Snoweel
First Post
So is this:
But the rest of us are able to ignore the stuff we don't find funny.
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Setting-fluff terminology? Simple or Unique?
So is this:
But the rest of us are able to ignore the stuff we don't find funny.
I'm a big believer in names, but I am also a big believer in making things easy on the party; using names similar in sound to how a group functions or appears, using a key handful of names for things the players are likely to focus on and using a small appendix so that at least some of the party are not utterly baffled. It can work, so long as player bafflement is kept to a minimum.
Agreed. It's vital to pick your battles and minimize the number of new concepts your players are required to assimilate in order to grok your game world. Furthermore, a completely new element is easier for players to assimilate than a change to an existing element (and the removal of an existing element is easier than either).
When designing a game world, I hardly ever rename stuff. It doesn't offer enough bang for the buck. I prefer to reserve my "new concept points" for actual new concepts... I'll even go so far as to invent historical figures like the primeval elf-lord Eladar, just so I can stomach continuing to use the name "eladrin." It's a stupid name IMO, but it's what we got.
(This, incidentally, is why "just re-fluff the things you don't like" is not a sufficient answer to bad fluff in the rulebook. The vast majority of a well-built game world uses the default fluff in order to make it easier to comprehend; every piece of bad default fluff the DM has to re-do is several pieces of good custom fluff that have to be left out.)
But funny.
To take your question more seriously, I'd probably pick an English title for them that more or less summarizes the concept, with a bit of dwarven flavor... "earth companion" perhaps.
But if your players are like 95% of the players I've encountered, expect a lot of jokes along the lines of "scanque," "hor," and "hookah" no matter what you call them. (And the more seriously you take it, the more they'll make fun of it.)
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Paul_Klein
Explorer
I can only join the choir on this:
Do yourself and your players a favor and don't overdo this.
Unless you add the proper translation directly after every instance of your invented words, I wouldn't use them in a Wiki at all.
Take a clue from novels: If the author wants to get the point across, that people use a foreign language, she will often write one or two sentences in the foreign language followed by the translation. Afterwards it's strictly standard language. Everything else is a pain to read.
Naturally, there are exceptions to the rule, like 'A Clockwork Orange'... (however, I DID think it was a pain to read
)
Do yourself and your players a favor and don't overdo this.
Unless you add the proper translation directly after every instance of your invented words, I wouldn't use them in a Wiki at all.
Take a clue from novels: If the author wants to get the point across, that people use a foreign language, she will often write one or two sentences in the foreign language followed by the translation. Afterwards it's strictly standard language. Everything else is a pain to read.
Naturally, there are exceptions to the rule, like 'A Clockwork Orange'... (however, I DID think it was a pain to read
)There are cases when using simple english is much better than making up your own words (or taking them from foreign languages) and there are cases when it is the other way around.
If something may be precisely described by one or two english words, name it this way. You gain nothing by using exotic word here, and you create something the players have to memorize.
Use new words for ideas that take long to explain in detail, or that carry unusual aspects of meaning, and at the same time are important for the setting. For example, if a race or culture has a strong tradition of children being brought up by different people that they biological parents, it's a good idea to name "biological mom", "biological dad", "upbringing mom" and "upbringing dad" using made up words, as it makes the concepts easier to communicate and less likely to cause confusion.
I read several books that were heavy on author-created terminology and still were very good - but all of them used the rule mentioned above, of giving exotic names only to concepts important for the fiction and rarely if ever used IRL.
If something may be precisely described by one or two english words, name it this way. You gain nothing by using exotic word here, and you create something the players have to memorize.
Use new words for ideas that take long to explain in detail, or that carry unusual aspects of meaning, and at the same time are important for the setting. For example, if a race or culture has a strong tradition of children being brought up by different people that they biological parents, it's a good idea to name "biological mom", "biological dad", "upbringing mom" and "upbringing dad" using made up words, as it makes the concepts easier to communicate and less likely to cause confusion.
I read several books that were heavy on author-created terminology and still were very good - but all of them used the rule mentioned above, of giving exotic names only to concepts important for the fiction and rarely if ever used IRL.
Barastrondo
First Post
I think Umbran's said it well; the actual made-up word works best when it's something that isn't easily translated (like 3e's "urgrosh"), but it never hurts to always have a memorable translation at hand, like "spike-ax." Then your players can pick and choose, depending on whether or not they're language buffs. I muck around with languages maybe more than I should, but I tend to drag in the actual terms only if players ask. For example, I'll throw together some potential elven words if someone wants a good name for a character, or I need to name an elven weapon. But generally I don't expect anyone to remember or care what the elven word for "cat" is; maybe they'll remember the elvish name for their sword mean's "Cat-Devil", but if they just call the sword Cat-Devil and disregard the translation, works for me.
Look at the first Star Wars film. The names for all of the fantasy elements are very basic: Force, star destroyer, droid, blaster, hyperdrive; all words you can basically understand as a newcomer without a glossary of terms. Heck, the names for the characters are pretty non-fantastical: Luke, Old Ben, Han (with a surname that makes it basically "Hans"). I don't think that anyone would say that Star Wars doesn't manage to create a sense of the fantastic, even with the very simple terminology.
If I ever want to create verbal oddity in-game, I act like a wan knock-off of Gene Wolfe and repurpose English. In Dark Sun, to emphasise the smallness of the known world, I would describe large distances in dekameters instead of kilometers; in a standard Points of Light setting, where civilization is sparse on the ground of a large world, I'd use leagues. I would, if feeling ambitious, play with morphology to create new terms for especially fantastical concepts, but I'd keep it simple and rare: off the cuff, as an example, to build a giant elf-people living tree-building might be to "enroot" it, or to "perarbor", or whatever. Keep it rare, and keep it relatable, and it's less likely to confuse players or to make them roll their eyes.
If I ever want to create verbal oddity in-game, I act like a wan knock-off of Gene Wolfe and repurpose English. In Dark Sun, to emphasise the smallness of the known world, I would describe large distances in dekameters instead of kilometers; in a standard Points of Light setting, where civilization is sparse on the ground of a large world, I'd use leagues. I would, if feeling ambitious, play with morphology to create new terms for especially fantastical concepts, but I'd keep it simple and rare: off the cuff, as an example, to build a giant elf-people living tree-building might be to "enroot" it, or to "perarbor", or whatever. Keep it rare, and keep it relatable, and it's less likely to confuse players or to make them roll their eyes.
Keldryn
Adventurer
I was thinking about the first Star Wars film when I first read the original post yesterday. The film gives a few sentences briefly setting the stage in the opening crawl, and then drops the viewer right into the universe, with little explanation. Within the first hour of the film, the viewer easily picks up that in this fictional universe, they call robots "droids" and Luke's car is called a "speeder." Mos Eisley is a "spaceport" and the farmers on Tatooine use "moisture vaporators." Those are not the conventional terms that we use in English, but they are (or are derived from) English words and their meanings are similar.
Even the made-up words are simple and easy to pronounce. The little desert scavengers that capture R2-D2 are called "jawas." Luke's father and Ben Kenobi were both "Jedi knights" -- and despite the word being used perhaps half a dozen times in the film, kids were pretending to be "Jedi" after seeing the movie a single time. Han Solo's tall, furry companion is a "wookiee." The "sand people" ride "banthas." There's just enough to make the universe depicted in the film feel exotic, but not so much that the viewers' are left trying to remember a long list of terms.
As you noted, the character names are generally very simple as well. Even the alien characters named in the film have unusual-sounding but simple names: Greedo, Jabba the Hutt, Chewbacca.
Compare these to the names given to many of the background aliens 10+ years after the fact by West End Games and novelists: M'iiyoom Onith the H'nemthe (bless you!), Kardue'sai'Malloc, Lirin Car'n, Figrin D'an, Hrchek Kal Fas, Tzizvvt, Kitik Keed'kak.
I do appreciate when world-builders go to the effort to create distinct languages for non-human races; a few years back I was doing some research on constructed languages for the purpose of being able to develop the basics of a couple of languages to add some detail to the campaign world which I was developing. One of my players was nice enough to point out to me that "Chris, nobody cares about that stuff, and we don't even read a lot of the handouts that you give us already."
I still like to ground names of characters and places in the languages of their cultures of origin -- mainly to avoid having a bunch of names that look and sound made-up. None of my players speak any languages other then English (other than a bit of French from high school), so I'll borrow a real-world language to represent other races/cultures. I don't think I ever use foreign terms for anything other than character or location names. People are used to proper names that don't have an obvious meaning, so as long as it isn't too difficult to spell or pronounce, I'll name the cities of the elves by translating a two-word English description into Gaelic or Quenya. The sound and spelling of the translated result is more important for me than the meaning, so I'll modify the meaning until I get a translated word that I like.
If the players need to start keeping a dictionary of terms on the back of their character sheets, then to me that's going too far with the setting fluff. A few players really dig that sort of detail; however, in my experience, 95% of players don't want to be bothered with it. When I'm a player, I don't mind keeping a short list of perhaps half a dozen words to use to add a bit of flavor when speaking in character, but I don't want to have to refer to my glossary to understand what the DM is talking about.
