Cantr II Discussion Forum

For those like me that are a bit retarded when it comes to proper role-play, I've stumbled onto a device that has significantly helped my characters (or at least the one I'm using it for). I've been writing down my character's thoughts in a separate window as I play, moving back and forth between the game and this "thought note." It's made me play less impulsively, and it's a lot of fun.

But, but, but.....

-can't find a decent argument against it-

And at the end of that character's life, you could C&P it to an uneditable autobiographical note so that they leave behind a cool legacy. I like.

Well, except for the illiterates and the impulsive characters.

I still type up 95% of my posts in notepad first. lol Old school habit but it does save me from premature accidental entering and the idea is that it gives me the opportunity to proofread, though it doesn't always help.

I has found argument!


I can't really do this very much when I'm on my smart phone. It's too much of a pain to go back and forth between Notes and the Internet browser, and if I try to C&P any of the events on the events page, my phone freezes and then closes the browser.

I think when I had too many chars for the time available to me, I was becoming increasingly impulsive. Worse... I was becoming reactive rather than proactive in terms of my char's behaviour.

Whilst I like the idea of recording a thought process, out of game... I don't have the patience for that, and will probably just rely on hopefully knowing each of my chars personal philosophy.
It does remind me of a thing I was involved with once to do with protocol analysis, whereby a 'expert practitioner' would talk aloud what they were thinking in some hopes to later analyse this in terms of their decision making processes.

Try it... with anything. Driving is a good situation to do so, but be aware, it can force errors, so maybe start with making a coffee or something simple. It is very hard to do, initially, but you improve with practice.

Actually... I think I am warming to this idea for rp more than I was.

SumBum wrote:I still type up 95% of my posts in notepad first. lol Old school habit but it does save me from premature accidental entering and the idea is that it gives me the opportunity to proofread, though it doesn't always help.

This is what I do. I have to see all of my response and read it 3 or 4 times at least.

It is a neat idea though, for those that can make themselves do it.

I see it as a side-thinking... not like checking or re-reading what you're going to post before you post it.
Since thoughts can't be roleplayed... it's interesting, and I find it kind of "enlightening", too. A very useful device for those "complicated" characters, whose thoughts go far beyond what they say or roleplay. All those thoughts in the mind of a character who is just sitting quietly.

Something like what curious says... stop for a moment, and speak aloud what you're thinking while making something simple like a coffee. You'd be surprised.

This would definitely save me of the shame of a few days ago...

Yes, I should probably look through my posts for emoticons in the future LOLOLOLOLOL

the_antisocial_hermit wrote:

SumBum wrote:I still type up 95% of my posts in notepad first. lol Old school habit but it does save me from premature accidental entering and the idea is that it gives me the opportunity to proofread, though it doesn't always help.

This is what I do. I have to see all of my response and read it 3 or 4 times at least.

It is a neat idea though, for those that can make themselves do it.

I'm like that too, at least when I'm RPing something really deep. I like the idea of typing up the characters' thoughts before speaking...what's that old saying? "Think before you speak"? lol ...I think I'll be trying this. I have a feeling it'll really help me separate my characters' thoughts and emotions from my own thoughts and emotions.

My own method for some of my chars:
I use this diary-type software in which I can make seperate diaries.
For each of the chars that I use this for, I make a seperate diary... then when writing an entry I get in-character as much as I can, and basically let that char air/vent/whatever...

Sometimes the result is a cold logic description of thought processes, sometimes it's ramblings about stuff that char's going through/went through, sometimes it's "note to self"-type entries in which a char basically tries to remind him/herself of something (or gets a bit humoristic)...
In the case of one char, sometimes he rants about everything from his world to his player... and while I play him, it's one of those chars of mine that even I sometimes have a hard time understanding the accent of :p

masterekat wrote:I have a feeling it'll really help me separate my characters' thoughts and emotions from my own thoughts and emotions.

This. This is a notorious problem for me, and why most of my characters wind up being the same in the long run.

Wolf wrote:My own method for some of my chars:
I use this diary-type software in which I can make seperate diaries.
For each of the chars that I use this for, I make a seperate diary... then when writing an entry I get in-character as much as I can, and basically let that char air/vent/whatever...

I do that, except I use notepad. Could you link me to the program? It sounds purty nifty B)

Unless it's not free. IT MUST BE FREE

EDIT - Casual html fail. Used <> instead of []

I have an excersise book with a section for each character. It has some interesting footnotes, history, info from towns etc. I started it was I was new and learning. Now I use the character naming and comment section more when mine meet others but I still jot stuff down, print stuff out and put it with it. I listed clothing and descriptions and coments made regarding physical description (mostly my characters but others too - Seakor comes to mind). I used to add stuff for the town leaders and main characters mine met and kept quotes I liked. Coventina and EOnone had large sections of their own. Those two had awesome back stories and I couldn't resist. It gave me substance to work with when interacting with them. Nader, Harvey and others have smaller sections as they reveal themselves.

I have trade notes and calculations etc in there. I have a few maps but am careful which characters I use them against as I had one on a main island that had seen no proper island map until recently - propaganda and all that.

I play differently now. But perhaps I should go back and play like I used to. The problem was the emotional attachement I had to some characters was made stronger by this. So I dulled down the intensity in self defence after Delphia died.

With my intense schedule (which has lessened considerably this week since it is SPRING BREAK!!!!!!YAY!!!!), if I were to keep such detailed notes of my characters' thoughts and whatnot, I'd have to drop some characters in order to be able to do all this stuff in the same time I have now. I need to drop more characters anyway, but still.

If I follow logic, with how much I play on my phone at school *cough* only during breaks from lectures and work, I'll end up keeping my more spontaneous characters. But it'll come down to which characters are entertaining me the most when I decide to kill one or another, which is kind of pointless. lol

I use Microsoft OneNote for all my Cantr stuff. It's definitely not free (unless you go through the right channels, which I, of course, do -not- condone ), however, it was included in with the Office software I had to have for school. But it's incredibly useful for sorting things out...in fact, I'm pretty sure that half my life is in OneNote. Cantr gets its own notebook and each of my characters have their own tab...then tons of pages within those tabs: turn reports sorted by the year and age of the character so I don't have to click through all the emails when I'm looking for something, personality tests I've taken for the character and tidbits from astrology I've pulled to get a feel for the differences between them and myself, trade calculations, in progress plans and notes that I don't want in game until they're complete, in game notes and quotes I'll want to keep handy after those characters are gone... I'm starting to think a few of those characters need to have their own notebooks now, especially if I start doing this new idea (though I guess it's not so new to all of us). Not to be a bot or anything, but if you have a way to get your hands on OneNote, I highly recommend it for this. Pictures and audio clips can even be pasted into the notebooks if anyone is into that sort of thing.

Edit: Actually I just checked and found that if you have a Hotmail account, you can access a free web app of OneNote through the Sky Drive. You can't add pictures or audio on that free version, but still plenty of organization stuff you can do with the tabs and pages.