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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 7651422" data-attributes="member: 3887">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.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.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).</blockquote>

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