The Wiki

[Lumino]

The wiki has always struck me as a bit odd, since it gives a lot of IC information...what I am wondering is, how much of what is on the wiki can be considered "common sense"? How much of it can my characters know, assuming they haven't discovered it for themselves in the game?

[DylPickle]

The official ruling on it is fuzzy nowadays...

The rules nowadays say your characters can't know about people, events, or locations they've never seen or learned of in game.

So I guess if you really wanted to you could let your characters know everything there is to know about what it takes to make things, but in my opinion it kind of ruins the whole RP experience this game is centered around.

If you want to play the game at a higher level, you'll use the wiki as a reference for yourself as a player, but keep your character relatively free from its limiting grasps :p It lets the game world as a whole be more dynamic, fun, and believable if more people play it that way.

As a loose guideline, I usually let my characters have a general knowledge of the things that are native to their spawning place, and then leave the rest up to the flow of their in-game experiences. Or if one of my characters works in a blacksmith's shop for 6 years, for example, I'd "open" bits more of the wiki to them as their understanding of their line of work increases.

[Piscator]

Your characters are principally allowed to know everything from the wiki. It's of course more or less bad style if you talk about animals or resources your characters have not yet encountered, but most of the production tree can't be deduced by logic, so we can just assume Cantrians know about that stuff because that's how their world works.

[Dudel]

Hmm... Dudel doesn't even use the Wiki.

I try to learn IG or not know at all.

[mikki]

I don't use it either. My chars either know what they are doing, or say hey I have no clue what you are talking about.

[Litchin_flip]

Agrees with dudel

[SekoETC]

I generally use the wiki to calculate trade rates for resources and items, but if my character runs into a resource he hasn't seen in nature then he's ready to pay more for it.

I dislike characters who talk about items that are alien to the current level of development in their community or about resources they have never seen and which are also not on any maps they have seen. On the Finnish region every once in a while someone asks if anyone knows if there's iron around, or hematite or coal, but I think we shouldn't know of such things since we've never seen them. It would be natural to hope for finding some material that could be used for stronger equipment, but people shouldn't mention iron or bronze or their ingredients until the ingredients are actually found in nature. After that someone can come up with the idea of combining them.

Likewise I had a character on Omeo island who didn't know what steel was, but eventually she had to figure out on her own how to make iron after she had seen limestone and coal and someone gave her a lump of hematite.

[ceselb]

Having rewritten most of the wiki at some point, I play my chars as pretty smart, so they know and understand how to make what they see around them.
One or two are not so technically minded, but after having seen a piece of equipment and used it for a bit, they can build it.
Another char saw a reed for the first time and then became obsessed with having a reed hat for some reason.
Another tried to find some elephants, asked a bunch of polish chars and was directed towards that island. He now proudly wears a couple of ivory items.

I would consider a guy in the middle of nowhere that wanted say a tusk horn bad form, since I'm pretty certain that char has never seen tusk or rhinos. But since that char has spoken about it, I guess now my char knows about the material? It gets weird at that point for me.

[Dudel]

Now one thing I do A LOT in game is ASK QUESTIONS! I see something new that either makes me (the player) say "Hmm... what does that do?" or makes my character say, "COOL! Can I have some? I don't know what I can make with it but... I want some! *laughs*"

OOCally I've started 'working' with clothes and tailoring so I sorta know what goes into basic wears, now. Its VERY tempting to have characters whom know NOTHING on the subject just start the project up so I try to avoid knowing what I shouldn't know. Or avoid the things required until someone says something.

Personally, have the fun of a game is figuring it out the 'hard way'. Thats so AWESOME when you (the player) know the answer to a question about a mechanic and even MORE AWESOME when you can 'optimize' on that IC. (Not use the info like magic but slowly be more aware of whats about.)

[Elros]

I agree Dudel. It is hard not to use the knowledge you have as a player sometimes, but it is better not to use it if your characters have not been exposed to it. It may take a lot longer to get what you want when you have to pretend to learn it, but that is what makes the game great, and is the way it should be played. A lot of players focus more on getting "stuff" rather than role playing, so it is obvious that they are going to use all of their OOC information to obtain "stuff". However, if you are more concerned with true RP, then you will be patient when it comes to getting "stuff", and enjoy the process and learning that it takes to obtain it.

[Drael]

Consider that characters begin life, with a perfect lexicon of english/other language, that is not learnt in game. Here there are many words that the person the person never hears in context, or sees in the world. In RP reality, they would begin unable to speak, and certainly not using slang etc... They also begin life with a name, but no reason for having said name....

Given this, its hardly a stretch to add wiki knowledge to the already implausible body of knowledge a character spawns with.

[Elros]

Consider that characters begin life, with a perfect lexicon of english/other language, that is not learnt in game. Here there are many words that the person the person never hears in context, or sees in the world. In RP reality, they would begin unable to speak, and certainly not using slang etc... They also begin life with a name, but no reason for having said name....

Given this, its hardly a stretch to add wiki knowledge to the already implausible body of knowledge a character spawns with.

True, but keep in miind that the characters starts out at 20 years old, so the fact that they know how to speak as well as perform normal functions is a given. They may have even learned how to work in a specific trade as well before they were 20 years old. However, most of them should not be allowed to know everything there is to know in the Cantr world since most of them have never been around the whole world...

Make any sense?

[Drael]

... so the fact that they know how to speak as well as perform normal functions is a given. They may have even learned how to work in a specific trade as well before they were 20 years old. However, most of them should not be allowed to know everything there is to know in the Cantr world since most of them have never been around the whole world...

Make any sense?

Somewhat

Even though they are twenty years old, they have no in game history, and for all purposes people treat newspawns as if they just appear, as if by magic.

Though, yes certainly it would be a rules violation if they knew maps, or resources locations etc without a note about it.

But...its kinda blurry in some areas.

For me its rather hard getting my head round no day and night, or seasons.

Theres alot of stuff to ignore also, such as the fact that people can carry twenty swords on their person with no bags or containers, or that there are "projects" lying on the ground, or that someone can drag a tonne of fish with no bag.

"Sleeping", "spawning" similarly is really sort of an OOC concept, in game people might use different terms, or ideas, if they are truely being in character. It would vary from region to region. They would also try and discover or understand the cause.

One of my characters had the idea that it was either dimension travelling, or "demon" possession. Given the primitive state of much cantr culture, youd think superstition would be much more rife on these issues. (Scientific understanding is also low generally, or simple, so again superstition really should play in)

When you really think about, theres alot of suspension of disbeleif going on when you play cantr.

And given that, full wiki knowledge seems pretty minor. The CRB thing really comes in mostly when the characters use OOC information for an advantage, or when its either blatant or uncommon. (As i said, i really consider terms like spawning, sleeping etc OOC, even though they are universal).

And say someone references the sun...or seasons. We dont actually know there is a sun in cantr, or a skyline, has weather, or that the planet is curved etc.

As an aside, i really do wonder, how many moons are there in cantr? What colour is the sky, or the sun?

But to me this adds to RP, these kind of details, like it being sunny or rainy...makes the world more beleivable.....

By contrast, something like the word "ninja" is culturally specific in the real world. Seems very out of place (someone actually used this word). But "knight", well there are knights in cantr, but no doubt the term "knight" which is culturally specific to european middle ages in the real world, came from just there!

Seems western culture is okay to import but eastern not?

Very blurry to me, but yeah id say using it for some character advantage is really the only issue id have personally. And trying to keep out of world ideas, words and speech minimal, or just to be aware.

[Elros]

Great post, I couldn't agree with you more. I definetily feel that adding such aspects as the sun, moon, day, night, and weather helps to set a better scene for the RP. I don't think anything is wrong with that. What kind of story has no scenery? I very dull one... RPing without a visual image to go with it sucks as well.

[SekoETC]

Characters are allowed to know how to make stuff and how to speak, but they are not allowed to know stuff about the geography or the people, so in a way you could think they have lived in a void that has no terrain, people or material, just concepts.