On the subject of newspawns

[alecto]

With a recent spate of newspawns in several populated towns, I've noticed a few things in how Cantr 'culture' seems to deal with them recently.

Firstly, I've noticed that they aren't given a great deal of information. They seem to be given the basics - food, clothes, shield, etc. However there seems to be an assumption that all newspawns will already understand the basic Cantr player mechanics and game-wide culture - i.e. don't go into buildings, don't ask for too much too early, try to find a task to do.

Secondly I've noticed that they rarely (if ever) get information on the in-game history, not even recent or local events. No "welcome to X town, we are [a big trade center/a fishing community/a mountain town that mainly exports X resource], here's what we do and what the local area is like." I saw 9 out of 10 recently spawned characters directed to notes, given the basics, and then left to work things out themselves.

This seems counter-intuitive, since one of the core game rules is that characters spawn with no prior knowledge of the game or any events. Contrary to this, there's unspoken rules that everyone is assumed to know on spawning - for example, food kept in containers in the main town area is generally free for all, shields are required equipment regardless of location or role, etc.

My question for the community - have you spawned a character recently? What was your experience? If you're a new player, what confused you the most? And if you're a regular player - have you noticed a common experience across spawned characters that would baffle a new player?

[alecto]

Just a thought - if anyone has a story they want to share anonymously, please feel free to PM it to me and I'll add it to this thread.

[sherman]

Haven't spawned any new ones in ages but one reason for lack of history given is.. That much has been lost. I for example run town but I have no idea about history, it was never forwarded in anyway or recorded.. Just tiny bits

[alecto]

That in itself could be interesting information, though. It gives some great context to a newspawn: "Hey welcome to X, I'd tell you all about the place but the truth is most of our history has been lost."

It gives something for them to play off of, at least?

[witia1]

Usually I would expect that new spawn would need to dig a bit deeper to get that knowledge outside of some superficial facts about day to day operations. Simply because I would expect of them to show any interest first.

On topic of history, simply not many people keep notes about daily activates, even those important. But also most often people are quite reluctant to give details of past from my experience so even if someone would want to write it down there is not much material available.

"Back in old days" kinda popular way was to just keep logs in game notes, especially of radio transmissions. To be honest it usually made me a bit mad.
While yes, it was good source of knowledge about something that your character was not present for, it felt for me a bit lazy way just copy paste game chat and also created this "perfect knowledge" about every detail.