Temporary Amnesia for the Good of Cantr

[Sho]

Solution: maps with directions marked. It doesn't take much additional effort to mark directions on a map (have your mapmaker note the directions of all roads he travels on, and use trigonometry for other roads).

[Savanik]

Solution: maps with directions marked. It doesn't take much additional effort to mark directions on a map (have your mapmaker note the directions of all roads he travels on, and use trigonometry for other roads).

Oh, for maps with directions! It would make things so much easier when you're trying to draw graphical ones from the text...

Sav

[Agar]

Has anybody thought of the inflictions caused by this change for the smaller language groups?
It may be that on the English islands there are some people in almost every town but on the Spanish/German island for example there are many abandoned places because of the relatively small number of people living there. All existing non-graphical maps of these areas will be completely useless as nobody will remember which locations had which names and therefor nobody can use the maps anymore to travel to places with a certain resource.
For one of my characters the change will be a catastrophe because she is on a new and seemingly uninhabited island. She was part of a small colony on the coast of this island. After one woman from the colony traveled some parts of the island and gave a non-graphical map of these parts to the other people in the colony they got the knowledge of a place with a certain needed resource several locations away from the colony. My character traveled there together with two other characters to collect the resource and now they won't be able to find their way back to the colony as they don't have a graphical map, don't know in which direction they must head and will be lost.

Well, first off, hope you got a lot of food. You will almost certainly get lost.

If the map has the resources listed on it, you're in luck. You take a road, look at the resources and figure out if you're in the right place or not, Name the location in either case. If you're in the wrong place, turn back and try another exit. Eventually, you'll find your way.

I have a character on a little mapped english area, and I'm not really planning to name ANYTHING untill after the amnesia. Part of the thrill of living there (besides the daily questoin of "Have I been eaten today?") is finding these new places that no character has ever been to before. My character has distant camps to set up, and a list of resources to explore for, so having to name new places while finding them is going to be a bonus for her.

[wietse]

Lucky for us, we dutch now have a complete graphical map of the island!

just in time it seems

[Racetyme]

You can always just guess from your map which direction to go, most decent maps are drawn close enough you can probably guess correctly. However, I have a feeling the map you are using dosn't even have a graphic, correct?

[Bowser]

I don't see any reason to have such a change in a game with so little communication between different towns. Without phones (I know the radio is coming) or other inter-region interaction, changing name of places is pretty useless except now you can tell new spawns that the land is named the Alexian Empire.

My newest character spawned on a deserted island. There was two people gathering food in the place he was spawned and he left on his own. He has passed through about 8 regions so far, making a map of sorts of what resource is in what region as well as what roads go where. It will be interesting to see how name amnesia works on an ilsand with no people on it. I'll be naming towns Stoneburg, Carrotland and Hematiteville

[Sho]

Without phones (I know the radio is coming) or other inter-region interaction

The radio is here.

Aside from that, though, there's still more inter-region communication than you describe. And yes, this will be most effective in largely uninhabited islands where we can watch names be created, argued about and possibly forgotten.

[Russell of Los Angeles]

I'm not worried about characters naming locations with poor names. If the names of characters are any indication, then a lot of players can think of good traditional or unique names that don't sound too weird. The location names that are too weird probably won't stick with the general populace. An exception to this is that even weird names can sound normal once people start using them as proper nouns. So, sure, Happyville may not sound like a good name now, to us players, but if it sticks with the populace of characters and they agree to call it that and it goes down in the historical notes, it won't seem so bad.

Having said all that, I voted NO for this suggestion. Because... well, before I explain, I think I'll read the rest of the posts in the thread.

Edit:
Okay. I've got to clear up some confusion on my part. I only just started playing again a couple days ago so I've kinda been out of the loop. I have one old character and just started a new character yesterday.
First question:
Has the suggestion for mass amnesia already been implemented?

[AoM]

This suggestion has already been implemented. Detailing why you think this is a bad idea is like asking if the parachutes will work after everyone's lept from the plane...

[Russell of Los Angeles]

This suggestion has already been implemented. Detailing why you think this is a bad idea is like asking if the parachutes will work after everyone's lept from the plane...

Right. I was confused and thought he was actually suggesting someting else, which I assure you, in my imagination, was a bad idea. The actual suggestion and implementation (as I now understand it) is good and right and I'd change my vote to "yes".