# Gamehackery: Valar Morghulis and DMing



## stevelabny (Jun 8, 2013)

I only speak one language and tend to think the exact opposite of most linguists - the quicker we get to one world language, the quicker we get over a lot of petty squabbles, but this was still a super fun read. 

A few random comments. While wookie and jawa are indecipherable (and I think SOME completely alien languages are ok) Huttese was constructed the "correct" way AFAIK. 

And while I spent a lot of time being against frak and sprock and grife and fictional profanity, I've warmed up to it over the years and will now usually roll with it if give any reason for its existence to hang my hat on, such as the Chinese is Firefly or obviously alien phrases. 

However, I would argue that Deadwood is the exact wrong way to do it. Modernizing everything completely destroys immersion. I watched 4 episodes of Deadwood and just could not get past the constant profanity - Deadwood Pancakes on YouTube is a perfect example of how ridiculous it is. 

I suspect your google translate --> risus monkey bit will be used quite frequently by people who read this post.


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## barefoottourguide (Jun 8, 2013)

I have a player in my group who speaks in Huttese quite regularly.


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## darkcyril (Jun 8, 2013)

Two points of order, and large pet peeves of mine. 

First, it's Wookiee, with two Es at the end.
Second, Wookiees speak Shyriiwook.  

I had a homebrew world where there were several different languages that had evolved from a few seed languages over the centuries. The players didn't pay much attention to it when they were creating their characters. By the end of the first session when they realized the only way they were able to get their points across were through a series of grunts, drawings, and interpretive dance, they all decided "maybe we should put some points into our language skills."


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 8, 2013)

darkcyril said:


> Two points of order, and large pet peeves of mine.
> 
> First, it's Wookiee, with two Es at the end.
> Second, Wookiees speak Shyriiwook.
> ...




Darkcyril - I'm going to make those corrections right now -- thanks for pointing them out.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 8, 2013)

barefoottourguide said:


> I have a player in my group who speaks in Huttese quite regularly.




Boy I hope you're running a Star Wars game.....


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 8, 2013)

stevelabny said:


> I only speak one language and tend to think the exact opposite of most linguists - the quicker we get to one world language, the quicker we get over a lot of petty squabbles.




Your idea, and the idea that an language is a window on a culture, are not mutually exclusive, by a long shot.  

I think that as English speakers, with a language that has incorporated loan words from hundreds of other religions, we may have a hard time imagining how difficult it might be to comprehend some concepts with a much more limited vocabulary. 

-rg


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## barefoottourguide (Jun 8, 2013)

Radiating Gnome said:


> Boy I hope you're running a Star Wars game.....



No, it's a One Ring Game. Fattest Elves anywhere.
Garrett


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## Morrus (Jun 9, 2013)

stevelabny said:


> I only speak one language and tend to think the exact opposite of most linguists - the quicker we get to one world language, the quicker we get over a lot of petty squabbles




I agree. As long as it's my language and dialect and not yours!  And therein lies the problem.

Incidentally, anyone who liked the magic language from _Dragonlance_ might like this thing I made:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/dnd_view_block.php?id=575


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## Traveller (Jun 9, 2013)

stevelabny said:


> I only speak one language and tend to think the exact opposite of most linguists - the quicker we get to one world language, the quicker we get over a lot of petty squabbles,




Do you also want a mono culture which is dull average of everything else? The OP put it very nicely Language is not only communication its a mind set, its rituals, its attitude and more importantly 
perceived attitudes. My Mother tongue is guttural, "loud" and flowing. If "we" get exited foreigners think we are arguing. When we try to translate to English (as in speaking to tourists or as tourists)
English speakers think we are extremely rude. This adds fun to a campaign (less so on tourist trips...)

On the "One-Unified-Language"
With the emergence of the "Internet community" several dying and almost dying languages got a boost that might even make them survive...


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## Challenger RPG (Jun 10, 2013)

I read somewhere that Tolkein created his books as a 'setting' for his 'language' of Elvish. He also apparently helped write the dictionary at the time and admitted that they 'just made up' the meanings of certain words. 

Star Wars is also pretty darn cool. 

--David


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## haakon1 (Jun 10, 2013)

Radiating Gnome said:


> terms like Valar Morghulis -- why is that so good?




Because it not random sounds -- it could almost be an Indo-European language.

"Valar" sounds a bit like the Latin for man "vir/virilis".

"Morghulis" sounds like morgue, murder, and for that matter Morgul and Mordor from Tolkien, so it's easy to believe it's something about death and/or bad assery.

Near Latin seems to be a popular way to invent fantasy languages.  If somebody just used Esparanto for Ancient Valarian, it would probably sound right.


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## Jhaelen (Jun 10, 2013)

Great article!

Oh, and everyone interested in languages should check out China Mieville's Embassytown. Although the novel has some flaws, its postulation of a (very) alien language it's still a brilliant and thought-provoking work.


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## Ratskinner (Jun 11, 2013)

Well, I kinda like the whole constructed languages thing from an intellectual point of view. However, I haven't found that its worth it to make up entire languages for a game. I _have_ developed an Open Office spreadsheet that is modifiable so that I can crank out long lists of names or words for any made-up cultures that have need of it. 

Personally, I despise "common" and the impact it has on the fictional universe(s). When I DM, I always make up different cultural areas and languages tied to the history of gameworld.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 11, 2013)

Big fan of different languages / dialects in my games. My players have a particularly memorable experience of powerful demons harassing them for nights on end, leaving messages that said "Noc Serum" in the sand, in the night sky with illusions, etc. In the game, "Noc Serum" translated to "Never Rest" in demonic. They were quite annoyed at the time, but remember the phrase to this day.

Anyways, good article. Read it all the way through, and enjoyed it. And yeah, I might mess around with the translate thing you wrote about... Thanks


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 11, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> However, I haven't found that its worth it to make up entire languages for a game.




You're probably right for most games -- and I certainly haven't gone to that kind of trouble. I think the challenge is always to make sure that if there's something that you're expecting your players to learn and/or understand, that it has a concrete payoff later on.  So, if your players are going to learn a language while they play your game, that should become an important piece of the puzzle of the game world. 

But if you're just making a small effort -- a phrase here or there, or a good idiom -- then it feels like it's a good dash of flavor that will help create uniqueness and immersion for your game. 

I think that's true of any game world detail, though. If you want your players to study a genealogy of kings, that had better be something that crops up later as critical knowledge to have. 



JamesonCourage said:


> Read it all the way through.....




LOL.  That's why we write them all the way through.....   

Seriously, it's nice to hear that people are getting something out of these rants. And knowing all too well how people read online, I take it as a real compliment that you read the whole thing.  

-rg


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## Sword of Spirit (Jun 11, 2013)

One relatively simple trick I use to get across regional differences, even with D&D's overly used Common, is to describe accents to the players.

For instance, in my Planescape+Spelljammer+multisetting campaign where multiple worlds are visited, I use the theory of parallel evolution of Common on different worlds (magically and divinely influenced, of course). Common is the language spoken by the latest expansive empire on each world. Many people don't speak it, but it's the most widespread human tongue.

So in order to inject some flavor into traveling around Wildspace and the multiverse, I assign accents of English to particular campaign settings. For instance Forgotten Realms Common (I desigate Chondathan) might sound like an American accent (with regional variants), Greyhawk's Common might sound British (with variants), Dark Sun's version could sound Australian, and Dragonlance could sound like Elizabethan English.

Players or DMs who are good with accents can use them, but even if the DM simply reminds them of what the accent sounds like every now and again, it gets the point across to the players and helps a bit with making the world feel a bit more immersive.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 11, 2013)

Sword of Spirit said:


> So in order to inject some flavor into traveling around Wildspace and the multiverse, I assign accents of English to particular campaign settings. For instance Forgotten Realms Common (I desigate Chondathan) might sound like an American accent (with regional variants), Greyhawk's Common might sound British (with variants), Dark Sun's version could sound Australian, and Dragonlance could sound like Elizabethan English.




Sounds like it works pretty well -- that's cool!

One thing I did just this weekend -- a PC acquired a magic item that's sort of a low-powered artifact. As part of it's effects, it grants her some knowledge of goblin engineering and allows her to speak goblin "with an archaic accent". My plan is to use formal articles and a few other gimmicks along those lines to create the effect of that archaic accent.  All it will really take is to use "thee" and "thou", etc.  

So, a goblin threat in that archaic accent might sound like "If thou will not tell me the password, I will gouge out thine eyes with a spoon." Or something like that.  

So, even small tricks of word choice or diction can be very effective to create a sense of personality and culture.

-rg


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 12, 2013)

Radiating Gnome said:


> LOL.  That's why we write them all the way through.....






Radiating Gnome said:


> Seriously, it's nice to hear that people are getting something out of these rants. And knowing all too well how people read online, I take it as a real compliment that you read the whole thing.



Well, to be honest, most of these articles (EN world, not yours exclusively) go by with me lightly skimming them. They're not about an area that interests me / too long-winded / not gripping / some other combination to this picky reader. But, this article was interesting enough for me to go through from start to finish, and so I did mean it as a compliment. Sometimes sentences seem to be there just for padding, and I start skipping the end of certain paragraphs because it gets repetitive (to me).

Not this time. It was interesting all the way through (to me). So, as a reader: thank you. As always, play what you like


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## Burrahobbit (Jun 12, 2013)

I liked how languages were handled in Ravenloft, specifically the 3E  White Wolf sourcebooks. Many of the domains in that setting were based  on either a real-world cultural analogue or a specific  mythological/literary source. The designers imported or incorporated linguistic elements from those sources (e.g., Romanian for the Transylvania-inspired Barovia, German for Falkovnia), and then, where analogues were not immediately apparent, they breathed some life and distinction into the domains by assigning them languages. 

At one level, there was a good bit of winking or punning, especially in the original names of domains and towns (Dementlieu, Invidia), but the use of languages accomplished two very cool things: first, they gave a kind of shorthand to understand the various societies of the setting and their relationships - (Port-a-Lucine is Paris; Lamordia is a rocky, coastal Switzerland). Second, the analogues started to suggest ideas on their own: if High Mordentish is French and Low Mordentish is Anglo-Saxon, what does that say about my character who speaks the one and not the other? If Rashemani names are basically Turkic, how will people look at a guy named Cengis in a little village full of folks named Hans and Wilhelm? 

This kind of real-world shorthand is nice, particularly for an RPG, where you can get a lot out of a quick connection. I'd be less enthused about a book full of 1-to-1 correspondences to real world languages (and not really accurate ones at that), but in a game, I think it works great.


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## Radiating Gnome (Jun 12, 2013)

Burrahobbit said:


> This kind of real-world shorthand is nice, particularly for an RPG, where you can get a lot out of a quick connection. I'd be less enthused about a book full of 1-to-1 correspondences to real world languages (and not really accurate ones at that), but in a game, I think it works great.




I think this is a pretty good insight -- one more way in which our expectations from a good game are very different from what we expect in good fiction. 

There's a challenge there, though.  

For Example: I work a lot with people putting together powerpoint presentations. They often assume that it's just fine to use the expedient of just doing a google search for a graphic and using whatever comes up, regardless of the copyrights of the owner of the image. 

Now, for a small internal presentation, that's widely seen as not a big deal. And, like eating grapes in the grocery store, it's far too small a cheat for anyone to care about putting a stop to it. But that doesn't really make it okay. 

So, maybe, because we create our games for an audience of 6, not 6 million; because we don't make any money on our games _(if you do, I want to hear about your system!)_, and because we don't have the time to invent whole new dialects every time we want to introduce a new culture... we take the expedient of making Dwarves Scottish, Elves French, and so on. Those are the grapes we steal. No one cares, it's probably just fine to do it that way, it's following long-standing precedents.... but it's not quite right, either.

I dont' know.  My dwarves aren't going to stop being Scottish (and not even real scottish, but that over-the-top Mike Myers scottish from So I Married An Axe Murderer) anytime soon.  But it's interesting to think about. 

-rg


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## Mallus (Jun 12, 2013)

Burrahobbit said:


> This kind of real-world shorthand is nice, particularly for an RPG, where you can get a lot out of a quick connection.



Spot on! 

A GM has to convey information & make an impression quickly. It's a live performance. Evocative and familiar-sounding names/language beats a glossary of invented words (almost) every time.



Radiating Gnome said:


> I think this is a pretty good insight -- one more way in which our expectations from a good game are very different from what we expect in good fiction.



Think of it this way: at the table, a role-playing game is more like live theater than written fiction. Everything is _spoken_. The experience is immediate, sequential, and fleeting -- there's no leisurely considering the text, no re-reading a prior section. There's only what gets remembered, so making a strong first impression -- ie, not confusing people too much with invented words or intentionally dereferenced invented cultures -- is (more often that not) a good thing. 

Which is why nBSG's "frak" is terrific: there's no ambiguity about what it means (and it sounds like an expletive to an English speaker). It's very effective. Another measure of its success -- it's used by mainstream media writers, in articles that have nothing to do with the nerd-o-sphere. It's made it into everyday language.



> So, maybe, because we create our games for an audience of 6, not 6 million; because we don't make any money on our games _(if you do, I want to hear about your system!)_, and because we don't have the time to invent whole new dialects every time we want to introduce a new culture... we take the expedient of making Dwarves Scottish, Elves French, and so on.



I think we choose expediency --grab the low-hanging fruit-- because it's almost always the better approach. 

For example, I DM for a PhD in linguistics. I'm fairly sure he has no interest in my half-assed dabbling in his field of expertise. And if he were to DM a linguistics-focused game -- bringing his training to bear-- it would be lost on me and everyone else at our table, as soon as things got more complicated than an NPC named "Gnome Chomsky". 

Its not that I don't care about language in my games. I do! A lot! But I try to limit myself to language the participants understand (excluding my occasional foray into traditional syllable slaw-style "fantasy sounding" names).


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## Michael Silverbane (Jun 12, 2013)

Ratskinner said:


> I _have_ developed an Open Office spreadsheet that is modifiable so that I can crank out long lists of names or words for any made-up cultures that have need of it.




That sounds pretty cool! If you wouldn't mind sharing, I'd love to see that.


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## Ratskinner (Jun 14, 2013)

Michael Silverbane said:


> That sounds pretty cool! If you wouldn't mind sharing, I'd love to see that.




Sure,View attachment 57784 this version has the most usage notes. The spreadsheet file is called "Imperial", because that's the language I was using it for.


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## KiwiRose (Apr 4, 2017)

Risus Monkey Cyhper appears to be gone. Does anyone know if it moved, or have we lost this awesome tool?


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