aramis erak
Legend
I've used them in both WFRP and D&D... the thing is, they're just codes.It seems like every rules set/setting that isn't historical has some group, class, race, organization, etc with secret runes, symbols, cant, etc which are intended to allow members to warn each other, kind of like hobo symbols from the 1890s-1950s.
I've always been interested in the idea/concept, but I've never really been able to put it to work in a campaign.
Has anyone made good use of them?
If so, how?
The secret signs mark relevant places. Ranger signs tell of good hunting, bad hunting, good camping, bad camping, bandit hideouts... and I mention signs but not their meanings if no one knows them. Thief's Signs? mark areas of low observability, direction of a sewer access, direction to the city gates and guardhouses, and marking which capo owns the local turf. Likewise, certain signs worn mark a thief as "undercover" or as "casing a joint" - two situations to avoid contact, while others indicate certain other professional situations.
The secret languages come in several flavors...
- Thieves' Cant is, much like modern gang slang, normal words used in unusual ways to avoid comprehension by outsiders.
- professional jargon - like modern police Ten-codes or fire-departmental casualty descriptors (Stay-puffed, Crispy.... ), or specific tool names (Fire: Pulaski, SCBA, pike, hook, ay-tripple-eff; Medical: 3-oh silk, 3-oh nylon, 10-blade, Vee-fib), but in an era where guilds forbid using the jargon when outsiders can hear, they are a code.
- alienated languages - such as a Jewish community using Hebrew, or a Polish community using Latin or Polish, to avoid "outsiders" understanding. It's not that the language is a secret so much as they use it to exclude others.
- Pidgins and Creoles... languages derived from mixing two languages, but which have become unintelligible to outsiders of either... Jamaican Patois, Hawaiian Pigin, Yiddish.
- Religious languages: many who use them don't understand them. Those who do understand them can use them for privileged communication...
Traveller had a table for pidgins/creoles intelligibility in a JTAS Article. I used it a few times, but it breaks the Space Opera feel I want.
The Guild Tongue for the Engineers is just engineering jargon - renaming things to keep the guild's secrets secret.
The wizards' guild tongue is their language of annotation of spellbooks... etc.
It usually is best to treat it as a key & lock kind of thing, IME.
A: I'm looking for any secret signs...
GM: you spot 3 groups on the building.
A: Do any of them make sense in Merchant Guilder?
GM: No, not really. Unless the guild has started marketing Mayoral Entrails...
B: How 'bout Physiker's guild?
GM: Surgery Forbidden - that's the middle group
C: Thief's Signs?
GM: Watchmen not bribable. And the other group, Sewer access in alley.