Re-work radios for better RP

[Nosajimiki]

Okay, I understand that radios are electronical devises and for weather reasons should ussally belong inside, but by not having an outdoor or message taking variety. I've seen them really screw up some role-playing in towns where not much gets done indoors. (One of my charies is in particular mountain comunity where the town leader is almost never heard from anymore b/c she's always sitting inside by herself listening at the radio.)

The more advanced varities should ofcourse be more difficult to construct. I think making a water-proof transmitter/reciever case should maybe be possible by utilizing the currently useless resources of either beeswax or sealing wax for an outdoor radio system. And/or there is the possibility of a much more hightech reciever that doubles as a printer (ie: creates notes, or has a note assoiceated with it that it appends). Such a reciever would probably require some gold/platnum wiring, and some other metals/alloys not typically required for radios like aluminum and cobalt(for ink pigment?).

[Pie]

I don't know why not.

Although I know that there is a way to RP around this(make a radio transmitter, and then have a sertain time to transmit a radio show or something of the sort.) It could be interesting to see how a radio show thing would develop in certain comunities, and the like.

And I'm not verry partial to having a radio outside. I would think when we make sections and the like(such as "mountain oudpost's yard" and the like) we would be able to hear any radio announcenments, and put radios there.

[Mykey]

Let's return to a theme

[tiddy ogg]

Perhaps external speakers, so the radio is built inside, but an extra project is needed for that.
On the other hand, from my chars' limited experience, towns big enough to have a radio usually have one building with someone permanently working there. It's a matter of selecting the right place for the initial project.

[Nosajimiki]

Keep in mind that, most large towns have smaller outposts for gathering key reasources such as Hemitite and Wood and the main reason for building radios is to comunicate with these outposts more effectively. Last I checked gathering resources is an outdoor activity so there is ussally little need for large indoor proccessing facilities in places like these. Now there is the RP way around it as Pie suggested, but that's still problatic because that requires two people in two towns to go inside at the same time every day. It's a good way to get messages lost from IRL interferences.

[Wilmer Bordonado]

Keep in mind that, most large towns have smaller outposts for gathering key reasources such as Hemitite and Wood and the main reason for building radios is to comunicate with these outposts more effectively.

Isn't it a CBR?


Wilmer B.

[Jos Elkink]

Isn't it a CBR?

No

Can those outposts not have resource gatherers plus additional staff for radios / cooking / cloth manufacturing / etc.? If effective communication requires more cooperation - between diggers and listeners in this case - then that's quite well in line with the overal design of the game ...

[Surly]

The idea of limiting radios to indoors, a point I arguing extensively for, is to prevent them becoming too powerful. As it is, most people have to disrupt their mindless gathering to go inside and use a radio... is that really so problematic? There are huge advantages to radios, and there should be at least some significant disadvantages as well.

Radios should also come at a certain level of society: i.e. when you have enough people to staff indoor projects as well. If you don't have enough people, maybe your society just isn't ready for radios, and need to do things the old fashioned way for a while...

[Nosajimiki]

I'm not saying they can't, but there are some places in this game that are boarderline unservivable for any significant population making that kind of specialization of labour not a good alternitive. Because these places are always so small I doubt may people would have charies in them anyway to know what I'm talking about (I really don't know how common such places are as none of my characters have been to more than 4 town in thier lives), but I know I have one, and I've had one of my charaters travel through at least one other. Where mine is was uninhabited appaerently for quite some time untill some pretty ambitious forest folks tryed setting up there to connect thier main town to a hymitite mine. Food is very scarce and there aren't any prossessable natural resources, so no specialized indoor cooks, no steel works, no clothing shops, no automotive factories, just a nice expensive radio station and a few fools too detirmened not to leave trying to survive by passing thier days hunting tortises and the occational hawk or goat, and yes, I am one of those fools. Also, we get a lot of traveling merchants passing through, so anything worth RPing ussally happens outside... maybe this is too specialized of a situation to wind up in to be seriously considered, but heck, we have two things going for us up in that wasteland, a nice town leader (or she was before she started hanging out by the radio all day), and a radio.

[Surly]

Maybe then, your society is not ready for radios? Radios are supposed to be quite an advanced level of technology, if you can't support them you are not ready for them.

Just a thought...

[The Sociologist]

Okay, I understand that radios are electronical devises and for weather reasons should ussally belong inside, but by not having an outdoor or message taking variety. I've seen them really screw up some role-playing in towns where not much gets done indoors. (One of my charies is in particular mountain comunity where the town leader is almost never heard from anymore b/c she's always sitting inside by herself listening at the radio.)

I am aware of this problem and am trying to develop organizational solutions to it myself at the roleplay level. Isn't easy. However, the problem isn't really with radios, it's with the very concept of factory work itself. In the "old days" with one person only making 50 grams of iron a day, we ended up with huge populations indoors and only a few resource gatherers outdoors. At one stage New Xanth, for example, had ten or more people working indoors and only a few resource gatherers outside.

The massive acceleration of iron production wrecked those factory cultures, so now there's often only one or at most two active characters inside the twin factories of New Xanth and the five smelters are hardly ever in use. This means that getting anyone at all to work in a factory for any length of time is not an easy thing these days. Players are also rather more somehow...self-indulgent than they were in the past, or so it seems to me.

The only real solution I can think of is alas a programming one involving using windows to control the amount of information passing between the factory building and the world outside. In other words, with the window open, you can hear spoken conversation from the other area. With the window shut, you can't.

[SekoETC]

Variety, honey, variety. The repairs, clothing, cooking and such can be done indoors. The biggest problem is finding balance. If all the interesting people are indoors, the resource collectors fall asleep, and vice versa...

[wichita]

Maybe then, your society is not ready for radios? Radios are supposed to be quite an advanced level of technology, if you can't support them you are not ready for them.

Just a thought...

I put this forward as the official RD response. For all of you complaining about the blurred lines between caveman and spaceman in the Cantr universe, this is a prime example of what we have to work with in the current game mechanics to achieve it. If we make the advanced items just as effective and easy as the stone items, we have unraveled the separation between Tech Levels.


And in any advanced society, the leader sits inside the "Ivory Tower" isolated from and oblivious to the outside world.