It doesn’t have to, no. You can be involved in the roleplay at the Ancient Order of Centaurs and it not cost you a single L$.
You will of course be responsible for making your avatar look like the species/race you’ve chosen and that may indeed cost you L$. Very high complexity avatars or excessively laggy attachments will not be permitted – this includes some old style avatars that use older technology and may cause very high complexity e.g. heavily layered flexi prim hair or clothing. You are, of course encouraged to shop at Jinx and partner stores for your avatar needs, but it is certainly not a requirement.
When you might decide to spend L$ on your roleplay
You might decide to rent a property on the Centauria Community Regions and you are very welcome to include your property within roleplay. Rented properties are available in differing sizes and range from as little as 325L$ per week right up to 2900L$ a week. The properties are often not used for roleplay and you can, of course, choose to rent a property and not include it in your roleplay but just have it as somewhere you relax and enjoy living – or you may decide not to rent a property at all – that’s entirely up to you.
You might decide to take your roleplay to the next level and purchase your own Cooking Oven or Winery kit, or Cauldrons, etc from Unity. These are available to purchase from the Unity Store and range in price from around 250L$ up to around 1500L$. If you do decide to do this you will need somewhere to put your resources to use them. It is not in the spirit of the roleplay or Centauria and the AOC to have your resources hidden away somewhere on another sim where others can not interact with them while you rock up selling your wares. This is very frowned upon and if we see you doing it you may be asked to either rent a property or cease.