Re: Glossotechnia, the card game

First, can I say that I really like this idea. It is very original!

My basic notion for Glossotechnia (my tentative new name for it)
> as a card game is this: there would be two decks.  The main deck
> includes cards like Phonemes (k, t, p, a, i, u, etc.), Syllables (CV,
> VC, CVC, etc),
> and Syntax cards (Subject-Verb-Object, Verb-Subject-Object, etc.).

 nitpicking: although using the S,V, and O paradigm is bestfor beginners,
you might like to consider changing that to S, V, and O (in any order) vs.
more pragmatically orientated ordering, or at least have a set with that for
more advanced players. I would advise having two or more 'subsets' of the
syntax card set; one subset containing all the S,V,O cards, one containing
all the 'pragmatic' cards (for example, you could have the 'new or
interesting information goes before the verb' system), etc. Only one of
those sets could be 'activated' at any one time, and to change from using a
pragmatic-orientated set to a S,V,O set (and vice versa) would require a
special card.
This would only make things more complicated, of course, and would not be
any good with beginners, so it is probably not worth doing. oh well.

The Phoneme cards consist of most of the phonemes
> of English, plus a few like /y/, /2/, /e/, etc., w

Oh, oh - you have to have retroflex sounds! They would be easy to explain to
your players, and they add a bit of spice.


> Then there is be the translation challenge deck -- a
> collection of translation challenge sentences; everyone
> would draw one at the start of play and translating that
> sentence into the game-language would be their goal
> to win the game.  There is another challenge
> card set face-up in the middle and no one can win
> with their private challenge until the group challenge
> has been translated.

I like that idea - it makes sure someone cannot just win strait off.

Maybe there is a time limit on coining your word(s) -- if you
> can't make the other players understand you within, say,
> 2 minutes, the next player gets to start their turn.  But if you
> can demonstrate the meaning of two or more words in the
> time limit, fine.  (Maybe it's easier to coin words like "this"
> and "that", or pronouns, in groups than one at a time.)

Maybe you should say that you can only coin more than one word if they are
related (e.g. you example of 'this' and 'that'). this would stop someone who
is a really experienced player getting all their words really fast. Just a
thought.


-Chad

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