[RPG] How to you encourage players to role play in line with their culture

roleplaying

How can you encourage players to role play in line with their culture, either fictional or realistic?

For example in a campaign with American players playing mainly European characters, I've noticed that the players show no signs of being anything other than American.

In fantasy settings elven characters are often indistinguishable in culture from the human characters.

What can be done through the GM's role-playing, rules, and incentives to encourage the players to accurately represent their character's culture (at least a little).

Best Answer

Show them. :) It's always best to lead by example. Have your Non-player characters use specific references and attitudes that can be easily copied -- however clumsily at first! -- and keep on hammering them with good examples until they get the hang of it.

If and when players lapse into American-speak or other characteristics you don't want to encourage, again rely on your NPCs. Have them misunderstand, react poorly to innocent comments, and provide other negative reinforcement (tho as little as necessary) to illustrate the worst-case scenario.

As noted in other responses here, reward it when they try. Keep the rewards small at first, but specify clearly exactly how much they're getting for which comments, attitudes, and actions. Then increase the rewards in response to more and better attempts. Next thing you know you'll have started a trend... and the better players of such roles will be getting bigger and better rewards. They'll keep leading by example, taking a lot of the load off your shoulders.

Finally, find written works (if you can) that can supply both ideas and one-liners that can be used or copied by the players. Such things will vary widely by setting and culture, else I'd recommend specific examples.

Best of luck!