Bunch of Questions

Right, I just came upon Second Life purely by accident and looking at the website and screenshots it seemed very nice.

But there are a few things I'd like to know before I'm wasting my free basic account creating a 'shitty' 'character'.

I saw among the stuff you could download the avatar files, to be specific: custom Poser characters of the Second Life avatar.

Does that mean that Poser is the ideal software to create/modify your own character (and other bits like clothes etc. AND animations) for Second Life? If that's a yes, oh boy, and me a Poser addict...

As an addon to that: what are the limits? I mean can I create hundreds of moves and upload them? Make them complex as hell taking like a few minutes to run through a run? And can I sell those too? By that I mean that e.g. person A wants a particular cool animation and I'd be willing to create it. Could I simply fire up Poser, make the animation and then sell it to the guy who simply uploads it into his account and then can use it? And along similar lines: is SL limited to those downloadable models? Well, stupid question I guess as you could make your own avatar using the building options in SL. But what I'm talking about is using a higher quality model like DAZ3D's Victoria or Michael (1,2, 3)??

Second question: would it be possible to create a combate game with/inside Second Life?

Well, I've seen the screenshots featuring weapons and all and I know that you can actually make anything you like by modelling it.

Okay, here is the thing: I'm also a fan of a miniature/RPG game. At some point the idea of playing this game online came up. And was dropped again as nobody could really figure out how to do it.

Now, let us assume that you would have a GM (Games master) who has an upgraded account that allows him/her to build anything he/she wants as a setting for a gaming session on land he/she has bought. The GM account is a shared account paid for by all 'masters' giving a nice large RL wallet to buy as much land as might be needed. No problem in that I'd assume... right?

Now, all the other players have their basic accounts creating their own heros/villains they are going to use for gaming and they create the equipment - weapons, armour, odd bits, whatevers - as created by the group for the group (i.e. free) - and potentially sold to others outside - but mainly used to customize the characters/be used as tools.

Obviously selling stuff outside the group will boost the group's ingame wallet, nice for... well, buying other things I guess.

Up to here I don't see any real problem: you have your setting, your characters and as this game is player vs. player there's no need for additional creatures with the GM's character potentially as the source, the intiator, the spark, the tool that causes things to happen in the session i.e. is the missions 'target' (or something like that).

Right, now this is where things get... though: how do I create 'effects' in SL?

I mean running around with the model of a gun is nice and all but if I want that gun to hit somebody with bullets (or even just a laser ray) and have that target receive damage from thta attack (or being healed by somebody else 'casting' a healing spell) how does that work in SL?

Is it possible or is SL really just a building game where your character might be running around and party but other than that there is nothing 'combative' to the game?!