[quote=Dinh AaronMk]I ask this because I have been holding for sometime an RP concept based in part on Arab culture and history. And in observing the forum I haven't seen many people going for the middle east. That whole area seems to be forgotten and ignored by people, except for a few. And even based on some preliminary interest checking before I interest checked I haven't had any promising bites. Which is a shame, because I'm rather excited over this.
[/quote]

I've had the same issue crop up with a few of my own ideas. The best suggestion I can offer is to go forth and do it, but ease people into these new cultural and technical aspects. When you do start the RP, ensure that you have a sort of 'tutorial', you have a couple of NPC's to help explain to the players what that part of the world is like. Make sure to devote a portion of the OOC exclusively to world building, fleshing out the most basic aspects, and one specific area if you can. Get to marketing it to death--use interest checks, reference it whenever you can, etc.

Then remember: It'll probably implode once or twice. That's fine. Take the best players from the original attempt, ask them what they thought of it and tell them that you're remaking it. Rebuild it and re-release it within a week, taking into account any errors you had. (Maybe you spent [i]too[/i] long world building, for example.) Try again. Keep trying until you find a formula that sticks and players to form the core group of the role play with, and it will work, no matter how obscure.

I'm running a post apocalypse near-future role play about shapeshifters, insanely xenophobic pseudo-american hyper patriots, and autocratic bunker colonies. If something [i]that[/i] obscure can survive, I'm sure an RP about arabic culture certainly can, so long as there's a suitable conflict to drive the story forward that people can relate to.

EDIT

Also, America, not culturally varied?

Snort.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_United_States]You don't notice it because you live there[/url]. As an outsider (Canadian), you have plenty of cultural diversity. You simply treat it differently than we do. You're a cultural melting pot, taking the most prolific aspects of each culture and putting them into this myriad concoction known as American culture. Canada is Multicultural, we emphasize identifying and enjoying the different subcultures rather than putting them all in the same pot and mixing them together.

They're both equally valid ways of cultural recognition: Integrating parts of a culture or accepting a multitude of different cultures are both examples of a culturally diverse society.