Worldbuilding: Is creating languages beneficial/necessary

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Mord
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Post by Mord »

Having a spare alphabet (or whatever the fuck you want to call your set of squiggles) around could be handy if you wanted to produce sketches or props with in-character writing on them for your players' benefit. You still wouldn't need to put this much effort into language though.
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Hicks
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Post by Hicks »

Is it necessary? No, nobody cares. decipher script and comprehend languages are a thing, and even if we weren't talking about the legacy of 3.x nobody actually cares enough to learn a completely new language to sit down and have fun. I mean, how much would it add if you were required to play shadowrun in esperanto? what does that add? It's a completely needless barrier. I mean, i could go to Germany and get some German shadowrun books and learn goddamn German and then I have to convince 2 to 4 other assholes to learn goddamn German so they can ALSO READ THE GODDAMN BOOK to know how their abilities even work in the context of the game and then the MC passes them notes in German (?) because why? is it fun to obfuscate basic knowledge your character would know from the player of said character because you want another actual human being to fucking DECODE and ACTUAL FUCKING LANGUAGE so the game can progress?

Now go back and re-read that last paragraph, except replace every instant of the word "German" with "Your special unique code with its own special squiggles." That's right, not only have you wasted everybody's time by being needlessly obfuscative, but you did so in such a way that USING AN ACTUAL, REAL GODDAMN LANGUAGE WOULD HAVE AT LEAST GIVEN THEM A REAL-WORLD FUCKING SKILL. LIKE THEY COULD PUT "SPEAKS GERMAN" ON A RESUME AND SHIT.

So no. it is not at all necessary, and in fact could be extremely bad PR if the art department starts working with it. Because you made actual humans learn a code that's gonna be all over your books, and they will resent the shit right out of you. Every single piece of art with your words in it is basically going to be an expletive laden love letter to how much you and every thing else in their life sucks. Little preteen Suzie is gonna learn all about how the artist's former boyfriend Sven is a cheating manwhore. Probably gonna be hidden in plain sight on the cover of every one of your books, in the wall carvings of every ancient ruin.
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Thaluikhain
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Post by Thaluikhain »

I'd say something similar to Hicks, in that instead of making up a new language, you could take an existing language and become fluent in that, so you could use that in the game. If that sounds like too much work, surely it'd be even worse creating a language from the ground up?

Additionally, Tolkien created languages because he knew how to. A lot of his imitators just copied him, without stopping to wonder if they had his skill. The results often were embarrassing. People who aren't philologists or language professors are probably going to struggle with emulating Tolkien this way.
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