More specific Cultural Familiarities

[Celti]

As we were discussing in the Custom Perks thread, Cultural Familiarities have, in the minds of many, a problem with being too broad to be useful.

Unfortunately, they're not exactly too broad for their cost! I've had two solutions for this problem floating in my head for a while; one entirely outside of the RAW, and one leveraging RAW components in a slightly new fashion.

The first: Fractional-Point Familiarities. 4th Edition abolished half-points in the beginning, but it brought back a limited version of them (along with quarter– and eighth-points) in the form of the Dabbler perk, and my gaming group unanimously decided to allow such fractions entirely generically (guided a bit by the frustrating rounding when buying a [-15] or [-5] disadvantage at Self-Control 15, and other such things).

This of course leads to the idea of charging only a fraction of a point for Cultural Familiarities, but making them much more specific. I think there's a better way, though...

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There's already a trait in GURPS that has a very-broad initial form that costs only a point (initially), and has a built-in way to give it a more specific definition: Skills, and skill familiarities. So, why can't we have Cultural Familiarity familiarities?

...perhaps ideally with a less cumbersome name.


Let's take Kromm's unofficial list of real-world Cultural Familiarities:

Originally Posted by Kromm

We have never published such a list, but behind the scenes, we use this one:

1. Latin American (Mexico and parts south)
2. Anglo (the U.K. and its English-speaking former colonies, including the U.S.A.)
3. Western European ( "the Continent")
4. Eastern European (the former Soviet Bloc)
5. North African (from the Mediterranean coast south to the Sahel)
6. Sub-Saharan (specifically as contrasted with North African)
7. West Asian (from the Mediterranean east to Iran)
8. Central Asian (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and so on)
9. South Asian (dominated by India)
10. East Asian (China, Japan, Korea, etc.)

Of those, I'd say you could afford to break up Latin American and South Asian further, and Sub-Saharan a lot further, if the campaign requires it. But if you want an even 10 to hit Cultural Adaptability on the head, this list works well enough.

Each of those remain one point each. By the standard rules for Familiarity (p. B169), starting characters may specify two familiarities per point spent on a skill. If he wants to know more, the GM can justify another familiarity per Background Knowledge perk (Power-Ups 2, p. 16), or allow a form of Cross-Trained for CFs (a form of which ws suggested by johndallman in the Perks thread, which spawned this whole idea). I would also encourage GMs to hand them out for free with well-made backstories that require more than two per CF.

In this case, a character from Virginia might have CF: Anglo [1] with the familiarities Southern USA and Eastern USA (or if a GM doesn't want to go that specific, perhaps USA and Canada). His backstory also has him attending school overseas in the UK, so the GM gives him the English familiarity. If he joins the CIA, he might add on CF: Central Asian [1] with Cross-Trained [1], giving him familiarity with any culture he's likely to run into on a mission there.

[Ellrelion]

I like the idea of having more specific Cultural Familiarities, but I personally find Kromm's version definitively biased.

How can "Anglo" be a distinct group while "the Continent" (meaning germans and portuguese alike) being one single group? Besides, one could argue that - language apart - much more things unite Brits with the others Europeans that with their American offspring (even if I perfectly know that very few Brits will agree with that, especially after last June :p , still if you consider society, government, politics, history, role of religion in life, gun control, importance and role of the state -NHS - etc Brits are definitively more similar to "the Continent" than to the US :p).

So in my opinion you either divide the "Western" Culture into SEVERAL different groups (not just the UK out and all the rest in one only soup) or either you make a unified Western group (or if you really want to specify, two groups, Europe and America).

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Ellrelion

How can "Anglo" be a distinct group while "the Continent" (meaning germans and portuguese alike) being one single group? Besides, one could argue that - language apart - much more things unite Brits with the others Europeans that with their American offspring (even if I perfectly know that very few Brits will agree with that, especially after last June :p , still if you consider society, government, politics, history, role of religion in life, gun control, importance and role of the state -NHS - etc Brits are definitively more similar to "the Continent" than to the US :p).

So in my opinion you either divide the "Western" Culture into SEVERAL different groups (not just the UK out and all the rest in one only soup) or either you make a unified Western group (or if you really want to specify, two groups, Europe and America).

My arguments against Kromm's "Anglo" are much the same as yours. "Western European" and "North American" as two distinct CFs I can understand, with Britain being in the "Western European" part.

I'm constantly revising my own CFs. My current list is:

Aboriginal: The native hunter-gatherer cultures of Africa, Yucatan peninsula, South America, and Australia, among others. (Not exactly realistic to put such disparate cultures together under one familiarity, but for cinematic games like those I tend to play in it works.)
Central Asian: Covers much of the peoples of central Asia, including the Mongols, Turcomans, Turks, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Uighurs, and Afghans.
East Asian: Most of Eastern Asia, including eastern China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippenes, and the Indochinese peninsula.
Eastern European: Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and most of the former Soviet Bloc.
Indian: The Indian sub-continent, including the island of Sri Lanka.
Latin American: Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.
Middle Eastern: Turkey, Israel/Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya, and other parts of Saharan Africa with heavy Arab influences.
Polynesian: Samoa, Easter Island, and any of the native peoples of the South Pacific.
Siberian: The culture of those living east of the Urals in what is commonly known as Siberia, removed from the cultural influence of Russia and Eastern Europe.
Sub-Saharan African: Includes the native cultures south of the Sahara Desert of Africa.
Western: Western Europe, and most of North America. Also includes Australia, New Zealand, and other places (such as coastal Western Africa) where European Colonialism displaced the native peoples.

If I was to, as the OP suggests, make them more specific, I'd split "Aboriginal" and "Sub-Saharan Africa" into a half-dozen each, and split "North American" off from "Western", making "Western" into "Western European". I may even put Australia in the same CF as North America rather than Europe. I'd also split "Middle Eastern" into "Saharan Africa" and "Middle Eastern", though I'd probably put Egypt in "Middle Eastern", given its location and closer ties to the Arabian peninsula and the Fertile Crescent than its western neighbors.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ellrelion

I like the idea of having more specific Cultural Familiarities, but I personally find Kromm's version definitively biased.

How can "Anglo" be a distinct group while "the Continent" (meaning germans and portuguese alike) being one single group? Besides, one could argue that - language apart - much more things unite Brits with the others Europeans that with their American offspring (even if I perfectly know that very few Brits will agree with that, especially after last June :p , still if you consider society, government, politics, history, role of religion in life, gun control, importance and role of the state -NHS - etc Brits are definitively more similar to "the Continent" than to the US :p).

So in my opinion you either divide the "Western" Culture into SEVERAL different groups (not just the UK out and all the rest in one only soup) or either you make a unified Western group (or if you really want to specify, two groups, Europe and America).

You can do that very easily simply by assuming the given character has familiarties specific to him. There is after all more then a bit of overlap.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ellrelion

How can "Anglo" be a distinct group while "the Continent" (meaning germans and portuguese alike) being one single group? Besides, one could argue that - language apart - much more things unite Brits with the others Europeans that with their American offspring

Culturally, not really. Personally if I were splitting Western I'd go with Catholic vs. Protestant, Europe vs. Americas is out, no way are the US and Canada are more culturally similar to Cuba or Brazil than to the UK or Germany.

But I don't feel Anglo is as bad as you might think though. The Channel historically has left Britain a little detached from the mainstream cultural developments in Europe, and between that, it's wealth, common law, and more recently the failure of the project of absolute monarchy, its only half way participation in Protestantism and being on the leading edge of the industrial revolution, it has been out of step with the rest of Europe fairly regularly. It's probably closer now than it has been since the Roman Empire.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Culturally, not really. Personally if I were splitting Western I'd go with Catholic vs. Protestant, Europe vs. Americas is out, no way are the US and Canada are more culturally similar to Cuba or Brazil than to the UK or Germany.

There's a reason why Latin America is carved out separate from Western Europe or Anglo - they're not like the US and Canada, and they're not like Portugal or Spain.

I'm OK with Anglo split out of Western Europe, I'll let other people argue if that actually includes England or not :).
If I were to split up Western Europe further, I might go with Germanic-ish peoples vs Latin-ish peoples, but then you have the question of where you draw the line with e.g. France and Belgium which are strongly blended.
"Eastern Europe" is just as lumpy.

Sub-Saharan Africa being one CF is insanity. It's about as bad as having an "Asia" CF, which we don't. Wikipedia splits Sub-Saharan Africa culturally into Western Africa, Central Africa, Horn of Africa, Southern Africa, and Southeast Africa, which I think does it much more justice than lumping the majority of the continent into a pot.

South Asian is mostly India and Bangladesh, and some of the -stans.

I also would split Malay out, along with South-East Asia (which sadly is defined by "not Malay, not East Asia", leaving East Asia to be China, Korea, and Japan (sorry Korea).

I'd pop "Nepal" out of East Asia as an example of 'misc minority CFs'; there are a lot of these in the world. I would also explicitly list as other examples:

• "Arctic Circle native (North America)"
• "Arctic Circle native (Europe)"
• "Temperate North American native (West Coast)"
• "Temperate North American native (East Coast)"
• "Meso-American native"
• "Andean native" (ideally with more useful/correct names)
• "Australian Aboriginal"
• "San/Basarwa/Hottentot" (from Africa, there's lots of really distinct small CFs in Africa)

I'd call out these because they're not going to be dominant CFs in most campaigns, but sometimes I think the (predominantly white, western) RPG community needs to be reminded they exist as separate cultures, not as sort of real-world elves or something.

[Kalzazz]

The most alien I have no clue what I'm doing I've ever felt was visiting NYC, which in theory is not only Anglo, but American

Giant masses of people and the utterly foreign to me notion of actually walking through streets carrying purchases instead of the normal highly intuitive pattern of roads, cars, and parking in the general vicinity of destination, going to destination, then returning to car to drive to next destination?

I've felt far more able to function in Costa Rica, Mexico, and even Quebec, because even the parts of Ottawa I've visited followed the basic notion of 'cars, roads and parking lots' I understand

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

The most alien I have no clue what I'm doing I've ever felt was visiting NYC, which in theory is not only Anglo, but American

I've never been to NYC, but central Boston made perfectly good sense to me, while its suburbs were alien. I'm used to the idea of land in a city centre being far too valuable to use for parking. The suburbs used up land in a way that seemed very wasteful to me, and wooden houses didn't seem as if they'd last even a single century in the climate.

[Kalzazz]

I admit, for the most part, I will not visit places that lack a convenient designated parking lot or at least decent side if street parking Except when driven by force of law (some government buildings) or its something I really really really want to visit (such as seeing a musical at a playhouse).

All the places I've been to in foreign countries have featured these amenities

Edit - one city I've lived in, the least accessible to cars place was, naturally, the DMV, which was placed right in the middle of the city, surrounded by statues, trees, fountains, an outdoor ampitheatre, and sundry other things none of which were parking, so you would see aspiring drivers and police constantly hiking to and fro to get to peoples cars, paralel parked on downtown streets blocks away

[ericthered]

Visiting a community of a size you aren't familiar with can be bewildering in the extreme. I don't know that I'd call it a separate point, but if we're doing familiarities, distinguishing if you are familiar with urban vs. rural might be worth it. And even rural vs. Urban have their splits: I feel like a foreigner in towns under 2,000 or so, and I grew up rural.

A big part of the issue is making sure you only use these when they are meaningful, so that they are fun rather than a headache.