| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| gutwrench |
Posted - 07 Oct 2011 : 10:36:44
I have a bit of a strange request and hope that the sages here can lend a hand.
I run a campaign in the 3.5ed Western Heartlands, using the Delimbyr Vale as our primary area. We meet in person, but with the use of an overhead projector connected to my computer and a heavily modded version of Neverwinter Nights, I can run a very quickly usable "virtual gaming table." Our campaign group varies in age.. some of us were rolling up 1st ed. chars when we were on Boy Scout camping trips, others are my youngest cousins, so the visual representation and bits of animation helped get them a bit more interested in a PnP campaign. (And FAR cheaper than buying a ton of miniatures!)
One problem I ran into was regarding languages. Despite most conversations with NPC's coming from direct interaction, there are plenty of opportunities for pre-scripted ambient conversations.
The technology side & Scripting, I have figured out. It's the flavor text(s) I'm having problems with.
To illustrate what I'm trying to do, let's say we have 3 of our characters that are within earshot of 2 NPC's Speaking Rashemi. All 3 of them will get a different visual of the situation.
1) Barbarian who speaks Rashemi will get an indicator that "NPC says in Rashemi: "Hello my comrade, how does the day fare for you?"
2) Bard with high INT will get an indicator that "NPC is speaking Rashemi" but will display a second set of text that should be representative of Rashemi as he can't actually understand it.. Taking a LOT of creative liberties with Russian I could diplay "Prvyat tvarch! Kvag Dalyea?"
3)lower INT fighter will simply see "NPC is speaking an unknown language" and the same text that the bard recieved as he cannot read it.
The Elven and Dwarven, I can figure out. We have examples of those, and even some phrases to play with. It's the other languages like Chondathan, Damarran, Illuskan, Aglarondan, Alzhedo, etc. that I need the help with. What do they sound like? Are there even a handful of phrases in these anywhere? Greetings? I know they're not supposed to be analagous to real world cultures.. I hate having to try and cheapen the realms by pointing at say Tethyr and saying "That's Renaissance Italy, nothing more!" That, and it seems a little easy to just grab a real world language and spell words improperly..
Any help would be greatly appreciated! |
| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| gutwrench |
Posted - 07 Oct 2011 : 12:08:47
Marc: Found it... VERY helpful! Thank you! |
| gutwrench |
Posted - 07 Oct 2011 : 11:56:40
It is a little confusing, and it is a VERY non-traditional method of running a game.
It's intentionally a strange hybrid. If you can keep a secret... I'm using the game to help teach math and reading to some struggling youngsters. 
It started with my younger cousins.. my dad is the oldest of 8 kids, and his youngest brother has children who are much younger than me.. I'm more "Uncle" than "older cousin".
My cousins are complete video game junkies and were under-performing in a few school classes. I devised a campaign to help them with those skills. Realizing I needed to speak to my audience, I used the projector along with the Neverwinter Nights toolset to help give them a visual as a hook... but we don't use the in-game combat engine, etc.. They have to roll dice, do the math, etc. NPC's sneak in their vocabulary words for the week when appropriate, and intentionally use a few words slightly above what they're used to (and there's a dictionary and thesaurus in the living room.. no web help to find a meaning). I've even cheated to the point of having a series of gates ask riddles (which were re-phrased versions of science questions..)
I've managed to get my sister in on it. With the help of Voice-over-IP and a little bit of voice morphing software, She has been able to play with her cousins and provide voice-overs for some of the creatures as well. So she gets to play with them as well
As I mentioned before, some of our older gaming group is part of this as well, and they're having a blast introducing the game to the younger kids. Part of it comes down to attention span.
When some of the other players are busy with turns, or maybe on a side-adventure of some sort, I can help keep some of the younger ones entertained by letting them "watch" on their laptops from a personal character point of view. They can move around on their own, interact with scripted NPC's etc. and there's always chatter in the background.That's part of where the language thing comes into play.
We're not far along enough with them yet to explain metagaming, and what a character knows versus what they know.. and sometimes the note passing thing or whisper caused a few problems.
e.g. the elvish ranger in the group speaks goblin and can understand the goblins. He knows that they don't plan on releasing the party if they tell their chief where the unicorn is. He understood the goblins talking in the background about which stew recipe to cook the party with.
It's far easier if the "kids table" sees something like "grrakh ashk googa moogum blatzag!" rather than one player overhearing it as he speaks goblin, and then having to keep explaining to the others that failed a sense motive check "No no, he's not going to cook you, you didn't understand that because it was in goblin"
I figured nothing had been done to the degree of Tolkien's elvish or Klingon, etc.. I suppose I was looking for something like the list of planescape cant (throw in a random "pike off" or "berk").. in FR novels, we get the Elvish farewell of "sweet water and light laughter.." etc. or even a few random bits in their own native tongues...
So for the most part, I get to wing it?  |
| Marc |
Posted - 07 Oct 2011 : 11:51:08
''Speaking in Tongues'' article in one of the Dragon Annuals has what you are looking for. |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 07 Oct 2011 : 11:01:27
I'm a little confused. All your players view the same display device (overhead projector) yet read individual texts scripted only for their characters?
As far as the languages themselves ... you'll find numerous words and phrases scattered throughout Realmslore. What the spoken language actually sounds like, especially when phonetic spellings are absent, is really anyone's guess (although they typically read into English well enough, for obvious reasons). I doubt any of the Realms languages have been constructed to the same degree as, say, Tolkien's Elvish tongues or Star Trek Klingonese. Most DMs whom I know (including myself) shamelessly apply stereotypical "foreign" accents to describe speech in the Realms, there are many correlations between the nations and peoples of Toril and those of Earth. Being a bad actor is just part of being a DM, and bad acting done in style leads players to emulate and invent more bad acting ... it may seem ridiculous, yet it's a consistent and vital aid through which DM and PCs intuitively identify and communicate a great deal of "non verbal" information relevant to the game.
[Edit]
lol, welcome to Candlekeep, gutwrench. Run while you can. |
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