This is the third in the Lena Kjeller Memorial Lecture series. I hope everyone enjoys this transcript, I edited it and realized I missed a lot of stuff even though I was there!
In terms of the Library Lecture Series, the first two talks are the Life and Times of Wild Bill Hickok
http://www.theroadtodeadwood.com/forum/index.php?topic=3000.0 and the history of the pioneer press
http://www.theroadtodeadwood.com/forum/index.php?topic=2895.0Also, you'll see I did some cutting and pasting to get questions and answers closer together in the transcript. My apologies if in so doing I cut out good comments.
[12:06] Blitzer Renfold: Hi everyone, I'm Blitzer Renfold, library director in Deadwood. First of all, the weather is scary good throughout much of the country, so we extra appreciate you being here ... the US I should add,hopefully it's storming elsewhere
[12:06] Blitzer Renfold: Caed will introduce his background in his bio, but we wanted to just say a word about this lecture series.
[12:06] Blitzer Renfold: The Lena Kjeller Lecture Series is named after an avatar who, in roleplay, founded the Deadwood Library in the first version of Deadwood.
[12:07] Blitzer Renfold: As many of you know, Lena's typist died last year in real life.
We honor the typist's memory and Lena's memory both with this lecture series. Her typist, a retired train engineer named Dave, did a lot in real life to preserve the history of trains and other aspects of hisRL life. In Deadwood, he advocated for the memory of all Western history.
[12:07] Blitzer Renfold: I should note that we're very honored to have the avatar of Lena's RL wife with us today, everyone give Holly (Hollyjean Allen) over there a round of applause!
[12:07] Blitzer Renfold claps for our special guest
[12:07] Amigatu Choche: Claps Very Loudly!!!!
[12:07] Rod Eun claps
[12:07] Claytanic Kungler claps and smiles
[12:07] Rhianon Jameson claps
[12:07] Johnpaul Portilo cheers
[12:07] Addison Leigh: claps
[12:07] Dulcinea Andretti appluades Holly
[12:07] Blitzer Renfold: We have a notecard about him and about his character Lena for the library, if you want a copy, shoot me an IM. We also have notecards with the urls to transcripts of our previous two lectures, same deal, send me an IM.
[12:07] Laomei Luo claps
[12:07] Hollyjean Allen chokes up a bit aned smiles
[12:07] Havelock Southpaw applauds
[12:07] Blitzer Renfold: Our plan right now is to have a fourth lecture around about August about the subject of religion in the West, but we always welcome ideas for talks. If you're interested, let me know.
[12:08] Blitzer Renfold: We host a library and have these lectures because we have fun in Deadwood but we also love learning things we don't know. Which brings us toCaed, who has showed us a Deadwood no one really imagined.
[12:08] Blitzer Renfold: So thanks for coming, Caed ... want to take it away?
[12:08] Caed Aldwych: sure thing
[12:08] Caed Aldwych looks over the crowd
[12:08] Blitzer Renfold: Let's hold questions by the way until the end of the talk
[12:08] Caed Aldwych: Thank you all for attending
[12:08] Blitzer Renfold: Unless Caed shouts for em
[12:09] Caed Aldwych: first of I would like to say due to lag I wont advance the slides to fast so hopefully each picture will rez for you all before I make any changes
[12:09] Caed Aldwych: A Tale of Two Deadwoods, How the west was redone
[12:09] Caed Aldwych: I am a Old West history buff, always have been.
[12:10] Caed Aldwych: The first build I ever made in SL was the Gem Saloon. Used to be on a 512m parcel, wasn't much to play with but it was fun. *chuckles*
[12:10] Caed Aldwych: for those that may not know, the Gem Saloon was a real Saloon that was in Deadwood
[12:10] Caed Aldwych: One day, a few western players wandered in and told me about a new western sim that had just opened up. "Sigil" was a roleplay town developed off spaghetti westerns. It was a great build and it got me hooked.
[12:11] Caed Aldwych: I bought my very own sim the next month. In April of 2007, my two fellow owners, Rynn Dryke and Estwee Vansant joined me to plan and build Deadwood 1876.
[12:11] Caed Aldwych: In early 2007 I did not know much about the real town of Deadwood. I only really knew stories about Wild Bill Hickok and how he died there in the summer of 1876. HBO’s Deadwood series however was in full swing and, using the show as a platform, I began the build.
[12:13] Caed Aldwych: I first set out to terraform the sim then estimate how many buildings I could fit into the space I created.
[12:13] Caed Aldwych: The HBO Deadwood's web site and its companion book had numerous pictures of the town. Replaying episodes of the show over and over, I was able to re-create the Gem Saloon exactly as they had it.
[12:13] Caed Aldwych: The book is titled Deadwood - Stories of the Black Hills, written by David Milch who was also producer of the HBO Deadwood series
[12:14] Caed Aldwych: Now I realized not too much from the show was accurate at all, but at the time it was all I had to go on. What the Deadwood producer did get right was the feel of what Deadwood was like in history.
[12:14] Caed Aldwych: Finding a few pictures from some web searches I began to construct more buildings that looked more or less correct from these old photographs. The books “The American Frontier” by William C. Davis and “Age of the Gunfighter” by Joseph G. Rosa were two of my early sources for many photographs of the era.
[12:15] Caed Aldwych: What I could not find from Deadwood photographs online, the HBO show and these books filled in the blanks.
[12:15] Caed Aldwych: In the end, the SL Deadwood I created was a composite of the HBO town and different Deadwood settings from April of 1876 all the way to late 1877. During thattimeframe the real Deadwood changed its face quite rapidly as new businesses were created and old ones vacated.
[12:16] Caed Aldwych: This famous picture here of early Deadwood, printed clearly that it was taken in 1876, fooled me as I was to learn later on that clock and bank would not be in place until early 1877 ... this was the more modern Deadwood, the likes of which Wild Bill Hickok never laid eyes on
[12:17] Caed Aldwych: Though as you can see from this photo of our first Deadwood, I designed the street to the best of my ability to look like that photograph, clock and all.
[12:17] Caed Aldwych: Since much of the street work, including our entire China town, was based on the HBO show layout, it was almost entirely wrong. Most of the buildings were in incorrect locations.
[12:18] Caed Aldwych: However I did manage to place the Gem Saloon close to where it really did exist, which was on lower Main Street by the intersection with Wall Street. I didn't know it at the time however
[12:18] Caed Aldwych: Now only a few folks that knew anything about the real Deadwood realized I wasn’t spot on. In the end, the old Deadwood was a lot of fun due to the roleplay and the efforts of our players to learn more about the history.
[12:19] Hollyjean Allen nods in agreement
[12:19] Caed Aldwych: Many of our players, in seeking to discover what life was really like, did research of their own to design realistic characters that would have been present in our little bit of history in the making.
[12:19] Caed Aldwych: Our sim progressed from summer of 1876 till the spring of 1879. This time frame was advanced over the course of our regular years here from 2007 until our closing of March 2010.\
[12:20] Caed Aldwych: The sim we were living in was good but it was certainly not correct, and as a sim that espoused a real historic roleplaying experience we had to get it right.
[12:20] Caed Aldwych: What better time to make a change but during our RP year of 1879? This was the same year a great fire burned a third of the town of Deadwood to the ground and damaged many more.
[12:20] Caed Aldwych: While this fire happened sometime in September of that year, our town burned early, so that we could reopen in the spring. It was in early spring of 1876 when settlers first started to arrive in Deadwood after the last winter snows.
[12:21] Caed Aldwych: Having a fire to end our old Deadwood was fitting. As with most people who get attached to things, I was attached to the builds and the fire was a cleansing experience, especially watching as the buildings crumbled one by one as the slowly expanding fire took them.
[12:21] Caed Aldwych: The old Deadwood now done, the ruins left for the weekend for our players to wander amongst smoldering ruins, our plans began behind the scenes to re-create a more historic and believable build.
[12:22] Caed Aldwych: Over the previous years while Deadwood 1.0, as we call it, was still alive, I had already been doing more research. While inhabiting the old Deadwood, I gained a greater respect for the town and its inhabitants.
[12:22] Caed Aldwych: I searched for more information, more photographs and more stories so I could learn more about what the real Deadwood was like.
[12:22] Caed Aldwych: The photographs of the era are few and confusing. It was hard to tell which side of town was lower and upper main, and I struggled to determine where each early Deadwood building should go.
[12:23] Caed Aldwych: It wasn’t until a few months prior to our great fire that I discovered a hand drawn map of the entire town of Deadwood.
[12:23] Caed Aldwych: This map was created by White Eye Charlie, a friend of Wild Bill Hickok during the latter part of his life in the 1940’s. He drew this map by memory and it included some of the more prominent buildings and occasioned several stories as well, written right onto the map.
[12:24] Caed Aldwych: I located this gem of information in the book “Wild Bill Hickok Gunfighter” by Joseph G. Rosa.
[12:25] Caed Aldwych: for those interested Joseph G. Rosa is an excellent author old west history miss Luo
[12:25] Caed Aldwych: This map was a rare find, never seeing it on any previous web searches it finally closed up many of the gaps in the town I had been lost on before.
[12:26] Caed Aldwych: Not only did it pinpoint where Preacher Smith’s body was found -- murdered in the hills above Deadwood. It also described the Senate Saloon where Wild Bill sometimes played poker and where Calamity Jane threatened a miner to pay a whore 5 dollars which he owed her.
[12:26] Caed Aldwych: Now with the pictures in one hand and this map in the other, I was finally able to identify the locations and orientation of all the photographs.
[12:27] Laomei Luo: good detective work
[12:27] Caed Aldwych: this is an image of Deadwoods upper main street looking south west, that tall building is the beginnings of the General George Custer House Hotel
[12:28] Caed Aldwych: you can just see the twin tall ponderosa pines towards the back
[12:28] Caed Aldwych: I found the exact locations of many of the primary builds including the Gem Variety Hall and Theater, the Bella Union and the No. 10 Saloons.
[12:28] Caed Aldwych: well you could see the pines if someone would quit changing the slides on me *chuckles*
[12:28] Hollyjean Allen: Caed, you've been working hard!
[12:29] Estwee Vansant laughs.
[12:29] Blitzer Renfold: haha yeah no poking the sign boards, and lag don't help
[12:29] Caed Aldwych: I was close… All of the major famous buildings were present on this map, but not every building, nor did I have a working knowledge of who owned what, what businesses they ran, when they started or when they closed shop for good.
[12:30] Caed Aldwych: I didn’t think I ever would know, figured that knowledge was lost to time during the consecutive major fires that engulfed Deadwood starting in 1879. I found I was wrong.
[12:30] Caed Aldwych: this image is my work area, some of the main photographs i have set out on super prims over my work area to help get things right
[12:30] Caed Aldwych: “Wild Bill Hickok, Deadwood City ~ End of Trail” written by Thadd Turner in 2001 opened up the floodgates of history.
[12:31] Caed Aldwych: Thadd Turner a western enthusiast and historian was very curious about the life of Wild Bill and the town of Deadwood where he died. Turner who moved to Deadwood to conduct his research, dug up Deadwood’s past. He painted a highly detailed picture of Wild Bill’s arrival with Charlie Utter’s party, his short time in Deadwood and his final murder at the hands of Jack McCall.
[12:32] Caed Aldwych: To this end he also mapped out the entire town, building by building, owner by owner, to trace Wild Bill’s path through town. He named where he went, where he ate, where he slept, who he entertained and how he died.
[12:32] Elegia Underwood: Wow! $5. She was expensive!
[12:32] Amigatu Choche: lol
[12:32] Caed Aldwych: indeed *chuckles*
[12:32] Dulcinea Andretti: she must have been good.
[12:32] Caed Aldwych: I learned for the first time that the No. 10 and the Bella Union were owned by the same individual and were both located across the street from the Gem just down from the Wall Street intersection.
[12:33] Caed Aldwych: I learned that the bank in the famous 1877 picture we saw just a moment ago was not built until early 1877. Up to that point it was an empty lot inhabited by a squatter in a tent.
[12:33] Caed Aldwych: just before they built the bank in early 1877 they kicked the squatter off the lot
[12:34] Caed Aldwych: Places like the Big Horn store came to life located way up on upper main close to the Lee Street intersection.
[12:34] Caed Aldwych: Lee Street eventually leads up into the mountains and becomes a trail where Preacher Smith's body is eventually found. Supposedly he was killed by Indians, but many suspect road agents did it or unscrupulous saloon owners whodidn’t like his preaching disturbing their businesses.
[12:35] Blitzer Renfold: Preacher Smith's life and death will be the subject of our August lecture, in part
[12:35] Caed Aldwych: he had an interesting life to be sure
[12:35] Caed Aldwych: I learned of Chandlers Fruit Store and the General Custer House Hotel named due to Custer’s finding gold in the hills and his death at the Little Big Horn River. This building is seen on this slide in the summer of 1876.
[12:36] Caed Aldwych: its the tall building not yet fully constructed
[12:36] Caed Aldwych: it would have been during this time that Wild Bill just arrives in Deadwood in early July
[12:36] Caed Aldwych: Down the street at the intersection of Wall and Main, Seth Bullock and Sol Star opened their first hardware business inside of a tent two days before Wild Bill was murdered.
[12:37] Dulcinea Andretti: is someone messing with the slides again or are you trying to find the correct one? because on my screen i see the opening slide.
[12:37] Caed Aldwych: this photo is late 1877 when they have already established themselves and own two lots instead of one
[12:38] Caed Aldwych: here and there, some folks have itchy fingers *chuckles*
[12:38] Amigatu Choche: lol
[12:38] Caed Aldwych: ZCMI store owned by Craven Lee and Isaac Brown was a small brewery, general store and saloon remained a cabin for quite some time after the other buildings around it began to modernize. No one to this day really knows whatZCMI stands for, but many suspect the owners were Mormon and reputedly stood for “Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institute.”
[12:39] Dulcinea Andretti: mormons brewing and selling alcohol? nice.
[12:39] Caed Aldwych: the cabin is located in our Deadwood now, I am not sure why no one has asked what the ZCMI stood for yet lol
[12:39] Caed Aldwych: Each build was placed where it should be from all of the research that was conducted by Mr. Rosa, Mr. Turner and the memory of White Eye Charlie.
[12:39] Caed Aldwych: Only five buildings are missing. Two from the south side of Main street and three from the north side between Wall and Lee streets. These buildings were intentionally left out do to the size constraints of thesim.
[12:40] Caed Aldwych: this photo shows the new sim construction with streets and lots marked out by prims
[12:40] Caed Aldwych: The Whitewood Creek is in its correct location as well.
[12:41] Caed Aldwych: If you want a walk through history, Wild Bill camped on the north side of the creek across from the buildings. He was known to empty his black powder revolvers daily into the ridge just across the creek so he could place fresh powder in them each day.
[12:42] Caed Aldwych: here you are looking south west again if you were to turn around you would find the north east side and near the end of the creek as it leaves thesim woudl be where Wild Bill camped with Charles Utter and Company
[12:42] Caed Aldwych: Seth Bullock even commented on Wild Bill's accuracy seeing him in that few days before his murder. “Wild Bill drew his revolver and fired all six shots in rapid succession into a knot the size of a palm of the hand in a nearby cottonwood tree. Needless to say, all shots were well grouped within the knot…”
[12:42] Elegia Underwood mutters, "And then he went & sat with his back to the saloon door."
[12:43] Caed Aldwych: Deadwood now stands below and is entirely set up as close as possible to what Deadwood would have looked like in May of 1876. Much effort went into its build, to make it lower prim,realistically sized and even set out in the correct direction along Main Street as it was in history.
[12:44] Caed Aldwych: as you head down South West from the big horn store you come first to lee street which extends across main and heads up into the hills
[12:44] Caed Aldwych: Each rental sign on the buildings below relates the actual name of the business that was located there.
[12:45] Caed Aldwych: if you see the rental sign just curser hover over it and you can find out what building was present at that location in early 1876
[12:45] Dulcinea Andretti: nice
[12:45] Caed Aldwych: Why put so much effort into historical accuracy? We opened Deadwood wanting to have an immersive historical roleplay environment. We wanted the players to feel like they stepped right into the past when they entered Deadwood.
[12:46] Caed Aldwych: Without having a historical cornerstone to ground the roleplay, we were doing our players a disservice.
[12:46] Caed Aldwych: Everything down below in the town area is strictly roleplay and great pains are made to extinguish anything that would take away from that feeling. Bright pose balls are muted for example, floating text limited as much as possible. We don’t allowOOC comments in open chat down below in Deadwood for that purpose.
[12:47] Caed Aldwych: As an educational platform, Deadwood springs from historical research, to walk the streets of the sim people can get a good idea of the real Deadwood.
[12:47] Caed Aldwych: They can easily learn real history, our web forum contains a treasure trove of historical research for anyone wanting to learn what life was like in a frontier town, what politics were going on, and including whattechnologies would have been present.
[12:48] Caed Aldwych: Many of our players and admins have compiled a great amount of data, articles and excerpts from news of the day then created a Library here in the entry area that is also linked to the Alexandrian Free Library network. This library contains tons of historical information that players and anyone who stops in can learn from.
[12:48] Caed Aldwych: There is real history here in the build and the mechanics that went into the shaping of this sim. Myself, my fellow owners, our admins and our players have all contributed to many of the stories, settings and historical knowledge you will find.
[12:49] Caed Aldwych: I thank you for coming out for this presentation, I welcome you to a walk into history and in the words of HBO’s Al Swearengen…
[12:49] Caed Aldwych: Welcome to Fucking Deadwood.
[12:49] Elegia Underwood: lol
[12:49] Mucaro India laughs
[12:49] Blitzer Renfold giggles
[12:49] Johnpaul Portilo: hehe
[12:49] Hollyjean Allen: LOL!
[12:49] Rhianon Jameson laughs and applauds
[12:49] Claytanic Kungler claps
[12:49] Dulcinea Andretti applauds
[12:49] Blitzer Renfold claps
[12:49] Mucaro India: Thanks Caed,
[12:49] Rod Eun laughs and claps
[12:49] Elegia Underwood claps
[12:49] Caed Aldwych: This ends the presentation, I will be available for questions for the next hour or so.
[12:49] Havelock Southpaw applauds
[12:49] Kori Benazzi claps
[12:49] Blitzer Renfold: OK so I think we got some time for questions before a tour ...
[12:49] Caed Aldwych: Thank you
[12:49] Bohny Spad: Applause!!
[12:49] Caed Aldwych: indeed
[12:50] Elegia Underwood: Why do so many Western buildings have rectangular frontages, though the roofs behind them are slanted ?
[12:50] Caed Aldwych: good question ... like in any culture advertisment was the name of the day when it came to a business
[12:51] Dulcinea Andretti: advertising, i bet.
[12:51] Elegia Underwood: Really? So they could paint signs on them?
[12:51] Caed Aldwych: the false front developed in our old west culture as a resort to display large bold business names and products
[12:51] Elegia Underwood nods. "Interesting." Thank you.
[12:52] Blitzer Renfold: wood was that cheap then, wow
[12:52] Caed Aldwych: there was plenty of wood to be had in the black hills at the time
[12:52] Tropical Bearsfoot: wood was scarce in some areas, and the wooden sidewalks would get stolen... hence the term 'roll up the sidewalks'
12:53] Caed Aldwych: from the false front you see many pictures of signs extending way out into the street as well, they wanted to catch onlookers from every direction possible
[12:52] Dulcinea Andretti: To help maintain the historical accuracy will new businesses that renters open be in their historically appropriate location and carry the business'rl name?
[12:53] Caed Aldwych: some of the builds only, the most famous
[12:53] Caed Aldwych: like the Gem will remain the Gem and the Senate Saloon will be called the senate
[12:53] Estwee Vansant: Bella, No. 10, Custer Hotel, Grand Hotel....
[12:54] Caed Aldwych: there are quite a few builds that folks can turn into what they like
[12:54] Dulcinea Andretti: right now the senate appears to be running as a boarding house though.
[12:54] Caed Aldwych: yes but the name is still the Senate
[12:54] Caed Aldwych: mostly its for looks, so the build matches the photographs and still retaining some modicum of creativity for the players
[12:55] Mucaro India: And on the DW Forum there is a directory bo businesses, I believe from '77, if anyone is interested in names, types of businesses
[12:55] Blitzer Renfold: It's a tough balancing between rl and our evolving roleplay, I don't think they had a library until much later, but I'm sure we will start one again
[12:54] Johnpaul Portilo: Does the Roleplay ever cause a problem with the goal of maintaining historic accurac? For example say someone is historically perfect in their portrayal of a miner but their roleplay finds them perhaps living a much better life then would have ever been possible in true deadwood..more prosperous or more successful, more intelligent
[12:56] Caed Aldwych: roleplay is for the player, we have some set guidelines athat players try to create characters that would have been around at the time to the best of thier ability
[12:57] Blitzer Renfold: We have some postings about the nature of roleplay that can help with that question, in every roleplay sim you have people who want to be better off than they would have bee inn history
[12:57] Caed Aldwych: we don't allow super powered rich influential characters that can take over the rp, like you cant be the president of the united states in sim
[12:57] Blitzer Renfold: my drunk avatar has tried, not working out too well
[12:57] Johnpaul Portilo nods awesome lecture and response to my question
[12:57] Dulcinea Andretti: though, i suppose, if a miner had a few good finds and invested/spent his money wisely, he could come to live pretty well for the area.
[12:57] Caed Aldwych nods
[12:56] Dulcinea Andretti: you had mentioned that the sim 'ages' from year to year according to the rl calendar. does that mean everyone basically rp's according to teh sl clock as far as time of day goes rather than to the automatic light levels as they change throughout the day?
[12:58] Caed Aldwych: Mis Dulci yes
[12:58] Caed Aldwych: our sim does advance along with our time so today in sim its Saturday May 22 of 1876
[12:59] Blitzer Renfold: It is a challenge since the sky keeps changing
[12:59] Dulcinea Andretti: yes. i've been in some sims where everyone pretty much sets their light levels to match the sl clock, so a normal 24hr day. but others where they choose to play to 'naturally' occurring light levels of 3 full days in one 24hr day.
[13:01] Caed Aldwych: I usually ignore the light levels myself and just play to the SL clock for the time of day
[13:00] Elegia Underwood: So, how much leeway are you willing to allow in story lines?
[13:01] Elegia Underwood is getting paranoid about the level of accuracy required.
[13:02] Caed Aldwych: you create your own story miss Underwood, its your character, all we ask is that you keep your character within the 1800's timeframe as someone that would realistically be in Deadwood
[13:02] Elegia Underwood: Okay.
[13:02] Elegia Underwood: I think I have done that.
[13:02] Blitzer Renfold: But they're real
[13:02] Mucaro India: Ask an admin if you are not sure, I did and got some help
[13:03] Caed Aldwych: And Deadwood have all sorts, rich folks came for the adventure, foreigners came for the work, ladies came with their aristocratic husbands, poor came to make it rich etc
[13:03] Caed Aldwych: outlaw came to hide from the law
[13:03] Elegia Underwood nods.
[13:03] Hollyjean Allen: Does one need to rent or buy a home in Deadwood to RP in deadwood?
[13:03] Caed Aldwych: no
[13:03] Caed Aldwych: you can easily rp you have a home you don't have to rent
13:04] Estwee Vansant: There are also tents sprinkled around the town that are open for anyone to use.
[13:04] Caed Aldwych: yes any vacant tent is free and you get 10 prims to decorate it with
[13:04] Hollyjean Allen: that is so generous
What was the hardest part of the reconstruction?
[13:06] Caed Aldwych: the absolute hardest for me was the photographs, none came with any explanation of what direction you were looking, and both sides of the street entering Deadwood looked the same, I discovered after about two years most of the photos were taken from the eastfacing west the side with the Big Horn store ... that wasn't until I found White Eyed Charlies hand drawn map
Blitzer Renfold: both entrances looked the same? wow, yeah that would confuse anyone
[13:07] Blitzer Renfold: Esp if you didn't know why the picture was taken or for who
3:13] Blitzer Renfold: So Caed, if you had it to do over again, would you have done research a different way?
[13:15] Caed Aldwych: research is a thing that can only be done over time, going over different materials from many different sources not knowing when you will hit pay dirt, almost like mining a gold claimlol
[13:15] Estwee Vansant: Great analogy!
[13:15] Caed Aldwych: but keep in mind... people were the same back then in most respects as they are today, we all have our dreams, wants and desires just like they did
[13:04] Blitzer Renfold: So I have a question .... Based on your research, what do you think was the absolute hardest aspect of life in Deadwood?
13:05] Tropical Bearsfoot: winter would be worst
[[13:06] Elegia Underwood: Can't imagine living in a tent could be too pleasant in the winter. Figures you'd freeze your... appendages off.
[13:06] Estwee Vansant: Id' think summer was worse, since it got warmer and diseases would spread. Hehe.
[13:06] Hollyjean Allen: your limbs might be injured
[13:10] Caed Aldwych: I would say the most frightful hardship were the renegade natives in the area, being on illegal land i imagine the miners were scared for their lives each day they worked their claims ... in town they knew they were fairly safe but up in the hills working claims was another story
[13:11] Dulcinea Andretti: though, since it was their land, the natives weren't really renegades.
[13:12] Caed Aldwych: Indeed many sides to a coin eh?
[13:12] Dulcinea Andretti: yup
[13:12] Rhianon Jameson smiles wryly
[13:12] Blitzer Renfold: well yes that's true, the whole town is built o Sins of many kinds
[13:12] Blitzer Renfold: That's what makes it so horribly fascinating, at least to me
[13:07] Rod Eun: One would think hauling water from the creek or waste management would be tough to live with.. lol
[13:08] Caed Aldwych: Deadwood had some awful and heavy winters
[13:08] Elegia Underwood: I need to be getting a move on. Thank you so much, sir. Excellent presentation. And very fine RP environment. Thanks to all of you for taking all the trouble.
[13:08] Dulcinea Andretti: but hauling water and dealing with outhouses was the norm back then, so no one would really consider that an unusual hardship.
[13:09] Estwee Vansant: We have a mini tour game if you'd like to visit the different areas of the sim! The crate in front has instructions on places to find.
[13:09] Caed Aldwych: also folks if you want to get a good estimation of Deadwood we have a small scavenger hunt tour for you, the box behind me has the instructions if you wish to start your journey into deadwood
