About playing children (once more)

[SekoETC]

This is not planned to be a massive debate. All I'm asking is don't you consider it odd that you may have a character that's a three feet tall midget with underdeveloped brains and face so that he looks like and acts like a child, as long as we make sure everyone knows he's over twenty? And still the twenty first years don't really exist, it's just a system starting from 20 instead of 0.

Still I doubt that a newspawn has the number 0 as an age and everyone then gets 20 added to their age. No, most likely there stands the number 20 in the database. So it could as well be 18 or 16. Except that there are no descriptions for those. In the simplest all that needs to be added is "in his teens" for 13 to 19-year olds and "in his infancy" for 0 to 12.

There is this problem that kids can't work as hard or carry as much as adults, but the limitations wouldn't have to be necessarily programmed in, if the option of playing children would only be available serious, long term players that are more interested in good rp than hogging resources and traveling fast. Since the thing is rare, considered cases could have their age manually changed after spawning. The change could be only done once and the player would be bound to respect his character's age in such way that he spends less time engaged in projects and keeps his speed lower than maximum when travelling. If such person would be seen violating the rules, he'd then be punished.

Like I've said before, until the baby thing gets implemented in one way or another, I will not have underaged characters but if I see someone else rp:ing a child, I will play along.

[Psycho Pixie]

ah... you can play along if you want. I wont.....


example, yesterday in a town I have a charry(or 2) in, someone spawned. and this newspawn, said :

"*you see a small basket next to a small tree with a small baby in it at the edge of town*"

why on earth would anyone want to be saddled with the care and extra work that is involved in bringing up a small infant in a game that requires so much time and effort to get our own charrys up and running? bluntly, I think people who play infants this way are just looking to be the center of attention.

WHEN they implement babies and the infants can be played according to the game, i will interact. until then, I will ignore the infants.

I wont ignore charrys who have impairments, I wont ignore simpltons such as silly and Seko. Well played charrys that have these defects work well in a real society game. When they make babies i will happily interact with them.... but only when they are implmented and permitted by the pd.




Psycho Pixie

[The Industriallist]

I agree that it could be done (well, maybe) and, if the almighty administrators saw fit to do so, I would play along. But I don't like any ideas that involve the phrase "only available to serious, long-term players"

Also, I just don't like babies for cantr at all, and will be very sad (or possibly driven out of the game, depending) when they are implemented.

As far as I'm concerned, you can hamper your character any way you want (blind, deaf, mute, illiterate, invent your own). But they still are a man (or woman) in their Nties, outwardly like any other. Because the game says so.

[SekoETC]

"*you see a small basket next to a small tree with a small baby in it at the edge of town*"

Now that's a problem.. When there's a baby, there also has to be a mother. Having a toddler around, that may be possible, a kid that can walk may somehow take care of himself but a completely helpless baby... *Shakes her head* In such case playing along might mean just ending his life, because you can't expect this little thing to step out of the basket, grow up and say "Fine, if you don't play with me, I'll be twenty then."

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

if ya near water RP pickig the basket up and putting it in thw water and hopefully the idiot will travel to another town

[SekoETC]

Good idea. Now unfortunately although how much you rp drifting, that won't get you to another town. You can't even drown... Now if there was a grid system, you could swim from place to another and rest after a while in the shore.

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

if ya rping a baby i'd be mre worried about getting warnings from the pd since t says on the main page that rpig babies and children is not allowed

[SekoETC]

Main page? What main page? Cantr main page? I went to check and there is never a baby mentioned. Huh? All I ever hear about this matter is the old Jos quote posted around every now and then...

[The Industriallist]

Jos Elkink (2004-07-08)

I will report a message to all players that has been posted before, simply to bring it back under attention. Especially the existence of roleplayed babies in the game has caused confusion lately as to what our policies are towards such roleplaying. Babies do not currently exist in Cantr and will be implemented as soon as possible, which might still not be very soon, as we lack programming staff. My message from November last year: "I see more and more descriptions of actions in peoples` talking, like *smiles* or ::walks to ...::. As such, this is fine, and it adds to the roleplaying character of the game, but please limit it to behaviour that does not affect a surrounding and does not involve objects that are not actually in the game. E.g. ::hits Paul:: is not allowed, as for that there is a hitting function, or ::hides his bottle:: is not allowed, as there are no bottles in the game, or ::runs behind a building so nobody can see him:: does not mean nobody can see him ... That would simply be a different type of game." This policy has always applied and still stands.

This was mainly meant to address the 'virtual baby' RP, though. It doesn't necesarily apply to 'I am a baby'. Though it certainly does rule out the 'virtual basket'.

[Missy]

I'll clarify quickly. You may not roleplay a child or baby. You may role-play childish traits.

No-- *The baby cries and squirms wanting attention*

Yes--*Cries and squirms wishing for attention*

Your character is a 20 + year old.

[SekoETC]

Hmm I think that's clear now.. Now I'm then beginning to think what about an extremely small person in his twenties, like when you can find info from the Internet about people that are only a little over two feet tall. This is off subject though.

[formerly known as hf]

I've never played a baby or a child. Someone asked my new character if they were a child... But in this instance, it was just a character - the age/gender/species was quite irrelevant to the situation really... It just required a bit of imagination, just to play along with it...

But the fun of RPing this character was destroyed by the lack of imagination/sense of fun of those around her (she's now locked up and forgotten about )

[SekoETC]

hallusinating farmer> Sorry to hear that.. But.. had the imprisonment something to do with your characters age? If not, that sounds a bit irrelevant to the topic.


But what I came here to post is a suggestion..

I think that when babies are implemented, they should be first computer operated and considered as objects, can be passed around, set to ground and so on. They can be seen like weapons "you see a woman in her twenties holding a baby" and most likely do not wear clothes, since making babyclothes in locations where most adults are primitively dressed doesn't seem logical. If the mother has fabric in her inventory, she can rp the baby is wrapped in one, but that isn't so necessary.

There are two choices about defining who becomes who's child.

- First, an invisible queue, mentioned before by someone else. In this case even gender might be random because I'm sure the parents would like to know the age of the child right after it's born, not when it finds a player. The children enter the queue in the age of one year (20 days) and when a player clicks create new character button, they will be sent to control the first baby in the queue. In this case you may end up playing a baby whose parents care only about themselves, leaving their newborn kid gathering food on his own because newspawns had to do that before, so why not now. *shakes head* The list may be long if no new characters are been created, and thus you may end up playing an older child, whom the parents have been required to feed and take care of for years and they probably will make you work really hard to repay that. And if there are no babies in the list, either they accept younger and younger ones to it, or make you have to wait. As you can see, this option has gaps... That's why I have another one.

- When the baby is 20 days old, it enters a selection list. People can see the gender and health of the baby (has it been taken care of or abbandoned - this prevents people ending up in dying corpses). After day 30 if not yet selected the baby starts losing health (a random number a day) and will eventually die somewhere between age 40 to 50 days. If someone thus definately wants to rp a retarded child, they can select a slowly developed child and have a past that explains a lot. Setting a final date of death prevents parents from having to feed a soulless child, and also stops people been born so late that they have no memories of their childhood. The numbers can be discussed but I think they are good the way they are.

- The moment the baby gets a player is when the child takes his/her first steps, thus turning intependant. Before the parents may rp the baby's actions if they want to. There may be automated crying if the baby is in trouble, and the feeding is probably also automated. Easiest way to handle it is to say the mother breastfeeds the baby until it has a player. As long as the mother has enough food, she can produce milk and feed the baby. Most likely nursing requires more energy, and the amount of food consumed in a day is increased. If the mother dies the baby is screwed unless they find a nurse. A side note: letting the baby suck even if there is no milk, will eventually produce milk production. I have even heard of a man breastfeeding, but he must've been taking hormones... Easiest way to handle the feeding thing is to increase the food consumption of the person carrying the baby, no matter it is it's mother or not.

Spawning system can co-excist either for the changing period or then for a permanent option if some people really do not want to play children. When there's only a little or no babies, fertility rate is very high and a woman having sex with a guy will almost certainly become pregnant, but if there's a long list and not many people wanting young characters, then the chance of getting pregnant is lower. The problem is things must be foretold since the children are subject to been played only after a waiting period of 20+ days depending on how long the pregnancy time is set. Logically it should be 15 days but everything can be discussed.

Children grow and mature faster than in real life, I think 10-year olds should already be fertile. After all, if you start when the child is one years old (and the child is more active than a real life child would be, maybe in the level of a three-year-old) you need to play 180 days for reaching 10 years. Now that sounds like a long time, doesn't it?

[SekoETC]

I would like to see a waiting system run here on the forum, making sure that only serious players get to play children.

In that way it would also be obvious if someone is playing children just to ruin the fun for others...because believe me, there are lots of people who would do that.

Ewww, how could people be so cruel? Think about it, your character carries a child for 15 days, suffers from slow walking, eats for two... then takes care of the baby, feeds it, cuddles it, wipes it's little ass... And then some fuckhead registers to play the child, steals everything (though it probably has limited inventory), hits people with it's puny little fists and shouts obscenities with caps lock on. NOooo! Ok, he can't do much damage game-technically but mentally - definately.

I don't think I'd want to play several children, maybe only a couple, but I do want to my characters to have a childhood past, and in some cases people are telling that's a no-no.. Though it's only said that the person can't have knowledge of other regions, nothing bigger problem with it. *Frown*

[Pirog]

Ewww, how could people be so cruel?

You answered it yourself...it's the typical behavior of a fuckhead

I think the plan is that the spawning system will eventually disappear, leaving children as the only way to bring in new characters.
I personally don't think it would work, but I hope I'm wrong...it would be really cool if that was the only way, because then the game would get a whole new strategic level.