Obscure build names

[Agar]

This is once again a call to clarify, in at least some small way, what things are supposed to be in Cantr. I don't want everything revamped. I don't want all, or even most, maybe not even any, details. What I want is a general kind of idea. That's it.

We all already know some things have names that are vague, misleading, or from obscure fantasy settings. Most things are fairly straight forward, but there are many things that are big projects that would be helped if the character initiating thier build had some idea to base thier decision to build it on. Take the example of boats.

A great many people know what a Rowing Boat is, or can look it up on the internet, but that scarcly matters, since the way it works in Cantr is based on the judgments of the people in charge of coding vehicles in Cantr. They can, however, look up a rowing boat and a galleon and a longboat, and compare them vessels overall against each other. The character may then decide if they want to build a Huge vessel that can hold a great amount of people or stuff; a small craft intended for only a small amount of people or things; or a in between craft, not as big, but not as small.

So now, where does a skimmer fit in there... ?

A little internet research makes them a canoe/sailboat, a 25 foot sailboat, a pontoon boat, and a 36 foot speed boat.

Riiiiiight. And it's all OOC knowledge anyway, so CR breech to boot.

But that's just boat confusion, right? Find out in game through experimentation. Great. A single word to commit a character to working for YEARS in game on an idea that might not be what they want to do. Or they could ask around in game, if they can find someone who knows, because thier character has already made one. Just finding someone who may or may not know an answer, that might not even be the right answer, could take years.

What if weapons were the same way? Would it be all right then? Dagger, Machete, Long Sword, 3 weapons, all different, all take a good amount of resources and tool to make, all an investment on the characters future. Logic, research and gameplay indicate the longsword should do more damage when used by the same person on the same target, under the same conditions. No mystery there. But what if there was something that was?

What if there's now a thing to make called bal'leth. What does it do? How does it work? Is it better or worse than something else? If it takes years to make, wouldn't you want to know soemthing? Wouldn't your character; after all, how can your character even know how to make one, if they don't know what it does, if they've never seen it or thought of it?

What I'd like to see is just something to give the players an idea what the character can build. It doesn't need to tell us much of a damn thing, but something would be helpful. You don't make a pair of pants and end up with a hat. Instead of just calling a boat a "Soarer" give it a short description, like (and I'm purely making things up here) "A large flat boat with several large sails" I haven't read what ever book that was made up from, so that's probabally wrong. But the point is, now the player has an idea what the character thinks the thing can do.

A dirk could have the description "A knife with a thin, needle like blade." and now they don't think it's some kind of polearm. A single sentance, but there's a world of information there, and no specifics. Do they know if a Dirk is better than a dagger? No, they need to experiment still, but do they think it's better than a billy club? Likely, and they might be right. Does it seem easier to hide than a billy club? You bet.

Nothing spelled out, but less of a complete mystery.

Do I think this is easy? No. It needs a good deal of coding, maybe another button, all tedious and time consuming. Some names might want to be changed to things from other real cultures rather than fantasy settings. Bugs would pop up. It'd be a bitch. But change is.

Would it help make Cantr more fun? Of course, but that's hardly the point. Would it let characters have a clue on how different things compare to other things. Yes, and that's the point.

It doesn't need to change the way the CR works, it doesn't need to change the way people in Cantr find out what things do, but it can help them make more informed decisions on what they want to find out.

[Nixit]

makes sense...

[Molested.Peach. (cky)]

I was just talking about this exact topic in the chat yesterday night. haha, I told them I would love descriptions.. Even a little one

[Sparkle]

I agree and also brought the boat thing up in Mirc, but of course Anthony's, I have to keep everything to myself, attitude showed up and so I dropped it. But it is a good point and like you said major detail shouldn't be given but at least an idea. If I was to walk outside and say I'm going to build myself a Soarer. How could I build such a boat and don't even know how it look or what I can hold in it. Now that's not very realistic now is it?

My two centz
Sparklez

[Anthony Roberts]

My attitude showed up when you all started arguing about my decision to not step over my bounds, and tell you nothing about the boats. I can't make judgement calls, that's not my place. It's my place to create the items, and maintain, not to tell you about it.

No matter, I must say, descriptions for vehicles will sooner or later be pointless, as they will be seperated into parts, and you'll be able to tell what that vehicle is like based off its requirements.

An example (Purely an example):

A Chimny Sweeper (A boat. Go with me, here.): Reuires a Large Flat-bottomed Chasis, Two Large Masts, 1000 Sail Cloth.

A Put-Put Boat: Requires a Small Rounded Chasis, One Small Mast, 300 Sail Cloth.

By those requirements, you can tell size and speed, practically. The more masts and sail cloth required, the faster. The smaller the chasis, faster as well. The larger the chasis, holds more. You'd need to use judgement calls, too. If it needed a large chasis, and had 4 masts, it could go the same speed as a small chasis with 2 masts, since the 4 masts have more to carry on the water.

But descriptions would still be nice.

[myst]

Hear hear.

In fact, it might be better if the names of things WERE made up. That way, there can be no CR breach.

But the important thing is that we know, roughly speaking, what sort of a project we are starting on. Size and composition only, nothing about effectiveness. Perhaps in enough detain so that we know what each material is for; eg "a long narrow steel sword blade with a wood and leather handle". Or whatever.

[The Industriallist]

After all, we're not up to guessing what those boats do from what they cost...

I suppose I can't tell the speed-size balance. But I certainly can tell which ones are 'better' than others with no trouble.

[west]

My trouble with boats is this: I have a character who is creating a galleon and some dinghies, based on the purely reasonable assumption that a very small boat should be able to be brought along on a very large boat, for purposes of reaching the shore when there is no harbour.

Now, this character has already committed the resources and much of the labour, but there's no way for me to know IC or OOC whether or not the dinghies will actually dock on the galleon and travel with it while it moves. I could just have wasted an extraordinary amount of time on something that DOESN'T follow its IRL antecedent but is merely a case of convenient names. That would make me very sad.

[Revanael]

(west: I think it's public knowledge that they were supposed to be working on allowing boats to travel docked to each other...)

As for those moaning about the Skimmer, Darter, and Raker... I did tell people where those names are from in a topic only a week or so ago. General support, I think. Go read. You wanna do your research properly, you can find out exactly how big they should be in #rl. However. I'm not going to tell you. Nor will that necessarily bear ANY relation to how they are in cantr.

[Agar]

Hrmm, if I remember right, the Skimmer, Darter and Raker were fake from some book rather than anything real. How on earth did they end up in the game?

I'm going to go encourage that orc, since he's from a much much more popular book.

[Cherize]

Gee and I always thought you could tell the size of the boat by the amount of wood it took. And that ones requiring iron also, were better than ones just requiring wood. That would have been so much simpler.

While we're on the subject of descriptions, one of my characters farmed papayas. I've never eaten a papaya IRL, so a description of the taste would be greatly appreciated. It would make for a much truer experience for my character.

[Missy]

Gee and I always thought you could tell the size of the boat by the amount of wood it took. And that ones requiring iron also, were better than ones just requiring wood. That would have been so much simpler.

While we're on the subject of descriptions, one of my characters farmed papayas. I've never eaten a papaya IRL, so a description of the taste would be greatly appreciated. It would make for a much truer experience for my character.

how can you describe it? lol I personally think they're yucky.

[Anthony Roberts]

1002-4: You eat 'a bunch of' papayas. They taste yucky.

Works for me.

[myst]

Another random element? The probability that someone likes something is just proportional to some "tastiness quality" of it. The only effect is the message.

Probability of liking spinach =0.2
probability of liking cooked meat = 0.9

seems reasonable!!

((And not at all a bandwidth wasting act of folly ))

[west]

actually fresh spinach is one of the tastiest and healthiest veggies around. mmm...

and Rev: 'supposed to be working on it' is totally different from 'have implemented yet'.