Advice on Visiting a Foreign Land

When the PCs become strangers in a strange land, how do you handle what they know about the new culture? Before getting there? After they arrive?

Do they need to acclimate Knowledge skills? All knowledges or just some? For example, does knowledge (arcana, nature, engineering) apply no matter where you go? Do you need to take knowledge (local, geography, history, nobility, religion) for each nation?

To recognize local customs, should the DC be the same no matter the skill check? In other words, to recognize the same custom, is it as easy with Bardic Knowledge or Gather Information as it is with Knowledge (local) or Knowledge (geography)? Should a player about to make a breach of etiquette automatically get a chance to stop themself with a skill check (like making a Spot check unconsciously), or should the player have to ask the GM?

How do you run a game where your players come to a foreign country?

Good questions. Seems it needs some good answers though....

-Sravoff

Here's what I've come up with so far...

Upon entering a new culture/nation/plane, your knowledge skills are restricted by "acclimation" any time you make a knowledge check regarding a unique element of the new land. Checks dealing with common phenomena or things your character is already familiar with are unaffected.

Acclimation: Upon arriving in the foreign culture, you cannot make a knowledge skill check regarding a unique/foreign element. Either you must learn about the culture through role-playing, or you must spend a week acclimating. After each week, you may make a check in a single Knowledge skill you wish to acclimate. The DC of this check is shown below. If successful, that Knowledge skill is considered acclimated for you, and you may use it as normal, even in regard to unique/foreign elements.

Certain knowledges, like Geography, History, Law, Local, and Nobility cannot be used at all in a foreign culture until they're acclimated. These skills are intimiately tied to the culture/region in which they are being used.

Other knowledges, like Arcana, Architecture/engineering, Dungeoneering, Nature, Religion, and The Planes have limited use in a foreign culture. They include knowledge of some elements which are univeral, regardless of culture.

DC.......Type of Culture
20..........Many similarities to base culture; neighboring province
25..........Remote similarities to base culture; neighboring nation
30..........Distant culture; halfway across the world
40..........Radically different culture; non-human or totally opposing values

A GM could always adjust this scale to a more local game, with DC 20 representing a different tribe, city, or even social class. Alternately, in a plane-spanning game, DC 20 might represent the PCs' entire home plane.

For example, a PC from Waterdeep with Knowledge (Nature) is en route to the gilded city of Samarkand. The PC spots an incoming storm moving with unusual speed and he decides to dig a pit in the ground to weather the storm. When the storm hits, a sand dune collapses on top of him, nearly killing him. If the PC had acclimated his Knowledge (Nature) skill, he could have made a check to remember not to seek shelter near a sand dune during a storm.

Works for me. Having traveled pretty extensively, I can say that even in a "globalized" society this type of stuff is an issue.

This is a simple way to account for it without writing whole volumes of rules or putting out special skills for each environment/society.

Tell them to make sure they don't let anyone know their Americans. I keed I keed.