Picking your Battles

[Nalaris]

I try to bring my characters in with nothing but pure personality, like 'likes fairness, justice, etc. and will fight for it' or 'pacifistic at any cost' or 'power-hungry'.

I try to have them all come with a built in aversion to killing, but none have got into a position to excersice that at all, so it's a bit moot. Naturally, my culture influences me, but I try to limit its influence.

[Marian]

Gah, that 'built in aversion to killing' annoys me so much...that's why nothing interesting ever happens.

[rant]

Why oh why does almost every single newspawn have to pop up with a fully formed personality and the exact same ethics and value of their player and society in the 21st century, which has nothing at all to do with Cantr and the place where they spawned?

Why can't more people just look around a little, see what sort of town they've landed in and roll with it, instead of just popping out of the ground and immediately trying to lecture other chars forty years older then them about right and wrong and the correct way to run a government?

Doesn't anyone care about roleplaying? Like, you know, playing a role? If a person only wants to be themself why are they making 15 characters in a game like this anyway?

*sighs*

[/rant]

[Phalynx]

Its survival Marian.. they go on about rights and goodness when they are helpless newspawns.. give it a couple of years, they get a shield and a sabre and it all dissappears...

[zisked]

Bingo. Just like the Baby Boomers . . .

[juxtapoz]

> The man wearing the crown yells across the bar...
You talk to newspawns?

> I'm tired of the number of newspawns that...
Of course you are. But you can get plenty of sympathy from a raft of players in the game who obviously feel the same... except the talking part - that's a more exclusive group.

"I'm tired of newbies..." has been a popular refrain since I started playing online RPGs (a coincidence?). Years ago games began creating methods of connecting newbies with players who like to deal with them, or at least who realize how important newbies really are.

> It's actually a demonstration of just how piss poor things
> have got in a town when a newspawn intorduces themself
> and sits there for a few days and noone speaks to them.

I wonder if a Cantr player is going to run across more frustrated neurotic newbies than a player in the "typical" successful RPG. Is this a roleplaying issue or a matter of player frustration?

[Nalaris]

Every human has a built in aversion to killing which can only be overcome by a)extreme anger, b)mental disbalance, c)special training(like in the Vietnam war, which will scar them forever) or d)the belief that those they kill are not human.

Even in World War II, only fifteen percent of the American army(and, presumably, similar figures applied to the other sides) actually shot people.

[SekoETC]

...But thanks to video games training, in the Gulf war already 95% shot to kill. That's what it does to ya.

[Marian]

Every human has a built in aversion to killing which can only be overcome by a)extreme anger, b)mental disbalance, c)special training(like in the Vietnam war, which will scar them forever) or d)the belief that those they kill are not human.

I don't know about that...I think that's probably more of a modern mindset then anything. (And yes, WWII still counts as modern. It wasn't that long ago.)

Also, I'm aware Cantr isn't actually set in any RL time period, but with the way most "towns" are structured you have a lot more similarities to tribes or a fuedal system. And if you look at history people back then killed each other all the time. Either because the person they were killing was poor and unimportant (newspawn), or because they weren't a part of the group (traveller), or because their leader simply told them to kill and rape and torture these people in another place, because their leader had offended his leader somehow...to the average person doing the fighting the reason probably didn't even matter that much, except they had an excuse to prove their loyalty and bravery and all that and loot the place on top of it.

I don't think human life meant much at all back then...it probably even wasn't that big of a deal when somebody dropped dead of natural causes, because that happened all the time to...just like in Cantr.

[Oasis]

Years ago games began creating methods of connecting newbies with players who like to deal with them, or at least who realize how important newbies really are.

Do you, or anyone else, know some of these methods? We've tossed this idea around for Cantr, but never came up with a solid, workable idea. Why reinvent the wheel, if there are already good wheels out there we could use?

I wonder if a Cantr player is going to run across more frustrated neurotic newbies than a player in the "typical" successful RPG. Is this a roleplaying issue or a matter of player frustration?

This is a good question. As this is the only game I play, I don't really know. Is this a Cantr issue, or a typical gaming issue?

[Bowser]

> "I'm tired of newbies..." has been a popular refrain since I started playing online RPGs (a coincidence?). Years ago games began creating methods of connecting newbies with players who like to deal with them, or at least who realize how important newbies really are.

The newspawns that are obviously newbies, who pick up things and knock on doors and enter buildings and say "hello" are not what I was referring to. I do try to help them and don't kill them for newbie mistakes.

Newspawns are not always Newbies. Your point is well taken, but this isn't directed at people who don't know how to play and are new.

[wichita]

Every human has a built in aversion to killing which can only be overcome by a)extreme anger, b)mental disbalance, c)special training(like in the Vietnam war, which will scar them forever) or d)the belief that those they kill are not human.

For what it's worth that isn't entirely true. There has been psychological evidence that people can be born with a genetic predisposition for violent antisocial behavior, just like there can be genetic predispositions for depression, mental illness, savantism, homosexuality, religiosity, .... or at least that is a lie they told me in my psych class when discussing the existence of Ted Bundy.

The truth depends on what point you are are deciding to defend.

Even in World War II, only fifteen percent of the American army(and, presumably, similar figures applied to the other sides) actually shot people.

How many of those 85% didn't have a chance to fire their rifles because they were gunned down before they had a chance to fire on D-Day, Iwo Jima, or similar battlefields?

-------


And I agree with Bowser. I have been sick of the instant ACLU-esque attitude of the traditional newspawn for quite some time.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

There has been psychological evidence that people can be born with a genetic predisposition for violent antisocial behavior, just like there can be genetic predispositions for depression, mental illness, savantism, homosexuality, religiosity, .... or at least that is a lie they told me in my psych class when discussing the existence of Ted Bundy.

I'll back this up with all of the many psychology classes (especially the cognitive/biological psych classes) I had to take for my degree in psychology. Maybe I was lied to multiple times by different professors and journals?

[Piscator]

Even in World War II, only fifteen percent of the American army(and, presumably, similar figures applied to the other sides) actually shot people.

How many of those 85% didn't have a chance to fire their rifles because they were gunned down before they had a chance to fire on D-Day, Iwo Jima, or similar battlefields?
[/quote]

And how many of them were in supply positions. I mean you can't shoot many people if you aren't at the front.

[Phalynx]

A genetic predisposition is about as vague a scientific term as you can get of course. It means that statistically it looks like there should be a genetic cause, anecdotally there looks like there should be a genetic cause, but by genetics a lot of people who should display charactersitic X don't unless something additional happens.

There are considerable hidden intrests behind these kind of theories that take us well of the topic of cantr...

We can say that cantrians have predispositions in accordance with their players...

[Marian]

Also, I think my arguments about historical stuff were off topic now that I reread them, but at least I'm still sure that Nalaris' comment about every human being that way is off. (In fact I would say that its the opposite, that most humans have a built in instinct to be violent and that it's only 'training' that teaches them otherwise, but that would probably lead to even more off topic philisophical stuff, so I won't.)

Whatever the case, just turn on the news and see how much murder and war and violence in general there is, obviously it should be a lot more common in Cantr. All this friendliness and cooperation and newspawns going on and on about OOC concepts like 'freedom of speech' just isn't natural.