Things that annoy or puzzle you about Cantr

[Vega]

I had a char that used to cut her own hair veeery often...

[computaertist]

In real life I can't get my hair to grow past a certain length despite trying to grow it down my back.

My characters are the same.

[Mr. Bones]

It annoys me how every sovereign place in Cantr is a city state. I also hate that characters in the game try to impose this as a universal form of government, like some kind of law that you have to have a city state. Are people really so determined that Cantr should have no originality/diversity, or are people bringing their OOC political views into the game and trying to enforce them through their characters?

[Black Canyon]

It annoys me how every sovereign place in Cantr is a city state. I also hate that characters in the game try to impose this as a universal form of government, like some kind of law that you have to have a city state. Are people really so determined that Cantr should have no originality/diversity, or are people bringing their OOC political views into the game and trying to enforce them through their characters?

Or... you could go start your own settlement and establish your own kind of government... whatever that might be

[bnlphan]

Sorry Mr. Bones I meant to quote your post not send a reply via pm.

Except for the situation you are referring to. I think there is a wide variety of government types in the game. Some cities like Klojt seems very capitalistic. Other cities seem very socialistic with everyone working for the good of the city asking nothing in return. With my characters I do my best to just fall into place with the existing system accepting it as the norm. Terragotha has a very nice representative government for the island though I'm not very familiar with it, but empires are rare. Like Black Canyon said the only way it will change is if someone takes initiative to do it themselves. In the end any type of government in Cantr is better than no government. A city with a single person holding all the keys and everyone just doing their own thing just trying not to die gets boring really quick.

[computaertist]

It annoys me how every sovereign place in Cantr is a city state. I also hate that characters in the game try to impose this as a universal form of government, like some kind of law that you have to have a city state. Are people really so determined that Cantr should have no originality/diversity, or are people bringing their OOC political views into the game and trying to enforce them through their characters?

Overlooked possibility: lack of imagination concerning governments.

I plead guilty to such lack.

[bnlphan]

Better communication between cities would help multiple city governments as well in my opinion. Hand held radios, though may be a headache to other parts of the game would help keep a leader in touch with his outlying areas. Personally I'd love to see Pok Island or Cantr get to the point of having an island wide election for a president, and a senate of some sort, but that's just a dream.

[Mr. Bones]

The thing is, it seems that any time a nation tries to expand to multiple locations, that there's always some blowhard out there who has a problem with it and tries to stir up some kind of war with them. I'm not even talking about expanding to already claimed locations, but even when they aren't claimed. That's why I'm wondering if there might be some OOC influence involved. I know imperialism/colonialism isn't well liked today (I don't know why, considering the former imperialistic/colonialist governments were more wealthy in those days), so that's what makes me think some players might be bringing their real life political views into the game and trying to enforce them.

[catwill]

The thing is, it seems that any time a nation tries to expand to multiple locations, that there's always some blowhard out there who has a problem with it and tries to stir up some kind of war with them. I'm not even talking about expanding to already claimed locations, but even when they aren't claimed. That's why I'm wondering if there might be some OOC influence involved. I know imperialism/colonialism isn't well liked today (I don't know why, considering the former imperialistic/colonialist governments were more wealthy in those days), so that's what makes me think some players might be bringing their real life political views into the game and trying to enforce them.

I have a char who is part of a group working to expand, she is not the type to be deterred by blowhards so stay tuned...

[Mr. Bones]

The thing is, it seems that any time a nation tries to expand to multiple locations, that there's always some blowhard out there who has a problem with it and tries to stir up some kind of war with them. I'm not even talking about expanding to already claimed locations, but even when they aren't claimed. That's why I'm wondering if there might be some OOC influence involved. I know imperialism/colonialism isn't well liked today (I don't know why, considering the former imperialistic/colonialist governments were more wealthy in those days), so that's what makes me think some players might be bringing their real life political views into the game and trying to enforce them.

I have a char who is part of a group working to expand, she is not the type to be deterred by blowhards so stay tuned...

Good, please do Cantr a favor kill all of the blowhards please. I know one really old guy that needs to die ASAP.

[Doug R.]

In RL historically, until very recently, people were used to being ruled by some power or another. In Cantr, the opposite is true: People are used to their freedom. In RL, the "small folk" didn't care who sat the throne, so long as they had a decent harvest and were left more or less in peace. In Cantr, even most city-state governments are extremely democratic, and any suggestion of incursion by an outside power into the life of the town is met with outright hostility. I could bring a van of six people into a town, declare that I'm their new sovereign, and as a sign of my good will, I'll leave their current government intact, and most of the townsfolk would still throw a fit and choose to die by my sword rather than submit. It's just a totally different value system. You could argue that it's ooc motivated, since we're all used to living in free societies too, but I think in this instance, the OOC and IC realities are pretty much the same, and if there was ooc influence, it's been shaping Cantr society since day one, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it now.

[sherman]

If you want your own society you have to do it by yourself (Getting inhabitants is different story..). Even today then we are used to our freedom I think it is quite possible to establish Dictatorship to Cantr and make aggressively expanding nation. This just need charismatic leader to rally all under his cause and he has to give people what they want (If thats iron then iron and so on). I think preferably way would be by a ''democratic'' way so he is actually elected and has popular support behind him. This is possible but I think some doesn't like idea and then there is 50 people in one town or more doing this gets pretty hard.

Cantr give us freedom to build even communist society that actually works or town there is nobody at charge, it just need people to do these things and use imagination.

[Tiamo]

The city state government structure of Cantr is, in my view, mainly caused by the setup of the Cantr game itself:
- locations are relatively far apart (days of travel, unless you have a motorized vehicle and good roads) and direct communication between locations is very limited (radios only reaching one or a few rooms in a location). This makes regular social contact between locations rather difficult and expensive.
- in contrast you can see pretty much everything that is going on in your location. This makes tight control of the location relatively easy.
- characters are pretty much self-supportant. Nobody really needs to cooperate to survive or even reach any reasonable goal in terms of wealth. Cooperation within a location can be useful, cooperation in larger structures usually is just a burden.
- most locations have enough food resources for the survival of at least a handful (a complete village!) of characters. Contact with other locations is not needed for survival.
- protecting a location from a distance (against war and criminals) isn't really effective. Again, it takes too much time to react, the damage has long been done. Locations pretty much need to solve those problems themselves.
- unless they are a weak, awkward fighter, characters can defend theirselves better than they can be defended by others.

There simply is no in-game reason to accept government from elsewhere...

[Mr. Bones]

While I have seen some democratic governments, most of the ones I've seen are run by a dictator. My guess is that most of the republics that did exist in earlier times are gone now as well. I believe the reason for that is there aren't enough people in most places for a nation to rely on the citizenry to run things, so they often submit to a sole leader out of necessity. It is true that attitudes towards the citizens are often laid back and capitalism is allowed, although rarely practiced.

Most people have no true rights granted to them by the government, they don't even have the right to a fair trial if they are accused. The systems of government, the way of life are medieval like, yet the ideals are 20th century hippiesque views about democracy and "make love not war". I think the small size of towns in Cantr are a problem too, when you only have 10 people that make up a town they all know each other and take every attack personally. If you had thousands they might be willing to accept the death of their leader as long as it doesn't interfere with their personal lives. I don't expect any very large countries to pop up, but it would be nice to see more like we have on Teregotha, several unified locations.

Still though, it seems like people become hostile to any place that has multiple locations, not just to states that attack them personally. This can apply to people who just claim uninhabited locations to use as outposts or to create small towns. It doesn't seem to matter how the land was acquired, people still have this irrational hatred for any nation that expands at all.

I think there may be something we can do about it still. Treaties between like-minded expansionist leaders would lead to large empires who support each other militarily, if they are honored it would be difficult for anybody to complain no matter what they think about it.

[Doug R.]

and capitalism is allowed, although rarely practiced.

Can't have capitalism when the price of the raw commodities are fixed by the game mechanic. Cantr is designed to support a barter society, and it does that very well.