Preview: Herb & Fable from Jinx

Today I have something exciting to share with you all. Julala, the creator of the Jinx Second Life Centaur and other such creatures, is making a game. This will be a foraging and cultivating roleplay game.

I’m going to be working through the initial process of starting the game, as an Alpha tester (and am posting these previews with explicit permission from Julala). This means following a series of set tasks and providing feedback on what does or doesn’t work as expected. It also means by the time you play the game, the messages or images you see may be quite different.

The first steps are adding the Meter and HUD.

The Meter displays your Herb & Fable stats above your avatars head.
The Main Herb & Fable HUD
When you first wear these items, you will receive a welcome message in local chat and a list of starting stats.

Using the HUD buttons you will create an account on the Herb & Fable website by submitting your email address into the dialog box and following the instructions. The website then stores all your achievements and stats as you play.

Your email address will be your login for the Heb & Fable website

You will be able to customise your Profile page with a photo and change the name displayed (which by default is your login email address).

You will also choose a Class and a Gender, which includes a non-binary option. There may be some expansion or customisation of this using a label of some kind later.

There are 22 different Classes to choose from
Gender options of Male, Female & Non-Binary to choose from.

You will also have two additional HUDs to wear; a Pouch for in-game currency (not Linden Dollars) and a Bag that will contain your collected items & ingredients.

The three Herb & Fable HUDs

So now I’m all set-up, time for some basic tasks to see how the game works.

Task: Boiling water

Collect Water from the Well
Head over to the Fire and click the Kettle

Simples!

Task : Growing Cleavers

This consisted of fetching more water from the well and planting seeds in a soil bed, then havesting them.

Cleaver bed ready for planting
Prompt to confirm planting seeds
Cleavers beginning to grow

This process takes aboutt 30 minutes, you don’t have to stand and watch over them.

Task: Cleaver Juice

Once my Cleavers were grown I was able to harvest them to make juice with. It’s also possible to forage from other people’s plant beds, to gain a Foraging badge.

The Juicer
Dialog: select what kind of juice you want to make
Confirm making cleaver juice

The produced glass of Cleavers juice contains 3 servings and can be drunk to restore lost health points.

Task: Incense

This involved grinding some cinnamon using a pestle & mortar, before using it in an incense burner.

Image from Gyazo
The pestle and mortar can be used to grind several things
Image from Gyazo

I think for now that’s enough to give you an idea of how this game will work. These simple steps will all be combined to make recipes for different things, such as a cake, which I’ll be attempting next.

There are also a number of Rituals that Julula has made; Protection , Yule and Winter Solstice. These animated set peices are already available to purchase, including a voucher for an update to Herb & Fable versions when the game is released.

I mentioned the website earlier and that’s quite important. As I completed the tasks I earned badges for them, grouped into different categories/disciplines. As you play the game you may choose to specialise in one particular area.

Bear in mind that the dialog boxes and messages you will see may be quite different from those shown, by the time they’re publicly released. There will be capabilities for third-party creators to make items for the game as well.

Herb & Fable Links:

The Taur Rider

The store Salt & Pepper released a new outfit recently called Western Rider at the Teegle Dog & Pony Show. This obviously resulted in a slew of photos on social media of people wearing it, usually on horseback.

While that’s all very well and good, I felt like trying a different take on it. I got an idea when at a Western theme party not long ago I heard the song lyrics “Save a horse, ride a cowboy”. It made me think; any woman can be a “cowgirl” she just needs the right kind of ride….

While that might have been fun, I like to keep my blog PG rated, so I veered away from that train of thought,instead I thought “Why ride a horse when you can ride a Centaur?”

Imagine if Centaurs weren’t the graceful beings we see them portrayed as in stories and Second Life community. What if they were as Wild as the old West? Could they be tamed, made civilized? Intriguing questions that may lead to an interesting story in the future.

I want to say a big thankyou to Tori Landau for playing the part of the Centaur in the photos and suggesting the idea of Wild.

Rider Credits:

  • Clothes: Western Rider by Salt & Pepper at Teegle Dog & Pony Show
    (Western Rider does have a matching hat you can purchase)
  • Hat & Hair: TRUTH Montana – Redhead with Hat – TRUTH
  • Skin: Milk ELIANE skin (EVO-X) – WoW Skins::

Centaur Credits:

  • Hair: NO_SAVIOUR by NO.MATCH
  • Top: Malefic Top by Scarlet Fey (group gift)
  • Centaur: JINX CenLighTaur – Jinx Store
  • Tail:Fluffy Light tail – Jinx Centaur by CINNAMON
  • Skin: SANDY CHLOE’ NB BODY MAITREYA*-Lelutka evo X – WoW Skins::
  • Freckles: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Freckles.013
  • Scars, mud, blush and scratches from Izzie’s
    Izzie’s – Body Aged Claw Scars 6
    Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Face Aged Claw Scars 6
    Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Dirt & Mud medium
    Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – 04 Ear Dirt more (dark)
    Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Winter Blush (light)
    Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Scratches Nose (light)
    Izzie’s – LeL Evo X – Scratches L Cheek (light)

Avatars posed using the Jinx Passenger System for Centaur.

Location: Copper Canyon created by Camilla Runo, now sadly closed.