Cantr is a failure.

[Bowser]

Bowser's post actually illustrates that pretty nicely. I'd be curious to know how long his character on the deserted island would take to build a stone quarry, what with all the tools and machinery required. I assume the character in Quillanoi got the iron by working for someone else for a few years, but where did they get their iron?

No, the man in Quillanoi got the iron from going out and collecting limestone, coal, and hematite and then smelting the resources into iron. The best part of the story was that in his frist days as a new spawn, he offered to build something for a man if he could keep the trowel. Once he owned the trowel, he found 2 unfinished building projects with all the stone supplied. He finished the buildings himself and had 2 buildings within a three years. Collecting the iron resources took a bit longer, but I have the time.

As for building a Stone Quarry on a deserted island all depends on the materials present on the island. Sring-Sri had no sand, nor rubber... so improving the roads or building a bike was impossible. Stone Quarry requires medium rope which requires thin rope which requires twine which requires yarn which requires hemp or cotton... not to mention the different rope maker machines of different sizes. Find your goal, map out all the resources for all the tools needed as well as the resources for the item itself and in about 5 years you should be fine... get a giant stash of food and you can always have people work for you for food.

[wm]

I guess the point I am trying to make, and I think Bowser did a good job at it, is, this game is based on Iron. Ok, we all know that. A race for power such as Bowser describes, comes only if a newly spawned character is played by a MUCH older RT person, (who already knows the ropes because he has 80 year old characters elsewhere in the world.) This newspawn will NOT be instinctivey inclined to build house, smelter, and impliments of infrastructure so he can begin manufacturing steel, first thing, had he not the "wisdom of generations" behind him, rather had he not already known the value of steel. A newspawn does not know (or is not supposed to know, anyway, though we all know this is one part of the CR which is not followed) the inherent value of steel, especially if he is spawned on an uninhabited island. The only way he can know that is by wandering around, seeing all the powerful warlords with steel weapons, maybe being attacked from time to time by them, and gradually, he comes to understand that this is a resource he must acquire if he has any hope of living and seeing his dreams come true.

This is true for the aspiring governor as much as for the aspiring trader. The governor needs to pursuade people, most of whom do not want a government if they could help it, that he is the best person for the job. How does he usually do this? By defense of the town (the quickest legitimate path to social advancement) or by attacking the previous government and establishment of himself. There is little other sure way to rise in the career of politics. Trust me, I recently had a character who was running for office. This character's campaign was subverted by some idiot who entered the race the last day of campaigning and because he had friends, all of whom left town after they voted for him, he won, while I had been campaigning for two weeks. So the effects we see irl do not exist in Cantr, and we can't count on the normal advancement.

The only sure way to legitimate power is through service in the bureaucracy. But WHO REALLY recieves fulfillment being a functionary? Sixty years later, if you have chased enough thieves and witnessed enough deaths of your former comrade guards, you may INHERIT the mantle of the city, or you may just be a functionary for the rest of your life. Either way, you will need steel weapons to do your job.

The Trader, to get rich, needs to eventually deal in steel. ALL of my traders are working in that direction, supplying the need, trying to bust up a monopoly that exists in Steel. No trader gets rich running hides from point a to point B. There is one market, and that is for the commodities needed to make steel. All others are pitiful in comparrison.

This is not a society simulator for this reason. No society is based on exactly one commodity and all the components of that commodity. People say this is how the real world works. No it isn't. Our economy may be based on one MODE of production, but that production provides an almost infinite number of consumer goods, none of which are capital goods. In other words, if the aim was to duplicate our societies, Cantr does a poor job due to its OVER preference to one single good.

But if that isn't the purpose, then what is? To duplicate the social interactions we have? No, I would agree with the person who suggested that the playing field be leveled, first, and then steel would not even be an option while the earliest societies were being formed. technological advances could come at different times for different civilizations, but... The entire society advances as a whole. Within the society, everyone benefits from technological advances, not just the few and not just the oldest. For instance, if Seatown Gardens was a society, and steel processes were first developed there, the entire city should gain a modifier, or rather, all steel made in Seatown gardens should be made EXTREMELY easily, while in other societies, it would be next to impossible.

This would have several effects: Tying technology to geography instead of just raw materials would encourage trade and migration between cities. Those interested in obtaining steel weapons would have two choices: Move to a city that makes them, or join with the rest of your local society in trying to develop the technology to do it yourself. Similarly, if Seatown Gardens make steel, (and probably steel weapons) they would be able to trade those things for things they didn't make, such as food (hypothetically... there is a LOT of food there, and in this system that would probably be their forte, not steel). Trade routes and depots would develop easier, and well-organized governments would become NECESSARY. People would abandon those areas that are not conducive to technological development and migrate to areas that are, and those abandoned areas would become bases for outlaws, which are a healthy addition to a social order (in terms of redistribution of wealth). Organized armies could then become possible, because expeditions against these bases would require high levels of organization. This would develop a genuine town/countryside dichotomy, with just a few large cities springing up, and subjugating the surrounding countryside to its hegemony.

This would also stimulate the growth of infrastructure, and make it a socialrather than an individual priority. The town would have a smelter, the town would seek to improve the roads to its sources of raw materials, etc. It would make individuals, over time able to pursue higher interests, because it would free them from having to break their goddamned backs day in and day out collecting food.

This is how things happened in the real world. Cantr does not simulate this situation. As it is now, Cantrian society as a whole will never advance past the hunting-gathering, low level mineral extraction, low level trading phase for the VAST majority of our characters, who are ruled by very few characters lucky enough to have acquired steel.

WM

[The Industriallist]

Going to Lumin's original point...I agree entirely. I like cantr a lot, and so on. But you're never going to get a simulated society in it that doesn't have it's origins and strength in OOC ideas.

Why do I say this? Look at it. a few of the oldest characters in game are still alive. I would say that the world might be described as going on 4 generations old, with extensive historical continuity to the very beginning. That means very little time for traditions of any sort to set in...a good tradition should be passed down to the current generation by someone who at most has a fuzzy recollection of its origin.

At the same time, the economic basis of everything has deformed sharply...at least three times (2 metal changes and degredation), not counting things that were mostly undone. Lesser shifts, far more often. One of the major determinants of social interaction...violence, has been, within my memory, changed radically by tiredness, then changed into another form substantially different from the original by cutting work tiredness to nearly nothing, and completely turned on its head by skills. Now we have the basic nature of communication completely transmuted by the existance of radio.

The effect of this is that any society in cantr has no really relevant history, and barely has any at all. Even more, it has no real idea of the future, since not one of these changes was brought about by IC action. There should certainly be no well establised traditions, no customs, nothing. It's as if you had the rise of rome, the Rennaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil war, WWII, and the rise of the internet all in the past...maybe, discounting the compressing effect of 1 cantr year getting less done than one real week in many cases, 50-60 years. And this is with absolutely nothing before all that. I think there are enough really good cantr players that on a clean slate, with a constant set of rules, we would grow some societies with genuine, primarily in-character backgrounds, organizations, and cultures. Eventually. As things go, there'll never be a chance.

I'm not sure, but I think I might cantr better if the underpinnings of the world stayed still. On the other hand, there are things that I'd want to see it that stable world that we still don't have...