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Trouble in the gray area of the CR
Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:20 am
by Mafia Salad
Another character on the same old island. I have 13 characters now and 9 of them, including all of my women, are on the Pok island. It's getting really hard to keep character interaction to a minimum and keep them out of the same organizations, which I thought, after reading the forums for a while, was a CR breech. I’m having the most trouble with the larger groups, companies and such that are multilocation. Having quite a few of my characters in close proximity to each other I am now running into the gray area of the capital rule with several of my characters.
I was under the impression that you weren’t suppose to have characters in the same organizations, but reading the capital rule again it doesn't outright say that, it says:
The creation of organizations should take place in the game - not among your personal characters
Would I be coming to close to breeching the capital rule if I have more that one character in the same group if they were introduce to it in different locations by different people? It makes sense from an IC point of view but it could be trouble if in the future they are put on the same job or something of that sort. It’s getting harder and harder to find good IC reasons to turn away from the best newspawn jobs. I don‘t even know if I should be turning them down at all, if my character is looking for work. It seems like I’m having a lot of OOC influence in my characters actions to keep them independent of each other and I’m afraid that that might be a breech of the CR.
I also would like to know how much interaction is to much. Within a week of getting one of my characters out of a town where another was (while one was heading there to get food, the other spawned there) , I have two more wind up in another town for different IC reasons. I have a feeling this is going to happen fairly often as long as my characters have any reason to travel. Although this isn’t an issue right now, I don’t know if I could fairly trade between two of my characters. Would it be a breech of the CR to pass up a trade that would benefit both of my characters? Or would it be one to make that trade?
For a single rule, the CR sure is a pain to understand. I guess I’m just trying to figure out how far into the gray area I should go before I’m getting to close to black. And I’d prefer to figure that out now before I cross that line and get nasty e-mails from the PD.
Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:39 am
by the_antisocial_hermit
Okay, this is what I've kind of seen and what I understand concerning the types of situtations you're talking about:
Pretty much, having characters in the same organization is kind of just better to avoid all together. There might be situations in which it would be fine; like you said, some organizations are multilocational. But I don't know all the fine lines even in that, especially since most of my chars don't mess with too many organizations. I think I'd just steer clear of having even just two in a multilocational organization that were 30 locations apart.
The making a trade thing would be a breach, most definitely, even though avoiding the trade could be seen as a breach.
Essentially, it's best to keep any interaction to a minimum and not have any of their interactions include any sort of trading. It might be a CR in a sense by making them avoid each other and not take part in what would be a logical IC interaction, but it's more of a CR to have them interact, if that makes any sense.
Anyhoo, that's just what I've observed. Only someone on the PD could really tell where the fine line is. I think that different situations call for different interpretations of whether it would be considered a CR as well. Maybe that will help clarify a bit until someone with more experience or someone on the PD can give their view.
Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:50 pm
by Sunni Daez
Having 2 in the same organization is not the problem, it is having the two work together... Such as....(totally random situation)
You have 2 working for XXX Enterprise.... A thief steals from XXX in town A and travels to town B ...If your Charri from town A follows to town B... and you have a charri at the XXX outpost in town B.. Both charris cannot fight that thief...
Same with..... Town A and Town B both send your Charris to build an XXX outpost in town C.... Nope cannot do that!
This is the way I understand it.... am I wrong?
Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:33 pm
by Oasis
You are not wrong, Sunni. That is part of it. Another is that as a player, one might be putting more than one character into an organization to better advance it, which is the big reason why having more than one char in one is frowned upon. It is difficult for us to assess if that is true or not.
To address your situation, Mafia, without knowing the circumstances, I guess one must ask oneself if it is the only logical and best organization for that character to join. If there is another viable alternative, that should be explored. Being that they're far apart, it makes it less of a breach to have two involved, as long as they're not both working towards the same goal.
e.g. An organization could have two different locations, even towns apart, but if they're both working on achieving the overthrow of the same government, building arms and having that same goal, that would not be so good. However, if they're doing their own thing, with no clear shared objective like that, it is not so bad.
Back when I began, I had three members of the Lad Army. It only became an issue, or was noticed, when they were all in the same town together. I was asked to seperate them, which was easy enough.....they were only temporarily in the same location due to in game circumstances. I was also asked to have one of them leave the organization, which was easy enough as well.....one wanted to desert anyways. The other two both remained in the Lad Army......one went to the other side of the island, still a member of the same army, but having none of the same goals or motivations as the other. Her goal was to help establish a new community, and had little to no contact with the main army after that. Had she stayed, it would have been too difficult to keep the goals of the two characters seperate, and not have them both fighting for/working towards the same objectives.
I hope this example helps show the difference between what is okay and what is not. Each situation needs to be looked at individually, but not all are breaches.
Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:05 pm
by WojD
Your example is really hard. What if two chars are really important for city life and they don't communicate in any way - but sometimes must cooperate because ALL people of this city cooperate? And there is no other possibilities to RPing? What if one char have wife and other too... And this is tiny island? And in other locations player also have chars?
Sure - this is another 'hard' example - but I think PD interpretation of CR is too HARD

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:10 pm
by marol
Oh, this is very, very common problem in Polish Zone. For a long time no one in PD took care of CR understanding there, so Poles CR following was quite loose, people used to find out RP reasons to cooperate instead of finding out RP reasons to avoid cooperating.
Recently two Polish PD members was hired. They started explaining it on forums and asked some individual players to stop cooperating. People was very surprised of this CR interpretation. Many of them said that CR interpretation that could be read while account creating is not so strict as PD expect people to behave. Some of them thought that those two PD members tried to overinterpretate CR and accused them being overreacted. Others think that rules has been changed recently and currently it is no cooperation allowed but before the change it was and they complain because of that...
Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:43 am
by WojD
Well - if PD is 'game master' then PD should create clear CR Explanation for each language, then this document should be signed by whole staff and accepted by all players.
After this if player will cooperate or break CR - PD can simple say - 'you accept CR - - you know CR - you break CR - you are guilty!'.
But when we make this all past faults should be forgoten and dossiers cleaned...
Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 2:40 pm
by Doug R.
I understand the spirit of the CR, which is why I disagree a lot with the PD's various interpretations of it. A charrie should never have to break character/personality just to avoid another of his characters. To me, that goes against everything that Cantr stands for.
If there is a viable choice involved, then a player should always choose to not interact or to avoid, but there are plenty of situations where the only PD-approved course of action is OOC, and I consider that in itself a breach of the CR, but of course, my opinion doesn't mean anything.
The best thing they could do is to improve the spawning program to evenly space new charries out, instead of putting them all on K-isle or spawning them one town away from each other (my charries). It seems to me that the game is mostly responsible for putting players into a position to breach the CR.
Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 2:59 pm
by Chris Johnson
Doug R. wrote:The best thing they could do is to improve the spawning program to evenly space new charries out, instead of putting them all on K-isle or spawning them one town away from each other (my charries). It seems to me that the game is mostly responsible for putting players into a position to breach the CR.
The new character spawning system was changed about 3 or 4 months ago to ensure much larger geographic distance between new and existing characters of the same player. This will reduce greatly the chance of spawning in the next town , especially in the English regions, but also in all the other language groups (except for Russian and Lithuanian which currently use specified spawning points).
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:07 am
by Mafia Salad
So it’s ok to have characters in the same business, government etc. as long as they have their own goals (I think this game would be pretty boring if my characters shared goals), and don't directly work together on the same project or give each other stuff. I think that's fair.
One situation I had last week was in Pok Harbor, I have two characters there who need to gather resources and there is a lot of trouble with resources slots there right now. While I was online one opened up. I just did the smaller project. This is a case that is just a player decision and not effected by the capital rule, right?
The trouble I'm dealing with right now is where one character spawned in Akypor and I was looking at the situation there to see what my character would have interest in. The resource gathering laws and high population make it near impossible to be an entrepreneur. And the biggest opportunities that a newspawn there are with the Xanth Commune and Heaven. I have character become associated with Xanth in Kjolt although not a member, and another working on the CKC project with Heaven in Plaekur. So I think it wouldn't be a problem to for me to join either except that my new char doesn't have any goals and I would need to find reasons to keep my new chars goals from becoming to similar to my other character.
I think I understand where I should draw the line now. All I need to do it hope my last two spawns don’t appear on that island and make matters more complex.
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:44 am
by cantrlady
Oasis wrote: Another is that as a player, one might be putting more than one character into an organization to better advance it, which is the big reason why having more than one char in one is frowned upon. It is difficult for us to assess if that is true or not.
To address your situation, Mafia, without knowing the circumstances, I guess one must ask oneself if it is the only logical and best organization for that character to join. If there is another viable alternative, that should be explored. Being that they're far apart, it makes it less of a breach to have two involved, as long as they're not both working towards the same goal.
As Oasis said.....it is frowned upon and it is hard to assess but it will be looked at if the two are together and you might have to be asked to break them apart if you can't seem to keep them from cooperating.
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:52 am
by Mafia Salad
What I actually did was leave town without a word. I think that was the best way to handle things.
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 4:27 am
by Doug R.
The new character spawning system was changed about 3 or 4 months ago to ensure much larger geographic distance between new and existing characters of the same player. This will reduce greatly the chance of spawning in the next town , especially in the English regions, but also in all the other language groups (except for Russian and Lithuanian which currently use specified spawning points).
Well, it must not take into account players on roads, because my newest charrie that I made 2 weeks ago spawned in a town my old charrie left 2 Cantr hours before.
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 4:39 am
by Mafia Salad
EDIT:

I'm helping drag this thread off topic, we don't need this in the CR Breach section.
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:46 pm
by SekoETC
I once had two of my characters in the same town and one of them needed to drag people. The one that wasn't involved I kept "sleeping", just to keep things fair. But when the first character went elsewhere, there was good chance to wake up the other one and reply to someone she'd been talking to earlier. But then the first one needs to come back and start dragging people again. And again I was going to keep the second one inactive, but then someone especially states out she had just been awake... So what am I to do? Fake snoring? So I assisted a couple of times, but you know what? - it's rather difficult to keep two characters awake at once. While more of the others started to pitch in, my second character naturally drifted to sleep.
...And why am I sharing this? *shrugs* Seemed to fit the subject.