Cantr II Discussion Forum

Continuing on the theme of how there are characters whose lives are boring and nothing interesting ever happens. For someone it might be better to get an interesting death than a life of boredom, or someone might rather get robbed and left on an uninhabited island to discover what's truly important in life. People don't want to take risks because that might get their characters killed, so there are not many pirates nowadays. But what if people agreed OOC:ly not to radio for help or if someone went into near death state, they would get to choose if they want to die or not and people would at least give them a chance of last words? If a pirate got captured, they would be put in jail, get regular interaction with guards and/or other inmates, eventually go on parole and get released, either as a rehabilitated citizen or plotting vengeance. Usually no one ever surrenders or agrees to live in imprisonment because there are no guarantees that it will ever be humane and worth the player's time.

In chatroom rpgs, characters rarely die, and when they do, it's planned in advance and heavily rp'ed. Then the death has a meaning instead of being the result of who happens to be online at convenient times and what the random number generator happens to spit out. Near death state was a step in a good direction but if people are finishing people off instantly without giving them a chance to say their last words, that sucks.

For example, has it ever happened that an important character gets kidnapped and people pay ransom to get them back? And that the person is actually returned safe and sound? Because usually in situations like that, the friends of the abducted person attack the kidnappers because they know they can't hit the victim more than once a day, and they know that if they gave everything that was asked, the kidnappers would have an even better chance to win, and no reason to return the victim other than being true to their word.

OOC planning often results in drama and people taking things far too personally, in my opinion and experience.

Usually, just having an RP environment results in drama and people taking offense. Something about getting together a group of creative types who all have their own ideas of where things should go... and the fact that they're usually young.
Having anonymity prevents that in cantr, I think. And maybe also the non-modern game interface keeps the average maturity level up a bit. Out of game planning would take away that anonymity, but not the maturity level.

I can't help but feel like this would be abused, while the intention my be that a player could agree to and be aware of their character's planned demise I expect it would see more use in the planning of attacks for technical advantage rather than role playing oppetunity.

There's also the point that cantr has established this anonymity which we've grown accustomed to. Some players value that more than others and I can easily imagine a portion of the player base not being interested in the rule change, and their characters being rather isolated should any planned events take place.