Being Alone: True Prison Role Play

Alone at TICF, Circa 2009

For anyone who has taken part in prison role play in Second Life, or any similar place, one of the challenges is being alone. This may take place when you are simply the only person online or when you are confined in a place where interaction with others is prevented. Every player encounters this situation and how you deal with not only test what you are role playing to achieve but also how satisfying your play will be. Let’s be honest, being online alone is boring. Being prevented from engaging in role play is hard. But this gets down to one of the key questions of any form of prison role play, what you want to achieve from your role play and how realistic you want to be in your portrayal.

Let’s start with a fact or life in the real world, being in prison is boring. You are being locked up in an environment where your opportunities for amusement are very limited. However role play is not reality and even very serious pole players cannot ever achieve the emotional challenge or real incarceration. When role playing in second life you can always log off and that is a control real inmates do not have. Indeed many prison role players in Second Life have no interest in achieving anything approaching that level of reality and if there are not others actively playing they log off, most likely to an alternate account. Yet in doing so they miss the opportunity to take their role play to a different level of involvement.

When I first became involved in these form of RP I was taken aback by how emotional and how real the feelings can become. While the reasons for this are a subject for another day, I found myself craving interaction with others when my confinement prevented this. When I was alone I wondered when someone would come, who they would be and what would happen. Despite the reality that I was sitting in front of a computer screen, I felt a very real feeling of confinement. When a staff member would enter, there was anticipation of what they would do. Would they simply pass through? Maybe take me to the yard? Maybe simply talk to me for a short moment. This situation made my feeling of confinement much more realistic than if I had just logged on to see if people were around.

During my first experience with prison role play in Second Life, I engaged in a long term arc with someone playing a guard at that facility. This player was a master, she knew I was very much immersed in my character and played with that is very subtle yet effective ways. When I had been on alone for some time, she would show up and play with my emotional need for engagement. Sometimes this would result in amazing role play, other times she would simply leave me locked in my cell alone again. This would never have the effect had I not spent real time alone. To those who have not been involved with this style of play, this will be hard to comprehend, I never would have understood before my involvement. Yet the results were the most incredible role play I have ever seen.

Now this may not be what all role players want. Some want more vanilla role play in a prison environment, but for those wishing to role play a realistic prison experience being alone is a real part of the experience. I found the emotional experience was enhanced when I tried a few simple routines for my play. First I set hours when I would log on to play and stayed for the entire time regardless of my confinement situation. When on I avoided the camera cheats which allow you to “escape” your limitations and amuse yourself. I have always felt role play was a voluntary situational experience and when you use cheats, you simply cheat your own experience. The confinement and anticipation simply amplified the emotions of whatever role play followed. When alone I tried to do things I would be able to do if I was actually confined, reading or such things. For those seriously role playing inmates, the loss of control is part of the experience.

Some players make use of in world tools to aid in the experience such as the Restrained Life Viewer (RLV) which is fine. However I have felt that if you are serious about role playing an inmate, then you do not need tools to keep you from cheating. If you’re locked up and alone, then you’re locked up and should stay true to that. Being alone is the true test of this as only then are you either able to emotionally immerse yourself in the situation or simply disengage and move on to the distractions real life affords. Yet by letting yourself be immersed in your confinement you can take your role play to a whole new level.

Prison Role-play: Life without uniforms

Not every player in an online prison SIM needs to wear a uniform.  Quite the opposite.  Creating a viable and realistic background for a SL prison can be assisted by including a range of roles within the prison which complement, but don’t detract from, the inmate and guard roles.

These additional roles help the development of the “feel” of the online prison.  In their own way they are as important as the physical fabric of the prison. We’re talking here about medical services, police, investigators, psychologists, chaplains and court officials, as well as a host of other roles from the “outside world”.

Of course, an online prison is unlikely to have all of these additional roles filled at any one time.  But developing an environment in which players can pick up one of these additional or supporting roles from time to time is a useful way of allowing a new player into the SIM to catch a glimpse of what’s going on.

Its also a great way of allowing a longer-term player “time out” with a different character through using an Alt. Using alts in SL roleplaying is a topic in its own right.  Without getting into the pros and cons of using Alts, I think it’s fair to say that, handled sensibly, enabling a player to use an Alt to undertake a supporting or ancillary role in a prison can be a good way of allowing players to refresh their play, take a break from a main character, or focus on a different dynamic in role-play.  One of the interesting options for using a supporting role (for example a chaplain, or psychologist) is that this allows a focus on relationships with other players which is, at least ostensibly, outside the power asymmetry of inmate-guard relationships.  For players wanting something outside the mechanically focused role-play of the prison block, this can be a useful release.

Supporting roles also can give a chance for roleplay to be focused on a different technical or mechanical theme.  One of the first times I saw this was at Terminal Island when I was playing a guard and came across a player roleplaying a State Investigator.  Rather than seeing the investigator as just being a surrogate guard, the player had evolved the investigator’s role through looking at forensic science and saw the role of the investigator in the prison as being essentially a neutral agent.  The investigator was neither on the inmate’s side nor was she a guard in plain clothes.  This sort of balanced play really helped her character become important to players from all sides, and was a great example of how a supporting role can become important in the story arc of the prison, as well as giving other players a lot of openings for role-play.

It also fair to say that supporting roles don’t need to stop at the prison gates.  In the real world, prisons have never existed in a vacuum.  They mirror the world outside the walls.  Connections between the prison world and the outside world are a key element in movies and books – and the same should be true of roleplaying.  Whether the role is a Federal Prosecutor from the DA’s office, a newspaper reporter, or just an in-character friend on the other end of a prison pay-phone call, having the outside world interact with the online prison world is always a good way of creating and developing theme and context in prison roleplaying.

In practical terms, this also gives lots of opportunities to players from other SL SIMs to get involved.  Many of these roles don’t require much, if any preparation.  Perhaps my favorite prison scene is the prison visit by a friend or relative, not least because this always seems to feature in any prison-related movie or TV show.   Over the years, quite a few friends have visited my character in prison.  Some of the visits have been traumatic, some of them have been intimidating, some of them have been heart-breaking but all of them have been memorable.  Occasionally, friends have orchestrated visits long in advance, building up the role-play through IMs and Notecards.  More often, though, the visits have been arranged just a short time in advance, with the friend just simply turning up.  The visitor’s role is a good example of a very short term role which complements the more involved, immersive role-play in the prison, while retaining its own distinct character.

These types of interactions between the online prison world and the online world outside the prison walls help the creation of the atmosphere within the roleplaying SIM.  Just as there’s no darkness without light and no substance without shadow, the constant reminder in a prison of the world just out of touch can be used and abused by all players within the SIM.  Supporting roles really help achieve this connection and interaction.

Give one of them a try – and who knows, in time you may find you even prefer that role to one in a uniform!

Natascha Krokus

Prison Role-play: Switching Sides

Even the most engrossing and exciting role-play can get jaded over time.  The feeling can creep up on you that you’ve seen everything, met everyone, been everywhere in the role-playing setting and you’re ready for a change.  Online prison role-play in Second Life is no different and perhaps, with the close physical confines of a prison in mind, it’s a setting which is more prone than usual to players getting burnt-out.

There are a few solutions to this.  Of course, there’s the very obvious one of powering down the PC or laptop and leaving the SIM or, less drastically, joining another SIM with a different setting.  There’s another, very sensible, approach of cooling off and leaving the SIM for a while – things tend to look different when you’ve been away a few weeks. And there’s always the option to use an Alt alongside your main character – a pragmatic solution which helps the realism and immersion of the prison setting, while perhaps diluting the immersion of the player into their characters.

But what if you’re keen to continue your character’s roleplaying in a prison SIM without using an Alt but feel that, rather than the SIM being the problem the difficulty is that your character’s ‘story arc’ has come, or is coming, to a dead end?  Is there something you can do to extend the life of a character you’ve played for a while, perhaps in a different role within the same SIM?

In a prison SIM, there’s a possible route which might answer this question for you.  Switching sides is not easy, but it can create enormous depth of roleplay and re-invigorate a character who you think has come to the end of his or her story line.

By “switching”, I’m talking about a change of role.  Perhaps the first which comes to mind is the fairly well-worn route (at least in films and online roleplay) of a prison guard or police officer who transitions into an inmate through a variety of disastrous circumstances.  The guard might have assisted an inmate’s escape.  Perhaps he or she has been caught supplying drugs or contraband in a prison. Or perhaps there was a moment in her life when the world fell apart, in my own character’s history the point when I killed an inmate in a riot when serving as a prison officer.

This isn’t the only switch which is possible however.  It’s just as viable for an inmate to be paroled and continue in the SIM, perhaps working in the prison or another related SIM elsewhere in Second Life.  In one memorable occasion, one of the Terminal Island inmates was released and turned up at a “halfway house” for paroled women.  These transitions help to ground a SIM in a viable background reality and help continue the life of characters long after they leave their initial role.

Whatever the point of transition is going to be, it’s a good idea that your co-players are aware and supportive of the change.  The transitions are inevitably key moments in the history of the character making the transition, and that focus and excitement is something which is easy to spread to other players in the SIM.

I think it also helps to try and look ahead as far as you can in your character’s future when you’re considering the switch.  Is this a change you are likely to want to reverse? Is it just temporary, or intended to be permanent? How will it affect your character, and your relationships with other characters? Having a feel for these ideas will help you navigate the transition in a way which both gives you a great moment in the spotlight, but also brings other players into center-stage.

The actual point of transition is something which can be carefully planned, and again its good idea to try and use this as a focus of a role-play in which other players can participate.  It’s certainly a lot easier to precisely plan the day, or time, when the transition happens than it is to plan what comes afterwards.  Your switch may be the parole hearing if you’re playing an inmate, with you listening nervously to the arguments made for, and against, your release.  You might even want to track your switch to the gates of the prison, with a taxi waiting for you containing your ecstatic partner.  Scenes like this can the arranged and choreographed well in advance and provide a perfect focus to a long period of role-play leading up to the moment of switching.

Whatever the switch you plan, it’s worthwhile making sure you think about the timing and what comes next.  The switch from controller to controlled, such as a prison guard to an inmate, is more than just a switch of setting.  Once your intake is complete, you’ll pass from a world where you’re in charge to one in which your character can’t simply walk out of the prison block, and (in my experience) quite possibly can’t leave your locked-down cell.  Just as it should be, this transition is a huge change.  It takes a lot of time online to work through those changes.  As long as you realize this in advance, you’ll be golden.  Or, as I found, light blue.

Natascha Krokus

Prison Role-play : Playing a Guard

If it’s hard to imagine why a person would want to serve as an inmate in an online prison role-play, you may think it’s perhaps even harder to imagine why anyone would want to be a prison guard.

At first thought, it sounds like fun, especially after a hard day’s work. Power.  Control. Authority.  Your own private kingdom.  “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever”, someone once said.  Yes, that can be your boot.  Doesn’t that sound good after that lunatic nearly broadsided you at the interchange of 4^th and Main on the drive home tonight?  A chance to beat back at the cruel world, with the inmates as the target.

That kind of role-play release might be entertaining, for a while.  But like all role-play which is one-dimensional – here, the absolute physical abuse of power – it tends to get same-y pretty quickly.  And once you’re bored as a guard in an online prison, you’re really bored.

And yes, I’ve been there, and I guess at least a couple of you will have been there as well.

So is there another approach, one which combines the role of a prison guard in a Second Life SIM with a more interesting, involving play-style?  I think there is, although it’s only fair that I get my cards out on the table at this point.  After playing a prison guard for almost a year, and an inmate for almost three years, I can say that playing the inmate role has often been a lot easier from a role-play perspective.  The guard’s role took a fair amount of time to grow into.  I felt I needed to think through what I wanted to achieve and needed to invest a lot of time to realize that goal.  In the end, though, it’s a brilliant role to try and I can guarantee that in doing so, you’ll feel that you’re really giving something back to your SIM and the players in your prison.

How?

Think of the guard as being less of a boot stamping on the inmate’s head.  Think of the guard as being the balance between different events, styles and players in the prison.  Much of the mechanical role-play in a prison revolves around a guard.  She or he opens the cells, shackles the prisoners, takes them to a location, and takes them back again.  And a lot of the emotional and personal role-play in the prison is initiated by a guard or results from a guard’s actions.  A guard who helps one inmate probably antagonizes another, and in-character consequences can spiral out of control fairly quickly.

Without doing much the guard is providing settings for role-play and is providing a balance between the different inmates’ actions against, and between, each other.  Once a guard realizes this, they can work, alone or with inmates and other guards, to steer and direct action, or open opportunities for new role-play.

What started looking like a role suited for sadists or control-freaks starts to evolve into a role where a lot of the action can revolve around a guard who’s switched on and tuned in to what other players want to try and experience in the prison.  When that happens, the guard is not just a turnkey, but a person who the inmate players really look to, confide in and trust as a co-player aiming to create the environment best suited to the inmates’ role-play wish-list.

That doesn’t mean that the guard needs to lock away the baton, nightstick and shotgun.  Those kind of threats in the background always heighten tension, and that helps role-play.  But a collaborative approach to playing a guard is a lot more involving and interesting than stamping on heads forever.  And in the end, what’s interesting is what keeps a player playing – and that’s to everyone’s benefit in the long run.

Natascha Krokus

Prison Role-play : Playing an inmate

Playing an inmate in an online prison online isn’t really the first choice for many people if you’re looking for a fun, engaging and interesting role-play setting.  Unusual, yes.  Sometimes bizarre and strange – yes, that as well.  But as a first choice, well it wasn’t mine and probably wouldn’t be yours as well.

So how did this happen, and why on earth did I stay once it had?

I’d played a number of online SIMs and role-plays for a while in the late 2000s but I was really looking for a different environment by 2009 which was limited in the setting but unlimited in the depth of role-play it offered.

I was fairly tired of SIMs where you can wander for hours meeting different people each time.  I was looking for somewhere which was compact, geographically limited and gave the chance to bump up against the same players that I’d met before.  Even if you’ve never been in a prison SIM before, you’ll realize that the confining grey concrete walls of a correctional facility meet this first requirement.

I was also looking for a role-play environment which would offer the chance for a deeper style of role-play.  I say “environment” because I believe that the context, or setting, of a game influences the players’ reaction and play styles within it.  I was looking for something where I could develop a character, play that character for a long time, and see that character develop alongside other players.  Some environments help you do this more than others.  In my experience, they tend to be some of the “edgier” environments – places where you’re slightly uncertain what’s going happen, and where it’s not quite certain whether you’re the hunter, or the hunted.  The kind of environments which heighten tension also seem to help to develop role-play, and when a friend had mentioned prisons as being one of those environments, I started to be intrigued.

At first, like some of you I’m sure, I dismissed the idea out of hand.  Surely a prison was too limited a role-play.  What was there to do?  Who’d be there?  Do I just stare at concrete walls all day long?  And then, the more I thought about it and read around the subject, I started to see some of the opportunities.  The environment was certainly “edgy” – and sometimes even tense.  The physical properties of the prison SIMs in SL are frequently deeply impressive; so much work has gone into these over the years that, with the right lighting effect on your screen, you can’t help but feel slightly unnerved.  The location where role-play happens is confining, perhaps even restrictive, but that helps the role-play more often than it hinders it.

And once I’d started I found that these features had drawn a lot of other players with similar wish-lists of what they wanted to get from their online role-play.  There were players who wanted to examine the interaction between characters in a complex, social environment where there was a very clear power asymmetry.  There were players who wanted to create lasting relationships between inmates.  Players who were very interested in the mental aspects of prison life.  Players who wanted to fight “The System”.  And players who wanted to escape and saw their imprisonment as a personal challenge.  It wasn’t at all what I expected.  And while my character was in the prison (first as a guard, and then as an inmate – we’ll come to how that happened later), I started to see the opportunities opening up for detailed, immersive and challenging role-play.

Over the past few years I’ve therefore played the same inmate, developing my character in various ways.  During this time, some strange things have happened.  The features of prison role-play which I thought would be the focus of the action, have faded out of the picture.  By these I mean the mechanical actions in the prison role-play – inspections, searches, yard-time, visits to the canteen.  One other inmate mentioned to me that these mechanical actions were “going through the motions” – something which happens in the role-play, as in a real prison – and I think that’s right.  They’ve become part of the setting in which the really interesting aspects of the SIM take place.  By contrast, the types of social interaction which I’d hoped for, but not been sure how to find, have become central to my role-play.  Human interactions, friendships, enmities, fears, regrets, relationships with those on “the outside” and, above all, in-character hopes and dreams have become the heart of my experience of the SIM.  As a journey, that’s taken a while.  But as an engaging role-play experience, its more than I’d ever hoped when I first came through the doors of a prison almost four years ago.

Natascha Krokus

Welcome to Our Community’s New Presence

So why did we decide to create the Prison Role Play in Second Life group inworld and take on the task of building this website & forum? The answer is rather simple: We have been actively involved in the prison role play community for many years and feel the many individuals who are involved, or who may be interested in becoming involved should have a place where they can share, learn and improved their own experiences. For me, my involvement started more than 4 years ago at that legendary role play Asterion, created by the masterful Traci Gassner & Bethany Letrova. I had been involved with other more mainstream role play environments in second life for a couple years, but the whole prison theme made me a little curious. While quietly exploring a number of the RP environments in SL at the time I met one amazing soul who not only took me on a tour of many, but after learning my interests were mostly in RP, pointed me in the direction of Asterion.

Torie and Sanako at Asterion Circa 2008

What followed were several months of the most intense role play I had experiences and the creation of friendships which last today. In the years since, I have created a role play environment of my own, aided in the development of another and continue to be involved as the creator of products for those in the community. I understand the commitment of those creators, particularly those who build and operate role play environments, who spend untold hours to the stage upon which amazing role play occurs. That role play can be amongst the most intense and creative of any I have seen in Second Life.

Yet at the same time that role play comes in many different flavors and choosing the right one is essential to your personal experience. I was fortunate one weekend day to find an amazing guide who helped me find my place to start the adventure. Along the way I met so many great players who helped me along. However I know others who have struggled to find their place or to grow their one style of play. Still others have been just a little curious about prison role play, but never did find the place to start. The whole prison role play is a bit of a guilty pleasure. That is why we have created this group. We believe sharing information, experiences, advice and yes, personal viewpoints can help the community as a whole grow in both size and quality. Hope you not only enjoy, but take some time to share your thoughts and experiences by contributing your words and pictures.