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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGirl

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    Default Strangers in a foreign country?

    The party I GM for is about to walk into a different country that doesn't have much trade with theirs. Most of that trade is on the east border—they're walking into the west. They don't speak the language, they aren't dressed in a way that fits in at all, and they don't know the culture.

    Any tips on how to run this best and give the most atmosphere? I'm running by voice chat, and I am happy to have an entire session of the party being lost and RPing without combat.

    All the party knows is that the people there are strange, use artifacts made of vivisected living animals, use a language they can't read or speak, and have a good hospital. They have a different religion, a different language, a similar technology level with different materials, different classes, and a different culture.

    The people in this country have extensive ritual scars that they show off, and follow a god of pain, blood, and surgery. (The gods available to the PCs aren't better.)

    The party is level 3 in Epic-6 Pathfinder; low fantasy. They include an alchemist, werecat, tinkerer rogue, and slayer sniper; they don't have any resources to translate with.

    They are trying to investigate some mercenaries, and they have clue letters they haven't been able to read. The local god might try to convert the non-religious Rogue, even though it's not a perfect fit, as the party got the attention of the gods by destroying a different god's altar.
    Last edited by JusticeZero; 2020-10-11 at 03:16 AM.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    RedWizardGuy

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    Oct 2020

    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Step One: Find a translator!

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGirl

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    I'm sure they will want to... I'm the GM though, I don't need one. :grin:
    "We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
    - They Might Be Giants, "Road Movie To Berlin"

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    May 2009

    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Bear with me here a second.

    I think the way to do this is...montage.

    In effect, you need a series of vignettes--"chance meetings on a road," "things happening just as you enter the town," "what's happening on the main street"--that slowly demonstrate the central habits and rhythms of the new culture, with first-presented ones being briefer and with less exposition, and with later ones providing context for those first strange interactions, and the final ones creating a sort of summation of "this is what these people are about." If any one detail piques their curiosity, there's now a path to explore that detail; if no particular detail is seized upon, the montage still conveys the necessary minimum of detail for them to function.

    A place to start would be something like being greeted by strangers from "the west" while traveling. Indeed, travel along a major road can be used as an excuse to present a kind of gazette of social roles in this culture: this is a young person, an old person; this is what a priest looks like; this is a child so young they don't have ritual scars, and here is a child old enough to have some; here is a peasant with an inexpensive, ubiquitous piece of the odd material culture, by contrast here is someone high-status with a more extravagant living-thing-artifact.

    And since the adventuring troupe is strange relative to the culture they're entering, they'll receive extra attention from the locals, which means that they can also learn indirectly about the culture through how the culture perceives them as odd. Even before you get to interaction, the PCs will start to notice the changes in clothing, the ritual scars being something consistent...but at the same time people will be amused, surprised, or offended by their lack of scars, their lack of proper scar-showing etiquette, etc. At some point they're going to be in an interaction that involves a formal greeting or whatever passes for hospitality--or the opposite, they receive negative attention and are deliberately shunned in ways that also reflect cultural norms. That can establish the tone.

    If they're headed to a town, the edge of town is a liminal space for the town's culture--a place of danger and opportunity--so it provides another chance to establish some of the community's norms. More security and some kind of bureaucratic stamp to pass through or enter a town says one thing about how the culture operates; the outskirts of town being some kind of demimonde...a place for travellers to crash and indulge, or specifically oriented toward "foreign" adventurer types says something else...and both can be present. If the hospital is something that people from other regions seek out, it may be there's a kind of medical tourist area where people seeking treatment stay, or even an expatriate quarter. (This also provides an excuse for a the presence of NPCs who can speak the same language, and might be open to a more casual level of acting a translator).

    Even if the first town they enter isn't the one with the hospital, there's a kind of logic of what is central and what is peripheral that can say a lot about the culture. Kind of like how Westerns establish the tone of a town by having the protagonist ride through the main drag. If scarification and surgical rituals are an established practice, there's going be places and times where people go to do this that are "central" to community life, but also have ripples effects like...where do you go to get aftercare, who cleans up, are there secondary festivities. Having the PCs encounter some kind of community ritual activity--a holiday, a funeral, a wedding--is another way of establishing through descriptions the central priorities, but also an excuse to show off some of the more odd elements...artifacts that might not otherwise be public, acts (like deliberate scarification) that characters would otherwise only encounter the end result of.

    There's also the details of material culture. Clothing and self decoration tends to mean stuff in addition to being self-expression, so consider whether there's any groups in this culture that would be visually marked by tradition. For example, widows wearing all-black, or children under a certain age having their hair not cut, or pious individuals carrying or wearing marks of faith. And if displaying scars is a big deal, then it's possible that one kind of social decoration is less clothes, more revealed skin, but another is decoration to specifically direct attention to scars...tattooing, painting around them with bright colors, deliberately abrading the scar to make it raised.

    Given the idea of scars a something deliberately shown...those marks have specific significance that people within the culture use to communicate: so what are they communicating? Are they status markers (class or caste), affinity markers (kinship, clan), ritual markers (participation in specific rites and mysteries that convey holy status), etc...it doesn't need to be just one. Think ahead about if there are specific scars that mean things and integrate their appearance and frequency into descriptions. Hopefully the PCs begin to think of the scars as a detail to "read."

    If they're using vivisected animals as artifacts (magical items?)...that's something that would be present in the culture above and beyond the objects themselves: there would have to be live-animal markets and people specifically raising or catching things for artifact-creation purposes. Back to the idea of "what's in the center of town?"...there'd both be the physical location devoted to this space (like a specialty market) and all the people engaged in that trade that would be notable and strange to the PCs. Why is someone walking around with a wicker basket of snakes, why is there a cartload of caged songbirds, etc.
    Last edited by Yanagi; 2020-10-11 at 03:47 AM.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    BardGuy

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Yanagi's given a lot of great ideas.
    I'll add; working around language barriers gets old fast ( as in 1 or sessions of miming and pointing at things is enough). Get them a translator, have the rogue's would-be god gift them with the language so the can hear The Word, fast forward to when they know the language or give them something to do that isn't based around talking to locals.
    Make a choice about how friendly or hostile you want the locals to be. If you want them to be friendly, they'll forgive transgressions against good manners and minor local laws. If you want them to be hostile, failing to use the correct ritual greeting is a capital offence. There's lots of room between them and I encourage you to deliberately make that choice rather than fall into it
    The temperament and how powerful the PCs feel will make a difference. People coming up and touching their stuff because it's strange could be scary or funny or annoying and whether the PCs think they can slaughter the whole village if they have to or whether they know that one watchman could kill the whole party will make a difference. How it affects the players will also vary, some will get upset when their character's hair clip gets taken out, other's will find it all good fun
    I love playing in a party with a couple of power-gamers, it frees me up to be Elan!


  6. - Top - End - #6
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Tanarii's Avatar

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Are you running a scene/encounter based game or a play through everything with variable time-flow game?

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGirl

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Are you running a scene/encounter based game or a play through everything with variable time-flow game?
    Setting first, closer to the sandbox side of the spectrum. They have a quest line right now, they had three places they could investigate. They checked one out and did a side quest, now they are checking one of the other two. They could have gone anywhere if they wanted. I'm just tracking the dates and tracking what they plan to do, mostly.
    "We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
    - They Might Be Giants, "Road Movie To Berlin"

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Troll in the Playground
     
    ElfRangerGuy

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Have the local police force come talk to them if they break a minor local law. They are let off with a warning or small fine, but it's a good way to learn about differences in law in this country. You can look up a large number of strange local laws of a lot of different places. Just google 'weird laws' and I'm sure you have more than enough examples to last you dozen's of sessions.

    As to language, if it's close to another language one of the PCs know, let that PC make some linguistic checks to start understanding the local variant. Some examples are Spanish-Italian (if they speak slow enough or write it down, you can get a lot of one if you understand the other) or Dutch-Afrikaans.
    Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

    "Magic can turn a frog into a prince. Science can turn a frog into a Ph.D. and you still have the frog you started with." Terry Pratchett
    "I will not yield to evil, unless she's cute."

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    RedKnightGirl

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    d6 Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    This a job for the local thieves guild. Place thieves cant in your game hand signs and what not.

    So the theif in your party can for a short time become the face. Give them a child guide thieves guild employee in a big city,1,000 people ir more.

    Everyone eats. Low level wizard/ cleric may have 1st that allows them to understand the language but not speak. It is a neighbor so on the boarder they can understand each other. 5 or 10 miles. Have the guild for a mark up sell tounges to a mid level wizard.

    Religion have a small cleric group of theirs no higher than one 8th level priest.

    Oh and for real fun do not have sign posts on where the boarder is a series of small streams
    9 wisdom true neutral cleric you know you want me in your adventuring party


  10. - Top - End - #10
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Tanarii's Avatar

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Quote Originally Posted by JusticeZero View Post
    Setting first, closer to the sandbox side of the spectrum. They have a quest line right now, they had three places they could investigate. They checked one out and did a side quest, now they are checking one of the other two. They could have gone anywhere if they wanted. I'm just tracking the dates and tracking what they plan to do, mostly.
    You missed my point. If its jumping from one encounter/scene to anpther, you can subsume a lot of stuff in the in between moments, summarizing what's happened.

    The other style basically requires table time be used for almost everything, possibly speeding it up for somethings (restinng, camping, traipsing).

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGirl

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    The other style basically requires table time be used for almost everything, possibly speeding it up for somethings (restinng, camping, traipsing).
    The second one.
    "We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us 'The nicest of the damned'.."
    - They Might Be Giants, "Road Movie To Berlin"

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    GnomePirate

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    I am running an even more extreme version of this once my group gets back together at the table. They are going from being Crusaders in the 1st Crusade in the real world to getting sucked into Ravenloft. I am going to make life slightly easier and have the trade language of the domains be a bastardized form of Latin that they will have to learn the details of in game with Int checks.

  13. - Top - End - #13
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    MonkGuy

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    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    I actually love playing with this idea that translating is or feels impossible.

    Things you could try, hopefully synergyzed with Yanagi's cultural differences approach:

    • Outdated/hilariously flawed phrasebooks. (anything you find on the internet about any random language translated via Google Translate could help) This can cause some misunderstandings that they can figure out later.
    • Homonyms meaning two vastly different things if they get cocky and forget to pantomime when using single words. i.e. Asking to buy some candy and getting a piece of rope handed to them instead.
    • People who can speak just a few sentences but refuse/are prevented to help in any significant manner bcz of cultural taboos (being too young, wrong caste, busy with official duties, or just having the wrong character ask for their help?).
    • Body language meaning different things if they try to pantomime.
    • Using drawings to communicate. -> drawings and symbols meaning different things in this culture.
    • A "translator" who knows as little as them ripping them off.
    • A side-quest imposed by the translator in exchange for their help.
    • The translator fleeing or getting killed at the worst possible time.
    • Some people or an entire section of the population who can (secretly or ritually?) speak maybe not common but another of the languages the PCs know (so they could have circumvented this problem the whole time, they just didn't bother to ask)


    Maybe some others later, idk.
    Last edited by Shirow; 2020-10-20 at 05:20 AM.

  14. - Top - End - #14
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Goblin

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    Mar 2019

    Default Re: Strangers in a foreign country?

    The past is a foreign country.

    The simplest things can make a place seem foreign.

    Eating: Up until the 17th century many town dwellers didn't have access to a kitchen. They would prepare food in the kitchen of their employer, prepare food at a table and have it cooked in a bakery or cookshop, they would grill in the middle of their room, or they would buy food from a cookshop. Disposable ceramic dishes/bowls were common in some places. And the diet was limited and monotonous in many cases. Cereals were prepared in a variety of fashions. Bread was the most common. Pottage (a savory porridge) was also very common and might incorporate old bread, beans/peas, eggs, vegetables and greens. Lots of beans/peas for protein supplemented with some eggs. Meat is really a luxury. And meals were typically eaten twice a day, not three times a day or more frequently. Simply changing dining customs can be very disorienting for players.

    Accomodations: The travellers inn is another 17th century innovation. Unless they were part of a network that provided for travellers (such as pilgrims) they'd probably pay someone to stay in their home, maybe displacing a family that can't pay as much. And they'd typically be renting a space on the floor. If a bed was available it would be shared by several people. That alone will freak out some players.

    Gift giving: The culture of giving gifts was widely distributed. Peers gave gifts to each other to establish trust relationships, advertise power, curry favor, and even advertise capabilities. Superiors gave gifts to subordinates, and vice versa. If this culture practices gift-giving then people who approach without gifts will be seen as rude or unmannered.

    Freedom of movement: This is mostly a modern idea. Most early societies were quite intrusive. Characters may not be permitted to leave the eastern portion of the nation to travel to the western portion until the authorities have satisfied themselves as to the intent of the travelers, a process that could take months. Which gives the characters time to learn some local language. They'd probably be assigned minders to accompany them.

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