Cantr II Discussion Forum

I play two types of characters. Several are just the worker bee types. So long as they are doing something they are happy. Others have goals and things they want to accomplish. This second group I'm having a real problem with now that I've been playing for about a year or more. They either wanted a decent vehicle or a boat or to set up a town and now that some of them are accomplishing those goals boredom is setting in. They work to get a nice vehicle. They get it and wow now what? There's a multitude of traders. Every town seems to have its own brewery and other specialty businesses. I have a trader. I have an explorer. I really don't want multiple ones. I don't have it in me to be a thief or a pirate every time I try I end up backing out and just trading or joining the town as a productive citizen. Even my town leader is seriously considering just passing the keys off and giving up.

So I'm asking for opinions from other players what you do in situations where your characters accomplish goals and start to get bored?

Lay adventures for others to find. Get a shitton of treasure and leave enigmatic clues as to where it might be, then abandon that continent and repeat. Come back years later, see if anybody found it, and if somebody did, spend the rest of your life trying to find out who.

That's a very common problem. It's the argument I always fall back on when players complain that their chars aren't given enough crap from the towns' hoarders just for showing up. When chars achieve their goals (which usually revolve around "acquire X stuff"), they get sleepy.

With some of mine, I've made goals that are farther reaching. Visit every island at least once, collect at least 1 gram of every resource, etc. There are others that I won't go into more detail about but they involve accomplishing certain things in tandem with their age so as long as they are living their goal is increasing in size/scope. It's a moving target that can never really be "hit" so the chars will always have a goal.

Chars need a purpose. There's a few of my chars that struggle with finding their purpose and each time it slips through their fingers I find it harder to get them moving again.

One type of character I'd like to play is a fashion designer. It would be possible now that we have custom descriptions. A different question is who can afford to buy fashion.

Two of my characters have a life goal of visiting as many islands as possible. There could be a business in delivering gems to areas that don't have them, although if you have to buy them when gathering isn't allowed, there's the question of what do the people in the location want in exchange. Another thing to trade would be silk, because there are coastal locations that allow carrying it and might even have some for sale, while the civilized islands have a shortage. It just requires a bit of sailing. Other things that are good to trade are radio components or the resources to make them, soldering irons, things that require an anvil or a work bench to build. The problem is most people are pretty poor. If someone was ready to sell at a loss and for example buy things at manual rates if they know that the person who gathered them doesn't have the necessary tools, that would ensure more trade.

One thing that might work is first studying maps of sparsely populated islands to find the optimal locations to settle, then gather all the bored people from dying towns and found the optimal society that's able to produce everything. I once had a character settle in a sort of an optimal location, and it worked until someone enslaved her and broke her personality so that she didn't know what to do with her life after she was freed.

One of my characters wants to make jewelry, but he doesn't know where to find cobalt for a soldering iron, so he has to go searching. That could well take decades.

Alternately, build a few galleons and an oodle of weapon, then collect said bored players from populated regions, travel to some fertile corner of Fu and build an empire. Then announce war on Klojt and sail dozens of small ships to land on the wrong side of Treefeather and march your destructive path across the continent and pour into the city and try to overtake the defenders they've surely assembled.

I think part of the problem, loath as I am to say it, is the lack of major violence that happens. The Blackrocks war was incredible, and I think that somehow, societies became more loyal and competitive, Cantr would become a lot more interesting. Part of the problem is most chars are travelers who don't really hold any strong loyalties.

I dont know if I would go so far as wanting to start a war, but that brings up another point. I think what is so frustrating at times is that there is so much potential in game for elaborate plans, but it takes multiple people to really be sold on the idea. I'd like to see an organized trading network set up on some of the larger islands but one characters cant do that alone. Just like kicking jay's empire. I've never seen one work in game. You can't just leave a note on the ground and not defend your claimed area. People will just laugh at it. You need numbers to do something like that. I know I'm whining, just trying to get an idea of how people deal with hitting that invisible wall with their characters.

I'd say it's, the whole issue of loyalty, or the lack thereof. Why would anybody feel like they should do anything unless they had a part in making it happen? People are too damn nice, that's what. If we were more hostile to outsides, then those that were spawned into a town/civilization would feel like they are a part of it. Instead of all this "earn your position" thing that so many towns do, as soon as you're born, you are given an option - take a token, basically a receipt of citizenship, and stay, or leave and never be a true part of the town. With this, you are a part of all towns in this civilization, and you have almost unlimited privileges - at the cost of going under great scrutiny if you try to leave or move about. If you were ever caught giving or trading away your token, you're toast - expect to be hunted town and brought to painful death. Instead of earning your position in the town, you are rewarded with going on raiding trips to plunder nearby villages that are not part of the civilization, and expanding it. That'd build loyalty to the civilization, and I expect either wars with other clans or revolutions internally, both of which are quite interesting.
But that won't happen, because everybody is so kind to each other and accepting. Stop having such 21st century ethics! This is medieval!

On a side note, I wish I knew more about the Stone Knights, and how they did/do it.

See - for me - the fun isn't in the simulation part of the game, but rather in the social part of the game. I enjoy trying out different social structures, different payment structures, different government types. I enjoy giving some of my characters strange personalities and watching how people react. Some of my characters have material goals, but most of them are more or less social experiments. Like you - I can't really bring myself to play the brutal victimizing type, but I have some truly manipulative types.

I think material goals are often a pitfall for characters since you do fall privy to that familiar conundrum of 'Now what?' after it's been built or obtained. Prior to spawning, each of my characters have a far-fetched intangible goal for them to reach for. They are simple, but open to many ways of execution depending on their location, skills, and environment. Here's some examples of what I mean:

- become famous or infamous on the entire island(s): this one is probably more profession/reputation related ranging from pirates to poets.
- be a stationary, unsuspecting sociopath: Lots of people pull off the Jekyll and Hyde stunt, but run to avoid getting caught. Not sure how this could really get done, but I suspect lots of meticulous planning and patience would be needed.
- make the best out of everything for others, not yourself: usually altruistic goals makes a character last longer, especially since other people like to surround themselves with selfless, giving characters (generous in their time, gifts, labor, etc.). Ultimately then, to solidify this goal, the character may take up an occupation to give their work away as gifts to others and spread the happiness.
- make opportunities for others, while not making profit in the process: This one is similar to the one above, but may demand more patience and planning. Probably a character with a large network could benefit from this and be part of an organization or business that provides needs or resources to others so more dreams can be fulfilled. Or can even be as simple as creating a overseas trading network of transporting resources each island lacks to different coastal harbors.
- age appropriately from youth to elderly: This is pretty self-explanatory. Start off rising through puberty/young adulthood. Go through adult life. Start having symptoms that comes of age.
- have an incorrigible amount of faith in people and try not to falter from it no matter how trying it may be: this one is frustrating to play, but if a character can stick it out, they could go around the island helping people heal from hopelessness, heartache, pain, etc. Maybe even as an opinionated missionary.
- be displeased with everything, but remain living in disgruntle: this one can be fun in the right environment. Could end up being a small business owner who is never satisfied with his employees, products, etc. Can be a scrooge, a disgruntled postal worker, a tyrannical leader, etc.

I have one that spends MOST of his time making vehicles for newspawns and young characters. He then ends up giving them away to gather and build the next.

For me the game was more relational than physical.

It was about building relationships with characters. Some were built to have close bonds, others purposely had personalities that would bring conflict, or something different to the table.

For example Orand didn't care about owning anything, except some nice things that might attract a girl, so he could have someone special like everyone else. My time with Orand was about 'how will people interact with him'. Brason, the only person in the world to him was Seraphina, so he listened to whatever she had to say, but had a terrible temper with others. Surf's goal, again wasn't physical, but it was to become a Stone Knight and improve their image (he didn't live long enough for the second part of that ). I had a trader in Gracy Greene, but it was more about meeting people than making trades, that was just a part of the experience. Even my explorer Larson, his goal was to check out the different animals that he'd never seen before. He'd get so excited when he saw something new. He also spent time sometimes years in foreign language towns for the experience. One of my favorite characters Drey, his goal was to improve his town which took his whole life and was never able to complete, all the while trying to win people over to stay in town (unless they were crazy, crazies need not apply). Find a primitive town and build it up, that will take a lifetime, and I don't just mean objects, I mean building it up with people too.

I found I got a lot more out of the game by addressing relational or social goals, than just physical objects, trying to acquire stuff. I think that's why it was so hard to quit, all my characters had real connections with other characters.

I think a problem is that character goals are both too easy to obtain and too specific.

I have one character that will -never- be bored, simply because their goals are complex, broad, and generally impossible to attain. Every time they think they're making progress, conditions shift, meaning they have to reformulate their plans.

I also have characters that have fallen out of my favor and are bored, and some that just build stuff quietly, but for the moment, I'm fine with that. I've said it plenty of times, and I'll say it again: 15 Characters is far, far too many. 10 is too many. 5 is probably a good number. You can't make up interesting and unique stories for so many characters. I have a hard enough time setting goals for myself in RL, much less 15 fictional characters. It's just not going to happen.

So, here's my solution to solving the "lack of a goal" problem:

-Cut your list to five characters.

-Set broadly defined goals that are probably impossible to attain, but will generate an endless list of smaller, attainable goals that will occupy your character.

-Avoid your "happily ever after." If at any time you can apply that phrase to your character's life, then that character is STUCK! Their story is over! Consider culling that character to get down to your perpetually unsatisfied 5, or alter the situation radically enough to introduce that perpetual unsatisfaction. Unless you're quite happy living out your blissful, comfortable existence day in and day out, but I bet after 6 months of it, you really won't be. This is why soap operas don't feature functional families.

I am probably strange in that I'm happiest playing perpetually happy characters. Real life has enough trouble, thanks.

I have too many, so some of my characters are bored because I just don't have energy reserves to keep them happy on top of my others. Doug recommends 5, but I would really prefer 1 or 2 except I find myself unable to probably hurt anyone; I would need either the characters or the players of the characters it would effect to let me know they would not be hurt at all (I can live with hurt characters if I'm convinced there are no hurt players).

My happy characters all have never-ending goals by the very definition of the goal. A certain amount of things is never enough; it's all either consumable so it must be constantly replenished or symbolic and all able to always have more. Ideally both, but that's harder to come up with in a world where so little rots. They are always either about helping other people in some way or else helping something even more intangible than other people.

People need to worship something (though most won't use that word). Without a god of some sort, you die of boredom. This is more obviously true in Cantr than irl.