Worldbuilding: Is creating languages beneficial/necessary

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Judging__Eagle
Prince
Posts: 4671
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada

Worldbuilding: Is creating languages beneficial/necessary

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Among the recent sketches I've done for Frank's ACKs-based hexcrawl terrain and occupation types; I've also cobbled together an alternate language character set (which I'm reluctant to label an alphabet, since it's not initiated with characters named Aleph and Bet).

It doesn't seem necessary, but at the same time I keep thinking about how Tolkien's ME was founded upon Tolkien's insistence that the alphabet of a language denoted what its cultural values were, and shaped its storytelling.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
Mechalich
Knight-Baron
Posts: 696
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2015 3:16 am

Post by Mechalich »

Tolkien was a professor who studied, taught, and translated early British literature. Linguistics was a professional responsibility for him, so of course it became a huge part of his work, but there's nothing that says his methodology was any sort of essential method for storytelling, just that it worked for him.

If you are interested in linguistics and language informs your understanding in developing a fictional culture, knock yourself out. People say it is particularly helpful for things like nomenclature. However, don't expect anyone who is not similarly inclined to give a damn, because they won't.
User avatar
GnomeWorks
Master
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:19 am

Re: Worldbuilding: Is creating languages beneficial/necessary

Post by GnomeWorks »

Judging__Eagle wrote:(which I'm reluctant to label an alphabet, since it's not initiated with characters named Aleph and Bet)
...that's quite possibly the stupidest thing I've read all week.

"Alphabet" is, at this point, an acknowledged linguistics term, used to describe a particular type of writing system.
User avatar
DrPraetor
Duke
Posts: 1289
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:17 pm

Post by DrPraetor »

If that's the stupidest thing you've heard all week, you need to get out more.

What's funny is, the term alphabet now excludes Abjads, such as the phoenician abjad which was the first to start with characters named Alep and Bet.

Anyway, call them alphabets (or syllabaries or abjads or whatever) rather than naming them after the first two characters you make up.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
User avatar
GnomeWorks
Master
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:19 am

Post by GnomeWorks »

A syllabary is not the same as an alphabet.
User avatar
Chamomile
Prince
Posts: 4632
Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 10:45 am

Post by Chamomile »

Creating language for your world is like creating music for your world. It's beneficial (though still unnecessary) if you have the relevant skill, but will be anti-immersive if you try to just learn enough of the skill to worldbuild with it. The lack of genuine ability will show, and your world will be weaker for having something so half-assed added to it.
User avatar
hogarth
Prince
Posts: 4582
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 1:00 pm
Location: Toronto

Post by hogarth »

In my experience, that's the kind of world-building that GMs get a boner over but that has marginal pay-off for the players.
User avatar
Judging__Eagle
Prince
Posts: 4671
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada

Re: Worldbuilding: Is creating languages beneficial/necessary

Post by Judging__Eagle »

GnomeWorks wrote:
Judging__Eagle wrote:(which I'm reluctant to label an alphabet, since it's not initiated with characters named Aleph and Bet)
...that's quite possibly the stupidest thing I've read all week.

"Alphabet" is, at this point, an acknowledged linguistics term, used to describe a particular type of writing system.
Yes, a particular type of writing system. One which is based upon the Mesopotamian writing system whose first two characters are: Aleph (Bull), and Bet (Courtyard). Worldbuilding would be very boring if the only writing systems one limits themselves to are alphabets.

By comparison, when one is talking about ancient Norse writing systems, they are often reffered to as Futharks, not Alphabets; because F U Th(orn, or Y), A, R, & K, are it's starting characters.

The thing is, the first language I made up is is more of an adventurer's DwsrSk, than anything I'd feel comfortable descrbing as part of the writing systems of alphabets. It's most accurately described as a pidgin or patois language than a proper alphabet, using a mix of latin/greek reinterpretations of the sumerian/phoenician alphabets; plus some reversion back to their original pre-cuniform pictographic forms; plus some pictograms to make it seem more irregular/organic.
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Fri May 05, 2017 4:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
User avatar
rasmuswagner
Knight-Baron
Posts: 705
Joined: Mon May 16, 2011 9:37 am
Location: Danmark

Post by rasmuswagner »

Tolkien was a bona fide linguist, and his use of linguistics adds up to long-winded masturbation.
Every time you play in a "low magic world" with D&D rules (or derivates), a unicorn steps on a kitten and an orphan drops his ice cream cone.
Orca
Knight-Baron
Posts: 877
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 1:31 am

Post by Orca »

How fascinated are the people you game with, with details like that? Are there any who are really interested in languages?
User avatar
Judging__Eagle
Prince
Posts: 4671
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Chamomile wrote:Creating language for your world is like creating music for your world. It's beneficial (though still unnecessary) if you have the relevant skill, but will be anti-immersive if you try to just learn enough of the skill to worldbuild with it. The lack of genuine ability will show, and your world will be weaker for having something so half-assed added to it.
For the most part, languages help a lot more with writing fiction than they do help frame a game setting. However, the mechanics of any game will will drive the player's narrative into incentivized paths. In terms of what a language does for a game, Languages need to have mechanical benefits for having them; if players are ever going to care. Players in D&D care about Infernal, Dragon and Elven far more than they do about Roper, Halfling, or Grimlock. Specifically b/c the first three are avenues to potential power; and the last three are languages for monsters that aren't clear avenues to power.

Right now I'm mostly thinking of "languages" as ways to help abstractly frame how communication will happen between groups meeting for the first time. Which is important because I'd rather aim for Frank's "hostage trade" military paradigm over the typical D&D "reduce to 0HP" status quo. I'd rather use pre-defined, abstracted concepts, of languages maps that PCs/NPCs can use to communicate with each other; over creating summary lexicons for concrete languages. As this is for a game instead of fiction, in-setting languages would be abstract lists of topics that players know their character is conversant in with other speakers of the same language.

The potential idea that seems to stick out the most is one where certain strata of society have their individual lingua francas as a result of chrono-cultural drift and that each stratum's disuse for unrelated topics, combined with focus upon its related topics has continually changed languages over time. Creating hyper-focused profession-specific jargon/pidgin/patois that only specialists can fully captivate and express. Ideally this will make various character archetypes have social circumstances where they alone can represent their party best.

One downside is that people in the [Origin Story/Black Forest] tiers would be limited to the Provincial Vulgate; and maybe a professional specialty language. However, I'm not conceptualizing a system where [In Media Res] PCs are generally unable to communicate with the people in the next valley. Ideally each [In media Res] PC would start with no less than three languages: their provincal vulgate, adventurer's cant, one specialty cant, the supernatural cant for the source of their supernatural powers.

Language can also help to keep the art style consistent among character types, as well help to distinguish and define cultures. Consistent art style, can help immerse, players into the setting. While noted inconsistencies can indicate potential adventure.



Right now I'm thinking of one of two models:

-Regional patois; with an Adventurer, a Trade/Faith, and a Secret cant that is used to communicated between areas. This would be like the "hardest" option Frank & Kieth describe for using languages (i.e. where Lapp, and Farsi, are options, and "Common" is not)

-The Kitchensink Model; borrowing ideas of what happened with Latin in the Post-Roman collapse (Latin military terms became Dark Ages Noble/Political terms; became an international language with high and common uses for theology &or law); and imagined as if applied the contemporary 2017 English language.

e.g.
Languages Villagers, Tradesmen, & Merchant Care about [Origin Story/Black Forest Tier]
-Provincial Vulgates (Regional; Agriculture, Neighbourliness, )
-Market Cant (Universal; Goods, Weight, Measure, Inventory)
-Non-Adventuring Guild Pidgins (Universal; Guild-specific)

Languages Nobles, Scholars and Priest care about [In Media Res/Action Tier]
-Adventurer's Patois (Adventuring, Equipment, Supernatural)
-High Ancient (Science, Engineering; Karmanics (i.e. AS' Universal Powers))
-Low Ancient (Honour, Purity, Longevity, Succession, Law; Arete (i.e. "Complicated" Combat RPS+ bid-mechanic))
-

Languages Luminaries Know
-Psaimonology (the trifurcatry of Summoning, Trapping and Binding Psaimons & Goblins) (Fire, Burning, Salt, Wishes)
-Alchimerastry (the pictograph pentalogoue of Alchemy (Organic & Inorganic), Lightning, & Monsters (Elder & Shoggoth)) (Water, Suffocation, Seeds, Dreams)
-Cthonecromantic (the freezing undertongue of Revenant of Wraith flight and stay) (Ice, Numbness, Sand, Rebirth)

Languages Elders Know
-Anything from Lovecraft I guess; Yithian seems to stick out as being older and used as a catalogue of trans-chronal information, but there's likely a pile of others that would also fit the bill. Leng perhaps.
-
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
GâtFromKI
Knight-Baron
Posts: 513
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2011 10:14 am

Re: Worldbuilding: Is creating languages beneficial/necessary

Post by GâtFromKI »

Judging__Eagle wrote:It doesn't seem necessary, but at the same time I keep thinking about how Tolkien's ME was founded upon Tolkien's insistence that the alphabet of a language denoted what its cultural values were, and shaped its storytelling.
This is as important as having physical laws (like "how does magic respect energy conservation ? If it doesn't, why isn't the world highly industrialized using any kind of magical free-energy generator?") or a realistic economy/society.

In other words: nobody cares. If you like it, build your world around it, otherwise, do not bother.

...

Actually, "everyone speak common language" is the best solution in any story. Even in LotR, at no point they need a hobbit/orc interpret, and Gorbag and Shagrat argue in English because fuck you. Linguistic is important in LotR only when it doesn't impede the story; in other words LotR uses Hogan's Hero's linguistic system: German people speak English with a German accent, because that's what German people do I guess.
Last edited by GâtFromKI on Fri May 05, 2017 8:39 am, edited 4 times in total.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

The closest I've come to caring about making languages for an RPG is when I decided that halfling language at least partly consisted of using text speak phonetically. So laughing sounds like "Lol Lol" or "Rofl rofl" if it's something hilarious. And "Stfu" was a frequently used curse. It was a decent gag so long as I didn't overuse it.
Voss
Prince
Posts: 3912
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Voss »

Judging__Eagle wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Creating language for your world is like creating music for your world. It's beneficial (though still unnecessary) if you have the relevant skill, but will be anti-immersive if you try to just learn enough of the skill to worldbuild with it. The lack of genuine ability will show, and your world will be weaker for having something so half-assed added to it.
For the most part, languages help a lot more with writing fiction than they do help frame a game setting. However, the mechanics of any game will will drive the player's narrative into incentivized paths. In terms of what a language does for a game, Languages need to have mechanical benefits for having them; if players are ever going to care. Players in D&D care about Infernal, Dragon and Elven far more than they do about Roper, Halfling, or Grimlock. Specifically b/c the first three are avenues to potential power; and the last three are languages for monsters that aren't clear avenues to power.

Right now I'm mostly thinking of "languages" as ways to help abstractly frame how communication will happen between groups meeting for the first time. Which is important because I'd rather aim for Frank's "hostage trade" military paradigm over the typical D&D "reduce to 0HP" status quo. I'd rather use pre-defined, abstracted concepts, of languages maps that PCs/NPCs can use to communicate with each other; over creating summary lexicons for concrete languages. As this is for a game instead of fiction, in-setting languages would be abstract lists of topics that players know their character is conversant in with other speakers of the same language.

The potential idea that seems to stick out the most is one where certain strata of society have their individual lingua francas as a result of chrono-cultural drift and that each stratum's disuse for unrelated topics, combined with focus upon its related topics has continually changed languages over time. Creating hyper-focused profession-specific jargon/pidgin/patois that only specialists can fully captivate and express. Ideally this will make various character archetypes have social circumstances where they alone can represent their party best.

One downside is that people in the [Origin Story/Black Forest] tiers would be limited to the Provincial Vulgate; and maybe a professional specialty language. However, I'm not conceptualizing a system where [In Media Res] PCs are generally unable to communicate with the people in the next valley. Ideally each [In media Res] PC would start with no less than three languages: their provincal vulgate, adventurer's cant, one specialty cant, the supernatural cant for the source of their supernatural powers.

Language can also help to keep the art style consistent among character types, as well help to distinguish and define cultures. Consistent art style, can help immerse, players into the setting. While noted inconsistencies can indicate potential adventure.



Right now I'm thinking of one of two models:

-Regional patois; with an Adventurer, a Trade/Faith, and a Secret cant that is used to communicated between areas. This would be like the "hardest" option Frank & Kieth describe for using languages (i.e. where Lapp, and Farsi, are options, and "Common" is not)

-The Kitchensink Model; borrowing ideas of what happened with Latin in the Post-Roman collapse (Latin military terms became Dark Ages Noble/Political terms; became an international language with high and common uses for theology &or law); and imagined as if applied the contemporary 2017 English language.

e.g.
Languages Villagers, Tradesmen, & Merchant Care about [Origin Story/Black Forest Tier]
-Provincial Vulgates (Regional; Agriculture, Neighbourliness, )
-Market Cant (Universal; Goods, Weight, Measure, Inventory)
-Non-Adventuring Guild Pidgins (Universal; Guild-specific)

Languages Nobles, Scholars and Priest care about [In Media Res/Action Tier]
-Adventurer's Patois (Adventuring, Equipment, Supernatural)
-High Ancient (Science, Engineering; Karmanics (i.e. AS' Universal Powers))
-Low Ancient (Honour, Purity, Longevity, Succession, Law; Arete (i.e. "Complicated" Combat RPS+ bid-mechanic))
-

Languages Luminaries Know
-Psaimonology (the trifurcatry of Summoning, Trapping and Binding Psaimons & Goblins) (Fire, Burning, Salt, Wishes)
-Alchimerastry (the pictograph pentalogoue of Alchemy (Organic & Inorganic), Lightning, & Monsters (Elder & Shoggoth)) (Water, Suffocation, Seeds, Dreams)
-Cthonecromantic (the freezing undertongue of Revenant of Wraith flight and stay) (Ice, Numbness, Sand, Rebirth)

Languages Elders Know
-Anything from Lovecraft I guess; Yithian seems to stick out as being older and used as a catalogue of trans-chronal information, but there's likely a pile of others that would also fit the bill. Leng perhaps.
-
Yeah, no. I even like languages and this comes across as bullsht no one will ever care about.

Also, It's deconstructed in a weird ass way (very few are actually functional languages peop would actually use) and then stuck with weird borrowings that don't even fit the rest of the model.
Harshax
Knight
Posts: 393
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2014 3:12 pm
Location: Chicago, USA

Post by Harshax »

I stopped geeking hard on languages and scripts like those discovered in Tolkien's works after I was well into puberty, but I do appreciate their inclusion in campaign material. I cite Tolkien, because I was exposed to his works so early in life that it's the literary equivalent of comfort food. Later, I tried to get into M.A.R. Barker and his Empire of the Petal Throne and just found it impossibly dense for my tastes. I suspect my inability to use the material is partially the fault of never being able to find enough entry level material in one place to make sense of it all, but the real reason has more to do with the atrophied language center of my brain that is a result of looking at the world through a single mono-cultural language.

I think the best use of language has nothing to do with presenting alphabets. Specifically when they can be used to associate localities and NPCs to cultures and help players chose thematically appropriate names for their characters. So when all the places in one corner of a map are chateaux and another corner are cantons, you've conveyed plenty about the surrounding politics without relying on extended exposition. Even the players least interested in the meta information of your world can make subconscious associations about places, people and pantheons by their thematically similar names.

If a fantasy language has that entry point, you can take it a step further if there is enough linguistic logic to support it. Take Harn. You can download a map of this famous island and toggle layers between the English place names and the Harnic place names. It's not only very pretty, but if script is your thing, you can immerse yourself into it even further by having those play materials support your fantasy. Another way that I appreciate Harn, is that it assumes you want the real-language equivalent of titles. The Earl of Tormau is just as much of a skulking dickhead whether you refer to him as Malnir or Earl. The Harnic troll is called a Nolah, but you can just call him a troll, if that's your native word for it.
It doesn't seem necessary, but at the same time I keep thinking about how Tolkien's ME was founded upon Tolkien's insistence that the alphabet of a language denoted what its cultural values were, and shaped its storytelling.
I'm not sure an alphabet conveys cultural values. It certainly conveys a culture's resources and material values. Runes are shaped the way they are because they had to be scratched into wood and stone before the advent of paper. There is clearly cultural values inherent in a language's morphemes, but outside of purely academic pursuits, I've only heard people use language sounds to make crass and racist jokes. Unless everyone at the table is going to speak Yon-Made-up-Fantasy-Speak, it's something that is best avoided. It's very natural (and easy!) to humorously associate foreign words with your native language and culture.
TheFlatline
Prince
Posts: 2606
Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:43 pm

Post by TheFlatline »

Judging__Eagle wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Creating language for your world is like creating music for your world. It's beneficial (though still unnecessary) if you have the relevant skill, but will be anti-immersive if you try to just learn enough of the skill to worldbuild with it. The lack of genuine ability will show, and your world will be weaker for having something so half-assed added to it.
For the most part, languages help a lot more with writing fiction than they do help frame a game setting. However, the mechanics of any game will will drive the player's narrative into incentivized paths. In terms of what a language does for a game, Languages need to have mechanical benefits for having them; if players are ever going to care. Players in D&D care about Infernal, Dragon and Elven far more than they do about Roper, Halfling, or Grimlock. Specifically b/c the first three are avenues to potential power; and the last three are languages for monsters that aren't clear avenues to power.

Right now I'm mostly thinking of "languages" as ways to help abstractly frame how communication will happen between groups meeting for the first time. Which is important because I'd rather aim for Frank's "hostage trade" military paradigm over the typical D&D "reduce to 0HP" status quo. I'd rather use pre-defined, abstracted concepts, of languages maps that PCs/NPCs can use to communicate with each other; over creating summary lexicons for concrete languages. As this is for a game instead of fiction, in-setting languages would be abstract lists of topics that players know their character is conversant in with other speakers of the same language.

The potential idea that seems to stick out the most is one where certain strata of society have their individual lingua francas as a result of chrono-cultural drift and that each stratum's disuse for unrelated topics, combined with focus upon its related topics has continually changed languages over time. Creating hyper-focused profession-specific jargon/pidgin/patois that only specialists can fully captivate and express. Ideally this will make various character archetypes have social circumstances where they alone can represent their party best.

One downside is that people in the [Origin Story/Black Forest] tiers would be limited to the Provincial Vulgate; and maybe a professional specialty language. However, I'm not conceptualizing a system where [In Media Res] PCs are generally unable to communicate with the people in the next valley. Ideally each [In media Res] PC would start with no less than three languages: their provincal vulgate, adventurer's cant, one specialty cant, the supernatural cant for the source of their supernatural powers.

Language can also help to keep the art style consistent among character types, as well help to distinguish and define cultures. Consistent art style, can help immerse, players into the setting. While noted inconsistencies can indicate potential adventure.



Right now I'm thinking of one of two models:

-Regional patois; with an Adventurer, a Trade/Faith, and a Secret cant that is used to communicated between areas. This would be like the "hardest" option Frank & Kieth describe for using languages (i.e. where Lapp, and Farsi, are options, and "Common" is not)

-The Kitchensink Model; borrowing ideas of what happened with Latin in the Post-Roman collapse (Latin military terms became Dark Ages Noble/Political terms; became an international language with high and common uses for theology &or law); and imagined as if applied the contemporary 2017 English language.

e.g.
Languages Villagers, Tradesmen, & Merchant Care about [Origin Story/Black Forest Tier]
-Provincial Vulgates (Regional; Agriculture, Neighbourliness, )
-Market Cant (Universal; Goods, Weight, Measure, Inventory)
-Non-Adventuring Guild Pidgins (Universal; Guild-specific)

Languages Nobles, Scholars and Priest care about [In Media Res/Action Tier]
-Adventurer's Patois (Adventuring, Equipment, Supernatural)
-High Ancient (Science, Engineering; Karmanics (i.e. AS' Universal Powers))
-Low Ancient (Honour, Purity, Longevity, Succession, Law; Arete (i.e. "Complicated" Combat RPS+ bid-mechanic))
-

Languages Luminaries Know
-Psaimonology (the trifurcatry of Summoning, Trapping and Binding Psaimons & Goblins) (Fire, Burning, Salt, Wishes)
-Alchimerastry (the pictograph pentalogoue of Alchemy (Organic & Inorganic), Lightning, & Monsters (Elder & Shoggoth)) (Water, Suffocation, Seeds, Dreams)
-Cthonecromantic (the freezing undertongue of Revenant of Wraith flight and stay) (Ice, Numbness, Sand, Rebirth)

Languages Elders Know
-Anything from Lovecraft I guess; Yithian seems to stick out as being older and used as a catalogue of trans-chronal information, but there's likely a pile of others that would also fit the bill. Leng perhaps.
-
It seems like you've already made up your mind and you're looking for kudos for all your brilliant work.

And the response from this thread is about what I'd expect from players. Fucks are not given.

Here's the thing. It's plumbing. It's out of sight of the players but is infrastructure to your own worldbuilding that lets you keep a consistent theme flowing through your world. If players want to know about it, sweet you can tell them. If they don't, it literally does not matter other than as a pretty toilet or faucet. When I built up my fantasy world setting I kept a notepad of how climates changed due to different global effects, not because I wanted to have weather in my game, but because I was trying to develop a world organically that had reasons- for me. Sure this one area is in the equivalent of the Mediterranian zone and should be incredibly fertile but it isn't because of X, Y, and Z. That means anyone living there is going to have to rely on raiding, piracy, conquering, or trade. The players never learned that beyond a superficial explanation.

If you're actually building writing systems that you expect to have an impact on the game world, like I'm going to have to learn your language to play in the game, and you intend to have linguistic discussions in character of the nature of language, this is pretentiousness of the highest degree and deserves a "go fuck yourself".
Omegonthesane
Prince
Posts: 3680
Joined: Sat Sep 26, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by Omegonthesane »

I didn't do any serious language related prep for my current campaign, however the dwarf Eldritch Knight decided that his culture cared only about Law/Chaos so kept being confused that the Common word "Lawful" didn't instantly connotate "correct and proper and all that matters" the way Good does.

Then ran with that kind of thing as a characterisation point here and there - the LE Republic's dialects have so much layered subtext as to require subtitles, while the Infernal words for "Good" and "Evil" are better translated as "naivete" and "pragmatism" - but that's pretty much decided on a case by case basis as it comes up.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Fri May 05, 2017 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath, Justin Bieber, shitmuffin
TheFlatline
Prince
Posts: 2606
Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:43 pm

Post by TheFlatline »

Omegonthesane wrote:I didn't do any serious language related prep for my current campaign, however the dwarf Eldritch Knight decided that his culture cared only about Law/Chaos so kept being confused that the Common word "Lawful" didn't instantly connotate "correct and proper and all that matters" the way Good does.

Then ran with that kind of thing as a characterisation point here and there - the LE Republic's dialects have so much layered subtext as to require subtitles, while the Infernal words for "Good" and "Evil" are better translated as "naivete" and "pragmatism" - but that's pretty much decided on a case by case basis as it comes up.
I'm cool with that. That's more cultural than being super concerned over the phonemes that are mapped to symbols.

Your examples are useful because they impart useful information to the players inside of a twitter-length statement.

Worldbuilding seems to be a lot like politics. If you have to explain it, you've probably already lost.
User avatar
nockermensch
Duke
Posts: 1898
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:11 pm
Location: Rio: the Janeiro

Post by nockermensch »

Setting up naming patterns should be reasonably important to any campaign world.

Developing languages and/or related writing systems beyond the need above is, as Chamomile said, like deciding music (or cuisine, or sports, or board games) for your world. Fun if you're already into it, but almost 100% window dressing that the players won't care about.
@ @ Nockermensch
Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.
Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.
User avatar
Judging__Eagle
Prince
Posts: 4671
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Lake Ontario is in my backyard; Canada

Post by Judging__Eagle »

I guess treating "professional" jargons/patois/languages as a variant on the mechanics for AS-style "Background Skills" is what I was aiming for. Speaking different languages is already covered by a Resource.

This idea is probably best kept in the art design notes.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.

While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
User avatar
tussock
Prince
Posts: 2937
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:28 am
Location: Online
Contact:

Post by tussock »

Tolkien translated things from English to Sindarin or whatever, and left the English bit in the book. Story-wise, the characters are reading Elf (and getting it slightly wrong, it's "say" not "speak"), but the readers are just using English.

So the main use of languages and scripts I see is a convenient place to lay the blame for a shit dice roll. It took long enough to open the door that you got a wandering monster, from the lake table, yes it's a tiny lake and a colossal monster, shut up, you read the elf wrong.

Trade Common, meanwhile, is fine. There were no lines in the ground where people stopped speaking one language and started speaking another, that's a modern thing from each national curriculum. No one knew how languages had developed because it never mattered that German had a different root to French, to anyone, ever, and lots of people spoke a mix of them until modern times.

This thing with German-speaking peoples that Hitler thought were the purebloods was just an artefact of which compulsory education system had been imposed on them the previous couple centuries, until then there wasn't an obvious "German" or "French" for anyone to speak.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
User avatar
Count Arioch the 28th
King
Posts: 6172
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Most of my attempts at worldbuilding have been described as "autistic" by my nicer friends and compared to tying a bunch of sticks together by my less nice friends. Language stuff is one of my attempts. These days I just run pre-printed stuff.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
hyzmarca
Prince
Posts: 3909
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Post by hyzmarca »

Creating an entirely new artificial language is a lot of work. And you can get almost as much mileage out of just using Klingon.

And it is correct that language influences thought patterns, but creating new languages is hard.
User avatar
Pixels
Knight
Posts: 430
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 9:06 pm

Post by Pixels »

Creating a bit of vocabulary isn't hard, creating a language is hard. If you want to add a bit of flavor to a race I'd heartily recommend the former over the latter.
User avatar
fbmf
The Great Fence Builder
Posts: 2590
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by fbmf »

I seem to recall the Dungeonomicon having a rant on developing languages in D&D, but I can't be bothered to verify.

For my home game, I come up with key phrases/idiomatic expressions in different languages mostly ripped from pop culture, but I've been playing more or less in the same homebrew campaign world for the better part of two decades, so a lot of them are in-jokes with my friends and I.

Game On,
fbmf
Last edited by fbmf on Mon May 08, 2017 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply