swearing

[Rip]

Hey folks,

I'm curious as to how many of you 'swear' in your game world, as a DM. I know when I DM'ed tabletop I never swore but I find that I wanted to use it for message board playing. Now my players that joined were well informed of the fact that the game was to be more adult oriented and that there will also be the use of cuss words.

Now I have contemplated the use of modern swear words, f-word, w-word for the most part and decided to use them. Players have adapted and have used the occasional outburst. When players are in more seedy areas I find I use it then more consistently.

Now I can write a damn decent story line, as a matter of fact I've got players pretty intrigue, however I would like to spice up the vocabulary but I am not good at swearing and mixing it in with the fantasy setting. If any would provide links or offer some suggestions, both serious and comical, that would be great.

I don't want this thread to be deleted due to people maybe getting carried away, in fact I'm not sure if I've crossed the line with this suggestion, but please be discreet if you plan on using more of the offensive words by using @#!* as the substitute. I know this is a weird request so I do appreciate suggestions.
I'm sort of looking for phrase like 'Son of a orc wh*$@' that type of thing.

Sorry in advance to the admins if this thread needs to be locked or deleted.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

Not much call for it, in general.

"Creation's Blight"
"Prophet's Stones"

are the two in-game swears I encourage. The former is used by druidical types and the second is used by less-devout members of the Church of Light.

As for the more traditional four-letter Ango-Saxon words ... **** 'em.

 

[Desdichado]

"Modern" swear words come across as modern slang, and therefore would ruin the mood for me of this being a fantasy setting removed from the modern world we know (and love.) That said, I do like to come up with all-new swear words, often bsed on ingame religion and the like.

 

[francisca]

Since we play at my dinner table, and my 4-year-old is always somewhere about the house, there is a no swearing rule at my table.

 

[Tsyr]

Other than that big old water-holding-back device, and the occasional semi-humourous exclamation of "Bloody hell!", not much swearing goes on at our table... And even that's pretty subdued. Mostly it just breaks the mood.

 

[Rip]

Hey I respect the fact that some don't use it etc., and I for one, like I said, never used it during table top games. So regardless it is only for the eyes of myself and the consenting players.

I had also made a list of slang words for ingame that I have ongoing and kept in a separate post so players can translate the meanings. I'm just out of ideas.

Please ignore the thread if the subject matter is of no interest. I'm not here to rile people up.

 

[Skarp Hedin]

For phrase-based cursing, I'd go with something with some in-game impact, something like "Creation's Blight" that BiggusGeekus mentioned. For those more ah, scatological terms -- way I see it is that we're not speaking dwarven, elven, or even common, we're speaking English, so use of the English term is appropriate, since it's just, ah, translated.

THis assumes you want to use scatological curses -- some cultures might not use them, etc. Maybe gnomes think poop is funny, so it's not a curse for them, who knows.

 

[Pielorinho]

Now I have contemplated the use of modern swear words, f-word, w-word for the most part

W-word? You're messing with us, right?

We swear some in our game, but not hugely so; really, it depends on the character whether and how much they swear. A mild-mannered bookkeeper is a lot less likely to swear than a grizzled sergeant.

Guy Gavriel Kaye's excellent novel Sailing to Sarantium has a cool soldier in it with a mouth like a, well, like a soldier. He's positively inspiring in terms of coming up with hair-curling medieval-sounding curses, many involving farm animals and the target's predilections. Good stuff!

In general I avoid curses like "By the hammer of Moradin!" People tend to swear in a profane manner, whether through scatology, religion, or both; I like to keep my swearing in a similar vein.

Daniel

 

[Tsyr]

Maybe gnomes think poop is funny, so it's not a curse for them, who knows.

Only in the proper context, such as the context of a big person's shoe. Any other attempts to link gnomes and fecal matter will result in a lawsuit from the G.A.G. lawyers for defamation of gnomes.

 

[PowerWordDumb]

Re: Re: swearing

W-word? You're messing with us, right?

LOL! I was just gonna ask too!

While we do swear at the table about bad rolls, it's not very involved stuff, and if it goes beyond a syllable or two it's unlikely to be used.

In-character, I don't think anything worse than a "Go to hell, you bastard!" has been uttered. Strange, but we just don't swear much in character. Not that I wouldn't like to or that I have a problem with it, it's just as someone else mentioned, modern F-bombs and the like just feel out of place, and I lack the knowledge of cool-sounding ancient cursing methods to do it right without sounding like some hopped-up LARPer or Vampire player.

For a while there I could do some respectable Planescape-esque "cutter" dialogs, but that's faded over time. I considered picking up Gary Gygax's "Cant" book, but the overall composition turned me off.