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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 2441840" data-attributes="member: 5435">Then focusing on the setting makes sense.  In all honesty, I don't know if I can bring something like that to life myself either, but I'm trying.Which is why your advice of having the setting signify all the time is so good.  This gets back to the question of player investment... all too often your players want the game to play like an interactive movie or video game, where action and exposition alternate to build up the story.I really want to run a campaign more like the Myst series of games, where the story doesn't progress unless the players study the world and invest themselves in its details.  But it's so hard to find people willing to play that way... they come in from a long day at work, and just want to sit back and be entertained.Maybe, but I find that plot is more flexible.  If the players take things in an unexpected direction, it's easier for me to adapt the story than the background.  That's probably because I have more creativity invested in the background, and I resist changing it.This question probably deserves its own thread.  It is difficult, extraordinarily difficult... I've been living in France now for a year, and have been married to a French woman for 6.  French and American cultures have many more similarities than differences, but even the small differences can seem frightenlingly alien at times.  My 'personal culture' has now evolved to an intermediate stage between the two, but it's taken a lot of conscious effort on my part to incorporate the alien attitudes and behaviors into my personality in a way that makes sense to me.From a role-playing standpoint, I've found that players have an easier time adopting a fictional culture if it is strongly similar to one they are already familiar with, so I try to give the nations easy hooks--this country is kind of like Russia, but with a frontier mentality reminiscent of the Wild West... these people are gypsy-like... and so on.  It's not at all original, but that doesn't bother me any more.  Really it's just short hand for encouraging certain personality types that are independent of culture, and it's much easier and more rewarding for players to role-play something familiar than something alien.Take a look at the 7th Sea player's guide for a good example.  The cultures are extremely close cognates of European cultures, with just enough historical and cultural difference to make them refreshing.  IS the setting boring? No, it's fun to read and great fun to play in, because the role-playing hooks are so plentiful and familiar.I think a truly alien culture inevitably feels drab and lifeless, because we're incapable of becoming emotionally attached to it.Ben</blockquote>

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