Musical Skill

[Snake_byte]

I think it would be nice to see:

2745-7.20: You hear So-So a man in his twenties play some music novicely on a brand new Flute.

Then you can role play bad music and good music without people hearing different things... Though you COULD always just say it's a matter of opinion how well the person plays. I still think this would be nice.

[Miri]

I think it was suggested before, many times, and I really like it.

However, the problem would be current 'musicians' characters. It wouldn't be fair for them to get poor music skills due to random initial distribution during implementation.

...unles the initial distribution wouldn't be random.
Is it possible to count how many times a certain character performed certain action in his/her life?

[Dudel]

Yes, I like the idea and yes... I would be rather annoyed if my musical character sucked suddenly.

See, both sides of the coin, right here... and I'm still for it.


Also: Yes, this has been suggested before.

[Snake_byte]

However, the problem would be current 'musicians' characters. It wouldn't be fair for them to get poor music skills due to random initial distribution during implementation.

What do you think happened when the fighting, hunting, and manufacturing skills came in? I was here for that... Music isn't that big a deal... At least your survival doesn't depend on it.

[*Wiro]

No. Skills are broken and I am going to bug ProgD and whoever else to raise music skill to expert with at least three of my characters if this would be implemented. This should be role-played.

I don't see how this adds anything that isn't already possible.

[Jos Elkink]

This should be role-played.

I am not sure I agree, actually. Yes, it's a role-playing game, but I think you could make a distinction between two types of role-playing games: games where you can imagine your character to be anything and describe it as such and games where you still need to strife to get things done. For example, I used to play a StarTrek role-playing game where you just write every week what happened to your character. So I could just write that he was brilliant and rescued some people and so her did. But Cantr is another type of game where if you want to be, say, a brilliant politician, you actually have to act brilliantly ... You cannot just say you're brilliant. And to be a good fighter, you need to practice a lot. And so to be a good musician ....

[SekoETC]

But in real life if you practice a song, eventually you'll learn to play it right even if you still had to repeat the learning process with each new song, although it would get easier in time. And after practicing fighting (or going to the gym), your muscles would be sore and after a couple of weeks of practice, you could already feel how they've started growing firmer. But in Cantr even if you spent a couple of weeks hitting a couple of people each day, the strength and fighting skill levels would still appear the same and you'd have no indication of improvement. The only motivation people have comes from the OOC knowledge that some skill gain happens, and in some rare cases from meeting someone in-game who happened to be near the top limit of a category and got to the next one. People need gratification that doesn't take RL months or years to reach.

[Piscator]

And to be a good fighter, you need to practice a lot.

Well, this is at least at the moment not true. Skills are more determined by luck than anything else and many people are just naturally talented.

I also see a difference between being a brilliant politician, which relies solely on the skill of the player and being a good fighter, which has to rely on the skill of the character. Music could be handled in both ways, but I think basing musical skill on the skill of the player to describe the play, is the more interesting way.

I think it would be nice to have the option to insert a description directly into the play music event, so that you would see "You see XY play a happy tune on the WZ" or "You see XY play proficiently on the WZ" instead of "You see XY play the WZ".

[Voltenion]

But in real life if you practice a song, eventually you'll learn to play it right even if you still had to repeat the learning process with each new song, although it would get easier in time. And after practicing fighting (or going to the gym), your muscles would be sore and after a couple of weeks of practice, you could already feel how they've started growing firmer. But in Cantr even if you spent a couple of weeks hitting a couple of people each day, the strength and fighting skill levels would still appear the same and you'd have no indication of improvement. The only motivation people have comes from the OOC knowledge that some skill gain happens, and in some rare cases from meeting someone in-game who happened to be near the top limit of a category and got to the next one. People need gratification that doesn't take RL months or years to reach.

I was going to say something, but Seko said it all. I'll support this suggestion when you can actually develop your skills. Music is one of the only things in Cantr that you can RP without having to cross your fingers when you click the "create a character" button.

Hey, I did say something.

I think it would be nice to have the option to insert a description directly into the play music event, so that you would see "You see XY play a happy tune on the WZ" or "You see XY play proficiently on the WZ" instead of "You see XY play the WZ".

I really don't think we need this. We can emote much better and interesting things in the asterisks. This would make people lazy and lower RP's quality.

[SekoETC]

Not to mention that it wouldn't work in a multi-lingual environment.

[Piscator]

How that? It would be exactly like an emote just that you wouldn't see two lines appearing on your screen. I think

"You see XY play a happy tune on the WZ"

looks a lot better than

"You see XY play the WZ"

*he plays a happy tune (on his WZ)*

It might of course get a bit tricky with longer descriptions, but I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to leave the decription blank and add an emote like usual.

Not to mention that it wouldn't work in a multi-lingual environment.

What exactly do you mean?

[SekoETC]

It would look better, but if a person could write extra inside the event, that extra would be in what ever language the player is using while the rest of the text would be translated.

Currently it's like:
You hear X play some music on a new bone flute.
Du hör X spela musik på en ny flöjt (ben)

But if you changed the middle part into an optional piece, it would be like:
You hear X play a happy tune on a new bone flute.
Du hör X spela a happy tune on en ny flöjt (ben)

[Piscator]

Well, that would indeed not work very well, but it's essentially not worse than seeing the music event and then an emote in a foreign language. Or seeing foreign emotes in general.

[BZR]

It would be good if the person who came out with the idea of music skill would also propose any method of raising that music skill.

[Piscator]

Hmm. Good point. Unless playing an instrument would be limited to once a day (or at least gaining experience from it), you could max out your skill in one afternoon (and annoy the crêpe out of everybody).