Objectively Close Minded - And other cultural blockades

[Mafia Salad]

Many of us forum goers are asking ourselves every time we log on: How can I do my part to encourage cultural monotony in Cantr? I’m sure that most of us wish that the few towns that are truly unique amongst the factory made villages would just disappear. Really why do we let their presence mess up our hundreds of perfect towns all getting along in peace and harmony? I’ve found that while this epic goal of monotony can create a little boredom, it can be solve by spawning a crazy character or maybe a mute or even someone who only says one word. Now that almost every town has their own crazy person and/or mute the dream of complete monotony could be only months away from fulfillment. And we could have never reached this dream without the wonderful tools of an “objective” viewpoint towards new ideas, and spawning with a preset moral code.

If you didn’t catch on, there may have been a little sarcasm in that last paragraph.

Since I’ve started playing, it seems that most of the newspawns spawn up with some moral code, they are either good or bad. Most are automatically good people and if you kill some innocent person in front of them on their first day of life then they start crying murder. Very few look at that and go “So that’s the way thing are, might as well fit in” It doesn’t matter if that town accepts murder or not, the newspawns reaction is the same either way. Now murder is an extreme example, the reaction can be just as repulsed as if it were something simple like trying to run a town with sever punishment for minor hunting violations. This attitude make it very difficult for anyone who wants cultural variety but finds that a crazy lady trying to make an asparagus have a conversation with a mute as something less then cultural definition.

A culture is made by more than one or two people in a town. For unique cultures to develop, newspawns need to accept the unique aspects of the culture in the towns they spawn in. Frankly the game is less fun because people spawned with a full fledged unique personality and spending the first three minutes of their existence building a resume to match. I know by experience that characters seem more natural and are more fun to play if you spawn them with few personality traits and ask a lot of questions for them to develop a worldview for themselves.

One unfortunate thing about so many people having “objective” characters, usually because they spawned that way, is that by staying objective, they never embrace new ideas. They couldn’t embrace any sort of beliefs that their player doesn’t hold to due to game mechanics or whatever else, because then they wouldn’t be objective any more. A missionary for a new religion comes to town and all you have to do is call him a closed minded religious nut, lock him up and never consider a word he said. That much seems fine for an older bias character, but not for the twenty-one year old freshly learning about the world or a thirty year old looking to set their town apart from the others around them.

Younger characters should be developing views on life not fighting for ideals and dreams that they spawned with but don’t have any reason to believe in based on their surroundings. The best thing that could happen to make diverse culture around Cantr is for half of the newspawn to embrace ideas they hear preached in Cantr instead of having their own to begin with.

Has anybody else noticed that nobody seems to embrace the interesting religions? The only ones that can gather a few followers are the cheesy great god(s) oppose disorder or chaos or people breaking laws and wants us all to hold hands and help each other. (Funny that people who spawn with these same beliefs are plenty happy to dismiss even these religions as bogus without ever evaluating the religions explanations of Cantreality) I’ve seen a few really neat religions come about only to be ignored or have their propagators chased out of town as lunatics. I think newspawns characters and young people are the ones who can change this trend.

Now people who have a neat idea about a new character, instead of just unleashing them on whatever town they happen to spawn in, spawn them up and start asking around to see what the town is like. It isn’t hard to make a character gain personality traits over time. So if you find yourself in a town where your character idea will work, then move their personality development in the direction of your ideas. The character will probably be more fun to play, and certainly more appropriate for the way the town is developing than if you just spawned them like you pictured from the start.

So please people, when you are getting ready to spawn up a character, keep them open minded enough that they might accept crazy and stupid ideas, especially if the whole town around you holds to those strange ideas. Let the town and people around them build up their personality. Who knows, we might start to have more than a shrinking handful of interesting towns.

[MrPenguin589]

So basically, you want people to have characters that learn from their surroundings, and see what they first learn as normal?

[tiddy ogg]

Interesting, and laudable... but how much of this is due to your long-time playing having made you jaded? The game sign-on page suggests you should set goals for your char. A webzine article went further than this and suggested you should treat him aas a fully fledged char in a novel. Both pre-planning ideas, I agree, are wrong, and you should let your char develop in its own right, but we all come with a baggage of RL concepts, hence the outcries here about rape and bad language.
Old farts like you and me have learned this, but a new player hasn't had a chance to throw off this baggage.
Religions: one of my chars has, after 20cantr years, embraced religion, (and not the one almighty whatever), but without natural disasters in Cantr yet, there isn't much to convince the populace that it is only due to your deity's intervention that things could have been worse, or that it is a punishment. (Even then, RL baggage will probably stop them believing any of it.)

[Doug R.]

I had a character really close to joining an established religion, and then decided not to when he saw the types of people the religion was recruiting. Perhaps religions could build their legitimacy if they were selective instead of accepting anybody that will join them.

[Solfius]

On the one hand, cantr as simulation wants us to start with blank slates for characters, and cantr as roleplaying game wants us to think our characters through before we spawn.

I'm more interested in cantr as simulation, so prefer the blank slate approach, although you won't find me playing a character I don't actually enjoy.

[Nosajimiki]

I feel that there is plenty of room for preconcieved notions with adopting what already exists, I recently made a character who I had an idea for a religion for: came up with all the back info, and how in life he would come to believe in his religion and everything. Then he had to go and spawn in a town with a pre-established relgion. Now he is playing into the beliefs of the local poplice, believing in what they tell him about gods and the natural order of things etc., but I have altered how he will come to his revolations around this religion so that he can still create his own system either as a splinter group of the 1st religion, a modification of it, or by excomunicating himself in his latter age as he sees the "flaws" in the one that pre-existed him.
The way I see this issue is that taking a solid stance for one methodology of play or the other would go against Cantrian conventions. By simpling reacting entierly to the culture, it would remain stagnant and become boreing, by ignoring it all together is bad RPing.

[Mafia Salad]

Interesting, and laudable... but how much of this is due to your long-time playing having made you jaded?

Actually this is similar to part of a post that I made about a month after I joined the forum. But I feel my opinion has been strengthened based on my personal experiences playing the game. The first two characters that I made were to figure out what the game was like. I had no idea what to expect so I really let the towns I spawned in guild me on how to act. One became a relatively successful thief stealing tools weapons resources and a vehicle. He later became part of a wealthy organization. He’s bitter, sarcastic, knows he’s better then you and is a sexist, although not as openly as he used to be. All in all he's a blast to play, especially when snotty or whiney young women come to town.

The other spawned in a much different enviorment, she has a much different prespective on the world. She had a very friendly greeting and was welcomed into the town. She has never held a job, mostly she just thinks through physics and alchemy in the front yard and helps people with whatever they are doing around her. Her biggest role model was an emotional person, so she picked that up over time and has become an emotional person herself. She has always been part of a friendly family atmosphere and is upset when someone or thing upsets that balance. She is also fun to play but in a very different way.

The game sign-on page suggests you should set goals for your char. A webzine article went further than this and suggested you should treat him aas a fully fledged char in a novel. Both pre-planning ideas, I agree, are wrong, and you should let your char develop in its own right, but we all come with a baggage of RL concepts, hence the outcries here about rape and bad language.

I have goals for all of my characters, but I let those goals come from what that character has experiences. Emmy Metro decided to make a radio network only after aimlessly traveling for a couple of years and finding that towns in the Baaak Area have difficulty trading with each other and communicating. She saw a problem in game and addressed it. In game developments and experience help my characters make goal that makes sense. Whether her solution to the problem will work is yet to be seen since her progress is so slow, failure can also a fun part of the game IMO.

When I was spawning, I started each of my characters as an experiament. Some had very set in stone personalities some were very pliable, some were just looking for answers. My Karnon born became very patriotic and eventually became a soldier, not because I spawned a intentionally patriotic character, but because it fit for where and when he spawned. I had a nutcase, a quiet religious guy, an anarchest, a lot of your basic every player seems to have one characters. A few I spawned that way and were very out of place and became a chore to play. They undoubtedly were a chore for the others around them too. The gimmick characters were fun to play for about a month, then they got old and boring. I just recently killed half of my characters because I don’t have time to play them all anymore. Five of the seven I kept didn’t have any sort of strong personalities traits when they spawned. (In a few years they had much stronger personalities then the ones spawned with strong and neat personalities that didn’t fit where they spawned) The other two, Charlie Charm and Sterling Jackson both ask a lot of questions and make most of their decisions based on the replies.

Religions: one of my chars has, after 20cantr years, embraced religion, (and not the one almighty whatever), but without natural disasters in Cantr yet, there isn't much to convince the populace that it is only due to your deity's intervention that things could have been worse, or that it is a punishment.

Why does everyone stick with the deity model and a need for miracles? What about animal worship? Something similar to some Native America beliefs that give traits to animals and then attribute all those traits in other things to those animals. Or how about a religion I’ve seen in game, the Dark Minions? A pantheistic religion centered around dragons that attributes everything from other religions to the sneeze to it’s different supernatural dragons. These sort of things are general shot down or ignored universally with little or no good reasons. Rarely does the majority of a town embrace a religion, the only one that I’ve seen was Pok Harbor, and that was because everyone in town who opposed the religion was killed. Nothing wrong with that though. Makes for an interesting town.

(Even then, RL baggage will probably stop them believing any of it.)

People we don’t need your baggage! Drop it at the door and lets build a bit more sociaty in this game.

I feel that there is plenty of room for preconcieved notions with adopting what already exists, I recently made a character who I had an idea for a religion for: came up with all the back info, and how in life he would come to believe in his religion and everything. Then he had to go and spawn in a town with a pre-established relgion. Now he is playing into the beliefs of the local poplice, believing in what they tell him about gods and the natural order of things etc., but I have altered how he will come to his revolations around this religion so that he can still create his own system either as a splinter group of the 1st religion, a modification of it, or by excomunicating himself in his latter age as he sees the "flaws" in the one that pre-existed him.

That is exactally what we need more of. I would love to see more people waiting for an in character catylast to do what they want, I have plenty of ideas for characters in Cantr, but I wait for something to trigger that change in personality, perhaps even in a character that I didn't first think of it for, usually with a more appropriate twist that makes if work in the time and place of the character.

The way I see this issue is that taking a solid stance for one methodology of play or the other would go against Cantrian conventions. By simpling reacting entierly to the culture, it would remain stagnant and become boreing, by ignoring it all together is bad RPing.

It’s boring and stagnant as it is. I have enough faith in the players that if they started reacting to their surrounding they can still bring in their new ideas, but in towns and with characters that will be more realistic and playable instead of forcing it onto wherever they happen to spawn.

[SekoETC]

Beautiful, very beautiful. Makes me feel like there might be a reason to have a newspawn after all. Though then again, you most likely land in a place that's just like the lot of them.

[Torkess_theCommie]

I agree with you Mafia Salad, I think newspawns should be influenced by their surroundings, like say It's a town of evil people and killing is ok, the newspawn will think that killing is good and the evil people are good, not evil, because that's the way he grew up and was influenced by that. Instead there are newspawns who spawn, see you kill someone, and run away shouting "murderer" so it's impossible to start a new religion/village which promotes violence and chaos.

[Sekar]

I agree with Mafia, but I know it is going to be impossible to get everybody to follow this way of thinking. Even I know I would have a very hard time completely forgetting my OOC personality while IC. It is a challenge to do, even with those who have great imaginations.

[DylPickle]

Meh.
I don't even spawn my new chars with names anymore.
I find it best to really work on detailing your char a little later, like after one or two cantr years of life.
A couple chars developped accents from their companions, or from isolation...
Little things make it more interesting, I find.
/Meh.

[Mattayu]

I started cantr yesterday with like a list of things I wanted to be. Then I got in and read a note about being a postman and dropped all my ideas and was like. "Can anyone point me out how to get (whever the place was)"

[tiddy ogg]

Your char knows nothing except what he has learned himself. He should ask other chars for information. Knowledge that you have gained, rather than him, should not influence him. JSo all he knows is something about postmen being wanted. He doesn't know there is anything outside his village except roads leading to locations unknown, unless there are notes there telling him more.
I know this is very hard to stick to, but geographic information is a big taboo in the forums, and you have to try to forget anything you learn here when playing that char.
Hope all that didn't sound too heavy. I know I'm a grumpy old man but I'm only trying to explain. *smile*

[Sho]

I assume he's talking about a character of his who found a note for a postal service based in a nearby town. If so, it's completely legal.

But no harm in reminding people of the CR.

[Nalaris]

There's nothing wrong with starting a charcter with basic tendencies, like the tendency to want power, or the tendency towards arrogance. But starting him from the very start as a religious leader goes against nature. It's one thing for someone to be the questioning type, ask questions, find answers, and build a religion based on the answers he finds (probably from within himself and in his environment as much as from anyone else). But just accepting murder is not in human nature. People have to be trained to do it, or motivated to. Either that or they're a murderous lunatic, but that's not the average person, that's a fluke in the genetics.

So, if the town was murderous, than every newspawn has the right to be uncomftorable. Their basic personality will then dictate if they'll just go with the flow and eventually get used to it, or take a stand for human rights, or maybe just leave for unknown parts, hoping to find a less murderous town (and if he finds one of the peaceful, happy towns he'll probably be shocked and overjoyed to see it).