Abertun Upon Whyburn, Ruritania - A childhood dream of a Southern English Countryside

• Theme: Old fashioned village scene with mystery game
• Grid: Littlefield
• Owner: Xi Shi
• Maturity rating: A
• Rating (1-6):
• Lag:4
• Design: 5
• Scripting: 6
• Experience:5
• Address (Copy and paste into map search box):
• Local: Ruritania-V
• Hypergrid: lfgrid.com:8002:Ruritania-V

Ruritania is such a rich and complex sim, we can't cover it all in one blogspot. We have to take one bit at a time and let's start with the first thing new visitors see: the charming little 1950s style village of Abertun Upon Whyburn.

Example of a local to talk to

It seems to be such a charming, quiet little place but don't let it fool you, there are secret mysteries hidden. Talk to the local NPCs and they wil start you on what can only be described as a combination of a mystery game, and adventure game and a treasure hunt.

It's a tricky one, I'm not sure if anybody has ever managed to finish it, but there are rewards to collect on the way and it takes you all over Ruritania.







Or you can skip all of that and just enjoy the scenery - that's your choice. The sim is A rated and some parts of it are very much so. Not Abertun though, it's just nice. Except for this house:

The hospital, that's where you can play ... ummm... doctor and nurse - or possible nurse and nurse.

Xi Shi is one of Second Life's all-but-forgotten masters of prim building (her SL name is Followmeimthe Piedpiper) and the village is mainly based on mesh versions of her old prim buildings. That gives the whole place the rather angular look that isn't very fashionable today but even so, it still feels so much more real than most modern highly detailed mesh scenes.
There are several reasons for this: the relatively low lag, the consistent style (no sore thumbs sticking out here), the movement (animated birds, chimney smoke, moving cars, trains and canal boats, NPCs who actually interact with you in sensible ways...) and - perhaps most of all - the scale. It's all done close to real life size, no oversized buildings towering over the avatars here:

Enough said! Or not nearly enough... I could go on for ages. But a picture says more than a thousand words, so here we go:

The entry point