OOC shenanigans

[Marian]

"Those who speak the language of the whatever islands" really doesn't make sense as a title in a game where people can travel.

And in Cantr it really is less about culture or nationality and more that some characters spawn with their brains wired completely differently than others. An English person could spawn in a Polish town, that still doesn't mean they'll ever be referred to as Polish. The RL origin of the term is meaningless in that case, a specific language is just a specific thing each character is spawned with, like their strength or fighting skill, and I don't see why it matters so much how they label it.

[sherman]

And part of problem might be really that english speakers ain't from one nation. There's people from so many countries that thinking one common term is way harder. People would need to adopt to use it and I would assume it's way easier to do that you are from one nation like polish. Yeah, it's OOC but it affects game even if we wouldn't want... Players have their own culture behind them which really is something you can't change

[Kyriel]

They think one common way insofar as they see the game through English words and know how to speak English when they spawn. Not that they all have the same culture.

[Frankoniusz]

So, why we have no problem with called all people with english language "zamordki" and you would have? Wouldn't be more interesting if you could tell apart the other accent? "He speaks treesfeathers voice" or "He sounds like nraamian" God, cantr is so interesting and can be so diffrent than our world, and you are mirroring our.

[sanchez]

My chars have composed several dictionaries in game, and have never had to resort to OOC references. They use title headers from names of islands, or the town in which they heard the language. This works even for multi-lingual cities in game, as it’s obvious in the word lists themselves what the different languages are. We are only talking about changing titles here. It is not difficult.

[Marian]

"He speaks treesfeathers voice" or "He sounds like nraamian" God, cantr is so interesting and can be so diffrent than our world, and you are mirroring our.

And how would a character know what another sounded like or what island they came from? The only way to tell how voices 'sound' a part are people who deliberately type with an accent, or maybe people who care about spelling and punctuation vs people who don't.

I'd still be a fan of banishing all of the latter to their own island, btw. They'd do quite well for themselves I'm sure and I bet they'd have no trouble finding an empress to lead them.

[Kyriel]

And then there's characters who spawn speaking an accent that has nothing to do with wherever they spawned.

I think referring to languages in different ways only breeds confusion. I've had characters see the same language referred to in several different ways, and bad enough that each language already has its own word for another language. Listing them by the names of towns a character has never heard of only contributes to that confusion, I'm afraid. I've had characters desperately trying to figure out which language was which and being unable to determine even which language they were looking for or comparing it to because they all listed languages by different names.

[sanchez]

How is it any different to refer to OOC nationalities where your char also has never been, than cities in game?

[Marian]

How is it any different to refer to OOC nationalities where your char also has never been, than cities in game?

Because the term 'Polish' is just a word from the dictionary that characters use for people who spawn speaking in a certain way. It has nothing to do with the country IRL when they say it. Because that's the thing about words, their meanings are constantly changing with context.

While referring to a somebody by their city would be using IG information the character can't possibly have and be against the rules? How would you automatically know which city someone came from just by hearing them speak, let alone which one they spawned in?

Still just seems such a minor thing to get worked up about considering all the other much more blatant Cantr weirdness.

[Kyriel]

How is it any different to refer to something as a "chair" when your character has never seen a chair or been told what it's called?

[sherman]

If we go this this round.. Why can we speak in Cantr?

[Kyriel]

The game has obviously decided that characters spawn at age 20 already knowing certain things. Like how to build a crossbow, radio transmitter, manual grain grinder, stationcar, violin, and fractional distillation stack, how to drive and operate all forms of machinery, etc. And possibly be experts at these things.

[sanchez]

How is it any different to refer to something as a "chair" when your character has never seen a chair or been told what it's called?

This is specious, and I don’t believe your chars are having this experience. The name of the language is not the language. Your char spawns as a competent speaker of the language and so knows what a ‘chair’ is. She doesn’t know what England is, only Olipifirovash or Kwor, etc..

Aside from copywrite liability, referring to OOC nations is not really different from using OOC plagiarised song lyrics for your chars. We use names of places on maps that our chars have not seen. But you’d never say that your char went to Poland. Your char speaks the language of Gazoport or Xiria or wherever she spawned. If you have to say ‘Italian’, you aren’t trying hard enough.

PD doesn’t have the resources for this, but it should be discouraged in the same way as other blatant OOC references like char names from literature or stereotypes from popular culture which are divorced from the game environment, which we’ve all seen and found annoying.

[Axiom]

You select your language group when you spawn a character, so these names exist with in the meta-state of the game. I don't see how it's different from, say, knowing things on the wiki. The languages are also on the wiki, by the way, and we're allowed to know everything on there.

Also, I personally regret the lack of mothers in this game. I really want to insult people's mothers. I guess I could do it anyway and people can just act like they're confused... A lot of people roleplay having a mother or a spawnmother or something, so good enough, right?

[*Wiro]

There is enough evidence that the word English was coined before England, and referred to the language and not to the country (as it still does today: Australia, Canada, U.S., to name a few, all speak English). The argument also doesn't really hold up for Dutch (spoken in the Netherlands).

While I agree that it is nice to think of new words, it's edit: not fair to accuse others of "poor play" for not adhering to your personal rules and ideas.