Re: Conlangs in RPGs...

Patrick,
I couldn't get into your website (you listed the URL as
http://members.xoom.com/saevsu)--do you know if it's temporarily down or
what?

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Patrick Dunn wrote:

> For a campaign I plan on running quite soon, I invented a very simple
> language for goblinoid races, since the PCs are likely to be taken captive
> by the Orkish Warlord Galag.  It's exceedingly simple because I want my
> players to get the hang of it, if they like.  (Of course, the warlord
> himself speaks fluent Riekspiel, the common language)
:-)  For the Black Wall, which I ran for nearly a year, I gave a language
guide (http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/blackwall/lang.html) telling what
languages were spoken were, but as I wasn't a conlanger yet there wasn't
any more detail.

I think, for the non-linguistically oriented, an exceedingly simple
language would perform great "local color" functions, too.

> Here's a sample conversation the adventurers are likely to run up against:
>
> The players, of course, won't get the translation.  ;)  {x} is pronounced
> /S/ and {j} is pronounced /Z/.
>
> sti u drugdrugthexox!  -- bind their feet
[snip]
Neat!  (I'll have to remember your orthography..."x" as /S/ is actually
rather cool.)

In the Legend of the Five Rings campaign Joe and I were running (and hope
to resume this semester), I used random mangled Turkish phrases.  (Latin,
French, German *and* Korean were all out for simulating the
foreign-language encounter, because there were people who understood
them...)  I did screw up and use "sÜt" (milk) instead of "sÜ" (water)
when the Burning Sands people were excited about the subject...(sorry, I
can't figure out how to get a lower-case u-(?)umlaut(?).  But hey.

YHL