Families; revisted and simplified

[formerly known as hf]

They are not a mother and father. They're something else. They're gene sources, nothing more.

In most of the natural world mothers and fathers are primarily gene sources. All the rest of the baggage comes with a handful of nurturing mammals and then with a few large-brained primates like ourselves, where you get the possibility of cultural variation. But even with us, parenting is principally about genetic attachment.

These concepts are very very close. So much so that once you introduce the one, I doubt if it will ever make sense to introduce the other without huge confusion arising.

In other words, once this is introduced, it will become what Cantrians mean by "family", "parents", "children" and whatnot.

Which is part of why I think this would abe a great idea, because it does allow for the opportunity to RP something other than a western-centric culture and morality already dominating English cantr.

If procreation and children are ever implemented to reflect the human process. The resulting RP will just be a re-creation of the moralities and culture surrounding 'family' we see in the western world. But, whilst internal family drama can be fascinating, and non-standard family make-up and attitudes can be interesting, we aren't gonna get that in Cantr.

The resulting families in Cantr would be straight, functional, well bonded and with middle-class western values, frankly; boring.

Spawning & inheritance is currently random and abstract. Keeping it random and abstract, but making it more integral to the spawn event provides an opportunity for us to RP around the abstract event, to think outside the damned box.

[Sicofonte]

The resulting families in Cantr would be straight, functional, well bonded and with middle-class western values, frankly; boring.

Boring as families could be in real life? Or boring as companies and enterprises are in Cantr?
I think it will depend on each player's tates and interests.

Spawning & inheritance is currently random and abstract. Keeping it random and abstract, but making it more integral to the spawn event provides an opportunity for us to RP around the abstract event, to think outside the damned box.

Currently, people just RP nothing about the newspawning event but "ey, you, the newspawn, state your name!".
At least, introducing the genetic relations (with one or two known parents), people will find more stimulus for a more varied roleplaying.

[psymann]

Just something to throw in the mix...


These genes only affect your skills.

They don't affect your appearance - that is set by each character's player.
They don't affect your personality - that is set by each chracter's player.
They don't actually affect anything other than how good you are at farming and fighting etc.

So "he looks like Jos" is a bad thing, as he may look completely different. You can't tell me that my character has to look like someone else, he looks as I wish him to.


And this, to me, makes this whole thing of "children" pretty pointless. I look a bit like my Dad, and I look a bit like my Mum. I am good at maths like my Dad, and good at sport like my Mum. Like both of them, I don't love big, loud parties, but like coffee mornings. etc etc. It's not just a case of whether I have my Mum's cooking ability and my Dad's fighting ability or not.

Maybe Cantr needs something entirely different as a concept - forget parents/children/genes completely. Maybe a newspawn has some training when they are spawned, and this training is done in the blink of an eye by two people in the current location. So you have two trainers - leading to these skills you're spawned with - not two parents...

psymann

[SekoETC]

And since there's only five levels to skill (you can't see the numbers behind them) and because it doesn't all depend on genes (randomness plays a role in it as well), it's more like that the newspawn is a product of the community as a whole, not the two samples selected from it. Drawing attention to these samples would be unreasonable. Maybe if only the newspawn him/herself and the gene sources would know of this bond, then there would be a bit of fairness, then they could reveal it if it fits them.

I was thinking "if this idea gets implemented thank god my characters are too old to have kids" and then it hit me, nope, this way they aren't. No one could dodge it because a person can be selected to be a gene source even if they were in their sixties, or even if they were spawned yesterday.

No one should be forced to be related to anyone if they don't want to. With the old babies suggestion, it was said many a times that spawning would remain as a second option, so no one would be forced to play a child or a parent. While as the current suggestion is forcing people to something not all of them like.

Even if we had mating, it doesn't necessarily mean love marriages. It could be decided by community elders that new population is needed, so they could order citizens to multiply because it's a duty, or a location with not many women could even kidnap them from the neighbouring town to make them pregnant (in a case like this, even if the woman character was unwilling, the player could make the choice of letting it happen or then fighting until death).

[formerly known as hf]

The resulting families in Cantr would be straight, functional, well bonded and with middle-class western values, frankly; boring.

Boring as families could be in real life? Or boring as companies and enterprises are in Cantr?
I think it will depend on each player's tates and interests.

As boring as some families can be, yes.

And enterprise in Cantr is only interesting because it is dealing with situations unique to Cantr, and therefore aren't attempted copies of rl examples, as basic 'business sense' in rl makes no sense in Cantr.

Parentage, if made the same as rl, will not lead to imaginative RP.

[UloDeTero]

Parentage, if made the same as RL, will not lead to imaginative RP.

I disagree. The best RP comes from the player working within a certain limitation. For example, people create deaf or dumb characters for the challenge of RPing them well. Beside, the nature of the game is that newspawns have to make their way in the world, and discover their town and local area, and their own abilities. In other words, working within the apparently random situation they find themselves in.

Adding an element of blood relations gives the player the opportunity to RP within that framework, thereby resulting in better RP.

If procreation and children are ever implemented to reflect the human process, the resulting RP will just be a re-creation of the moralities and culture surrounding 'family' we see in the western world

Not necessarily. It would be up to the player to decide how their character reacts, and what kind of morality and culture they decide to follow. If you want to see different attitudes in Cantr, have your character display a different attitude.

[Sicofonte]

I do agree with Ulo.


I can be a rejected bastard son/daughter.

I can try to convince the people of a town that I am son/daughter of the town leader (and not of that poor guy/girl that can scarcely make both ends meet... although he is in fact my parent, but that is a secret).

I can have a quarrel with my lover because s/he "had a spawn with others".

I can be a son/daugther that only wants to be free, but two insistent idiots that persist on the idea that I am theirs.

...

[Snake_byte]

Last post was two years ago but I don't want to clog the forum-

I think everyone agrees to generations but it seems the problems are the definition of the action and the programming behind it.

I suggest keeping the asexual reproduction by making a choice available to every character ONCE at a random age in the carries life. Once rejected or accepted the choice never returns but has the possibility of spawning 2 babies at the same time.

[Piscator]

I for one don't agree. I'm perfectly happy with keeping spawning exactly like it is and leave the more real world like modes of recreation to our competing products. Mushrooming newspawns have been part of Cantrs charme for longer than I play and I think we should keep it to retain our unique profile.

[Doug R.]

Well, unfortunately, the current spawning system is producing some very undesireable effects, and it's probably going to be changed.

[Piscator]

In which way?

[Doug R.]

-The fact that it never worked well to begin with, not taking into account people on roads, and putting characters too close together.

-The fact that if two foreign speakers land someplace, the population of them will explode in a few Cantr years, because the system favors that location. There are >100 registered spanish characters on Cantr and Treefeater right now. How much are you willing to bet that they're all descended from one or two ships of visiting Spainards? I'm willing to bet a lot. If you're not putting effort* into colonizing, you shouldn't be colonizing, and that's the biggest change that needs to be made.


* = does not necessarily denote an active project, but could also mean an extended presence in a location

[Piscator]

So basically all we have to do is add a mechanism to the spawning mechanics that disfavours locations with strong populations of foreigners. Seems simple enough.

[Doug R.]

Trust me, it's not.

[Piscator]

It usually isn't. I'd still be interested in the details (if they're not confidential).

I think most of the apparent problem could be solved by changing how distance is taken into account when determining the spawning odds and factoring in the presence of foreigners and/or the closeness to others of your language group (that is, finding a spot as far as possible from your characters, but as close as possible to the rest of your LG).