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Wag
 
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Matt Pennington (1/15/2010)
Your actual mode of dress, your speech, your character's place of origin can vary. If you want to play a group of gladiators representing Rome who are made up of slaves from every land you can do so. However that group will be representing Rome and must use the Roman rules, so those who aren't dressed and equipped as Romans will lose some of the advantages they would otherwise have.
Groups that don't gain the benefits of their national armour and weapons will have a natural disadvantage when fighting in the arena and on quests. But if that prospect doesn't intrinsically bother you then I wouldn't expect your enjoyment of the event to be hampered in the slightest.
I was assuming earlier that 'culture' = 'what society are you integrated into now' not 'where were you born' - i.e. who are you representing/who is producing/maintaining your culturally-specific weaponry/armour/kit.
Marios
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Squire
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Marios (1/16/2010)
There's a cute little example for Greeks and Romans - when the Romans had become an obvious power, effectively involving themselves in all Greek wars, but before they'd formally snapped up Greece - one of the larger Greek coalitions sent one of their sharpest rhetoricians across as a diplomat. So, he kicks off with his best display of Greek philosophy/oratory. On day one, he gives a long speech for the attainability of justice. On day two, he gives a long speech for the unattainability of justice. Standard Greek practice - showing that greek learning is so powerful that you can argue forcefully for both sides of argument.
The Romans, however, are absolutely appalled. These Greeks have just sent - as a diplomat - a man who stands up in front of our most distinguished assemblies and *lies* with a big, fat smile on his face and then congratulates himself on how well he's lied! Similar means, different goals!
Well, you have convinced me completely. We need to get into the habit of listening very carefully to what the in-game philosophers say and then butchering their nations because of it.
If the game goes *really* well, we'll have a couple of militant philosophers who will take the opportunity to die for their beliefs and go into the arena with their people. Thus giving them a guaranteed audience for their final speech and (soon to be) famous last words.
Maelstrom: Blind Harvey, Rimici Capell Future Prospects
Serenity: Sparks, bitter divorcee and mechanic.
Insurrection: A series of short-lived trouble makers.
Odyssey: Ramses, Keeper of the Goats, The Khemenethorus
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Champion
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It's larp.
Their speech will be rubbish and some bugger will heal em.
Or they'll be some secretly ninj nutter playing a barrel wearer for a laugh, and just carve the opposing warband up with their fruit knife.
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Doctor Who
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A quick question on the mixed group front. We get the culture and culture bonus thing and that's cool and were looking forward to that but we have a mixed group of people who want to play different cultures so in arena and quests we would split up into our respective cultures and fight with them (against each other in most cases)
What we are unsure about is do you have to camp in a faction and if so does everyone in that camp by default have to be the same culture?
So as an example we have 2 Romans, 3 Greeks and an Egyptian. When time comes for arena and quest we would split up but when that's not occurring can we still be in the same camp without effectively all being in that culture or is that not what its about? is it where you are in terms of camp is what you are in terms of culture?
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Prodigal
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We expect that each nation will expect to camp (IC) quite separately from their rivals. The reaction of different nations to a bunch of strangers/aliens camping with them is an IC issue for them...
PD: Odyssey Game Producer
Almost-RL: Photographer for hire
Insurrection: Dead Washer-up
Serenity: Redshirt #2, Crew of the Qi-Lin
www.disturbing.org.uk
www.odysseylrp.co.uk
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Wag
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Simon (2/6/2010)
We expect that each nation will expect to camp (IC) quite separately from their rivals. The reaction of different nations to a bunch of enemies/spies/saboteurs camping with them is an IC issue for them...
Fixed that for you... 
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Knight
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I can imagine a few cool ideas with people coming from different cultures but now fully integrated into their chosen one. Slave gladiators were mentioned earlier. My first thought was actually the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire - the personal guard of the Ottoman sultans, composed almost entirely of Christian children, taken from their parents, forcibly converted to Islam, and then trained together to become the sultan's most trusted soldiers, treated as personal possessions of the sultan. I can imagine a good group on that basis - a military unit entirely of Greek origin, but fanatically loyal to the Egyptian king, and fighting in the Egyptian style. But it seems pretty clear that groups without national loyalty aren't a feature of the world - why would they be? Why would you fight for the supremacy of someone else's gods, unless they had become your gods?
Maelstrom - Jan Andreas Vermeer
LT - Jericho Zeal
DUTT - Patrick of Caerdyll
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Prodigal
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Tag (2/15/2010)
I can imagine a few cool ideas with people coming from different cultures but now fully integrated into their chosen one. Slave gladiators were mentioned earlier. My first thought was actually the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire - the personal guard of the Ottoman sultans, composed almost entirely of Christian children, taken from their parents, forcibly converted to Islam, and then trained together to become the sultan's most trusted soldiers, treated as personal possessions of the sultan. I can imagine a good group on that basis - a military unit entirely of Greek origin, but fanatically loyal to the Egyptian king, and fighting in the Egyptian style. But it seems pretty clear that groups without national loyalty aren't a feature of the world - why would they be? Why would you fight for the supremacy of someone else's gods, unless they had become your gods?
I think this scenario was talked about earlier in the thread, or maybe elsewhere and it seemed that in the situation as described you would be playing Egyptians, in egyptian armour, with Egyptian weapons, and a background that said you were born Greek, but have been raised Egyptian. So you actually are just creating a character as an Egyptian Champion
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Knight
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Resurrecting for a quick clarification.
Bob's group want to play together, and they agree to tick "Rome" in the nation box because that's what most are interested in. Therefore to gain the armour advantages they must wear Lorica and use a rectangle shield, their physicians can only heal other Romans, any victories or defeats count towards the "score" for Rome. That's all perfectly clear.
Joe wants to join the group with his mates but really really hates the idea of playing "men in skirts". Can Joe be a Persian who is now loyal to Rome for whatever reason, follows Roman gods, wears Roman armour in arena or quests, happily will fight and die for Rome, cook and eat Roman food.... but still dresses underneath the armour like a Persian?
Cheers
______________________________________________
Gill R. : Variously playing and crewing at : CP / LoD / PD
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Wag
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Tikayo (3/17/2010)
Joe wants to join the group with his mates but really really hates the idea of playing "men in skirts". Can Joe be a Persian who is now loyal to Rome for whatever reason, follows Roman gods, wears Roman armour in arena or quests, happily will fight and die for Rome, cook and eat Roman food.... but still dresses underneath the armour like a Persian?
Ok, once more for luck.
The rules are designed to strongly encourage mono-culturalism. This is partly to balance the natural effect of any rules-set which has different rules for different nations/races/whatever. Any rules that do that proffer an in-built advantage to groups that take a pick-an-mix approach. We want Odyssey to be a real visual spectacle, bands of Romans fighting bands of Greeks in epic battles in the arena before screaming crowds. That goal is undermined if the rules are encouraging every warband to have "one of each".
So the rules say things like "Only Greek champions can be in a Greek warleaders warband and fight with him in the arena. A Greek philosopher's powers will only work on Greeks." What constitutes a Greek is very very easy to define in rules terms - did you tick Greek on your booking form or didn't you? If you did - you're Greek, if you didn't then you're not Greek.
However as you clearly identify, what constitutes a Greek character "in-character" may be very different. Perhaps your group is a ragtag bunch of mercenaries from all over the world who once fought in the Greek city-state wars and now fight for glory and power in the arena. Maybe you're a unit of elite Jannissaries." There are *loads* of options for subtle blurring of the rules in terms of definition of what is "Greek". Hopefully most players who play Greek will want to be Spartans, Athenians, Amazons, Argonauts or whatever. But by encouraging that, we hope we'll allow enough room for the "snowflakes" playing roman slave gladiators (who were born in Carthage), or a unit of Persian cataphracts enslaved by a powerful curse from Dagon and forced to fight for the Carthaginians to win their freedom. Hopefully since the rules are encouraging mono-culturalism, we'll see a few snowflakes amidst a hurricane of mighty Greek champions, rather than the more normal fest environment of the odd Greek Champion buried beneath a snowstorm of "different" Greek characters.
So you have the freedom to create your character as you choose. You can have any sensible, reasonable back-story, you can speak and dress and carry yourself as befits your characterisation. But if you want to fight with a Greek warleader in the arena, you must have ticked the Greek option on character creation.
Basically being "Greek" is not based on your birth, it's based on your "identity". It's a state of being, not a consequence of birth. It's a real physical thing, resulting from the blood in your veins, the air you breathe, the food in your belly and the wine in your cup, the land where you reside, the gods you fear. But it's all of these things, not simply "birthplace" and it's permanently set by the box you tick on your form at character creation.
I hope that makes things more clear, not less clear. And that Simon doesn't have to post a hasty retraction when he gets off the slopes.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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