Gaming in foreign language

[Noldor Elf]

As I am staying one year in Austria and hoping to get try gaming in here also, I started to thinking about gaming in foreign language.

Do you have any experience from gaming either in foreign language or in the group, where multiple languages are used?

My friend told me once that during the sommer vacation they had have a gaming group where three languages were spoken as mother language: spanish, swedish and finnish. As that was a Middle-Earth game, they used those languages as representatives of different laguages in ME (if I remember correctly finnish became quenya, spanish adunaic and swedish rohan). Luckily the GM was able to speak all required languages. English, which all players could speak at least to some extend, duplicated westron (common). My friend told me that they had great time and it was cool addition to the game, that language barriers between characters and language skill really meant something.

 

[johnsemlak]

Just in my experience, I think it is generally tremendously diffiuclt to enjoy gaming in a foreign langauge unless you are very fluent in the langauge in question.

RPing is a langauge intensive activity. It involves vivid descriptions, complex actions, etc. You really need to be a strong speaker to be competent for that.

How good is your german btw?

If your German isn't really good, I would recommend finding other English speakers who game (either foreigners or English speaking Austrians).

 

[Noldor Elf]

RPing is a langauge intensive activity. It involves vivid descriptions, complex actions, etc. You really need to be a strong speaker to be competent for that.

How good is your german btw?

If your German isn't really good, I would recommend finding other English speakers who game (either foreigners or English speaking Austrians).

Unfortunately my german is currently in the level, where it would be a major hindrance in gaming. On the other hand I believe that I would be fluent enough in english to game with that.

 

[Dakkareth]

I haven't found a group to game with yet, but I'm fairly certain, that I'd be totally at loss gaming in German (as native speaker). All my books are in English and I don't even know the German terms for the rules :s. And how am I supposed to make up German equivalents for the Planescape cant?

 

[johnsemlak]

Just in my experience, I think it is generally tremendously diffiuclt to enjoy gaming in a foreign langauge unless you are very fluent in the langauge in question.

RPing is a langauge intensive activity. It involves vivid descriptions, complex actions, etc. You really need to be a strong speaker to be competent for that.

How good is your german btw?

If your German isn't really good, I would recommend finding other English speakers who game (either foreigners or English speaking Austrians).

Ooops, sorry Nolder Elf, I had been assuming you were a native English speaker, and didn't look at the location info in your profile.

Still, my advice is pretty much the same--gaming in langauges you don't speak very well can be very unenjoyable. Others may have different opinions however.

 

[Li Shenron]

I have been playing mostly in English so far, and I like it a lot. When we played in Italian there was a very different feeling, the names of everything really seemed to have another style. It wasn't worse, just different... some things sounded very uncool, while others were more evocative that their english equivalent.

However, were I to play in Finnish I don't think I would really be able to It would definitely force the DM to use basic words instead of enjoying storytelling an descriptions in a more elaborate way.

The idea you mention about playing each one in their own language is totally unheard by me... sounds great but terribly difficult! Would be very interesting to try anyway.

 

[Noldor Elf]

The idea you mention about playing each one in their own language is totally unheard by me... sounds great but terribly difficult! Would be very interesting to try anyway.

Naturally it requires a GM that can understan all spoken languages well. ;-)

If I remember it right, they run it so that actions etc. were described in english but in-character conversations were hold in respective languages. Naturally that also restricted characters a little bit, because it was impossible to play a character that knew a language that the player did not know. Of course that was not an issue for relativly short campaing during the vacation, but it could be an issue on other situations.

 

[diaglo]

Do you have any experience from gaming either in foreign language or in the group, where multiple languages are used?

yes. we gamed a whole session in klingon once or twice.

also in a Play by mail game the whole campaign was done in Tolkein elvish.


but that is just my inner geek showing.

 

[Thalantor]

I game in Holland, and we mix Dutch and English together mostly. For all the D&D slang and terms we use the english versions, the rest we do in Dutch. Magic missile just doesn't sound right as 'Magisch Raketje"... Or "Melf's Zure Pijltje"...

*shudders*

 

[Desdichado]

I'd have gamed in Spanish a few years ago, but now I doubt I'd feel comfortable; I haven't used it much lately, and my sk1llz are slipping badly.

What I'd probably do, assuming I were back in practice a bit, is build my less than mother tongue confidence into my character. Common wouldn't be his first language, and he'd speak it somewhat, at least, poorly, to represent my fluency with the language we're gaming in.