A few things that are limiting some of my characters

[Moonflame]

Recently I've been thinking of a few things and am unsure about them. I'm not sure if they are being discussed elsewhere so I apologise if they are.

One of my characters is writing songs, and I'm wondering can I refer to the moon? Do our characters know what the moon is? how about stars? I ask because I have heard some characters refer to the moon before or look up to the night sky, but in other locations people seem to believe it is always day. I'm not sure how that would work geographically either assuming the world is spherical, but since characters can't tell when it would be night or day, so far I have always assumed it is day and that night doesn't occur. I like doing that as well, I don't want to overcomplicate by roleplaying it, but do you think it is acceptable in poetry or song?

Secondly, a character wants to use a resource to roleplay making a dye. IRL, haematite could probably be crushed to powder and used as a dye, and it can naturally be black, grey, silver, brown or red. But ingame, one person might say the source of haematite in a town is red, and a few days later another person might refer to it as a grey mine. I don't want to make contradictions like that but I guess sometimes you can't avoid it. What colours do you think I can get away with for haematite?

Similarly, in some coastal towns there is known to be a beach and people roleplay swimming in the sea or lying on the sand. But some of these towns don't have sand as a resource to gather. That's all fine, but what if someone were to assume it were a stony beach, swampy, or muddy? Is there any discussion about ideas like more of a location description?

[SekoETC]

Those are all difficult questions. I've generally used iron ore for red and orange and coal for black and gray. I don't think I've ever referred to the moon in Cantr, but I doubt people would start saying it doesn't exist if you mentioned it in a poem.

I'd say if a location has sand then it can have a sandy beach, if stone then a stony beach, if mud then a muddy beach, and if none of the above, then it's probably gravel, or covered in vegetation.

[*Wiro]

If we can have a thirty paragraph song about breast milk creationism, a poem about the moon won't hurt. Personally I don't mind references to night, stars, the moon so long as they are references to the past. "Last night I dreamt such a strange thing." or "I remember walking through the forest at night one time". However, I wouldn't like it if people started roleplaying night in a specific moment.

Your third question has been discussed in the past where fruit trees are concerned. Often there's apple trees, or olive trees, or other kinds of trees yet no wood resource available. In that case you should probably assume the resource (sand in your case) is of inferior quality and can't be used like the collectable sand resource can.

In the end there are no hard rules about these things, though.

[Rebma]

I can only speak to the second and third parts as the first, I've never thought enough about, I suppose.

The moon: Go nuts. I agree completely with Wiro. Not many people will give you flack for it. There was a guy once (before weather existed) who used to give people crap about mentioning sun/sunlight, IC. But the character was just a knob so no one else really cared.

As for the sand/swimming, I sort of always thought of it along the ways Seko described, sand being sandy, stone being rocky, and all others that didnt have those clues being just weeds over sand and nothing special. I would never Rp swimming on a rocky beach myself, but it might be because a certain lady once told my character we couldnt swim there because the rocks were too dangerous for mine.

[SekoETC]

IRL the shore at our summer cottage is really shallow and full for sharp rocks and seaweed. It's awful for swimming. There are probably lots of shores like that in Cantr as well.

[Doug R.]

The existence of a sextant in-game pretty much implies the existence of celestial objects. You can argue a Cantr sextant works nothing like a RL sextant, of course.

Night is nearly impossible to role play when you have so many Aussies that are just waking up when you're going to bed, so I've pretty much given up on night/day. My characters have re-defined night as the time when most people sleep, and day when most people are awake. Has nothing to do with sunlight anymore for them.

The Cantr world is a torus, not a sphere, though no one's discovered that in-character yet.

Iron is going to rust (unless it's bound up with other elements, like Iron Pyrite). When in doubt, look it up on the web. The entire premise of the Blackrock tribe is flawed because any iron exposed to the air will turn rust red. It should be the Redrock tribe. This is why Mars is red. If you do due diligence in your research, then stick to what you know is right and just give everyone else that is wrong a pass; ultimately, it doesn't matter if they're making black clothes using hematite, because they're not really using the hematite, just pretending to (If you're the recipient of such clothing, you can always pretend it turns rust red later after the dyer leaves!). And arguing with them ooc in the game is terrible form. The only time it matters is when staff is doing implementations into the mechanics.

Same with the beach. I find it bad form to rp resources that aren't around but still actually exist in the game in other locations. But if the lovers want to kiss in the non-existent sand, let them. It's not worth the argument, and again, arguing ooc is bad form.

Just my two cents.

[hyrle]

I agree. I actually have a character who RPs an obsession with the moon, because of another character who shares the obsession, and it's fun.

[Undine]

The Cantr world is a torus, not a sphere

My mind has just been blown completely.

[Chroma Key]

The Cantr world is a torus, not a sphere

My mind has just been blown completely.

I think this should be here. Bottom to top.

3719-7: XY says: "But you'd have an anti-horizon. Instead of the world disappearing, you'd see it rising before you."
3719-7: XY says: "One fix is if it was a flat torus, instead of a round tube, a round flat...*folds the map in half and then rolls it in a circle. The distances are the same now, and plenty of space in the middle. But....You'd think we'd notice flipping from one side to the other, and we'd be able to see the world above us if we were on the under-side. Unless the clouds block the view."
3719-7: XY says: "*nods* First, distance in the inside of the torus would be shorter than the outside. That would mean either the world can't be torus, or the world looks nothing like it does on this map. Second, I don't think you can make a square into a torus. It would have to be longer than it's wide, or the center would overlap."
3719-7: XY says: "Indeed. The more I think of it, the world has to be flat."

One of the rare conversations that I as a player really enjoyed, except my char doesn't have the brains my other one does, so she had nothing to add to it, and the subject was changed soon after. Shame.

[Alladinsane]

The cantr world is a donut!
Made of green cheese of course.
There must be some cosmic origami going on.

I always had the same internal conversation when talking about TBR... it should be red-rocks.
But I was not going to argue with their leader.

[hyrle]

I always had the same internal conversation when talking about TBR... it should be red-rocks.
But I was not going to argue with their leader.

Yeah, not a wise idea to argue with their leader, from what I understand.

[Moonflame]

I agree. I actually have a character who RPs an obsession with the moon, because of another character who shares the obsession, and it's fun.

Wow I completely forgot that I posted here, thanks for the replies!

In the end I've managed to poetically describe the night sky without saying it's the night sky, but heavily implying that it is for whomever nearby obsesses about it

Good to hear I can use Iron for red/orange, that sounds like just the thing I'm looking for. As for the beaches and things, I'll just tread carefully so to speak!

[EchoMan]

The Cantr world is a torus/donut, and many characters are aware of this in game as sailing over the "edge" of the world in one direction brings you back the same distance in the opposite direction, and this is true for all the directions of N, S, E and W. A "perfect" flat toroid.

There still are wonders for Cantr scientists to work out though, for example: Given this image of a torus:



In Cantr the three distances of A, B and C are of equal length... How could this be? Anyone awake in the University of Klojt?


(Sorry for the rough graphics, I'm not used to free-hand drawing at 5am)

[joo]

It might be a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_torus, embedded in 4-dimensional space, or perhaps it's possible to wrinkle the surface of the torus so that those three lines (or all such lines you might conceive of?!) are of equal length.

Edit: indeed, it is possible! This is what I was thinking of: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21760-wrinkled-doughnut-solves-geometrical-mystery.html

[EchoMan]

It took joo less than 10 minutes to come up with an answer.

Please do not use this information in game as it is highly OOC!

Edit: late post...