"...the ancient empire of the tieflings..." and Sword & Sorcery gaming

[Desdichado]

Like Earthling!

Yes! That too!

You wacky NorMericans! Why on earth would a single "i" at the end of a word be pronounced to rhyme with "eye"?

Why indeed would we pronounce 'i' as if it were the letter 'i'... :\

To me, the pronunciation controversy must be over where the emphasis falls: JEN-ah-see or jeh-NAH-see. I say the latter, because it flows better with the full name of each given race: fire genasi, water genasi, et cetera.

Yeah, jeNASSee works very well.

Although honestly, I don't think it's that great of a word to begin with. Oh, well.

Sahuagin, for me, has always been sa-HWA-gin. That's a throaty elision of the "hoo-wa" into "hwa".

Pretty much what I do, except with the accent on GEEN instead of hwah. That's the part that works with Spanish; using the hua as a hwa sound. I guess you could actually pronounce the 'u' and the 'a' as separate syllables, but that seems really weird to me for some reason.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

If they werent tieflings then it would be ok.
As long as they dont say that the tieflings had some sort of ancient empire in the already established campaign settings then I guess it would be fine for a new one.

 

[Blair Goatsblood]

In terms of 'ancient empire', I can see the appeal of it to a point.

But not the way tieflings look or the traditional role.

In some of the examples used in the OP, Melniboneans were mentioned. Not a bad comaprission as they have a direct link to Chaos via the pact with Arioch but they're all essentially humans in terms of appearance. Even Elric, an albino, isn't that far out of the reach of appearching to be human.

In many of the 'ancient empires', it's some type of serpent or lizard ruler when an inhuman ruler is mentioned.

So I guess I'm not seeing it..

Ahh, but I can take the mechanics for the Tiefling race, strip off the kewl devil-man appearance, and give it whatever appearance I like. Then I replace all references to "Tieflings" in whatever 4E adventure I'm using to whatever I'm using.

In other words, Serpent Men/Martians/Hyperboreans/Orichalans kill the Tieflings and take their stuff.

 

[Klaus]

Genasi - Jay-NAH-zee

Sahuagin - Sah-hoo-ah-GHEEN

 

[JoeGKushner]

Ahh, but I can take the mechanics for the Tiefling race, strip off the kewl devil-man appearance, and give it whatever appearance I like. Then I replace all references to "Tieflings" in whatever 4E adventure I'm using to whatever I'm using.

In other words, Serpent Men/Martians/Hyperboreans/Orichalans kill the Tieflings and take their stuff.

Only problem with that is will the game mechanics support it. Tielflings have varied in abilitity from 2nd edtion with random ability to a standard set of abilities and I don't think we have a full list of their abilities in 4e. Their abilities and ways of maintining their empire may rely on those abilities and thus be inappropriate for "taking their stuff" as it would require such a rewrite that you might as well just go with the X in the first place.