Game Enviroment in Second Life

So last night I stunbled upon an Egypt game sim, "Era of the Gods" in which you can be captured, sold, mutilated.... ( bloody) the instructions say yell " don't do XX to me" in group chat if the captor tries to force it on you. Or you can get an observer tag and watch. No, I didn't see the battle, there was basically no one there last night.

today I am in Rome

interviewing the princess of sparta revealed the following: your avatar does not die in a game, or hurt in any other way, however you wear a HUD, head up display that tells you how much energy, stamina, life you have left, etc. Interestingly, you can be at any place in SL that enables scripting and play the game! You can come back to life just as in any other game. Here it is illustated on the picture i took of the arena by the yellow light beams to the left ( kind of hard to see).

So what is interesting is the fact the fighting is not actually done by stringing together a number of gestures because gladiators and other combating characters have to be able to respond to changing situations. I have yet to discover how it actually works.