Sprachbund and Darklands (was: Re: Marked and Unmarked)

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Robert Hailman wrote:
>
> > Henrik Theiling wrote:
<snip>

> > > Maybe you say [spra:kband]? :-)
> >
> > Well, I'm studying German at school, so I pronounce it [SpRa:xbUnt] - or
> > at least as close as my Canadian mouth get to that. [Spra:xbund] on a
> > bad day.
>
> Ditto.  <wry g>
>
Excellence. ;-) Ook, that reminds me, a bunch of people are coming over
today to film a movie we have to make for German class. It's a detective
story about cocaine-dealing rabbis, (what do you expect? I worked on it,
after all!) and it's *really* bizarre.

<snip>

> > That's what I thought "Rathaus" meant, too. When I was younger, I had a
> > computer game called "Darklands" (well, I still have it, but...) which
> > is an adventure game set in mideval Germany. In all the major cities
> > there was a "Rathaus", and until I figured out what it was I didn't want
> > to go in, for fear of being attacked by giant rats. :-|
> >
> > Actualy, giant rats isn't *too* out of keeping with the game, but....
>
> DARKLANDS!  My boyfriend still has and runs that game.  I don't know a
> whole lot of medieval German history, but I *love* all the research that
> seems to have gone into the milieu.  For the record, the few times I
> tried it (it's sort of unstable on his system at least), I recall getting
> attacked by giant rats, too....
>
> (Oh.  He says the patch has fixed it.  New addiction?  Hmm....)
>
> YHL
Yes! You know Darklands, too? Sweet! There's a "Darklands" mailing list
on Yahoo! Groups that I'm a member of, but it's fairly low volume.

I don't know much German history either, but the game is mighty
thoroughly researched. Of course, it's all fantasy, soo...

For those who don't know, the Germany depicted in Darklands is what
Germans *thought* Germany was like in the 15th century - well, not the
geography, but it's filled with monsters and witches and...

I've never encountered rats, though.

There is a patch for Darklands, which brings it up to version 7, (or
rather, version .07 - just a result of MicroProse's *bizarre* version
numbering system) but even that has it's bugs. The archives for the
Darklands mailing list will have information about it.

I don't remember anything about giant rats.

--
Robert

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