Why is the word "newspawn" considered IC?

[psymann]

no one uses "spawn" to refer to normal, everyday human procreation -- unless it's meant in a humorous or insulting way. No one in RL asks, "Where did you spawn?"

The word "spawn" used to mean "appear fully grown, seemingly out of thin air" is, I believe, unique to computer/video games.

No-one in RL appears, fully formed, at the physical age of 20. That is not "normal human procreation", but in Cantr, it's normal, so it makes sense that they should have a word for it. If you don't use "spawn", you must use some other word, so why not spawn? And the term Newspawn is a lot simpler than "person-who-just-appeared-out-of-thin-air-quite-recently".

Computer games have developed the term because they need a word to describe the phenomenon, which does not happen in RL. Cantrians would surely do the same.

psymann

[N-Aldwitch]

no one uses "spawn" to refer to normal, everyday human procreation -- unless it's meant in a humorous or insulting way. No one in RL asks, "Where did you spawn?"

The word "spawn" used to mean "appear fully grown, seemingly out of thin air" is, I believe, unique to computer/video games.

No-one in RL appears, fully formed, at the physical age of 20. That is not "normal human procreation", but in Cantr, it's normal, so it makes sense that they should have a word for it. If you don't use "spawn", you must use some other word, so why not spawn? And the term Newspawn is a lot simpler than "person-who-just-appeared-out-of-thin-air-quite-recently".

Computer games have developed the term because they need a word to describe the phenomenon, which does not happen in RL. Cantrians would surely do the same.

psymann

- seconded

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Exactly!

[Chris]

No-one in RL appears, fully formed, at the physical age of 20. That is not "normal human procreation", but in Cantr, it's normal, so it makes sense that they should have a word for it. If you don't use "spawn", you must use some other word, so why not spawn? And the term Newspawn is a lot simpler than "person-who-just-appeared-out-of-thin-air-quite-recently".

Computer games have developed the term because they need a word to describe the phenomenon, which does not happen in RL. Cantrians would surely do the same.

It makes sense that the players of Cantr would use "spawn" and its variants in OOC settings. It also makes sense that people who care about the CR would make efforts to keep language that disturbs the suspension of disbelief out of IC conversation.

The game in the future will have children, won't it? To me, that plan suggests that the "appearing at 20" thing is a temporary OOC technical limitation, not an integral part of game design of the IC experience. When children become a Cantrian reality, will people make an effort to stop using "newspawn" and "spawn"?

Again, I don't want to make a huge deal out of it. Just curious.

[Nakranoth]

If Cantr ever has childern born to parent at age 0, then yes, born would be the correct term. But as people in Cantr simply appear without any apparent reason, the causality of "born" doesn't really apply. So even if I were to magically appear at age 0, there's no cause associated to it, so you'd have spawned instead of being born... unless of course you're in a society that believes the world births the new people... but that's a matter of in game culture.

*edited to remove all instances of the word "honestly"*

[DELGRAD]

It is just beyond me why this is even being discussed.

[Missy]

I try not to use the word newspawn IC. It's just such a stupid term. I don't care if people are born or not. I don't imagine that these characters pop out of the ground..........I don't think about it at all, but if I had to, my logical explanation is that a character always existed in the town they spawned in, but it isn't until a person SPAWNS a character that that character seems to find a voice. Spawning just seems to hard to explain. IE You go to school and you know how there's sometimes a person that's been there all year long but you don't notice them til this one specific day? In cantr, that's spawn day.

[Chris]

I try not to use the word newspawn IC. It's just such a stupid term. I don't care if people are born or not. I don't imagine that these characters pop out of the ground..........I don't think about it at all, but if I had to, my logical explanation is that a character always existed in the town they spawned in, but it isn't until a person SPAWNS a character that that character seems to find a voice. Spawning just seems to hard to explain. IE You go to school and you know how there's sometimes a person that's been there all year long but you don't notice them til this one specific day? In cantr, that's spawn day.

Yes, that's exactly how I think about it. The text says that you notice someone you didn't notice before. The game says the character is 20 years old. Thus, there must have been 20 years of background activity, but at a very low level that escaped notice. Thus, no "lost heir of King Finkelfud" or whatever, but plenty of room for an ordinary childhood and adolescence, a story about why you're an expert at some skill, and so on. Any well-told background story should fit between the cracks.

[N-Aldwitch]

*edited to remove all instances of the word "honestly"*

Good, good!

[psymann]

The text says that you notice someone you didn't notice before. The game says the character is 20 years old. Thus, there must have been 20 years of background activity

It's not true to say there _must_ have been 20 years of background activity. It is perfectly possible that the spawning process takes twenty years.

Here is my hypothesis: You start to spawn, unconsciously. This process takes 20 years, after which you gain consciousness, take skills from two people nearby, and become visible to all around you. The Cantrian method of reproduction.

Judging from the experience of a newspawn in Cantr, I'd say mine sounds more feasible than yours. The idea of people actually being created at the age of 0, wandering around, doing almost nothing for twenty years and taking no notice of the world around them, sounds insane to me. I've seen a character who is completely extrovert, jumping round talking to everyone in sight and always the centre of the party. How could I possibly not have noticed him until he was 20?

Thus, no "lost heir of King Finkelfud" or whatever.

If you've not noticed this person before, how do you know whether or not they are the lost heir of King Finkelfud? They could have been doing *anything* for the last twenty years, you say. Therefore, the only things that they are not able to RP are those which can be clearly disproven. They can't say they've spent 20 years making a set of armour to wear, as clothing is visible in Cantr, and they are clearly not wearing armour. And they can't say they have developed the special power to turn stone to gold, since stone and gold both exist, and they can't change one to the other. But there's no way of proving that they are not the lost heir of King Finkelfud, so perhaps that _is_ what they have been doing for the last 20 years. Prove that there is no King Finkelfud, and prove that he didn't lose a son...

plenty of room for an ordinary childhood and adolescence

What normal childhood and adolescence involves spending 20 years without any other human being noticing you?

And why is it that no newspawn has the faintest clue where they are or who any of the important people are in their town, when they have supposedly spent 20 years there?

The game in the future will have children, won't it?

I don't see why it should. If you are going to try getting people to RP being a 3-year-old, then I find that pretty daft. I can't see six months of RP-ing "Goo goo gaa gaa" is going to be much fun for a newbie to Cantr.

When children become a Cantrian reality, will people make an effort to stop using "newspawn" and "spawn"?

_If_ children become a Cantrian reality, then they may just start being spawned at the age of 0 instead of at 20. But it may never happen. Certainly my Cantrian characters do not sit around saying "Now, I can't say that that person spawned, because in future, we may evolve into beings that can give birth to 0-year-olds, so I'd better say something else". For a start, they have no concept of what a 0-year-old would look like, as they've never noticed anyone under the apparent age of 20. And secondly, they're have no reason to believe anything might change.

It would be like me saying "I can't say my mother is called Mary, because in ten million years' time, we may evolve into lifeforms that do not have mothers, but are bred in test-tubes using some wierd genetic mutation that I can't even imagine"

You go to school and you know how there's sometimes a person that's been there all year long but you don't notice them til this one specific day? In cantr, that's spawn day.

But then they'd have a different spawn day for each person who notices them. How come all 20 people in one location suddenly notice this person all at the same time? Especially since, sometimes, the newspawn does nothing but stand there and die of starvation twenty days later?

And if they really _were_ born, and just not noticed until they were 20, then who gave birth to them, and why haven't those people noticed them yet?

Are you trying to suggest that in a town with 20 people, there are actually 100 people - 20 that you notice and interact with, and 80 that just do menial things, breed and raise children who get noticed at the age of 20? And that for some reason only the people you don't see are the ones that are able to breed?

And how come you notice 1g of sand, but don't notice a 19-year old in the town?

---

Too much wierd unexplanable stuff if you think newspawns have been around having a life already for 20 years. They just appear, at the age of 20. Until then: no-one sees them; they are unconcious and see no-one. Simple.

psymann

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Yea, that's how I feel. They don't exist until they spawn. They're not just hovering around watching the older people do things. It's not natural to real life, but it is to Cantr life, and even though Cantr was supposed to be a society simulator of sorts, it never really has been.

[I_am]

I don't imagine that these characters pop out of the ground..........

That is exactly the way I've imagined it and the way I've seen it RP'd on occasion; amusingly, I might add. Cantrians go into the ground when they die, why can't they pop up out of the ground when they spawn?

[Jackr]

I think there should be a clear statement from the staff or the community on where newspawns come from, as this sometimes couses confusion IC.

Example: One character spawns in a village and says he is glad to finally come outside after having been inside for so many years, while another one states he just popped out of nowhere.

Who is right here? Or is no-one right. Are they both right? How should characters deal with this, as they have all "seen" what happened but they have not in a way, because the game doesn't really clarify spawning.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

There is no clear statement that any staff member can make (Jos could if he wanted I suppose, but I'm not sure he'd want to). I think the nature of Cantr makes it better left to the game and the characters within the game to explain. There's no need for an OOC explanation just so we as players can understand it. It's all about our characters explaining it, and I think it's interesting that players have so many different ideas about it.

I'm not sure your first character example would really work very well.. Everyone would be like, "Where were you inside? You didn't come out of a buildling."

[Jackr]

Well, it wasn't one of my characters who made that statement. I believe the char who did left the town quickly or my char did, but it was just to make the point that it sometimes causes confusion in the game.