​Dear Friends

The last few years have been amazing. We would like to thank the thousands of players who have passed through our SIM, contributed to the SIM's story-line & made it the vibrant place we have all been proud to call home at some point. 

As you would have noticed, the admin team has not really been around the last few months. And we do not see the situation changing anytime soon. Unfortunately this means no build upgrades, poor support and a diminished Roleplay experience compared to what you have come to expect.

We had hoped to stay open by making some systematic changes to how the SIM is administered. We started by trying to push more of the RP leadership & administration burden to our business leads. When that failed, we tried to hire new admins to fill the void. Meanwhile, we hoped against hope that we did not need too many admins in the presence of strong Roleplay leaders.

Unfortunately, we have run out of time to pilot these changes. Dera is still caught up RL & Kuluk won't be able to log in for several months. It is thus with a heavy heart that we announce Asphyxiation Point will close its doors to the public starting April 15th 2018. We apologize for the short notice but we have a very narrow window of opportunity to wind down in an orderly fashion.

We do not know if we will resurrect AP or initiate a new effort when we do get back. AP was always supposed to be an experiment. One that brings together all types of characters from all walks of life - be they rich, poor, good, bad, beautiful or ugly. That experiment proved successful & made AP one of the best known SIMs in SL. However, that recipe has since been copied so many times, AP is no longer as unique as we would like it to be.

We would thus like to explore & RP on other SIMs before embarking on anything new. Please stay in the Asphyxiation Point group, (and befriend Kuluk & Dera) if you are interested in our future endeavors. We could use your help in figuring out what our next great adventure should be. Those of you who know us personally, know how much we hate being admins & everything it entails. So we probably won't start anything unless there is strong demand & a strong core team.

If you currently rent on SIM, the remainder of your rent will be refunded on April 15th. All groups except the "Asphyxiation Point Urban Roleplay" group will be disbanded. OOC communication is permitted in the Asphyxiation Point group effective immediately. Please use it as a resource to find your next home as it is populated by a lot of Roleplayers besides those you see on AP. If you wish to know what SIMs Dera & Kuluk plan to explore once back, please hit us up in IMs.

Once again, thank you all so very much. We will cherish this experience for a long time to come. Yes we might have disagreed at various points. Violently even. But the creativity, commitment, and sense of community you all showed us made it well worth it all. Especially those of you who stuck with us through both the good times & the bad. 

Thank you all once again. 

The players of
Deranean Sands
Charles Newton Kuluk (kuluk)

The word Chief usually relates to a ruler of people. When you toss in the word 'Police' to that, it means a strong, inspiring leader for an organization that may sometimes be the brunt of many jokes, but is also a force of nature in its own right. 

With that definition made clear, it is our great pleasure to announce the new title of Police Chief to Kerri Oakleaf, Lead of the APPD and head of a faction that AP would not be able to survive without. 

Please join us in congratulating her on her new title.

​The AP Admin Team

Asphyxiation Point is a non-profit community project built by Roleplayers for Roleplayers. As a result, we all sit together from time to time to figure out what we are doing right, what we can do better and what we can collaborate on to make Asphyxiation Point bigger and better than it already is.

We originally planned to do Town Halls once every three months or so. But we have received so many new players since January that we decided to push up the calendar a bit. If you happen to be one of these new players, we wish you a warm welcome to Asphyxiation Point !  The Town hall is a chance for you to ask questions, suggest ideas, get instantaneous feedback from the community and the admins. To know more, we would heavily recommend reading the invitation and the minutes to the first town hall in January

​Step 1 : Fill in the suggestion / feedback form to suggest agenda items. Given the number of players involved we may not be able to get to items not in the agenda on time.
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Step 2 : Turn up ! Dates, times and venues listed  below. Once again, thank you for making Asphyxiation Point such a vibrant and happening place to be in.

Vision : "To create the most diverse, friendly and engaging urban role-play community in Second Life."

Mission : "To establish Asphyxiation Point as the Second Life Urban Role-play destination of choice for those looking for
(a) diversity in character types and roleplay opportunities, 
(b) engaging and lasting storylines, and
​(c) respect for roleplayers and their choices in role-play."

If you read our vision and mission statements, we are not about creating the BEST roleplay experience in Second Life. Roleplay means a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of different people and we are never going to be able to please each and every person who lands on our docks. What we do wish to be however... is different. And how do we do it? By picking on some key differentiating factors and sticking to it. Our mission statement best captures our long term strategy to do so :

(a) Diversity in character types and roleplay opportunities : To give you a bit of background, this is why Asphyxiation Point was created in the first place. There are plenty of excellent Urban Roleplay SIMs out there. But most focus on either upscale RP or seedy RP or erotic RP or gang warfare or ... you get the picture. The objective of Asphyxiation Point is to bring together characters from different financial backgrounds, different social stratas, different professions and see what kind of magic ensues. In some ways, Asphyxiation Point is a grand experiment. An experiment that may still go one way or the other. Balancing a large number of Roleplayers and roleplay types and interests is no easy feat and we depend greatly upon the community to make it happen. But its also what sets us apart and the support we have received so far has been overwhelming.

(b) Engaging and lasting storylines : Let's focus on the word "storylines" first. Storylines come in three phases... Initiation, continuation and termination. Of the three, initiation is the part most players need help with. Initiating storylines means reaching out to new roleplayers, pulling them into existing storylines or sparking off new ones. At a SIMwide level we have a couple of mechanisms to encourage this : Businesses and events. Businesses give people a way to RP their way onto SIM. Events help introduce roleplayers to other roleplayers. But neither guarantees a long-lasting storyline. The strongest asset we have to engage new roleplayers is other roleplayers such as you. Go out there and make it a mission to draw new people into Roleplay. Encourage others to do the same. Inclusion is at the very heart of Asphyxiation Point. The day we turn into a bunch of cliques.... We might as well stop Roleplaying at Asphyxiation Point.

(c) Respect for roleplayers and their choices in role-play : A lot of people have asked us why our application process is so much lighter than other SIMs. There are no multiple-choice quizzes, not even a character background. Same goes for why our  moderators act as mediators to facilitate a dialogue instead of passing judgement. The motivation is simple. We give everyone the benefit of doubt and treat them like mature role-players unless circumstances force otherwise. By the same token, we hold our Roleplayers to higher standards and ask them to show similar respect to other Roleplayers. Roleplayers MUST consent to actions affecting their characters either via RP or negotiation in IMs. This is why we severely limit area-of-effect (A0E) attacks such as bombs, chemical attacks and other Roleplay where opt-out is difficult. Its why we encourage establishing intent long before making a move that may potentially affect another character. It is also why we enforce negotiation for use of OOC artifacts like props and NPCs.

Asphyxiation Point opened for Roleplay on February 22nd 2015.  A lot of focus over the first few months was simply keeping up with the tide of new Roleplayers. That didn't mean we didn't have some high-level goals to work on for 2015 : 

1. Learn, improve and make appropriate build / lead / rule changes.
2. Build a community and encourage ownership of role-play ideas.
3. Attract and retain novice role-players via marketing and roleplay.

1. Learn, improve and make appropriate build / lead / rule changes : 2015 was a time of learning... a time of change. We learned a lot from you. And made changes accordingly. Some of these changes were planned since the beginning. Examples of these are the SIM owned businesses evolving over time. Asphyxiation Point was created and opened in a span of 2 weeks. As you can imagine, there were a lot of build ideas we never got to fully implement and so we have slowly made changes over time. And we will continue to do so to ensure that Asphyxiation Point remains the most visually appealing Urban Roleplay SIM in Second Life. Other changes have been reactive in nature. The leadership team has naturally changed over time as the community grew and people's Real Life's got more or less busy. Our rules have evolved over time as well as we ran into corner cases we did not imagine hitting on day one.

2. Build a community and and encourage ownership of role-play ideas : 2015 was also a year of growth. Through your efforts, we added 280 members a month, or close to 10 roleplayers a day, in the last 10 months. Granted only a minority of these 2800 members are active Roleplayers at AP today, but the statistic represents an extremely large number of Roleplayers "potentially" interested in Asphyxiation Point, and is a fraction of the number of Roleplayers who have come to just check us out. While growing the community was nearly effortless given the amazing effort you guys put in, we had not realized how tightly controlled most people's Roleplay experiences had been in other SIMs. It took us a bit of time to propagate the culture of taking ownership of Roleplay ideas but it seems to have worked. Most of you no longer "suggest" events. You just send us proposals with date, times and requirements. The same applies for storylines. The only time we get contacted is when something needs admin approval, when there are prim/prop requirements, or when proposed storyline may affect the balance of Roleplay at Asphyxiation Point. 

3. Attract and retain novice role-players via marketing and roleplay : The pool of Roleplayers in Second Life is limited at the end of the day and attrition is a fact of life. Getting more people interested and involved in Roleplay is critical not just to Asphyxiation Point but for the continued growth of Urban Roleplay in Second Life. We worked on attracting novice Roleplayers by ensuring we are well placed in Second Life Search, Destination Guide, and third party blogs; as well as making appearances outside of the Roleplay community from time to time (such as the SL12 Birthday and the more recent photography contest). Retaining novice role-players once they do come check us out has been a slightly bigger hurdle. While Asphyxiation Point has one of the most friendly and welcoming communities in Second Life, it can be intimidating to be surrounded by experienced (and amazing) role-players without the right support structure in place. We need to do better in training and retaining novice role-players for long term growth.

Much of our high-level goals for 2015 are still very much relevant for 2016. What we hope to achieve by describing these high-level goals to you is two-fold : 

1. Get the community more involved in the goals we are lagging on.
2. Identify additional goals we may not have thought of.

1. Get the community more involved in the goals we are lagging on : For 2016 we would like to engage you to reach goals both old and new. Tell your friends about Asphyxiation Point and show them around. Doesn't matter if its just one person or that one person leaves after a few days... every person we introduce to / retain in the lovely world of Roleplay is a potential win. Same goes for novice Roleplayers you randomly run into on SIM. Often a few supportive words is all they need to become a valuable part of the Roleplay community. Similarly, coach through example on how to spark new storylines and continue the great job you have done in 2015 ! Or maybe we have been going about this all wrong and you have wonderful new ideas on how to achieve the high-level goals we have already described. Share them with the rest of us !
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2. Identify additional goals we may not have thought of : We do speak to you every day in IMs, in group chats or even in Roleplay. As a result, we get ideas and suggestions almost every day. But that doesn't mean we have collectively thought of everything that can potentially make Asphyxiation Point an even more exciting place to Roleplay in. Anything and everything you can think of is worth discussing and worth identifying resources for as it is the community that makes the SIM at the end of the day. Maybe you can help us with some of our existing goals? Maybe there is something we haven't thought of that the community as a whole should be really focusing on? We have a few ideas on the backburner as to what these things should be but we would like to hear from you first.

The survey above just helps us identify topics that all (or most) of the community finds important. We would like to eventually discuss these topics in an OOC town hall meeting. 

OOC Town Hall Meeting 1
Date : Jan 10th 2016
Time : 5pm SLT
Venue : Asphyxiation Point District Court Basement (The new courtroom)

We will have limited time so please do fill in the survey beforehand. We will post meeting minutes at the end of Town Hall Meeting 1 and ask for feedback to determine if an additional town hall meeting (in a different timezone) is required.

Its easy to lose track of time when you are having fun. And so you may be forgiven for not noticing the date. This Saturday (8/22/2015), Asphyxiation Point will officially be 6 months old. There will be no OOC celebration, no fanfare. But we would like to share with you what an experience it has been and how we can do better still.

Asphyxiation Point opened its doors to the public on 2/22/2015. Since then we have been the fastest growing roleplay SIMs on Second Life with close to 1800 members in the main Asphyxiation Point group. That's an average increase of 300 group members per month or 10 group members a day !!!

We the admin team can by no means take credit for these amazing numbers. At the end of the day it is you - the roleplayers - who flesh the SIM out, give it character, and draw other roleplayers in. If you hadn't been such a great group we wouldn't have been able to drive and sustain this growth. Through your efforts, we are not just attracting folks from other roleplay SIMs, we are engaging folks who have never roleplayed in SL.

So yes... Firstly, a big THANK YOU to all of you !

But there is always room for feedback, always room for improvement, so we always want to hear from you. We are always available to talk to inworld but its easy to get bogged down with day-to-day activities when doing so. What we would like today is to hear what you love about Asphyxiation Point and how we can make Asphyxiation Point even more exciting.

Some of the areas we have already identified are :

1. Admin coverage : Please visit the Help Page for the latest list of admins. The list does change  so please keep referring back when looking for assistance.
2. Businesses : Most of the businesses on SIM now have active and steady leads. If you are a steady roleplayer on SIM, please consider applying too!
3. Factions : The neighborhood restriction has been lifted. Any three business leads may now apply to form a faction. Factions will be approved based on level of activity.
4. Events : This is one area where we feel we are lagging behind. If you are interested in organizing something, please reach out to the admin team. You wont be alone doing it. Our staff are more then willing to help in anyway possible.
5. Rentals : We have steadily added new rentals since opening. Please sign up for notifications as apartments come up for rent every week.
6. Rules : The rules have been simplified, streamlined and augmented since opening. Please take the time to browse through if you haven't done so in a while.
7. Lag : For those of you on older / ultra portable machines, the increased activity on SIM may be lagging you out. We hope the recently added Lag Guide will help !

 Once again, we can not thank you all enough for making Asphyxiation Point what it is.
 We hope the next 6 months go as well as the first!, we can't do it without you!

February has been an incredibly  exciting month. At the beginning of February, all we had was a group of role-players who wanted true diversity in role-play. They wanted to explore what happens when you bring darkness and light, happiness and gloom, beauty and ugliness all in the same place. In less than three weeks, Asphyxiation Point was born and the SIM officially opened for role-play on 2/22/2015.

In many ways, Asphyxiation Point is a new experiment in Second Life Role-play. For those of you who have explored the SIM,  you would have noticed how the build transitions seamlessly from run-down and seedy to upscale and outright classy. These Neighborhoods weren't accidental. They were purely by design. We wanted to give role-players a home irrespective of what kind of character they want to play. Truly exciting and immerse story-lines are born when you run into a character completely different from your own. Straddling the class divide was the means we latched onto to encourage this diversity.

Diversity however is not determined by the build alone. At the end of the day, diversity is about people. It is about how you play your character and what kind of character you play. Please be mindful of what neighborhood you are in when you are role-playing there and how the local population there would expect you to behave. Asking for a vintage drink in lower town will probably get you laughed at. Yelling and cussing in upper town will probably get your thrown out. Please be aware of the consequences before you engage in a certain type of role-play.

Asphyxiation Point was never about one person's vision. We had a group to begin with but we didn't want the vision to be determined by this small group either. We wanted a mechanism via which any person could become a role-play leader. The various businesses you see around town was how we went about doing so. Players whose vision align closely with our own can apply to become leads for SIM Owned businesses. Players who are more adventurous and want to bring something completely new onto SIM may rent a shop and run a Player owned business instead. As long as these businesses conform to the neighborhood they are in, your imagination has no limits.

We will however attempt to keep the amount of conflict in check. Conflict based RP is exciting and invigorating but it also tends to overwhelm other kinds of role-play.  And our goal from the very beginning was to support ALL kinds of roleplay. As a result, conflict in Asphyxiation Point will be managed via a limited number of Factions. Unlike other SIMs, these factions in turn will be tied to the neighborhoods they are based out of. A group of three or more business owners in the same neighborhood can put forward a faction application starting early April. These factions can be gangs, the mafia or simply a business conglomerate for mutual gain.  There are no random mayhem gangs in Asphyxiation Point. It takes time for organized crime to gain foothold in a new place. Please take the time to role-play it out.

For those of you who have been on SIM since day 1, here is a summary of the changes we made in the last one week : 

1. The SIM Laws have been updated. Notably the combat and vehicles sections.
2. The procedure for finding jobs and leading a business has been streamlined / explained.
3. 8 new houses have been built in upper-town.
4. Prim only rentals have been put down in the garage opposite the police department. These are targeted specifically towards those wanting to rez vehicles on SIM.
5. We have approved more than 100 citizenship applications and are close to 100% rental occupancy even with all the new housing. If you rent more than one property on SIM, please give them up so that another role-player can move on SIM. One house and one business is okay.

As of 8:00am SLT 2/22/2015, the scenic town of Asphyxiation Point is officially open for roleplay. Welcome to your new second life roleplay destination !