Citizens of Cantr your advice please!

[Oob]

I do so enjoy playing Cantr it's such good fun! I enjoy RP'ing and I am continually finding out more about how the game mechanics work.

But.. my characters are now in their mid-late 20's they'll soon be 30, an age when they should know all about their world. People come and go, things happen, it just seems confusing and quite hard to keep up with everything that is going on.

So how to keep up with the daily events, what's the best way to keep track of all the 'who, what, where and when' of life in Cantr. How do you keep up with all the comings and goings without having a Cantr equivalent of Facebook or twitter.

Just when you think you're getting to know a few people they vanish, where do they go and what are they doing?

Any advice on your 'daily routine' or tips and tricks to help keep up with daily life in Cantr would be most welcome!

[Miri]

Uhmm... I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't quite get what you mean...

[Joshuamonkey]

My daily routine:
1. Quick read/scan through what people are saying and doing, looking for: names, attacks (other than with a waster), stealing, someone going through many buildings and leaving, etc. If it's a character/location in a very active town that I don't care about, sometimes I'll just do ctrl f "My name is" and "I am" , as well as ctrl f "name of my character". If I need to find someone, I look for the last thing they did (sometimes using ctrl f), and if they went in a building that's locked, you can knock or write a note, drop it, and drag it to that building.

2. Make sure you aren't going hungry. Generally people won't let you starve if you ask, and you can usually work for food.

3. I find something to do. If I don't have something to do or a resource to gather, I'll help others. One thing that does is help people know your active.

4. If you're in a place with lots of attacking animals (if the laws allow), hunt. Just make sure hunting isn't the only thing you do (some also rp hunting from time to time).

Tips:
1. Decide what you want to do/make/achieve and do what it takes. Find out who can help (town/organization leader, captain, etc) or travel to another town that can help (or find and gather the resources yourself).

2. Find someone(s) to work/travel with you if you can. You just need something to offer (roleplay, items, love, etc.). With a boat, this isn't very hard.

3. If you're in an organization/town for a long time and are active, chances are you'll end up as some sort of leader and/or gain trust.

4. Especially if tip#3 works out, make sure that people don't benefit from your death (within reason). Or at least (especially if your character is kind of evil), make sure that there's enough people that want you alive, especially the ones that are able to kill you. Give trust to those who are worth trusting.

Disclaimer: These are just general ideas. You should have variety with your characters. Roleplay takes priority over these tips.

[Chris]

I keep a page (or more) of notes for each character in an application called VoodooPad (Mac only). I also search my logs when I need to remember something that happened a while ago. Without the written memory aids, playing Cantr would be difficult.

[Oob]

Sorry Miri I must have been a bit vague, didn't quite know how to explain what I mean! Thank you Joshuamonkey and Chris your answers are exactly what I was looking for. I really need a routine to follow, both for me managing events and so I can help my characters live better more effective, involved and rewarding lives.

One thing that has surprised me and got me wondering is where people go to, they seem to leave the area/town and never seem to return, I come across very few of them again in the surrounding area. Maybe people end up exploring further away, they can't all of died and been buried can they? I was thinking they could be in buildings hiding away out of sight, or on board ships sailing away from land. All these people can't simply vanish into thin air!!

[CrashBlizz]

Thats something your charcheter may never know. If you as a player want to know where a certain someone's got to then you can always use the forum and ask, or find the player and PM. But your character peobably wont have a clue. Cantr is a big place.

[SekoETC]

I don't have a particular routine. I generally check that characters first who have been the most interesting lately, and/or that are most likely to end up in danger overnight. I generally read the events in order but might skim read if there's a lot. If it's a character who generally gets asked a lot of questions, I might copypaste those questions into notepad and write replies there, then answer in an order of importance (or order of who's going to get upset if they think I'm ignoring them). Fortunately only one of my characters is that popular. I might stick around waiting for replies from people who happen to be online but if no one talks by the time I'm done checking my other characters, I'm likely to start running around buildings and organizing stuff. My characters don't usually hunt so it's difficult for me to remember to do that, and one time someone was killing a person and I forgot to check the character for two days in the middle since the victim was a sleeper.

As for knowing what happened to people, it's easier for me since I can look it up in the db if I'm curious, but it's frustrating knowing sometimes that my characters will never be able to learn the truth even if I knew it. Occasionally I check who has died lately to see if there were any familiar people (kinda like how my dad reads the obituaries in the newspaper) but it tends to make me depressed, especially if there are characters that I was planning to go see one day (for example Sarah of Second Blojt and Ingred Schwan) but kept delaying it until it was too late. My character might still make the trip one day but I wonder if there'll be anyone left to tell what happened to these people.

[Doug R.]

Being as obsessed with Cantr as I am, I don't need to keep notes. I just remember everything for all my characters. They say we only use 10% of our brains, so maybe I'm using a different 10% for each character? If I ever do forget anything, I just search my character logs, or just admit that I forgot.

[Genie]

I have to admit i envied you because i have few things to follow,maybe i must open some new chars:)

[Diego]

Being as obsessed with Cantr as I am, I don't need to keep notes. I just remember everything for all my characters. They say we only use 10% of our brains, so maybe I'm using a different 10% for each character? If I ever do forget anything, I just search my character logs, or just admit that I forgot.

everyone uses 100% of their brains, just not all at once

[CrashBlizz]

Being as obsessed with Cantr as I am, I don't need to keep notes. I just remember everything for all my characters. They say we only use 10% of our brains, so maybe I'm using a different 10% for each character? If I ever do forget anything, I just search my character logs, or just admit that I forgot.

I'm kinda the same. I play a lot and so remember most things that my charries are doing and want to do. I dont keep logs or anything though. I see the 'show all' button as my short term memory. Anything not in that but I can remember is my long term memory. Anything I forget, my charries forget. Works for me.

The only exception to this is when I see another charrie I get on with rally well and might see again in the future. Then I'll write what they're doing in their little comment box thing. Eg. 'going to get cotton'. Then if I ever see them again, even though I might not remember them, I can say 'Hey, how did that trip go...' and look like I know what I'm doing. - I don't do it often though

[Oob]

I really wish my brain could cope better and not suffer 'information overload' quite so easily

So what I'm trying to do, and by me doing it thereby help my characters, is to try and know what the other characters are doing and if possible why they are doing it, I'm nosey and inquisitive when it comes down to it. Unlike Doug I can't remember everything, a lot of my difficulties come from finding ways of keeping track of all the social interactions and public conversations that take place. In a quiet location I'm able to follow events but in a bustling town like SekoETC I end up having to skim over the events and miss out on things.

I never seem to have the time to read everything, I really need to be able to extract the relevant lines of text from the mass of other 'secondary' text output. I'm certainly getting better at 'skim reading' but if there was a more effective and easier way I could absorb everything I would welcome it. It's not just what happened today it's what happened days before and how it fits in to the 'big picture'.

Perhaps there is a job opportunity for a town cryer to give all the news about the local people and community.. or just someone to announce what's going on, information in exchange for resources now there's an idea maybe?

[raspberrytea]

I've seen informational newsletters in some towns, actually, but I don't think it's a paid venture. However, it would be interesting to have gossip-mongers/spies, who get paid for information. I think I have a character close to that already, but it's not quite at the same level. You would need to be fairly dedicated (and either have a good memory, or take good notes) to play that one well, I suspect.

In response to your question:

Like Seko, I usually go through each character depending on how interesting things have been with them recently. I only have a few who are in highly-active areas-- for the rest, I read everything that happens, but usually don't need to take notes to remember it. In active areas, I usually skim very very quickly for any mention of my character's name or anything interesting, or just ignore all of it.

I am, however, very fond of the third-party custom descriptions you can give a character. For newspawns, I note the day they appeared (and where); when there are a lot of strangers in an area, to help tell them apart, I label them by their physical appearance (if applicable) or something else that will set them apart, like a manner of speaking, or a vehicle they're on. I also find it useful to note small quirks about characters. For example:

Bob
"Short and stout. Speaks funny. Hates carrots, thinks they talk to him."

By noting quirks, it's easier to make interactions with characters more interesting and natural in the future.

[Doug R.]

I skim too, so don't worry about skimming. Sometimes, if something's irrelevant to me, I skip it entirely.

[randognsac]

I think I brought this up before, it would be nice if your characters name was brought up it would be highlighted in the text. Or to make the actions of characters a different color in the text. That way you don't have to try to skim past all the moving about of resources and people. When I skim those I might miss some rp or text in the middle of all that. I remember it being shut down because it would cause people to not read the other events. If anything it would cause me to read the more important stuff. If I take a weekend off of Cantr, it takes days to read everything, so I fall behind and can't keep up, so I just skip all or most of what I missed. I end up reading less than if this idea was implemented imo.

Anyway back on topic, my routine involves checking characters that have pressing matters first. I have a few leaders that need to stay active to keep people interested in working or living in the town I manage. So they are usually first. Then my sleepy characters next. I also make sure every single one is doing something, I hate seeing a blank on the right side of the screen on the character screen. Sometimes if something is really pressing for one character I might have to put the rest to sleep for a little bit, especially if there are life threatening events going on. This way I don't get overloaded with a bunch of stuff at once. I will just concentrate on the important one until things subside. As far as keeping notes on characters, I sometimes wish I did this more often, but I kinda see it like Crash long term and short term memory.