but what i always say is that (ancient environment) !always=(RolePlay)|(Combat) [sorry that i haven't more appropriate math signs to describe this in my keyboard]. "Living" in an ancient environment doesn't necessarily lead to roleplay ALL the time. It is still Second Life, a place on the internet where we can be free to be whatever we like, without constraints. And strict role play IS a constraint. Roma has all this, without constraints =)
- How do you describe ROMA to your friends and family outside of SL?
I describe it as a cultural focused environment, where you can learn through having fun and talking to people from all over the world. A chat room with a 3d environment to navigate through, in the most delightful roman style, with accuracy in recreations and no common misconceptions about the roman world, as Hollywood movies have got much people used to.
- What is your favorite spot in the ROMA Estate?
The ROMA Estate lol.... shall i be more specific? The 8 sims altogether...and the eventual ones which i'm pretty sure will come, a day
- Do you use SL and ROMA for socializing, roleplay, or something different?
Socializing, roleplay, learning, learning, learning, designing, learning again.
- What will ROMA and Second Life look like five years from now? (2015)
If my head still keeps being so hard in wanting to be able to make inworld contents, i envision a detailed reconstruction of a real roman city, not based on any specific one, but collecting all the characteristics of a roman city. What i see here NOW is that ROMA's community has the best roman themed content creators, who want to contribute with their skills to this successful sim. This means that, with the improvements going on these days in SL about content creation, in 2 years there won't be any roman sim comparable to ROMA. Perhaps, well made ones (i'm currently involved in the building process of another roman sim, in order to have it showcased in the RP section) but never at Roma's level. Here there is the true SL's "romanity".
- Anything else you would like to add?
yes, just a plain, simple.....KEEP ON DOING THIS WAY TORIN!!! ^^
