[OOC] Jed’s RP thought of the day
Mar. 22nd, 2012 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The Stranger in a Strange Land shtick is a hard road to follow. If you really want to try and play the ‘I am an alien in your culture’ card in a community RP, please try and temper your enthusiasm for the plot with the patience of the audience. You may be having fun playing ‘Amish refugee’, but the rest of us may not be. The example of this was entering the ‘alien’ into an average steampunk town. The topic of conversation that killed the fun was the explanation of individual property, theft, and money. The coup de grace was when I tried to ask about individual property ‘in your world’ and got an answer that was contrived, nonsensical, and acted as the final stake in the heart of the evening. I tried to ask the alien about property ‘in their world’ and got the explanation that property was owned communally by family units. I then asked what would happen if someone took something that belonged to the family. The alien told us the magic wouldn’t allow it to work for the outsider. I wanted to ask how that would make a hammer 'not work', but by then I was too tired to keep fighting. It was at this point the last few stragglers who had managed to hold on walked off to preserve what little sanity and patience they had left.
Bottom line: while it may be a part of your storyline development or totally in character, there is a point where different culture dives deeply into unable to be taught and not any fun.