There IS life before 20 years old...

[Icy]

Is it just me, or do you find it irritating when people act as though your character shouldn't know what an Oven does or how to sew (for example) by the age of twenty? When I spawn new characters I assume that their parents (though not in actual existance in the game) taught them at least how to cook their own food, if not a few more skills before they could make it on their own. A couple of my characters have skills they picked up before becoming twenty. One claims that her mother taught her from age 5 how to paint and put a great emphasis on creativity. Another says that her mother taught her a small amount about sewing, though she never learned how to make the materials from scratch. I personally see nothing wrong with that. It's inconceivable to think that in the first twenty years of a characters life, they would learn nothing. Otherwise characters would need to learn the language, be potty-trained, and taught not to eat sand after their twentieth birthday

Just becuase you're creating a character doesn't mean that they should be like a baby knowing nothing of the world around them when they first enter the game. Sure, they havn't yet established a name for themselves, but that doesn't mean they are entirely incompetent. I look at it as kind of like movie or book characters... those characters have histories prior to where the book or movie looks in on their lives...

Sorry if this topic is already started, but I'm just trying to clear some of this up so that I don't do anything that might be a CR breach. I've seen some odd comments that seemed to present the opposite view and I'm relatively new to this forum and to this game, so any clarifications would be welcome.

[jeslange]

On the main login page for the game, there is a link called "Description and Background." Not far down is an "Introduction" paragraph, which includes these statements:

"This new character has no biography or personal background other then what you play in the sim. Nothing exists except what is explicitly in the game - no history, no other worlds, etc."

While this can certainly seem odd from our real life perspectives, it is critical to the integrity of simulation of Cantr societies.

[trage]

And I was just corrected by Jesalange

[jeslange]

Were you?

[trage]

Yes, my post was delayed because my computer froze up, I said something that was very..... indecisive and so it was posted after yours, I read your post then immediately edited my post.

[The Industriallist]

This will be a good source for quotes to drop on the next person to make that mistake.

I should have gone back to read that for debating, but I always thought it was just obvious...

[Icy]

Hmm, I see. Well I suppose that makes sence, though if that's the case then everyone would start out being rather stupid and boring....

[InsaneIrony]

Actually, it gives everyone a chance to make their characters more interesting. They can get a feel for the place, and decide who they will be, not based on what they were before they existed. They can choose to be good or evil, without claiming thats how they were raised. Free of any possible problems or major events in childhood, you don't need to focus on their past, but you can focus on their future.
Thats how I made a nobody into a well-known/well-liked/ very friendly and funny sheep-girl. (No, she doesn't think she is a sheep.)

[SekoETC]

At first I was fighting against this and most of my first characters have a background story, but they have been fading in time and I haven't referred to them in ages though I think that does not annul them. I think pre-spawn past, no matter how illegal, has shaped my characters' persona and it cannot be erased. I feel that those of my characters that have a background story are deeper and easier to play than those that have not. Maline has no past and it feels like a huge gap sometimes. The first thing she remembers is coming into consciousness in the mountains though she knew at once she's an artist. Sounds quite bizarre.
Thinking this a little more, maybe all of my characters have some sense of childhood. Except Lewis who keeps wondering if spawning makes some kind of a sound, and where does the air go that was in the place where the new person appeared... And Pharap has no defined past either. I keep forgetting the existance of these particular characters, does that say something?

[The Sociologist]

Is it just me, or do you find it irritating when people act as though your character shouldn't know what an Oven does or how to sew (for example) by the age of twenty?

I agree. All my characters know that an oven is for cooking, can guess that a loom pertains to clothing material, and so on. They are also able to examine all possible projects in their toolkit manual. In other words, they possess everyday "common sense". This doesn't mean that they know precisely what to do with hematite. Their capabilities are based on my general knowledge background, not on what my other characters have discovered in-game about quirks that only exist inside the game.

A couple of my characters have skills they picked up before becoming twenty. One claims that her mother taught her from age 5 how to paint and put a great emphasis on creativity [...] I look at it as kind of like movie or book characters... those characters have histories prior to where the book or movie looks in on their lives...

With this part I disagree. It is actually better to let your character start out "tabula rasa" and then have their personality shaped by what they experience in-game. So I have contented types, hard-driven business types, insecure and distressed types with adjustment problems, and so on--all depending on their initial experiences in-game. But they didn't start out that way. They were shaped by what life brought them.

You see, if you start out saying "this character will be an artist", then there may arise a conflict between that and their actual experiences. It is a question of "going with the flow".
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[Lumera]

Maybe everyone just had incredibly boring, uneventful lives up until the time they turned twenty; so boring in fact that it's all a blur and there's no point in even thinking about it.

Seriously though, I think very basic knowledge about the area you spawned into (growing food, chopping wood, using a harvester or an oven, etc.) should be a given, but there should be no specific information about your character's past experiences, likes and dislikes, etc. that might predispose them to anything.

All of my characters are still pretty new, but I find it interesting how they've gradually developed personalities based on where they started out, with no conscious steering from me.

One is in a large, sheltered city with plenty of food, and early in life she heard rumors about how dangerous the surrounding areas were, so she's become kind of a timid, stay-at-home girl with no desire to leave, something that's reflected in the job she just got. Another is the exact opposite, in a place with no food where several people have actually starved to death, so so she has more of an aggressive personality and is much more connected to the community. Yet another started off in a town with way too many rules and regulations, so she developed an independent streak, taking off as soon as she grew a little food and by luck stumbling across another place that shared her views and starting up a career as a trader. And so on and so on with the others.

None of them necessarily have really dramatic personalities that stand out too much, but to me at least it's amazing how different they are, even if not too long ago they were all blank slates. This is why I'm addicted to Cantr.

[Lumera]

Okay, sorry for the double post, but I was just reading some of the other replies and was wondering what sort of projects there were in Cantr to support art. Are there paints and things? I've never seen any. LOL, good thing I never planned for any of my characters to be artists, because it would have sucked to have nothing artistic to do, and everyone would have thought they were crazy.

Still, I think art would be awesome to have, as it's something that's important to all cultures, but I don't know if it would work in Cantr. Sure, you could get some tools and clay and make a sculpture, but that's not art, that's starting a project and then winding up with a new item in your inventory when you're done. I guess writing is about the only artistic venture open to Cantr characters, though I haven't really seen anyone utilize it. Libraries seem to contain maps and travel notes more often than great literature. I haven't seen any fiction at all, in fact...

[The Industriallist]

There is some fiction (some in KDS area and some around Quillanoi), and I really wish people would restrict their cantr art to that. But I've also seen 'painting'. Notes are HTML, so you can link in outside images, either your own work (if you can get it hosted) or just ripping something off the web. Since it's an entirely RPed 'productive' activity, I don't really think it's a good idea, but it has been done.

[The Sociologist]

All of my characters are still pretty new, but I find it interesting how they've gradually developed personalities based on where they started out, with no conscious steering from me.

One is in a large, sheltered city with plenty of food, and early in life she heard rumors about how dangerous the surrounding areas were, so she's become kind of a timid, stay-at-home girl with no desire to leave, something that's reflected in the job she just got. Another is the exact opposite, in a place with no food where several people have actually starved to death, so so she has more of an aggressive personality and is much more connected to the community. Yet another started off in a town with way too many rules and regulations, so she developed an independent streak, taking off as soon as she grew a little food and by luck stumbling across another place that shared her views and starting up a career as a trader. And so on and so on with the others.

None of them necessarily have really dramatic personalities that stand out too much, but to me at least it's amazing how different they are, even if not too long ago they were all blank slates. This is why I'm addicted to Cantr.

Yesss! You've put it perfectly. That whole account should be in bold type in a FAQ or intro to the game. That's what it's all about.
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[The Sociologist]

Okay, sorry for the double post, but I was just reading some of the other replies and was wondering what sort of projects there were in Cantr to support art. Are there paints and things? I've never seen any. LOL, good thing I never planned for any of my characters to be artists, because it would have sucked to have nothing artistic to do, and everyone would have thought they were crazy.

Still, I think art would be awesome to have, as it's something that's important to all cultures, but I don't know if it would work in Cantr. Sure, you could get some tools and clay and make a sculpture, but that's not art, that's starting a project and then winding up with a new item in your inventory when you're done. I guess writing is about the only artistic venture open to Cantr characters, though I haven't really seen anyone utilize it. Libraries seem to contain maps and travel notes more often than great literature. I haven't seen any fiction at all, in fact...

There's Taowyn's poetry, Glen Morangie's travel histories, and the MacGregor's are big on visual art, but taken from outside sources. I have some doubt's about the latter, given that Cantr is not meant to be a visual experience. There's tremendous scope for poetry, though, and I intend to do something about that soon. Iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets aren't that difficult...

I'd say the best scope is for historical writing and historical epic poems. Fiction though... I wouldn't say people will come here to Cantr to read others' (usually) bad short story efforts. Enough of that on the web.

As for sculpture, well... you could have sculptures as memorials naming the departed, part of this whole business of getting around crypts stuffed with corpses or houses being used as massively expensive tombstones. But until skills are implemented, there seems little point in being a sculptor--ie as a career.
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