Cantr II Discussion Forum

I know this discussion has probably been done to death a thousand times before, but where exactly is the line between IC and OOC knowledge drawn?

Especially now with the addition of the wiki I think it's important that the difference is made clear.

Are you still expected to roleplay certain things? For instance, is it considered okay now to have a character spawn and immediately seek to build one of the more complicated machines, automatically knowing the materials and amount of each required, regardless of whether they've been exposed to anything like it or have any IC reason to desire it?

I'd much rather see something like, "Gee, we really need to come up with a better way to cook our meat, let me think about this for a little while and see if I can come up any ideas...hmm, what if we built a kind of big metal box to contain the heat?" (Okay, not the greatest example, but certainly better than, "This place that I just spawned into five minutes ago is terribly inefficient, why don't you guys get some materials together and build an oven?" when no one in your community's ever so much as seen one before...)

We all assume certain knowledge for our chars, but when something is explained in the wiki, does that mean that the information is there mainly for the players, but can be incorporated into roleplay if desired, or that all characters are just automatically spawned knowing everything there is to know? (Even things completely irrevelant to the place they wound up at?)

i personally think it's more fun and more rewarding to play dumb. if you know everything there is to know, then what's the fun in playing? it'll just make the mass iron production that seems to drive the Cantr world even easier and degrade the quality of RP.

even if the new rule is that every spawn knows everything in the Wiki, my stubborn self won't play it that way. i'll play dumber-than average characters.

For me personally, I try to imagine what a 20 year old in a fairly isolated culture would know. I always look on the ground for any notes or maps and at any buildings, vehicle, etc. to help me decide how much traffic from other towns may be moving through the town. So usually, I feel most characters are familiar with things like, what is metal, what basic tools are, etc., while a complete understanding of multistep processes should require at little bit of time in game to acquire.

I guess as an example, I feel safe spawning a character and picking up some bones to make a knife, while springing to the world and asking to work for the materials to construct a smelting furnace is a bit suspect. It does bother me when I see a newspawn pop out of the ground with a well formulated agenda. I think if you are truly operating IC and letting your character honestly develop as a part of the society, you will just work to fulfill basic needs (gathering food so you're not hungry, make a few basic tools to hunt or gather effectively, assemble protection and clothing, etc), then fall into the niche that becomes suited for you. Asking for a job is perfectly acceptible, while immediately deciding to start your own company when you haven't been in the community long enough to know what business is available or needed is pushing the line.

The biggest thing for me in separating the two is knowledge of other towns and people. I have to assume that every character knows nothing about another town until he has spoken about it explicitly in conversation or seen it on a map.

Reminds me of those chars who spawn calling the world 'Cantr.' Now that the Hobbes has brought that island's map to the other big ol' island, it's fun to see people say, "Cantr? That's really far away...I've only ever seen it on this map" or something of the sort. Like the DCR note in Krif, or whatever.