If this was not a fantasy world it would remind you of Bombay, India back in 1,000 AD.
Hot, crowded and colorful.
As a player, how strange of customs and laws can you handle before it is not fun?
At what point is new and different just too much trouble to deal with?
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I personally like colorful, well-detailed settings, sights, and sounds, but have been saddled for many years with a group that just wants to know the AC of the opponent and how many XP they get after they are dispatched. Ah well...

When fantasy script goes from being a prop to being a gatekeeper. A note written in Klingon with translation at bottom, or a word here or there in context, is fine. When the rest of the table speaks and reads Klingon -- and you don't, nor want to learn -- then it is time to dial it back. Similarly with societal mores and jargon as gatekeepers is where I draw the line.

I sell the boat and buy myself a bit of food and lend a place to cook it on the streets, and start selling said food at twice - thrice the price of components.

As long as you'd be more or less well prepared with those laws (and don't expect me to read the whole 100 pages long worldbook ) I'm cool.

If you find yourself going on a monologue as the DM, then you have gone off the deep end.  If your players are confused and cannot relate to the setting, you have  gone off the deep end.

I've had a lot of fun with Empire of the Petal Throne, and the basic premise of so much of A. Merritt and Edgar Rice Burroughs (and Howard's "Red Nails," Leiber's "The Lords of Quarmall," etc.) strikes me as virtually the essence of the "dungeon game."

QuoteAt what point is new and different just too much trouble to deal with?

The same whether it's in milieu or in rules: when it bogs down the pace of players making interesting decisions.

Quote from: Phillip;722951I've had a lot of fun with Empire of the Petal Throne, and the basic premise of so much of A. Merritt and Edgar Rice Burroughs (and Howard's "Red Nails," Leiber's "The Lords of Quarmall," etc.) strikes me as virtually the essence of the "dungeon game."


The same whether it's in milieu or in rules: when it bogs down the pace of players making interesting decisions.

I'd say, more specifically, when there are so many unknown factors that the players have no rational basis for decision-making, you need to lay off the exoticism.

I am fine with these sorts of starts. It sets things up neat and easy. Used that for the start of Omega World and just handed the players out a "Things you know about the town and the area" writeup and let them remember or not any of that if they so desired. Visitors from other towns got different info.

Bring it on!  I can handle quite a bit of exotic.  Now normally I'd be fishing for handouts, but the premise is that I'm a stranger in a strange land, yes?

I don't at all mind playing the clueless outsider entering an exotic, different place in wich he has to learn a very different set of rules (or possibly just break them in entertaining ways...). If anything that's my standard character, right there.

Also it's easier than playing a native, cause in the latter case your PC presumably knows all the rules, customs etc, wich means you, the player, will need to read up on a bunch of GM stuff. Wich is a downer for some people. But happily not for all - having at least one PC not be a clueless outsider is generally a good thing after all!

What my PC would do? He'd go looking for work, presumably.

Quote from: Greentongue;722918As a player, how strange of customs and laws can you handle before it is not fun?
At what point is new and different just too much trouble to deal with?
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I would say that the breaking point is "too strange to for the PCs to muddle through via trial and error".

If the campaign premise is explicitly "strangers trying to make it in a sophisticated culture they're deeply unfamiliar with", I'd find it entirely appropriate to have characters occasionally stumble and make mistakes out of ignorance early on, provided that that generates interesting consequences and adventures (and if the GM or setting designer has done their job right it usually will). If a dozen sessions down the line we're still goofing just as regularly as we did when we got off the boat, then there's a problem.

I'd say in general with these things the most important thing to do is avoid unsolicited monologuing. Don't give the players lectures on local laws on customs - let them work them out themselves through observation and through experience. In general I find players mind monologues a little less when it comes through research or investigation they've personally done, because it makes them feel like they lucked out and hit the motherload on their investigation. And in general, only mention interesting customs and laws as and when they become relevant, and keep in mind how much the characters already know. Early on, for instance, PCs should regularly not be aware of a taboo unless they already broke it (or unless they were sharp-eyed enough to suss out that a particular subject is avoided by the locals). Once they've lived in the culture for a while, then it starts becoming more appropriate to say to players "OK, since you're now familiar with the ways of the Tsolyani (or whoever) you'll be aware that that would be kind of a taboo thing to do - you're sure you're go ahead with it?", unless the custom or law is a particularly obscure one.

New and different is cool, but IC new and different should become comfortable and familiar if the PCs live within the culture in question for long enough.

If the culture is just something in a pseudo-historical-European world with all the names changed, then superficial learning requirements are annoying. I mean, your Fiord-Barbarian thunder god Mjödegarr? The players are just going to call him Thor anyway, so just call him Thor to start with.

If the culture is something truly original, then I'm totally in for a bit of work learning the world you've created.

So, I gather that unsolicited monologuing is poison to a good game.

What about the player that picks a character that stands out like "Andre the Giant" or a Scandinavian blond in China? Should the game conform to them or should the GM not allow them to play a character they want?
How often does this also kill "fun"?
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That's a roleplaying thing. The locals will see this guy as either someone to be avoided because he's dangerous, or someone they can easily overcharge or steal from because he's ignorant.

Yeah, gotta say that choosing between the game conforming to the odd-man-out and the GM refusing to let the player play that character leaves out a huge excluded middle there. Unless people from the sort of culture the player wants their character to hail from really don't exist in this world, then let 'em go ahead with it but apply the usual pitfalls of wandering into a town where you don't know the local customs, at least at first (or until they find a local guide).

Incidentally, this is a nice solution when some players are really keen to study the stuff you've prepared on this exotic culture and others don't have the time or inclination to do it: have the players who want to do their research play locals who can show the ignorant bumpkin PCs around.