Come and discover Imperial Ar IV
I’ve been ill for the past few weeks, which has made my work more difficult, both professionally and for Gorean Archives. Even my presence on Second Life has been affected. In short, I haven’t had much to smile about lately, but despite this, the sim I play on is still as exciting and fun as ever for me, and I wanted to tell you about it again.
Imperial Ar IV is the city of Ar, or at least part of it: the imperial district with the Ubar’s palace, the administrative centers of the upper castes, and a residential district with its services: tavern, inn, hotel, brothel, and also markets and various shops. But what makes a Gorean role-playing sim so powerful is not its setting, even though, as you will see from my photos, it is magnificent, but its community and its rules.
Imperial Ar IV has a very close-knit core of players, with owners who also take on the role of facilitators and participants, uniting the community around them with rules based on roleplay, kindness, and inclusivity above all else. Yes, that means LGBT+ people are welcome, and so are their characters.
Here, there is no piuw-piew meter and no “the best is the one with the best internet connection, the best graphics card, and who is trained in first-person shooter games.” Combat is managed by a dice-based game system based on roleplay and description, which allows for dramatic and lively clashes and confrontations. An even richer, scripted, and automated system based on the principles of tabletop role-playing is currently being developed.
As for the rest of the rules, she reminds us that the Gor novels are not a game guide, but stories, and that taking the novels literally is essentially a mistake. Finally, it reminds us that Gor is a planet-opera-style science fiction world, much closer to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars Cycle (if you’ve seen the movie John Carter, you have an idea of what I mean) than to Conan and other low-fantasy novels set in a medieval or ancient world.
You can also check out the preliminary rules at this link, in PDF format: imperial-ar-rules-1
As for the dice combat system, you can see it in this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oDG6XroXMcj_XduZ63KYXcEqGYIYSn9rt5hM5JcfS6Q/edit?tab=t.0
But is that all there is to it? Oh no, because we need to add regular and numerous events, whether they be investigations following thefts or murders (and we’re talking real investigations and mysteries!), duels, warrior training, tournaments of all kinds, organized parties, public meetings, and so on.
So all that’s missing is you! Want to know more? Contact Marlenus (Dyce Boucher) or Syndel (Syndel Daviau), or come visit the sim whenever you want.
SLurl to visit Imperial Ar: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Illuminati/128/132/1001
Some photos !
