Unique British aspects of D&D in the UK?

[The Grinning Frog]

I married an American over twenty years ago who moved over to be with me. Yes, I am that wonderful - or maybe she was evading the tax man... erm... I might ask her tonight, anyway, there has been a two decades cultural exchange and there are a LOT of differences between the two cultures. A lot more than I can list below but off the cuff. I want to be clear, it isn't that they are better than us, or we are better than them. What I've learnt is that we could both learn from each other.

1. Brits love to preamble
2. Drive ten miles in America and you get to the next motel, in Britain the accent has changed
3. People drive with more respect for other drivers in the UK
4. USA customer service is better than ours
5. They have WAY more choice in their stores
6. Brick houses are unusual (exceptions exist and more frequently on the east coast)
7. Their cultural heritage is incredibly shallow chronologically speaking (I know someone who has a house which is older than the nation of the USA) which possible is why they are so intense about current events and recent history. In the UK we are, comparatively, easy going.
8. We do ceremony and general manners better (like queueing or waiting for everyone to be seated prior to eating)
9. Our news is far less politicised
10. A group of Americans will be louder than a group of Brits, on average
11. They do really find our unarmed police a puzzle
12. Our humour is significantly different (and our dramas)
13. Their pets are pets, ours are family.
14. They have much broader menu options everywhere you go
15. They have no stone castles and no stone ruined sites, they do find them genuinely magical
16. Many of their cities are built on a grid with straight roads. (I still find it bonkers but it's probably a good idea, I guess?)
17. They DO drive everywhere
18. They assume that what happens in Europe happens in Britain and struggle to separate us culturally from our nearest neighbours.

 

[The Grinning Frog]

Nothing beats the thrill of driving in the country lanes not knowing what's round the next corner, is it a herd of sheep, a tractor carrying silage or a boy racer doing 60mph on the single lane carriageway.

My son just crashed his bike dodging a bloody pheasant on a country lane. I damned near hit a badger the other day. It's quite a thrill but ya gotta stay sharp! (He's banged up but broadly okay - the bike is not...)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Gridded streets, where they exist, are great, although a lot of the value has gone away now that everyone's phones do their navigation for them.

But you can drop me into any of a number of U.S. cities by daylight and if I know what city I'm in and can see the signs in an intersection, I can theoretically walk to any other place in the city without the aid of a map.

 

[The Grinning Frog]

Gridded streets, where they exist, are great, although a lot of the value has gone away now that everyone's phones do their navigation for them.

But you can drop me into any of a number of U.S. cities by daylight and if I know what city I'm in and can see the signs in an intersection, I can theoretically walk to any other place in the city without the aid of a map.

That's interesting because I find the grids confusing. I'm pretty sure I could find my way around any UK city but likely with a different navigation method, e.g. asking people then heading towards the 'big building over there'. So now I write that, maybe grids are the answer...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's interesting because I find the grids confusing. I'm pretty sure I could find my way around any UK city but likely with a different navigation method, e.g. asking people then heading towards the 'big building over there'. So now I write that, maybe grids are the answer...

In Washington DC, the streets are named after the letters of the alphabet (skipping a few that looked too similar to one another at the time the city was laid out), numbered streets go the other way and streets named after states periodically come in diagonally.

If you know what letter and number you're near, and can tell where north is (hence the daylight), it's trivial to navigate around DC.

(Well, it would be, if city fathers didn't then get cute and make a lot of streets one-way, often with little warning. You haven't really driven in DC until you've discovered too late that you're driving the wrong way down a one-way road.)

 

[The Grinning Frog]

In Washington DC, the streets are named after the letters of the alphabet (skipping a few that looked too similar to one another at the time the city was laid out), numbered streets go the other way and streets named after state periodically come in diagonally.

If you know what letter and number you're near, and can tell where north is (hence the daylight), it's trivial to navigate around DC.

(Well, it would be, if city fathers didn't then get cute and make a lot of streets one-way, often with little warning. You haven't really driven in DC until you've discovered too late that you're driving the wrong way down a one-way road.)

So I need to remember my alphabet... man I'm so lost

Also, on the overall list, I forgot to put roundabouts - we have them (UK) not the US. Least not on the west coast where my wife is from. For years we talked about the 'cow udder signs' on the approach to those. Always good for a laugh.

 

[Voadam]

So I need to remember my alphabet... man I'm so lost

Also, on the overall list, I forgot to put roundabouts - we have them (UK) not the US. Least not on the west coast where my wife is from. For years we talked about the 'cow udder signs' on the approach to those. Always good for a laugh.

We have them, at least in the East of the U.S.

They are generally called rotaries or traffic circles though.

 

[The Grinning Frog]

We have them, at least in the East of the U.S.

They are generally called rotaries or traffic circles though.

Funny how a name looks strange/amusing when you are not used to it. Traffic circles? Rotaries? Fabulous names. Funny to me but then 'roundabouts' likely seems strange to others. I do love language.

 

[John Dallman]

I created my D&D setting in the early eighties, so that D&D tropes would make sense in the game to Brits:

• The current peoples only arrived in the world a few centuries ago.
• There were previous inhabitants, but because this is D&D, they are hidden and powerful.
• Arcane magic only appeared in its current form about a century ago. I couldn't believe that the TSR spell lists were stable for even a few years.
• There's a set of intrinsic deities of the world, who make sense in terms of Good/Neutral/Evil and Law/Neutral/Chaos alignment. They allow outworld gods to exert power, but reserve the right to prevent them destroying the world.
• Those gods did not create the world, and they don't know who did.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's interesting because I find the grids confusing. I'm pretty sure I could find my way around any UK city but likely with a different navigation method, e.g. asking people then heading towards the 'big building over there'. So now I write that, maybe grids are the answer...

My aunt used to be a district nurse, and she knew every street name in Liverpool. So when she was giving directions she would rattle off a long list of street names. Leaving me hopelessly confused.

The traditional mode of navigation in the UK is by pub names. Which is why changing the name or closing a pub is always so controversial.