Lilly's Irish Pub

Time for some shameless self promotion. Where in SL can you find:

• A wonderful Irish sim?
• An Irish pub with a great ambience?
• Awesome DJs every day?
• Three great hosted trivia events every week?
  

Lilly's of course! Lilly's was one of the first trivia events I went to in SL, and as most of you know I'm one of the current hosts there.

If you haven't been you so should. Lilly and Rudi have created a wonderfully atmospheric Irish sim with the pub at the centre of it. The pub is a busy place, and it certainly isn't all about trivia, and the club features DJ sets from Chantal Glenwalker, Mars Lake, Ronin Stormwind, Accacia Brissot, Sandi Losangeles, and of course Lilly25 Connolly and Rudolf Moo themselves. And I must mention Capi who works behind the bar, and my good friend Whisper who puts so much energy into making people feel welcome. And Lilly and Rudi are such a pleasure to work for!

Trivia crew!

Chantal, Rev, Karmel, Lotus, Whisper and Lovelee at Lilly's

I've been hosting at Lilly's since January, when Nelly and I spammed Lilly's group IM demanding trivia back during the week. We took it over from Alliekatt Knipper, and kept her format of 30 questions with a halftime break. We wanted something different, so we put in the T-shirt Challenge at the end. For those who haven't been, the first person to get the challenge question within 5 seconds wins a special T-shirt and at least 200L. If there is no winner we roll 50L over to the next event.

Last night's challenge question was on the subject of Chick Lit:

Which novelist wrote "The Camomile Lawn", "Harnessing Peacocks" and "The Vacillations of Poppy Carew"? Anamaria got the correct answer Mary Wesley, but not within 5 seconds, and we rollover 250L to Friday!

The Easter Egg is a clip hidden (not very hidden) in my event notices, and the last question before the break is about the clip. Everyone who gets it in 5 seconds gets pain. I try and make it easy so anyone who did watch it will get the answer. Yesterday's clip was a cartoon clip, the questions was "where is the only place you can find lions and tigers?", and the answer is, of course, Kenya.

We have "teh" bonuses of 5L for the first person to spot my irritiating "teh" typo, and we have halftime Stand on the Rug trivia, for anyone who wants to ask questions of their own. Nelly started out at Lilly's doing half time trivia when Allie ran the event.

Hosting with Nelly has been one of the most enjoyable things I have done in SL. She hasn't been able to host lately because of RL commitments, but we have some new excting hosts at Lilly's! Rickson has his own event at Cafe Trivia but he's a Lilly's host too. Karmel was talent spotted at Sharon's Bring Your Own Trivia, and Karmel's Kookbook is always open on Fridays, which leaves us with Rev on Wednesdays, and I've already told him I'm NOT going to be his altar girl.

I need to say that the Lilly's Wednesday and Friday events aren't my events, Rudi and Alliekatt diid them before me, and I'm just one of the current hosts. But I do do Early Birds and Night Owls at 11pm on Fridays, and that is mine. I noticed when I was on at 7am UK time, that my North American friends were still about. Earlybirds doesn't have the bells and whistles of the main Lilly's events, but Chantal or Mars DJ for us if they're about and the ambience is more subdued that the usual shouty stuff we do.

Karmel of the Kookbook fame. Anamaria looks chilled and ready to take our Lindens, as usual

The last thing I have to say is that I need more comments because I'm feeling lonely! So where persuasion and cajolery don't work I'll try bribery and put a question at the end of my posts. Oh, and I just realised I hadn't enabled comments from unregistered readers, I've done that now!

If you're the first person to post the correct answer in comments you get 50L in-world, so make sure I know your SL name.

Soooo.. here we go for 50L:

Which valley has the highest mountain, the deepest lake and the biggest liar in England?

Theminess...

What do Hawaii, 4th July, movies, music lyrics and TV have in common? You're right, the theme of this post is themes, and all of those subjects are themes of trivia events on this week.

I was saying in my last post that, as you might expect, players seem to host in a style that reflects their preferences as players. To digress, I also think that, while you don't have to be a star trivia player to host an event well, the best hosts tend themselves to be good players, and understand the questions, and who can be flexible with unexpected answers.

I just saw Lette do this at the post-nakieness wind-down at Chaos. She asked: "A leading banana exporter, what Central American republic borders the Caribbean & the Pacific and starts with C?" and got both Colombia and Costa Rica as answers, quickly realised it was a bad question and paid both answers. We all ask bad questions sometimes, and some hosts get into all sorts of difficulties when they do.

Rach and Lotus attempt to re

ad Lette's notecard at Chaos Truth or Dare. Chaos runs 2030 SLT Saturdays.

Visibility may be restricted due to giant rezzed phallic objects.

I rather got off my subject there, didn't I? I hardly ever do themed events because I don't much like them as a player. The problem for me is that I can spend 2 hours at a themed event and not know the answer to a single question. Ask me about comic books and, well, my ignorance is profoun. Meanwhile the others are having a whale of a time getting all the questions right. Sometimes I just don't go to an event I usually enjoy because I know I'll know nothing.

And, of course, it sometimes works in my favour. If anyone is thinking of doing a Jane Austen theme please let me know well in advance so I can keep my SL diary free! But I rather think having me get half the questions won't be much fun for everyone else.

Mako and Rach at Chaos

at Double Standards, snapshot used with permission of course!

Love the T-shirt, Rach, but are you sure a defibrillator works through a T-shirt?

I've been to some seriously good themed trivia events. Lebn Bucyk runs a sweet event "Barefoot in Furu" on Sundays at 1200. The 25 questions come in five themes of five questions, and the themes are complete nonsequiturs. Barbarians, South Pacific, Biblical Names, guitars, it's wonderful. Some themes are broad enough to allow variety, and Sharony subjects like "Rocks" or "Little" are so vague that the questions can be about almost anything. I remember Lebn saying he's been criticised for being too intellectual. Lebn, here's someone who just loves your intellectuallity, even if there might not be such a word really. Your event rocks, it so does!

Lebn hosting his Barefoot event in his cool and understated way

There is another theme to this theme too. Two of the subjects in my first paragraph are definitely American, and I have juuust a slight suspicion that the movies won't be Carry On, the lyrics won't be Pet Shop Boys and the TV won't be Father Ted. That's far too good an idea for a post to waste right now, and I rather think I'll be coming back to that one another time.

Do let me know what you think, as always!

Let me entertain you!

Reading other blogs, I’ve been struck by how differently people think what makes a good trivia event. Some trivia players I know and respect seem to be saying that they like events to run at a brisk pace with a fast QPH (questions per hour, thanks Lette).

Now I was quite surprised by that. While there’s something to be said for getting the event moving along, as a player I really do like the host to go some way towards entertaining us. And 1 hour events for me are a little like shrimps: they can be delicious but in the end a little unsatisfying.

I know some people have limited time, especially those who play during work hours. Some people will just want the questions, answers and lindens, and for new players much of what goes on apart from the questions might seem exclusive and cliquey.

But that’s not me! I like to get to an event, say hi to my friends, maybe exchange a few IMs and take part in the general chat that goes with most trivia events. And I like my trivia hosts to entertain me, so step forward the great entertainers of Second life, like Sinnamon Sands, Nelly Swindlehurst and Sharon Scofield! A good host like the three S’s can fill the time between questions and get the best out of the crowd. And DJs, yes please, especially ones that take my requests and play British music. Angelo and Sinn, that's you. I mean, who can tire of the Kaiser Chiefs and Blur? Sploders don’t do it for me, but people seem to like them, so bring them on! 

I blogged some of this from Circe’s Inferno event. The theme was Arabian Nights and the club was full of carpets, camels, tents and cushions. The place was packed with guests wearing harem clothing, the DJ was buzzing (no Brit music but hey not perfect here either!). The effect was magical and, for me entertaining. One player had to spoil the effect of course by having nothing appropriate in her inventory and had just woken up and not enough time to get anything, no prizes for guessing who that was.

And, I guess, we carry our likes and dislikes as players over to our hosting style. So at our Lilly’s event we have T-shirt challenge prizes with rollovers, money for typos, Easter Eggs and halftime guest trivia. Sometimes I hope it works, sometimes maybe it doesn’t, but it’s the sort of thing I like as a player and I sure enjoy doing it as a host.

Alanna, Honey and Rosalyn go Arabian Nights at Inferno

Circe's Trivia at Inferno on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 2030

And, a final point, there are so many hosted events about right now that it shouldn’t be too difficult to find events that suit your taste in trivia, and please don't anybody think I am saying there is only one way to run trivia events.

Do let me know what you think!

Sharon's Diner

Sharon Scofield sending Bo Cordoso to sleep
in the background









My first post is about where I first found true trivia love. Sharon's Diner is the first trivia event I went to as an SL newbie and I realised there was a whole world of SL trivia to tap into.

The setting is Sharon's Diner, with all the jokes about Ella the Salmon, mortality rates among the customers and visits from Environmental Health.

And it works so well. I call Sharon my hosting role model because she's just so good. She's friendly to newcomers, keeps the conversation going and, though she themes her questions, the questions have a wide enough range to stop players dominating the event.

On Mondays Sharon has started BYOT: Bring your own Trivia. The idea is that players ask questions of their own and Sharon hands out the prizes. It's one of the ways that people can try their hands at trivia hosting without the sttress of running a whole event, and the talent spotters from Lilly's Irish Pub have already recruited Karmel from Sharon's BYOT.




Until recently Wednesdays was Maggie Sewell's Wheel of Misfortune. Every fifth winner had the chance to spin the wheel for a random prize, which in my case was usually 0L but could be 1000L. Maggie's not doing it at the moment, and the new Wednesday star is Weniki Oh, the Miss Whiplash of SL Trivia.

I'm going to come back to the show element of trivia in a little while, but Sharon's Diner is an event that is far more than the sum of it's questions.

Sharon's Diner is open for business Monday-Thursday 0900-1100 SLT

Welcome to Lotus-Pocus!

Joining the blogosphere...



This blog is mostly going to be about Second Life. I've been on SL for 9 months now, and created precisely three T shirts and nothing else. There has been a flurry of blogging from my SL Trivia friends, and this afternoon I was complaining about being bored to my friend Jez Oh... ...and she said "why not start a blog?" So why not? My big thing in SL is trivia, and it's going to be mostly about the love of my life, lots of useless facts, collecting in my brain ever since I could read. So welcome to my blog, and please comment as much as you want!

My inspirations for this blog are Cully Andel and Lou Nietzen's SL blogs. But the guiding star of all SL trivia blogs is Lette Ponnier's wonderful SL Virtual Trivia blog. I'll post the links once I work out how to do it!