Cantr II Discussion Forum

Hello,

I am pretty new to this game and there are a few things I don't understand even though I read most of the rules and Wiki.
For example, I do understand the Capital Rule, but I cannot quite grasp if there is such a thing as a 'backstory' to the whole thing or not.

When I first spawn in game, am I being born or could my character have lived the past 20 years? Does he have any prior knowledge of the world he lives in? These are quite large questions, but in order to play a role, I must know "what I am supposed to know" when I first go in game and I haven't found any information about that.

Sorry if this has already been asked / answered, but I searched and didn't find much.
Thanks!

You know what is in the Wiki... as for a past 20 year history, past experience shows most will ignore that so it is best to spawn with amnesia

So the Capital Rule even applies to "the world I spawn in"? Because I read somewhere that Cantr is based in a "contemporary world" (not those words exactly, but something like that) and somewhere else that we were in a medieval setting. So I don't quite grasp where I am. If that's part of the game, that's just fine I guess. I do not want you guys to think that I'm trying to break the Capital Rule, I just want to make sure I am getting things right so I can participate in the game as I should

I ask this because I wanted my character to have some kind of backstory.

Every area you spawn in, is handled differently... Some have Kings/Queens.. Others simply have leaders, some are done democratically.. some are.. that's just the way it is..
You cannot use out of character information to play. If your Charri B knows about a war starting.. You cannot use that info with Charri A. If charri B needs limestone.. your charri A cannot decide to go on a trade mission to supply charri B

Bob Dylan and Metallica do not exist in Cantr... Common sense is the best... Wiki is common knowledge. This you can know.. Nothing else out side of Cantr.. is known. Nothing in game is known unless yours is directly associated with it.

Most characters don't have a backstory. In the beginning I started most of my characters with backstories because it helped to shape them, but basically people are forced to ignore the backstory in most cases because it contains people who never actually existed and thus cannot be contacted.

If you do have a backstory, don't go assuming that your character owns items such as clothing because they had it before spawning. If something isn't visible in the inventory or being worn by a character, it basically doesn't exist. If most people in the location have clothing, your character might assume they are wearing some sort of rags to represent nothing worth mentioning, but if the state of the art clothing is loin cloths and hide dresses, it would be out of place to include any sort of fabric. In general, it's good to make sure that the pre-spawn environment mirrors the spawning location, unless your character believes they are from another planet (did that once) or that they were kidnapped or robbed while traveling.

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Also, I think that the player should observe the character's surroundings to learn what the existing tech level is, and have the character absorb that. If nobody has iron/steel items, it might be that it hasn't been discovered in that community, so the character shouldn't ask for iron/steel (or items made out of them) and consider it something new and unknown when it's brought up.

If the spawn town has a radio, it's okay to consider it completely normal, but if it's built after you spawn or if you run into one on your travels, it makes more sense to assume there are little people inside the talking box, or maybe spirits.

If a considerable number of people are wearing good clothes, carrying good shields and weapons, your character could be born a civilized person and maybe refuse to dress in hides and use animal parts for tools/shields/weapons because it's primitive. However in most towns it's common that young people only get bone tools and stone hammers.

Thanks Seko, I understand a little bit more now.

It still seems kind of weird that people can be in the "same family" and those things, when they're being "spawned" (born) at 20 years old. Also feels weird that some communities are "medieval" and others "quite advanced" and still, they don't communicate between each other. See what I mean?

I guess I'll learn as I play, haha.

Your own chars can't be part of the same family or know each others if they had never met in game.
But sure you can form some kind of families with other people in the game...

The most important thing is... Your chars only can know what they CAN know because they knew it in game about the surroundings, other cities and chars and stuff. They don't know what YOU know

So, the fact that everyone is "born" at 20 years old with amnesia is something common in the game's universe, right?
Then, I guess anyone who would like to come up with a character that actually has a backstory or "past" would be considered "crazy" or as if they were making it up?

Alvarop wrote:So, the fact that everyone is "born" at 20 years old with amnesia is something common in the game's universe, right?
Then, I guess anyone who would like to come up with a character that actually has a backstory or "past" would be considered "crazy" or as if they were making it up?

Yes, most people spawn without knowing about any prior life... As stated before, they -can- know things like how to make a hammer: everything in the wiki can be known (Of course, you can choose to not know parts, if you prefer that).

There are chars with a backstory, and that gets viewed differently depending on where he spawns. I met chars with, for example, a story about a scar they got as a kid... Most important is that you will probably not get any privileges or something like that, because of something that happened before you spawned. And, of course, you don't know anything that's not in the wiki (so, no names of places on the cantr-world that your char can't have known, no names of people you never met or heard about, etc.)

I usually have a sense of key traits I want a character to have, or a basic personality, but it is really more natural for me to spawn them and let them be shaped by the events around them. I also like my characters to learn how to do things (even if it's just the very basics) and find things they're good at as more natural to them, rather than have them 'automagically know how to do everything'.

They can't have a mom or dad in the traditional sense of the word (birth doesn't exist), so I'm not sure what I would ever do for a back story (not that it has to start that far back, but if I'm developing one, I like to start at the beginning and know the history of the world the character is living in- Cantr kind of lacks that knowledge since you have no clue where you'll end up).

The 'back stories' I think that are best are ones that are really more like fantastical stories about the spawning process or where one was right before the spawning. I.E. "Oh, I was skipping through a lovely field picking flowers." or "I remember falling through a hole." (Those kind of suck, but anyhoo...)

I just started playing, so I made up a backstory for my first character, but for the other two I just didn't bother. I mean, I thought about their personality, but I just went along with the fact that characters spawn and that's just the way this world works. I just don't understand quite well how characters can deal with the fact that they have knowledge, even though they're just "born"... and also 20 years old.

I cannot help but feeling it is, indeed, quite weird. Are there many characters that question these facts out there?
Also, what if childs or babies get implemented in-game in a near future? What happens with the RP aspects of it? How do characters have to react to "new" features to the game? (I don't even know if there are new features being implemented... but still, I don't quite understand just yet how I am supposed to react to this kind of stuff. I found really old threads... like from 2003-2005 in which you guys talk about new features that just haven't been implemented yet, 7 years later. So I don't know if someone is still working on this game or if this is the "final version" of it).

For now, I'm just trying to go with it, but it feels like there are some "plot holes" to the whole world. Still, you guys managed to play for 10 years this way, so I must be the one that's wrong and that has to get used to it. I hope I do soon, because the RP is pretty fun and I really like the community around here. I am not trying to critique anything or change things around here, just trying to understand and discuss openly these facts than kind of make the whole experience strange, to say the least (still very fun, though! haha)

Another quick question : Is the game mostly based on building things and advancing as a civilization or are there other routes players can take? Being artists or priests, for example? How come there is so little communication in between "civilizations" or exploration in this world?

Sorry for being so broad and asking so many questions, it's just that I am pretty excited about this game, it's pretty fun actually.

Alvarop wrote:I don't know if someone is still working on this game or if this is the "final version" of it

Yes!!
There is a lot of great people working to implement new features and make us happy.

Characters reacts in very different ways. Some acts as if that things were the more common always, you suddenly can make windows (one of the last better things they implemented) and some people just build them without any reaction and others acts as if they had discovered it.

Alvarop wrote: Is the game mostly based on building things and advancing as a civilization or are there other routes players can take? Being artists or priests, for example?

You can RP a lot of personalities and features. You can build and that... But I've met a lot of artists in game: writers, painters, musicians... and some priests too.


Just play, and enjoy, and let the game drag you inside it

It is defnitely weird at first, but it becomes more natural. That quirkiness is a big part of what some people love about the game, though.

Children and babies won't get implemented in the near future. That suggestion has been hanging around for years. I just don't think at this point it'd fit in Cantr II. It might fit in other versions of Cantr, but not this version.

The game is being worked on- but it's all done by volunteers so the amount of stuff done varies over the years. Some years it will see practically nothing new, and other years it will see tons of new things (like this year). Right now one of the biggest implementations being worked on is animal domestication.

Usually characters just react to new things in whatever way suits them. I had a character sort of 'have an idea' to make sparklers for a party (though they weren't really all that new at that point, but they were still somewhat new). This character is good at blacksmithing and enjoys things related to metals and coals, so it felt like it would be something natural for her to figure out. ETA: Vega's example about the windows is great, too. I love those things.

There are lots of people that are out there as priests or artists. There are worker bees that just work quietly for the most part (sometimes labeled at simmers). There are characters that innovate new ways of doing things- new government, new religion, new businesses, new events. There are characters that sit around make daisy chains all day.

While there are limitations, there are many, many, many options as to what route to take and how you can build your character. Some people lean more towards one side of things, and some people fall in the middle.