Introducing role-playing to people from other cultures and religions

[Jürgen Hubert]

Seems like I will get the opportunity to spread the hobby of role-playing to some of my co-workers who have expressed interest in it. The new thing for me is that they come from quite different cultural backgrounds than me - all the gamers I have played with so far fell pretty much in the same demographic as I do.

One of the new players comes from a family of immigrants from Morocco. While was born here and speaks German fluently, he is also strongly shaped by his Arabic heritage, and he is a practicing Muslim. I'm not quite sure how he will view some of the standard tropes of D&D, such as the pantheism.

The other player is an Indian. While he speaks German fairly well (and we are encouraging him to practice it further), we still have to remember to speak slowly so that he can understand us, and we will probably have to switch to English from time to time to communicate certain concepts. This will of course slow things down and make play a bit more difficult, but I think it should still be possible.

It will be interesting to see how it all turns out. But has anyone here done anything similar - played with people from a drastically different cultural background, or with people who don't share your native language?

I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences...



Oh, and I'll probably use the setting of the Forgotten Realms, since it is probably the most accessible D&D setting to people who know the "Lord of the Rings" movies and it isn't necessary to use any extra rules from new sourcebooks. Still, I'm not sure which starting region I should pick. I'm not interested in the Dalelands and I am already running another campaign set in the North - so if anyone has a good idea for a starting region...

 

[NewJeffCT]

Good luck to you. Before I joined my current gaming group (on hiatus a bit now), they had a guy that was gaming with them that eventually ended up becoming some sort of Christian minister or monk or something along those lines. Needless to say, he was already devoutly religious and had no problems playing a fantasy game. You can probably tell your Moroccan friend that many of the D&D religions are based on cultures (Greece, Rome, Norse) that pre-date both Christianity and Islam and that it is a fantasy game, first and foremost.

I would love to introduce my wife to D&D as well... however, she was born in mainland China and spent the first 29 years of her life there. Despite having 2 undergraduate and 2 master's degrees and speaking 3 languages, she has very little concept of Western fantasy and many of the things we take for granted are unknown to her (vampires, for one, I had a tough time explaining Buffy to her...)

Edited to add - saw the end of your post. If you have a friend from Morocco, Calimport/Calimsham could be interesting.

 

[Barak]

If they have expressed an interest in the fist place, I wouldn't expect problems.

To be on the safe side with the guy from Morocco, I'd have a small, informal talk with him first, if you feel there -might- be a problem. If he is uncomfortable with certain aspects of the -game-, it might be easier for him to express it one-on-one.

About the guy from India, it seems to me that the only possible problem would be linguistic, and in that case, playing D&D wouldn't be much more different than having a conversation about Lord of the Rings, or some other sort of medieval subject.

 

[Raloc]

Good luck to you. Before I joined my current gaming group (on hiatus a bit now), they had a guy that was gaming with them that eventually ended up becoming some sort of Christian minister or monk or something along those lines. Needless to say, he was already devoutly religious and had no problems playing a fantasy game. You can probably tell your Moroccan friend that many of the D&D religions are based on cultures (Greece, Rome, Norse) that pre-date both Christianity and Islam and that it is a fantasy game, first and foremost.

I would love to introduce my wife to D&D as well... however, she was born in mainland China and spent the first 29 years of her life there. Despite having 2 undergraduate and 2 master's degrees and speaking 3 languages, she has very little concept of Western fantasy and many of the things we take for granted are unknown to her (vampires, for one, I had a tough time explaining Buffy to her...)

Edited to add - saw the end of your post. If you have a friend from Morocco, Calimport/Calimsham could be interesting.

You could probably teach her D&D. Just go through a regular game, and let her know to ask questions if she doesn't know what something is ("You see a vampire.", "?", "Creatures that were formerly human and have been turned into dead beings that suck blood for food.", "Righty-o."). Pictures probably would help too. Also, you could always have things explained completely in game terms. Instead of saying that vampires suck blood and aren't alive, you can just demonstrate it in the game. I think that would be much cooler (in fact, I think that would be incredibly cool for the person playing, since it's very new).

 

[S'mon]

I come from Northern Ireland, a pretty small and homogenous place (white Ulster Protestant or white Irish Catholic, that's about it), but I've been running and playing D&D in London since 2000. I've had a pretty awesome variety of players in my London campaigns, with a whole new variety in my latest campaign. Off the top of my head they've included Australian (several), New Zealander, British-Asian (2), Norwegian, German, Czech, some English-English, my American spouse and brother-in-law, and now Chinese-Canadian and possibly some more Americans too. And that's not counting the multitude of nationalities at my Gencon UK games in 02 & 03. Culture issues haven't really been a problem although I guess gender issues have - I have more sympathy with ENW's Teflon Billy now. In cultural terms I guess maybe a few minor probs w some of the English-English, I'm from a pretty conservative little country, they're from an (IMO) much more liberal country, and I've said one or two things which seemed to raise hackles with some people.

 

[Voadam]

I'd check with the muslim if he is ok with the concept of roleplaying a character who worships a made up deity.

This aspect is pretty engrained into FR (all PCs have a patron deity, no godless clerics or paladins, etc.).

If he is not comfortable with it I would suggest a different setting where deity worship is an option not the default (greyhawk for instance or just a homebrew generic D&D world setting).

 

[warlord]

If the fact of worshipping a made up diety in D&D bothers the muslim player have his character worship Allah.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I think the real problems aren't so much going to come from unfamiliar concepts as concepts that may seem familiar.

The word cleric, for instance, implies something to almost anyone, but very different things to almost everyone.

I recommend just giving people options, letting them pick and choose, and then explaining where necessary. Also give them a lot of lattitude to change things. As with any new player you want them to be comfortable with asking lots of questions and making lots of new choices.

In terms of religion, give them the brief history of the realms and it should be pretty easy to see how things work. If they have a problem then there's a problem, but at least you explained the largest context possible.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If the fact of worshipping a made up diety in D&D bothers the muslim player have his character worship Allah.

Wouldn't really work - as far as I am aware of Islam, Allah isn't prone to handing out miracles on such a predictable manner as the D&D cleric...

Maybe it helps if I mention Ao, the overdeity of the Forgotten Realms who put the gods in place but doesn't answer prayers himself...

 

[Testament]

Wouldn't really work - as far as I am aware of Islam, Allah isn't prone to handing out miracles on such a predictable manner as the D&D cleric...

Maybe it helps if I mention Ao, the overdeity of the Forgotten Realms who put the gods in place but doesn't answer prayers himself...

Don't make any assumptions, they can often come across as patronising or downright insulting.

Broach it lightly in-game and see how he reacts, then go from there. I'd like to think he can differentiate between reality and fiction.

That's my opinion anyway, I don't know all the details as well as you do.