Story time with Wong Wei

[Marian]

I've been in Dory before, and I'm sorry to say, but I hated it. I can't stand most large towns, actually, though I'm not sure if it's because of the size of the town itself or because they all seem to have buracracies that keep anything from ever getting done.

It's like, maybe these places and the people running it were interesting at one point in their lives, but they have everything they could ever need now and have settled down into the 'doll's tea party'. (I love that line too...I'm adding it to my Cantr vocabulary. ) There are no risks, nothing left to accomplish, and you're surrounded by friends already, so no one else needs to be invited to play time...just subtly give any new people the cold shoulder, whisper a lot, don't answer their questions, make the laws filled with red tape, and only give rights to citizens while making it clear by your actions that you don't want any more citizens...they'll eventually get the hint and leave, unless they don't mind making bone tools and farming carrots and spending their lives on the fringes of the community, completely ignored.

Anyway, rant over! It's kind of off topic anyway, and it really has nothing to do with Agar's character. I'm just saying that those kind of towns almost seem to invite apathy. I prefer a village with five or six active people who all talk (or argue) with each other than a huge town where nobody cares.

[Seeker]

I find that people rarely want to listen to speeches unless it's done by a character incredibly important and famous in both the real world and the cantr world...people are even more interested in the speech if it's talking about something important that is going to happen, such as war or making a whole town flee to a far away continent...
I also think it has something to do with large cities, if you spoke about it in a small town they citizens might comment on the speech.
A few tips from someone far from being an expert:

Start all sentences with "Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for war.." (what the speech is really about is irrelevant at this point)
Be incredibly famous in the cantr and players world, to do this I'd suggest start one really big war.
Pretend you are someone famous...eg. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm John Locke and it's time for war..."

[Marian]

I don't know how long this speech was, but in a smaller town I'd break one up into several parts (unless it was something urgent that had to be said quick) so everyone would have a chance to comment on it and get involved, though I get that that's really not an option in a bigger place, people would probably be hunting and whispering for pages between each section.

[Phalynx]

I don't know how long this speech was, but in a smaller town I'd break one up into several parts (unless it was something urgent that had to be said quick) so everyone would have a chance to comment on it and get involved, though I get that that's really not an option in a bigger place, people would probably be hunting and whispering for pages between each section.

I suspect these verbose characters are controlled by canny players who compose offline and paste it in... if they do it in chunks some of the time saving is lots... although I agree people would interact more if its done section by sentence - that's how I do it...

[Agar]

I don't have a lot of characters, and only a few I activly monitor, so I typically have 100+ minutes at the end of the day. I just typed it in as I went, nothing offline.

This has given me a lot to think about, not just for Wong Wei, but all my characters, to try and figure out how to avoid the "Dolls Teaparty" issue that seems to infect cantr. I haven't come up with anything. Anyone have any ideas how to break the cycle?

[Solfius]

Anyone have any ideas how to break the cycle?

destablilising an area by some means?

I like how The Socialologist coined an idiom and it's very quickly been picked up in common usage.

[saztronic]

I also think that Wong is at a bit of a disadvantage. He was gone on one trip to the mountains, back for a little while, then off on another trip to the mountains. And he's not the most prolific of speakers regardless. He barely talks to the woman he's supposedly interested in romantically. So I'm not sure there are a lot of people in Doryiskom who are heavily invested personally in what he might have to say about his past.

Another thing to note is that just because people don't react visibly, doesn't mean they haven't heard what you said or taken it into account. As many in this thread have said, some just didn't have an appropriate response.

I'm interested in hearing what Agar is missing. What would an appropriate response be, individually or as a community? What did you hope to accomplish with your speech that didn't happen?

[Solfius]

I'm interested in hearing what Agar is missing.

I couldn't possibly comment

But to hazard a guess, perhaps sympathy or a hug?

[notsure]

Wong isn't the hugging sort, in my opinion.

notsure

[Agar]

No, Wong is not the hugging sort. Hugging could get him killed.

What I was missing was any reaction at all. The only thing I got was "Interesting story" and one wise ass "Look at the notethief go! Following in your footsteps Wong?"

You think that people in the town there who have been living under the the rule of a pair of councilors and they suddenly learn he was a note thief, one of the most despised things in cantr, would have had SOMETHING to say about it, but no. Apparently, Dory is just a place for them to get thier food and keep thier stuff. That's it. We don't have big hoops to go through, not buerocratic, pretty easy going. Peaceful town, and it's gotten surprisingly big.

And the people, they are complacent. I thought better of them

[CrashBlizz]

If he's that upset he should leave, I don't think most will miss him.

[Agar]

Like you ran away when Little John and Cassy upset you? Some of us have spines.

[CrashBlizz]

..and sabres

[Joshuamonkey]

Let me say, I see potential in that town and at the same time I am frustrated, I also relate to the stress of playing characters in positions where you log in for the first time in a day and there's about 15 questions or requests people have come to you with, you get to about the second one and as you're responding, one of the people who asked you something while you were away from the computer is wondering why you haven't gotten to him yet, so then you need to stop and answer him telling him "I'll get to you in a minute, I haven't forgotten about you." and you begin to wonder if you're ever going to get to everyone! I completely understand what it's like to be in a town that's like that. lol Doryiksom seems like one of those to me.

They wouldn't be able to kill the doryis I bet, though.

"Look at the notethief go! Following in your footsteps Wong?"

lol (I really did, and I'm not really the laughing type), rofl (no, not really)

My character sure didn't have an appropriate response either. Compared to Zara, my character may seem sleepy, but I've got 15 characters that are all pretty active. (with most of them, just about nothing is going on, one of them's in a war now, but that's why I've been getting real low on minutes before the last reset)

..and sabres

And one of those doryis I was talking about is me.

[TatteredShoeLace]

Dory just faced once of the biggest and sloppiest CRB I've seen in a while.

Kudos for encouraging the chaos.