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Spawning in Cantr

Let's talk about spawning in Cantr.

Location-wise, there are 6 possible scenarios, which are:

- Big town
- Small town
- Among settlers
- Among travelers
- Among sleepers
- Alone

Big towns are big for one of two reasons: Either they are the center of where everything happens or it's a death trap that's full of sleepers and other people who have given up hope. If it's the former, you have a good setting of getting your life started. There are probably a lot of employment options. Also visitors will be frequent, so if you want to move, you can hitch a ride on a ship or in someone's car. The downside of this kind of a town is that because they attract a lot of spawns, these newspawns are not as valuable as in a smaller town. If you don't make yourself stand out, chance is no one is even going to talk to you, let alone give you clothes and starting equipment. You need to either show that you're a colorful individual or a hard worker, or both.
Also usually the key positions - town chef, smith, tailor, sheriff - are already filled out, so you should either be very innovative about what you want to do with your life, or become an assistant for one of the older characters. Resource runners are also often in demand.

If, in the other hand, you spawned in a death trap, the people are most likely there because they simply cannot leave. The surrounding region might be full of wild animals and the town doesn't offer the possibility of getting a decent shield without years of labor using inefficient tools. If you want to earn a vehicle, either you work for years or even decades with no tools, or first work to earn the tools, which might reduce the time it takes to earn the vehicle but you need to factor in the time spent in earning the tools in the first place. Most people will give up hope, increasing the number of mindless sleepers attracting more spawns and feeding the vicious circle. Yet, the work of those who don't give up, supplies the oppressive government with trading resources, maintaining the status quo. Your only hope is that a ship will come by and take you away. Maybe later you can raise a group to overthrow the government and offer a better future for the next newspawns. Fortunately towns like this are rare.

Small towns are a good place to spawn. Newspawns are often valued because they're not as common as in big towns. You're likely to be given some sort of starting equipment and clothing, often even without having to ask. Depending on the tech level of the town, it might be possible to pursue specific interests, or the town might be missing a key craftsperson such as the cook, the tailor, the weaponsmith or a town guard, and if you spawn with the right skills, you can step in to fill this spot.

Then there's settlers. These are usually groups of 3 to 5 people, who might be just getting started. They might not have very good resources, so they're going to need you to work for the good of the community, often without formal pay. You will usually be given some sort of food, and clothing and equipment will be provided when they get around to making it, but will often be primitive. Sometimes you might be required to farm your own food. If you want to play a specialty character such as a village idiot, a childish character, an artist or someone in the service sector, this is probably not the right place for that. Either you start working for common good, or you run off into the wilderness and risk being mauled by wild animals. Visitors will be rare and often in small vehicles or riding steeds, unable to take passangers.

There's also a chance you spawn among travelers. In the worst case scenario, there's only two of them, which is the minimum required to attract newspawns. Many travelers feel obliged to take care of newspawns because it's obvious it was their "fault" that this person appeared here. Yet they might not be carrying extra equipment, and you're lucky to get food, a shield, and maybe a few scraps of clothing. The risk of getting mauled by wild animals or dying of starvation is very real. If you're lucky, the travelers will be able to take you to civilization or at least point you towards the nearest settlement. If you're not, you'll be left in the middle of wilderness without proper equipment or access to a vehicle, and then you'll most likely get eaten by a bear. It can be thrilling to see how far you can run before this happens, though. Sometimes you get lucky and run into an abandoned tandem bike or a kite shield.

Also it's possible that you spawn in a location where a ship's crew is visiting. In this day and age, some ships have a crew larger than the population of an average town, so they get a high attraction rate for newspawns. In this case, your best chance is to join the crew, unless you'd rather run off into the wilderness and again, get eaten by a bear. Ships are likely to have a lot of excess equipment, or at least the resources to make a lot of stuff. The downside is, you are by default expected to work for free in exchange for the food and equipment you are given. If you are trusted, you might be given a key to the ship, but there are also crews that drag the younger crew members in and out of the ship, or always leave a trusted older crew member on deck until everyone else has left. This is very understandable, given the number of ship thefts by young people. Often the opportunity makes a thief, and people might take the risk of being caught even if they had acted like a nice guy or girl up to that point. If the town where the ship was docked at the time of the theft has other ships, people are likely to give chase because ship owners know they would like to have the same help if the tables were turned. No one ever says "the newspawn probably needed the ship more than we did, let's just settle here and let him go". No. The only way you're not getting chased is if it's physically impossible. Even if the town has a single unlocked longboat or a dinghy, there's a chance that someone will be awake and dock to you before the next sailing tick. Also if the location is within the radio network, they will put a word out with the ship's name and you would have to leave the range of the network in order to be safe. So basically if you're not willing to risk your life, don't steal the ship. It's probably not very fun sailing alone even if you did get away with it.

There's also a chance that you'll spawn among sleepers, although the larger the group, the more likely someone is to be awake. In this case, expect no help to get started. If you've waited a few days and no one has said a word or moved a muscle, go through all the buildings if there are any, steal anything of value and leave, because sometimes sleepers wake up if this happens. The other option is to wait until they die and take their stuff, but this might take a long time. There is, again, a high risk of being killed by wild animals, because shields are often not available. Often there's animal parts lying around, so you might at least be able to make yourself a bone shield, but even a wooden shield would require traveling because stone and wood rarely appear in the same location, if ever, and you need that stone hammer to make the shield. Also, the people are probably sleeping because the location is boring, so you'll probably get bored as well.

Finally, there's a chance you might spawn completely alone. Usually this means that some travelers stopped by, the census algorithm got run, the travelers moved on and then came you. There might also be a bug that causes people to spawn in the middle of nowhere, but this should be pretty rare. If you're lucky, you might be on a civilized island and there's a town within walking distance. Hopefully there's a map on the ground and some clues as to where you are. If you're not so lucky, you could be on a primitive island, which are often full of dangerous beasts. In which case, as you might have guessed, have fun running until you get inevitably eaten by a bear.