Why Do You Play Cantr?

[Friar Briar]

Just curious. I have been wondering this question for a while now and wanted to ask everyone their personal reasons for playing.

For me, I started because I wanted to play a game similar to A Tale In The Desert (which I have never played) where I could craft, sim, and take as long as I wanted in building something without having to devote hours playing or watching it everyday.

The persistent world appealed to me. Knowing I could say something and have another character respond at their leisure and vice versa put a lot of pressure off being in a constantly-active environment.

The freedom to role-play as-I-wish also appealed to me. In the beginning, I immersed some of my earliest characters in heavy, relational role-play and became deeply, emotionally involved in their stories.

These days, I'm less into role-playing, but still active. I'm really glad that Cantr allows role-play as heavy or as light as I want, as involved or not involved as I wish.

I'm more involved now in exploring game mechanics -- simming, building, and traveling, etc., and meta-world-building (being involved in the suggestions forums) to share my perspectives on the game.

What are your reasons for playing?

[Greek]

Possibility to cooperate and organize societies. Doing big things together - things which looked like being impossible at the beginning. Interesting moments like building or exploring something for the first time. Possibility of having unconventional character, which is not limited to a list defined by the game creator. Freedom of doing things in the way I like.


Hmm, maybe some parts of the list are now outdated...

[sanchez]

Learning languages in an immersive environment.

[*Wiro]

Mostly creating small spaces of really immersive and highly-detailed settings. This has become much better with custom descriptions for items and rooms. With furniture revamped it would become even better with rooms more than machine-filled boxes with windows. Also weird cults.

[Optimus Christ]

Time killing. But now since I'm streaming, and doing other things, I don't get on as much anymore.

[Rebma]

I started because when I was younger all my friends were playing online games and I wanted to. I went online to find these mysterious games, but my father had blocked my ability to play anything graphical and flash related. So I happened upon Cantr. I'd never rp'd or even heard of it before.

Now, I play it because I love the intricacies of building a character and watching their life and experiences shape them into this truly unique person, who interacts and relates (or not! ) with and to all these other characters and situations. I love writing but was never good at plot, always good at character dev.

I play this as an escape, and way to work through my own things.

[Marian]

I'm too tired to go into a big explanation of why it's so addictive to me right now, but I'll say that the reason I started was because I was a big fan of MUDs, but was looking for one with more of a focus on crafting and survival, while at the same time getting fed up with all these ridiculous backstories 99.9% of MUDs have with the world being torn asunder by the forces of darkness vs the forces of light etc etc. I kept wondering why these games that were supposed to be so big on RP didn't ever let players develop their own characters and their own conflicts instead of shoving them into these premade roles. And then one day I finally paid attention to this boring looking green browser game my cousin had been playing and watched her trade for wood or something and then got her to show me how to make a character. At the time the idea of no NPCs and of characters always existing in the world and doing everything in real time was just mindblowing. The game was an interesting diversion after that but it took a near life and death situation and a character on a trading trip getting swept up in an attempt to oust a crazy leader to get me hooked emotionally too.

[*Wiro]

Oh, I suppose the fact it is one of a kind (two since FTO) is kind of important.

[Xander]

I can't remember why I started playing the game back in the early days, but I have liked the novelty of the game compared to other online games.

[SekoETC]

I had gotten tired of games where you constantly kill things to earn gold to buy equipment and level up so you can kill bigger things. I wanted something different. Another thing I had played were chatroom rpgs, where it bugged me that others couldn't see the environment and equipment unless you described it while they were in the room. I wanted an environment where you could rp textually but also have constant items that others could see.

When I first joined Cantr, the only way to have pictures on notes was to send them to a certain email address and have them manually uploaded by moderators, so it was much easier to host them on external sites or write a description of a painting on a note or use ascii art. After it became possible to upload pictures yourself, a lot of my characters have been part time artists. It would be nice if it also would become possible in the future to attach pictures to items, but I already like textual custom descriptions. I play two fashion designers and even my other characters tend to custom describe their clothing. I hope eventually everything will be custom describable, including ship interiors.

I also like the possibility of learning new languages in game. I used to play a Swedish character who had fun learning Esperanto, and I heard that a copy of a dictionary he wrote ended up on a region he never visited. I also play an English character who compiled a Polish dictionary, combining several older dictionaries into one and trying to figure out IC how verb conjugation works. It's frustrating when dictionaries ingame don't have the words you need, so it's important to have characters who expand them based on personal experience. I think I'd like to learn Portuguese one day because I love the Portuguese/Brazilian children's songs on Youtube, but only two of my characters have visited their region and one of them is suspicious towards them because two of them stole his ship.

One thing I also like is experiencing roles I can't in real life, such as homosexual, transsexual, pirate, town leader, blind, illiterate or a slow learner. I have pervasive developmental disorder in real life, so I know what it's like to be different, but there are so many ways of being different. Some people are more normal than others but I doubt anybody can call themselves completely normal.

[Doug R.]

I grew up playing pen and dice rpgs, and Cantr was as close as I could find to that, and it is unique - mass storytelling. The novelty of it has long worn off, and the player base has drastically changed from one that engaged my interests to one that now, really doesn't at all . Character's today simply don't want the things they wanted when I first started playing, and it's pretty much ruined Cantr for me (back then, the focus was on relationships within groups. Now it's about personal relationships - makes political rp almost impossible). That said, I have one character left that against all odds has managed to hold my interest, doing the same things I've been doing for ten or eleven years. That character will be my last, and I'll move on to other pursuits.

[computaertist]

I tried writing a fuller answer twice and found I couldn't without saying more than I wanted to. So I boiled my reasons down to two:

1. I don't want to hurt anyone by leaving now.

2. I love a place that lets me be (as a character, not necessarily a writer) my idea of awesome, and lets everyone be whatever they want to be for whatever reasons they have. (It just so happens all I want for myself right now is awesomeness, with my apologies to those that puzzles and annoys [I do try to leave you all alone when I can].)

[sherman]

I first joined to be.. Great conquer and thief in mind with my chars.. Killing and conquering all known lands.. Well that didn't happen but was hilarious to get killed by scarab and once I did my first eng chars I really loved this game.. It was so deep and fun to play with people.. Recent sleepiness has really though lamed my gaming experience but playing nice and loving relationship is nice with great plans (I still want to have 200 years old chars, will see can I make it to that )

All in all, this is awesome game.. lack of players/active ones is just a bit minus but this is good for time killing and using english

[computaertist]

Having read through another thread, and seeing why this one got started, I realized it might be helpful if I also said reasons that do NOT compel me to play Cantr, as if I don't say them they might be assumed in my previous answer.

I, for one, don't want a war. I wouldn't mind one, but I wouldn't expect one to have much pull for keeping me here, not with combat mechanics being what they are. I don't need my heart to be racing, and besides that I've been in enough pirate/thief situations now to decide they aren't for me in this game. Tolerable (so if you all want one have at it and it won't make me quit) but not motivating.

I also don't play for the drama, melo-, epic, or otherwise. I have a hard time refusing people, so it's possible to get me stuck in it, but it doesn't attract me.

...

I'm aware hat that might only serve to leave my previous answer meaningless for most people. After all, if not any of those, what's left to be awesome? But I'd still rather not say for now.

[Doug R.]

I tried writing a fuller answer twice and found I couldn't without saying more than I wanted to. So I boiled my reasons down to two:

1. I don't want to hurt anyone by leaving now.

Get over it. Ok, that was intentionally blunt. Now let give you the reasons. If you are playing at less than your full potential out of fear of hurting someone else by leaving, you're doing both yourself and them a great disservice. This was my reason for hanging on to all but one of my characters until one day, I got depressed enough, and thought, "screw this, I'm not having fun with them, and I haven't in a while. There's no point in continuing." So I pulled the plug, some ooc messages were exchanged in RL and it all turned out to be anticlimactic. Those players are now free to move their characters on to another player's characters that are worth their time. So, don't waste your time and someone else's time on guilt.