Cantr II Discussion Forum

Most jobs in Cantr do not need the full time dedication of a character. This is true for almost all jobs in Cantr but one that I don't think some players grasp. Take the position of town guardsman/soldier for example, your not going to encounter very many threats in Cantr, really 99% of guardsman/soldiers are nothing more then glorified militia members handed a weapon and a shield on the odd chance that they needed to be called upon. Yet for some reason a few people don't think that they can be much more then a soldier who sometimes gathers the odd resource every now and repairs a couple crumbling tools. Another position with the opposite problem is that of librarian, people don't think they should become one because they don;t want to be cooped up inside all day sorting notes. Sorry to break it to you folks but a librarian is hardly a full time job. You just have to sort a couple notes, something that doesn't even take a project to complete. This is true for things like musician, storyteller, writer, dancer, artists harvestor/collector/general worker, trader and a host of other positions. We need more trader/writer/dancers and less soldiers, general workers and librarians.

Sorry if this is a little sweeping in claims/aggressive but I just want to get my point across.

Well, my problem is that some of my characters have too many roles at the same time. While others have none at all.

Being full-time soldier/librarian/musician in my opinion fights stereotype that only working on projects is "productive". I think it's good.

I don't know how it is in English. In Polish Zone many people think it's more ok to pay equivalent of one day of work for 8 game hours of work, than to pay the same for some work of art, which took many real hours of an artist/writer's to do/prepare.

Money wrote:... Another position with the opposite problem is that of librarian, people don't think they should become one because they don;t want to be cooped up inside all day sorting notes. Sorry to break it to you folks but a librarian is hardly a full time job. You just have to sort a couple notes, something that doesn't even take a project to complete...

Just a few notes? Yeah, I used to think about it that way. My char got a library with over a thousand notes. It's a HELL to sort out, because the names of the notes don't always indicate where they should go. Most of the notes are written crappy, copying notes just doesn't work for anything old, there are notes that have images as titles, there are notes without a title that are awesome but unchangeable.... It really isn't "just sorting out a couple of notes" for some libraries.

Everywhere I've ever seen, people have always taken multiple roles. People have official titles but rarely see people just stick to one thing. Everybody seems to help out with everything, and also play music, or sing, or do poetry whenever it fancies them.
In contrast, I have seen people who pull off one position and are constantly busy, mostly business owners and traders.
Freiana is also correct, being a librarian in the big, old cities really isn't as leisurely as you think.

I fail to see what point is trying to be made, so I'm thinking this is more of a rant than a concept for discussion.

freiana wrote:copying notes just doesn't work for anything old

There is a way to fix that.

LittleSoul wrote:I fail to see what point is trying to be made, so I'm thinking this is more of a rant than a concept for discussion.

That's what I thought too.

In response to the idea that this isn't much of a discussion then I have to disagree, the obvious extension of all this is agreeing/disagreeing, though I can see why this could be called a rant. If I made myself sound more agreeable and didn't take some kind of stand this would just turn into another "awesome! I understand your point and will voice a short message of support" thread. I think that the community needs to recognize that coming in with the mindset that "this will be my soldier char, this will be my worker char" is not really a distinction that needs to be made and is quite frankly a very thin concept of a character. Obviously the personality of a char will dictate certain jobs a char can take but specialization is not required or needed for most jobs.

On the library point I have to disagree. I've had characters manage massive libraries as well and it does not HAVE to be a full time job. Yes, characters that concentrate on the academic pursuits can easily make it into a full time job but simply taking ones time can allow almost anyone to complete the basic duties of a librarian (most towns do not have 1000 note libraries).

Money wrote:In response to the idea that this isn't much of a discussion then I have to disagree, the obvious extension of all this is agreeing/disagreeing, though I can see why this could be called a rant. If I made myself sound more agreeable and didn't take some kind of stand this would just turn into another "awesome! I understand your point and will voice a short message of support" thread. I think that the community needs to recognize that coming in with the mindset that "this will be my soldier char, this will be my worker char" is not really a distinction that needs to be made and is quite frankly a very thin concept of a character. Obviously the personality of a char will dictate certain jobs a char can take but specialization is not required or needed for most jobs.

On the library point I have to disagree. I've had characters manage massive libraries as well and it does not HAVE to be a full time job. Yes, characters that concentrate on the academic pursuits can easily make it into a full time job but simply taking ones time can allow almost anyone to complete the basic duties of a librarian (most towns do not have 1000 note libraries).

I am still not understanding why you made this thread. Here is why.

What I gather, is that you want people to perceive, and then consequently play their characters differently because in your opinion, players who play characters based on the roles you speak of, are using an unsubstantial character concept lacking in substance; or "thin" as you put it. Your second point, which is probably meant to be your main one, is that characters should be playing more than one kind of role in a character (because it gives them more substance), which ties into the first point: You dislike how, in your opinion, most people don't play more than one role on a character, and consequently you think it's a lacking basis for a character concept.

If this is actually your point, I'm afraid to say everyone's going to play their characters how they choose to regardless of your opinion, therefore the point is moot, and that is the reason it comes off as a rant.

People's opinions on bad, or sub par RP is an old concept of discussion, and the end result of it is always "Oh well, we can't do anything about that.", because you can't.

I agree with you that more fleshed out characters who have more and complex desires, ambitions, and talents would be nice, but that is pretty much the end of it, isn't it? Because the kind of thread you were speaking of above is exactly what this is.

Not that I have a great deal to contribute, but I feel a trifle need to say this. There's little that I love more than a character that is almost completely focused on one role. My 'trader' ( ) loves being able to look at his trade list and say "I can get that from Mister Tailor in this town real easy, and I can get that from Potatoes R Us"...

I'm hoping I can avoid meeting characters that run through the town yelling "See me for trade! I'm a tailor who has a couple of bits, and I did some smithing so I have a spare sabre.. Oh, and I should have a piece of cod laying around somewhere!" Although admittedly, that certainly could open opportunities for "Fred's junk store" or something.

The same way characters can see my tin can fanatic, and 'know' where to go if they want a tin can, or anything 'tin' for that matter. He's certainly not going to start growing herbs because somebody said "You can do more than one thing, you know..."

Hedgedhogst wrote:The same way characters can see my tin can fanatic, and 'know' where to go if they want a tin can, or anything 'tin' for that matter. He's certainly not going to start growing herbs because somebody said "You can do more than one thing, you know..."

Lol I think I know this tin can fanatic. My character just thought he was crazy doing nothing but making tin cans all day. Those types of characters are fun to play. No concerns just do something all day that most others would deem useless.

LittleSoul wrote:I am still not understanding why you made this thread.

If you don't get the thread you don't get the thread, sorry I'm not being clear enough for you.

point 1: most jobs/roles don't require the full dedication of your character, thus allowing multiple roles to be filled by a single character

point 2: having a single role for one character is unrealistic

I guess I'm just an optimist about being able to impact my fellow players

Hedgedhogst wrote:I'm hoping I can avoid meeting characters that run through the town yelling "See me for trade! I'm a tailor who has a couple of bits, and I did some smithing so I have a spare sabre.. Oh, and I should have a piece of cod laying around somewhere!" Although admittedly, that certainly could open opportunities for "Fred's junk store" or something.

I love organized individuals, power to them! Specialization is of course not all bad, you can only do one project at a time and travel so fast after all. That being said a character is not chained to their projects, You could write a story while on a road to between cities or compose a song. Mr.Tin Can Fanatic could serenade the town about his tin cans while he produces them. The distinction between a main role (the main concentration of your character) and subsidiary roles (something you do on the side every now and then) needs to be made.

NOW I get it! *face palm* This thread called "You can have more then role" is really "You can have more than one role".
My chars are all extremely industrious and do just about every type of work that springs up but some would like to settle and be just the town cook or tailor or dairy farmer. But they suffer their player's impatience so I don't see too many of them picking a single career path even if it is technically their official job title.

catwill wrote:NOW I get it! *face palm* This thread called "You can have more then role" is really "You can have more than one role".
My chars are all extremely industrious and do just about every type of work that springs up but some would like to settle and be just the town cook or tailor or dairy farmer. But they suffer their player's impatience so I don't see too many of them picking a single career path even if it is technically their official job title.

Now I am super embarrassed, the title was ment to be "You can be more then one role".

Money wrote:

catwill wrote:NOW I get it! *face palm* This thread called "You can have more then role" is really "You can have more than one role".
My chars are all extremely industrious and do just about every type of work that springs up but some would like to settle and be just the town cook or tailor or dairy farmer. But they suffer their player's impatience so I don't see too many of them picking a single career path even if it is technically their official job title.

Now I am super embarrassed, the title was ment to be "You can be more then one role".

Don't be embarrassed, I'm the one who couldn't figure it out from the context right away.

I think this is mainly an issue with the leveling rather than player. I mean if the leveling was done properly (not attacking the devs or the community so calm down) then it would take more time to specialize in something, thus making specializations just that. I don't think your disagreement is with the people playing one role but rather the game mechanics allowing them to specialize in everything other than that role they chose.

I really think the leveling could use some tweaking, the only reason I haven't suggested something is because I have absolutely no idea how to tweak it to fit a more realistic game play and I'm sure that's why the developers that made it this way did make it this way. But since this topic was officially brought up then I would be interested in hearing more people's opinion on it. If I take anything out of this it's you just now realizing what I noticed after the first day or so of playing the game and that's specializing in skill is far too easy.

Now here's some food for thought, the more and more I thought about this issue I couldn't quite understand why everything was so easy, but then came my 'weak' character and I noticed that making him strong wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do, now if we rinsed and repeated that method for the skills in the game I think that would at least help the skills issue. I'm not saying that would fix it over night, but as far as I can tell that's the only solution for now, BUT, that's only if the community agrees on the same problem I just brought up.

I would really be interested in having some input on this matter though, to give me some idea of what the community's opinion is on it. I would really rather not waste the space on the forums making another thread about this since this thread already brought it into light, so I'm going to wait until the community replies and if I think there is sufficient support for coming up with a new system for skills then I'll possibly make a thread addressing it and allow people to input their ideas and having everyone pick the best suggestion for the suggestions forum.

Doug R. wrote:

freiana wrote:copying notes just doesn't work for anything old

There is a way to fix that.

1. Open working note.
2. Click "Wrong encoding?"
3. Select "UTF8 (unicode)".
4. Copy note.
5. ???
6. PROFIT!!!!


Edit: Okay, wth? I just did that with a note and all the text in it just disappeared.

OnT: Most of my characters have non-project roles: full-time sleepers. XDD jk Only one of them is an active sleeper. (The rest just sleep because I'm too far behind to have any will to play them.) One of them is a bit of a bard. Well, three of them, actually, but the other two don't play as much. One of them even has a clarinet.