Avatars

[deathmonk]

Ya...i just decided to finally make a forum acount yay me...anyway...


Avatars would be nice, and races would too, but as long as you aren't able to choose them (i mean you didnt choose to be you when you were born did you?) and until they maybe get accepted...you'll have to deal with drawing scanning and uploading "portraits" of your or other characters to notes

[Gran]

People born in the same Language Zone may have a commom characteristic no?Except for some regions, they should have something in common and climate zones should affect these characteristics.I don't imagine a native from Polinesia or even Sahaara for example, with light skin like an European.

[ewerhof]

I'm not really interested in a graphical description.

Text based is good for me.

EX:

Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Blue
Height: 5 foot 7 inches
Weight: 145 lb
Skin: Light

etc., etc., etc.

Basically that is what I would like.


If you see a person in RL, many times you can guess their heritage by appearance. I think it would be great if Cantr developed areas with certain genetic traits.

I like this one. Not bla, bla, bla bla text.... Just 1,2,3. Easy to take in.

[SekoETC]

Another topic revealed that we have people who would QUIT if their character was assigned an appearance. I think existing characters should be able to define their own appearance as people may have been rp'ing them in a certain way and randomly assigning appearance would just fuck it up. Newspawns would be given a random appearance based on either the traits of their spawn parents or affected by the average of all the representatives of their language group within the location.

Inheriting appearance from the spawn parents would not be so good as for example, I have only seen two people rp'ing their character as being black, so if there was a town with 20 white people and one black guy, and then there was a newspawn who had brown skin, people would automatically know that it must have inherited the black guy's genes. And it would be easy to start bringing some paternity stuff into it even though characters cannot choose wether they want to contribute to newspawns genetically and with whom, so it would feel wrong to create a visible link between two characters like that. Imagine if the newspawn was a thief. Then the obvious parent could be accused of passing them criminal genes.

Newspawns could be given some level of choice, since we might have some stupid cunts who'd kill of their character if it turns out to look like it was from other race than the player, akin to the buggers currently killing of their characters if they're not expert fighters. So a person could tick "I want my character to be white" and then the could have max tanned skin but not brown. Or one could tick "I want my character to have dark hair", and it could be anything from brown to black.

Also rather than having exact heights, I'd rather see:
he's much shorter than you
he's somewhat shorter than you
he's slightly shorter than you
he's about your height
he's slightly taller than you
he's somewhat taller than you
he's much taller than you

[SekoETC]

How to make a selection form

Skin color:

*dark (range from deep tan to almost black)
*tan (range from slight tan to light brown)
*light (range from pale to medium tan)
*random (everything's possible)

Hair color:

*dark (range from medium brown to pitch black)
*brown (range from light brown to dark brown)
*light (range from platinum blonde to ash blonde)
*red (range from slightly reddish brown to fiery orange)
*random (everything's possible)

Eye color:

*brown (range from hazel to almost black)
*green (range from green to hazel)
*blue (range from gray to blue to blue-brown mixture)
*random (everything's possible)

As you can see the categories are overlapping some. So no one could choose exact values but if they wish, they could rule out options that would conflict with their mental image of their character.

Colours should be stored in some numerical format but if people want written descriptions rather than pictures, different parts of the range can be given names. But it would be possible to create a slider with Flash that shows all skin colours from pale to black. In fact I've done it once, I just don't know if it could be made compatible with a database.

[Solfius]

wouldn't choosing your own appearance make ethnicity in Cantr impossible, you might as well carry on roleplaying your appearance in that case.

As for the black man in a white village paternity thing, I don't think that's a bad thing. Since Cantrians don't have intercourse I usually imagine them reproducing like flowers pollinating each other indirectly, which would mean you don't have much choice in who you mate with.

[ewerhof]

Not so much details in the colour! Just some hint. Not insted of the RP.
First the skin thing:
"a man, much shorter than you, with light/dark/red big-/goat-/handsom- beard"

"a woman, about your height, with light/dark/red short-/kurly-/pigtail- hair"

Then the manner/moves:
"His is stooping and limping when he walks"
"She has a trot walk"


And then the usual lines with the clothes and juwelery.

(I'm not good at this language. I know! But I want to say my opinion anyway... )

[SekoETC]

I think expressing such basic things as skin, hair and eye colour are much more basic than expressing style of movement or trimming of beard, and besides, the latter ones can be changed while colours are harder to alter with primitive dyes. It would be kinda cool though if you could radio to the next town what a thief looks like so that they could tell the person apart from innocent travellers and guards chasing him. And also you could conceal your skin colour with mud, clay or some limestone mixture, even though it most likely wouldn't pass as a natural skin tone.

wouldn't choosing your own appearance make ethnicity in Cantr impossible, you might as well carry on roleplaying your appearance in that case.

I don't quite think so - in real life we have all kinds of people living in a country, there might be stereotypes like that all Swedish people have blond hair and blue eyes but that's not the case. I think that even if the existing population would be given a chance to choose their skin, hair and eye colour, some sort of regional traits would form. People are reasonable, if they were spawned in a place with resources that suggest a warm climate, they're more likely to apply a darker skin tone than those spawned on cold mountains. Many of the MacGregors have (had) red hair, and also some people from Krif and the surrounding regions, so I wouldn't be surprised if a red-head cluster would be formed there. If newspawns were given a chance to choose their basic visual traits then they would be more likely to spawn among people of similar appearance.

And if there seems to be no regional correlation between character colourings then language groups could be given features such as the shape of nose, eyes, cheekbones; general hairiness... But it should not be possible to recognize a person's language group 100% just by looking at them, there should be some fluxuation, especially on regions where several language groups live together. Otherwise race wars would be far too easy. If newspawns could get mixed racial features when spawned in a location with two language groups, a character like this could make a great spy if these groups go to war.

[Solfius]

Don't forget that our mixed ethnic cultures are a result of mass immigration over the past century or so (e.g. slave trade, irish influx into america) and more recently fast air travel.

Cantr lacks such mass movements of people and rapid transport, so it makes sense that an ethnic "stereotype" would emerge.

In real life such stereotypes have been blurred by the emergence of multiculturalism

[sanchez]

There have been many discussions of this controversial topic. Some of which is offensive. I frankly hate the idea that my chars' appearance could be determined by others' stereotypes, or even that such things would be visible at all. I think it's a feature of this game that this information is never made explicit.

http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1088
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11973
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4990

[the_antisocial_hermit]

People are reasonable, if they were spawned in a place with resources that suggest a warm climate, they're more likely to apply a darker skin tone than those spawned on cold mountains.

I don't really take climate or region into consideration when I imagine how my characters look. I don't think about external influences at all. I focus on the internal: their personalites and how I feel like they would look if they were real.

[sammigurl61190]

My ideas on this are simple--graphics, no, text, maybe.

I think a good role-player, though, would work those things into their role-playing, thus not needing any built-in description.

[CantrFreak]

Yea simple graphics mostly... nothing huge and fancy and depending where you spawn, extra features that can't be changed. If this is implemented, what an important thing for some of my characters.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

I think a good role-player, though, would work those things into their role-playing, thus not needing any built-in description.

That's how I think it should be done.