Cantr II Discussion Forum

About two weeks ago, I decided to make a transgender character and I'm...less than impressed with the reactions he got. He's currently being hunted down and killed, and it's really disheartening. I know reactions will vary widely because of the number of characters who play, but I wasn't expecting this. He's probably going to die before he gets to the next town, and I'm sorry to see him go. He was a fun character to roleplay, but he didn't get much of a chance since all of the people he interacted with were hostile.

Wow.

If you allow me to say this (and based on my absolute ignorance about the events your char has been through, but also on my previous experiences), I'd say it has little or nothing to do with your char being transgender.

I've seen at least 2 or 3 transgender characters in the past, and I can't count how many androgynous ones. Less I can't count gay, bi, or asexual chars I've witnessed, and I can even tell about one town where ALMOST EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER is gay. No one ever cared about that.
About the transgender characters, I'd say they had a normal interaction with the surroundings, but the most important thing to keep in mind here is that my experience is limited only to the english community.

I feel utterly sad about your experience honestly. I hope this doesn't discourage you. Maybe you should try it at some different community or place?

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Also: keep in mind that some characters or even places may have things like this as part of their own rp.
For example, while I'm lesbian myself I once tried to make an homophobic character. Ok, that didn't go very well, but at least I tried.

Just don't take it personal. Some language groups are more permeable than others to certain things too. Just don't let it take you down .

lee-whiteout wrote:About two weeks ago, I decided to make a transgender character and I'm...less than impressed with the reactions he got. He's currently being hunted down and killed, and it's really disheartening. I know reactions will vary widely because of the number of characters who play, but I wasn't expecting this. He's probably going to die before he gets to the next town, and I'm sorry to see him go. He was a fun character to roleplay, but he didn't get much of a chance since all of the people he interacted with were hostile.

I agree with Rocket's response and I hope you hang in there. I don't know for certain if the response your character received had anything to do with the fact that they were transgender or not. Some communities are rather suspicious and hostile to newspawns in general, and I've certainly had my own characters run down and attacked for fairly benign actions that would have been perfectly acceptable at some other town or location.

Some characters (not their players) are just hostile and antipatic. However they usually live by themselves or only in their little group.

You may make one or two more transgender chars to see how other towns would react to them. Most likely the reactions would be welcome or even indifference.

I'm almost completely sure that the reactions I received were for being trans, but I have made a new character who is in a nice community. Thank God. They're super nice and helped my character find a new name. I'm so much happier with this character, even if my old one had a more interesting personality. He died though earlier today, which was sad.

gudgeon wrote:Some characters (not their players) are just hostile and antipatic. However they usually live by themselves or only in their little group.

You may make one or two more transgender chars to see how other towns would react to them. Most likely the reactions would be welcome or even indifference.

I thought I had learned a new English word but (as far as I can tell) it isn't an English one and it has no equivalent in English. I do think it should be adopted, though. Useful word.

The root word should be "antipathy" (opposite of sympathy), and the adjective is "antipathetic." The noun sees a little use, but the adjective is rare.

There are some deeply problematic 'cultures' in Cantr, I find. The best advice I can give is to scope out your char's spawntown for a while and judge the personalities, then see if they're a good fit for the type of RP you're going for. I find this has helped me (as in the player) avoid some potentially awful experiences.

Having a trans or non-binary character is always going to be difficult in Cantr just because of the coding that shows unknown characters as 'a man/woman in their twenties'.

My own experience is related to that - my character's description makes it very clear that they shouldn't be able to be easily identified as either male or female (while clothed of course!), but some players don't seem to bother even glancing at character descriptions before refering to a gender. All fine if they accept your correction and use the right pronouns after that, but I did have one newspawn that insisted my character was female despite being told otherwise by mine and a couple others and without having seen my character naked or anything. So...he got punched in the face. When that very unladylike act failed to improve his viewpoint, he got locked up! It seemed to be in that instance that it was very much the player with an issue, as the character had been given no indication of what my character's body actually looked like - it was purely based off of the player seeing 'a woman in their thirties'. And therefore that player's character was then seen as being a deluded loon.

I'm glad you've had a better experience with your second attempt
Generally speaking, Cantr is a much more open-minded place than the real world, perhaps because human reproduction doesn't work anything like in real life? But there is bound to be some characters who will still have issues, so as long as it's for legitimate in game reasons, rather than the player themselves, it can add some interesting conflict.

I agree that gender as a game mechanism is completely useless in Cantr. We could simply replace all "man" and "woman" with "person".

In the recent versions of Angband, there is no gender option in character generation at all.

Snowdrop wrote:Generally speaking, Cantr is a much more open-minded place than the real world, perhaps because human reproduction doesn't work anything like in real life?

I think the cantrian community is generally more open minded. IRL I'd punch anyone in the face for purposely disrespecting someone non binary or trans just because of that. But IRL I'm quite reactive and hotheaded with stuff like that.

gudgeon wrote:I agree that gender as a game mechanism is completely useless in Cantr. We could simply replace all "man" and "woman" with "person".

In the recent versions of Angband, there is no gender option in character generation at all.

We totally could.

Rocket Frog wrote:

gudgeon wrote:I agree that gender as a game mechanism is completely useless in Cantr. We could simply replace all "man" and "woman" with "person".

In the recent versions of Angband, there is no gender option in character generation at all.

We totally could.

We recently discussed that in the suggestions channel on Discord actually.

I see no reason in Cantr why we need to specify sex/gender in such a hard-coded way. There's literally no difference between men and women in the Cantr systems at all (afaik).

I play both male and female characters and it does help me step in to a role picking a gender at spawn. I've never played a trans character before, so I can't speak from experience but I would imagine it would also take away from the experience for a player that does (from realization and transitioning, etc.) even if that experience isn't always the best. I do sympathize for anyone experiencing bullying or abuse, though. I'm glad OP had a better experience in a different location.

Millhouse wrote:I play both male and female characters and it does help me step in to a role picking a gender at spawn.

Nothing is stopping you from picking that gender, though it just missed the button, but there's plenty you can do with names and descriptions to make it clear what gender your char has.