Spawning for Success

[Mafia Salad]

What makes an awesome newspawn in the current Cantr?

I've had spawns that were duds, only to see someone else spawn in the same place with the same people around and breath fresh life into the town. I've also been on the other side where my new spawn is a blast to play and connects well with the town while someone else in my spawn group is just kind of left sitting there existing, unknowingly preparing themselves for an unending coma.

Spawning in a awesome town isn't really something you can control.

Waking up more than twice is a huge first step, but what else can the spawning player do to bring a character they want to play and other people want to play with into the world?

I've got a multi page ramble of ideas and observations on this topic typed up in Word that I'll start cleaning up and posting in pieces into this thread in a few hours, but I figured I'd get the conversation started and give some savvier players a chance to weigh in.

The gist of my ideas are that you need to find the right balance of nature and nurture. The right amount and right kind of predetermined characteristics while maintaining a willingness to let the environment shape the character.

[Ahrta]

In my experience it is a willingness to roll with the hand delt.

I have had characters who spawned in terrible places. So they left and found a place to blossom and grow. You cannot sit and wait for things to happen. Go out and make something of your newspawn. Several of my favorites have started out in bad circumstances which only served to strengthen them and make them less dependant on others.

For myself...I try to make my characters interesting, not gimmicky...but they all have flaws, they are not perfect they have depth of character, they have hopes, dreams and fears, favorite colors, favorite foods, likes and dislikes....one or two have a blinding hated that often pulls them off the road to their dreams.... some have horrible tempers while others are serenely calm,

Pick a trait and build on it... don't try to make a perfect person, perfect is boring. its our flaws and how we deal with them that defines us. Our characters are the same way. Does your character rise to the occassion when adversity strikes or do they wilt and cower and then mentally berate themselves after?



My two cents... for the moment

[Ahrta]

Oh.....

And my biggest peeeve in this game

MAKE A DECSCRIPTION!

Seriously, I do not care if its just something as simple as cold fact.... height, hair/skin/eye color, and thin or heavy.... give your fellow players something to picture in their minds and not just a blank slate.

[Mafia Salad]

In my experience it is a willingness to roll with the hand delt.

I have had characters who spawned in terrible places. So they left and found a place to blossom and grow. You cannot sit and wait for things to happen. Go out and make something of your newspawn. Several of my favorites have started out in bad circumstances which only served to strengthen them and make them less dependant on others.

For myself...I try to make my characters interesting, not gimmicky...but they all have flaws, they are not perfect they have depth of character, they have hopes, dreams and fears, favorite colors, favorite foods, likes and dislikes....one or two have a blinding hated that often pulls them off the road to their dreams.... some have horrible tempers while others are serenely calm,

Pick a trait and build on it... don't try to make a perfect person, perfect is boring. its our flaws and how we deal with them that defines us. Our characters are the same way. Does your character rise to the occassion when adversity strikes or do they wilt and cower and then mentally berate themselves after?



My two cents... for the moment

Yes to all of this, except I'm ok with gimmicks. But that's because I've used the word with a neutral connotation for over a decade to describe any sort of hook characteristic that would be the first thing you notice about a character. They come in good, bad, and a multitude of things in between in my mind.

The more proactively you play, the more interesting the game will be for you. The more likely you are to get your characters killed too, but I'd prefer to have awesome characters who die over boring ones that live on and on and on...

I definitely think all good characters have flaws. People projecting images of who they wish they were doesn’t make for an interesting game. The more Cantr is like a stuffy church lobby or awkward class reunion the less fun it will be. I don’t think you need to do this before you spawn, but at least have a couple flaws in mind and see what will work best for the character and context as they get going.

If you can’t think of a flaw look at the seven deadly sins: pride, wrath, greed, sloth, envy, lust, and gluttony; then pick one. If old timey words of Christian tradition don’t work for you pick modern vices: drunkenness, insecurity, intolerance, superficiality, jealousy, cowardice, or uncompromising idealism. Or just push a positive trait until it becomes a negative. Your character doesn’t need to project their flaw as a flaw. He’s not lazy, just laid back. She’s not arrogant, she’s just confident. He’s not a pervert, he’s just comfortable with his sexuality. If you’re not actively playing a flaw or 10, then it will be your personal flaws coming through in your character. Do you really want all the other players to know this character is played by a passive aggressive #%@# or a lifeless sack of potatoes? I didn’t think so. Show your flaws regularly and be willing to play out the character's flaw even when it could get your character killed. Flawed characters are more interesting (to interact with and to play) than near perfect ones.

I -really- like building characters around a single predominant trait. One trick I use is to sum up my character in a sentence or phrase. One I had long ago was “curiosity personified”, one I have right now is “larger than life” (if you know him, you can probably guess exactly who that is) and everything I do with that character from description to emotes to goals and ambitions goes through that filter until they become an established character in my mind. At that point the anchor phrase has become the heart of the character and I don't need to think about it, and I feel comfortable branching out without creating a disjointed character. Building a character around a single theme or idea makes it a lot easier for other players to interact with them and incorporate them into their character's story.

As for gimmicks, the sweet spot is where believable, appropriate for the world, and interesting meet, with the rare exception of a crazy unbelievable gimmick done really well, it may not be believable but it's so fun I'm willing to overlook that. When I first started playing the gimmick that seemed to be everywhere was the one word guy (or girl). Someone who said one thing and handles the rest of their interaction via emotes. When I saw Guardians of the Galaxy I kept thinking of Cantr because one-word-guy just went mainstream. A more common variation now a days is the mute. Drop the one word, stick to the emotes. It creates a challenge for you, and a challenge for the players who interact with your character. They may or may not be willing to deal with that challenge. If you play it well, it can be fun for everyone, if not, it's just frustrating for everyone. On that note.

Don’t play 15 village idiots. Playing a dumb character is really easy, as a result there are and always have been A LOT of them. Play -one- if you want to, but any player who might enjoy being their babysitter has done it half a dozen times with other characters. You could very well put a town to sleep since the players will click back out to the character list and hope someone else will wake up and deal with you. (yes, I have done this and will do it again. I have plenty of patience for real world developmentally disabled people, but I'm not going to use that patience up in this game.) If you must play one, play one that can live independently. Be simple minded without being a constant burden. Don't be a constant burden is a good rule of thumb for any sort of disability you want to play.

Another sort of gimmick is accents, I like them. Just know that English is not the first language of everyone who is playing in the English zone so it might be more indecipherable then you intend. I typically use text based accents/speech impediments instead of trying to copy a real world auditory accent since it is a text based world. (I switched all my "o"s and "a"s on one old character, That could be really confusing, especially when the resulting words were real words, for example he was constantly "moking iran" while he was at the smelting furnace) But that’s just how my brain works.

[Ahrta]

Let me rephrase....

I have no problem with a gimmick.... so long as there is more to the character....do not let the gimmick be the only thing interesting, because you quickly become uninteresting.

That is what I intended to say and failed ....

[JosiahH]

(Great thread idea, Mafia! Thanks!)

Wolfsong made a really astute observation in the "Religions" thread, that coming into the game with an idea is never as compelling as developing an idea IC. I think this is probably (at least partly) true for characters, too. Yes, it is valuable not to be a completely "blank slate", to have a few traits picked out ahead of time, etc. ...but the best characters I have encountered or played have been interesting because they had IC formative experiences. A character's "main thing" should be something that they discover IC.

[Mafia Salad]

(Great thread idea, Mafia! Thanks!)

Wolfsong made a really astute observation in the "Religions" thread, that coming into the game with an idea is never as compelling as developing an idea IC. I think this is probably (at least partly) true for characters, too. Yes, it is valuable not to be a completely "blank slate", to have a few traits picked out ahead of time, etc. ...but the best characters I have encountered or played have been interesting because they had IC formative experiences. A character's "main thing" should be something that they discover IC.

I definitely agree.

As I briefly mentioned in my first post, a real successful spawn is one who finds the sweet spot in the Nature v. Nurture balance.

If you create a spongey tofu-like character who will absorb the culture around them, and spawn in a boring directionless town, you will have a boring directionless character. Playing them will be like trying to eat a giant bowl of tofu and water soup every day. On the flip side if you create a unique and interesting character with a clear life plan, and they spawn on some island or with a skill set where their goals just won’t happen then that character will be a source of constant frustration. (sorry Troy the tiger trainer, you’re life’s ambition is an ocean away and the tiger will kill your weak awkward-at-hunting butt before you can RP your first attempt at training… and I say RP because the game mechanics won’t let you actually train one.)

I used to hold to a strong “let the surrounding shape the character” position. When I saw Cantr primarily as a society simulator that view made sense because I wanted to see a variety of cultures within the world more than a variety of characters within a single location. The game moved the other direction and homogenized even more over the years, there are clearly things that work better than other things and those things have become the dominant governmental structure of the game (at least the EZ). Towns that run well usually have a single strong and active leader and maybe a couple deputies and the 4 laws + a flavor law or two. Western liberal tolerance and a general be nice attitude saturates the game and characters will buck against anything else without an in game reason to, creating a cultural uniformity in addition to the structural one. So purely letting the surrounding shape the character will result in a sad set of similar characters. But we really shouldn't discount the surrounding entirely.

Being willing to let the surroundings shape your character adds a realism and depth to the characters that a player can't on their own. Someone from a rich coastal town with barrels of free food and generous leadership should have a different view of resources than someone who spawned in some forgotten looted mountaintop with nobody but a departing van to greet them. Someone who is ignored as a newspawn should have insecurities that someone who is helped and befriended shouldn't. If you spawn into a unique town, embrace whatever makes it different. Even if it is something that you as a player find cringe worthy (authoritarianism, cruelty, formality, defined gender roles, just plain weirdness). If you spawn in a town with a rich military tradition, play a disciplined character with a tolerance for violence. If you spawn in an academic town, play a character who thinks they are smart (even if they aren't). Embrace capitalism if you're from a business driven town, and play an unwashed hippy if you spawn in a commune. I still want to see a lot of variety on a macro level – societal variety not just character variety. Having every newspawn buck against anything that isn’t a group of friends just kind of hanging out really kills that variety.

Another way of letting the environment shape the character is to look for roles that the town needs and throw your character into that role whole heartedly. If a noticeboard or local leader says they need a cook, and you're halfway good at it (or terrible but in a town that doesn't care) then make cooking your life. You're not a cook, you're THE cook.

I've played all my characters this time around as religiously open, or at least superstitious, and have had several believe (at least nominally, if not actively) in the first religion present to them. Doing that hasn't taken anything away from the game and has open up additional avenues of role play. All the newspawns who are antagonistically atheist are missing out.

I couldn't tell you where that sweet spot is. It changes with a multitude of variables. I've hit pretty close to it with about half of my characters and fell off on one side or the other with the other half. One nice thing about Cantr is you get 15 tries.

[Slowness_Incarnate]

I tend to hate the characters who spawn and immediately go."So what can I help with?"

So boring. So dreadfully boring, heard it a million times, please have your own goals. I wish that those characters didn't start like some completely blank slate in a way. They have zero personality, no wants, no needs, no desires. How am I supposed to help them if they can't even help themselves?

Be bold be daring! Ask for something! Come right out and say: I want a car! or I want a boat! Whatever..

[Ahrta]

I usually have one or two traits in mind when I spawn a character and then let the environment and experiences shape everything else.....sometimes those traits stick.....sometimes I end up with someone completely different from what I intended.....

A kindly soft-hearted character who ended up feral and tough as nails after being abandoned and not seeing a living soul for almost a decade is the most drastic example I have among my characters.

[SekoETC]

I tend to hate the characters who spawn and immediately go."So what can I help with?"

So boring. So dreadfully boring, heard it a million times, please have your own goals. I wish that those characters didn't start like some completely blank slate in a way. They have zero personality, no wants, no needs, no desires. How am I supposed to help them if they can't even help themselves?

Be bold be daring! Ask for something! Come right out and say: I want a car! or I want a boat! Whatever..

Also, don't give up if the first answer is "No, you can't have it". Argue back. "Why not? You have all these vehicles sitting here, do you even have keys for all of them? You don't? How about I help you break the locks, then you give me one? And fuel."

[Mafia Salad]

I tend to hate the characters who spawn and immediately go."So what can I help with?"

So boring. So dreadfully boring, heard it a million times, please have your own goals. I wish that those characters didn't start like some completely blank slate in a way. They have zero personality, no wants, no needs, no desires. How am I supposed to help them if they can't even help themselves?

Be bold be daring! Ask for something! Come right out and say: I want a car! or I want a boat! Whatever..

I have a couple characters who would looove to get their hands on some nice pliable newspawns like that... The sweet spot changes.

[Mafia Salad]

A couple more thoughts I haven't touched on.

Borrowing a character – Is it ok to clone an awesome character from a book/show/game? I don’t do this anymore. I did with a couple of my first characters, at least initially, they grew in different directions within the game. The characters just don't work as well when you take them out of their own world and away from the other characters they interact with. I've had more success borrowing traits and quirks I like from characters but not the whole character. Now I prefer to challenge my creativity and come up with something newish. It’s not always easy to do that, so I won’t get down on anyone for cloning as long as there are some sort of a twist to the character. And if you use the same name then shame on you. Cantr isn’t your personal fanfic.

I do like building off of common tropes. There is a reason common character types are common, they express something widely relatable. It's certainly similar to cloning a whole character, but with out some of the pitfalls. It does require a bit more work and thought to make the character life like and interesting but definitely worth it in my mind.

Playing yourself - How much of yourself should you put into your character? Your characters will always be limited by you. They won’t have ideas you don’t have or encounter, they can’t do or say anything you don’t type. But that doesn’t mean they have to be just like you. I never play a character who is essentially me. I role play to expand myself not just express myself and often create characters who’s strength is my weakness just to further develop that trait in me. But I know other players do like to play characters who are pretty much them. You can do that, but there are two big problems that jump out at me when you do it. Mary Sueing and over complexity.

If your not familiar, Mary Sue is a catch all phrase for poorly written author avatars, predominantly in fan fiction. They typically are not just the author, but an idealized version of the author. It’s really easy to make that kind of character in Cantr. After all, you can stop and think about or refine what you’re typing. You can decide how you look. You can be a fantastic musician without all that practice and dedication. Why not be the awesome person you want to be? Because it’s boring and predictable for other players (Forcing myself to just type a response and not go back and fix it it has resulted in some of my characters saying things that turn my stomach into knots but also they became my most interesting and fun characters to play)

Over complexity is another problem. The game is a slow paced and text based, simple characters are a lot easier for other people to interact with. Don’t start your characters off too complex, let them grow in complexity if they are around other characters who can handle playing with a more complex and deep character. This is another hard to find target. If your character is too complex they will be confusing. If they are too simple, they will be boring. I just find it easier to make a character more complex over time than to simplify them.

I think the best role playing is like method acting, you draw on something in yourself and bring it out through the character as you step into their shoes. But try to focus on just part of you. I create rules and limits for each character to force myself to think creatively and uniquely as I play each one until I naturally step into their character as I click on their name. Actively limiting yourself forces traits to the surface other than your default reactions. That, to me, is one of the great joys of role playing.

In some ways you have to start a character from who you are. If you try to play a character who is smarter than you, then at some point someone will have a problem they expect you to help solve that you as a player can’t, and your character will look like a fake. If you try to play a character who is more creative than you, you will be expected to do something creative to back that up, and if you don’t your character will look like a fake. (If you’re playing this game you’re creative enough to play a creative character, so the question is really if you are confident enough.) On the flip side, playing an overconfident braggart or outright charlatan whose claims are always bigger than the reality that backs them up can be a lot of fun – if you are doing it knowingly, it can be frustrating if your character is beyond your ability to play. (Think of time commitment here too! Some characters will take a lot of time to play.)

And I've hinted around this idea a lot but haven't outright stated it. Spawn a character with room to grow. If they are a complete package when they spawn then they are entirely dependant on outside forces to create some sort of story in their lives. You can't count on outside forces. The best characters in the game right now are the drivers of their own story. And if they are doing it really well they can catch other characters up in that story with them.

[andrzejek]

i say new character must not be "noob" for have good game

[Mafia Salad]

Other miscellaneous thoughts:

Humor and lots of questions have been my two best tools for getting my characters off to a good start. Especially when I don’t want to rely on some gimmick (and get trapped playing it for the rest of the characters life) to introduce my character.

All my most fun characters have started light (happy, optimistic, friendly, etc.). It works a lot better than starting dark. In a world of constant death a gloomy or bitter newspawn doesn’t seem to get much traction but a joyful breath of fresh air does. If you want to play a droopy ball of depression you will find plenty of in game reason to turn your character that way. When other characters remember how your character was happy once, it will make the impact that much greater. Having in game reasons to draw on just makes the darkness all that much deeper too.

I’ve started all my latest characters morally neutral, no natural good guys or bad guys but the potential to be pushed either way. The results were boring. I figured having an in game backstory for why my evil character is evil would be awesome, but no backstories happened. There is still some potential for a couple to turn evil, but it would take a pretty strong catalyst at this point. I’d probably create one character with a strong leaning towards mischief, mayhem, manipulation and villainy if I had the time. Sometimes they’re just bad seeds, right?

Keeping a bunch of interesting goal on the back burner and bringing them out when a character seems well suited for it (which often happens pretty early on, even the first day) has worked better for me than spawning characters with specific goals in mind. Spawning with really vague goals and bringing them to specifics based on your surroundings and interactions also works well - unless you’re getting no feedback to direct those vague goals, then it sucks as bad as having no goals.

I relied a lot on the 4 temperament theory on my first account, pretty much every character I played as a single unmixed temperament turned out well.

If you make an introvert, role play their introversion actively. Emote body language and such. There is no way for others to know the difference between a quiet character and a sleeping one unless you make it known.

Make emotional characters and play out their emotions. Passionate emotions drive stories a lot more than well-reasoned arguments. That holds true in the game as well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an interesting flashpoint of conflict devolve into a dry philosophical debate in this game. Two opposing parties and between 1 and a dozen self-appointed “neutral” arbitrator spend a couple days trying to out pompous each other until they decide to just avoid each other for the next 3 decades and nobody leaves happy. That’s terribly boring, it reminds me of the time I served on a civic court jury and had to listen to a week and a half of testimony regarding a failed retaining wall and arguments about who should pay how much to fix it.

[Mafia Salad]

Naming -

Almost anything goes. Common English names, uncommon English names, names from other languages, random words, Tolkien like fantasy names, mashing the keyboard then adding enough vowels to make it pronounceable. The difference between a name you spend hours agonizing over and one you make up after you click the little green smile is not worth the hours of agonizing. I know from experience.

Don’t spork names from outside the game because if a name has a stronger connection to RL then the game world it will usually suck. It may seem funny, and it will be until you actually do it.

These are rough guidelines. I’m not going to underestimate people’s creativity to fail, or to make something awful work through brilliant RP. Here are a few examples of what I think can and can’t work.

Bad names = Britney Spears, Adolph Hitler, Homer Simpson, DDDDDDddddddd, The Internet, Coca Cola, Loltroll

Good enough names = Wombatoro, Billy Barrymore, Thu’mak, Post, Mojito Onice, Nancy

Letting people name your character in game. – You’ll probably be disappointed with the name you get, I’ve had 1 I like and 2 I didn’t. I’ve given people more, and usually they don’t seem to like what my character picks for them.

What I’ve done in the past – Used my phone’s T9 with random number (Wasi Caget, Afris Fai), Food puns (Jelly Enjam, Annie Smith Apple), Tried to create a first impression of the character (Charlie “Lucky” Charm, Tripps) Names that are also adjective noun combos (Clay Brick, Dusty Rose), intentionally simple names (Sue), Anything that seemed like a good idea at the time (Emmy Metro, Warren von Warren)

I’ve done everything from scribble on my phones keyboard, using whatever random word it decided I was trying to type to combining authors’ names off my bookshelf. As long as the name isn’t terrible, it will be fine.