Wraith Form
Explorer
Ironically, that was written by the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood. So you dislike the FR setting, but you like this book? Heh. Funny.Jakar said:
Thoughts on Kalamar
- Thread starter Jakar
- Start date
Wraith Form
Explorer
I don't find the FR to be "rubbish", but I'm not going to hijack this thread. The spotlight should be on KoK, so I'll keep my comments to myself.
Buttercup
Princess of Florin
I think the Kalamar books are wonderfully inspirational. Though I've never run a campaign in the setting, my home brews always seem to have Kalamar influences in them. I particularly love the half-hobgoblins, the well developed human cultures, the idea of enslaved dwarves and of course the atlas.
Many of the published adventures are set in the Renaria bay area, and oddly that's the part of the world that interests me least. I have a bunch of notes for a campaign I was thinking of running in the Lake Jorak region, but which never came to fruition.
These days I'm in love with the Wilderlands, but honestly I can imagine cobbling parts of Kalamar onto that setting. I haven't looked at the Kalamar books for maybe two years, but this thread has got me thinking about combining the two.
I think the setting has a lot to offer the right DM & players. However, many people these days seem to have fallen for the kitchen sink approach of Eberron, so that might be why Kalamar is perceived as boring. In a nutshell, if you like Eberron, you won't like Kalamar. If Eberron leaves you cold, then Kalamar might be the setting of your dreams.
Many of the published adventures are set in the Renaria bay area, and oddly that's the part of the world that interests me least. I have a bunch of notes for a campaign I was thinking of running in the Lake Jorak region, but which never came to fruition.
These days I'm in love with the Wilderlands, but honestly I can imagine cobbling parts of Kalamar onto that setting. I haven't looked at the Kalamar books for maybe two years, but this thread has got me thinking about combining the two.
I think the setting has a lot to offer the right DM & players. However, many people these days seem to have fallen for the kitchen sink approach of Eberron, so that might be why Kalamar is perceived as boring. In a nutshell, if you like Eberron, you won't like Kalamar. If Eberron leaves you cold, then Kalamar might be the setting of your dreams.
wayne62682
First Post
I will just add one comment, having perused the KoK book a few times... the setting seems decent enough, but what has always gotten my goat about the setting is the firk ding blasting names! Half of them are nigh-unpronounceable and the other half look as though the Kenzer guys just hit up a random name generator for like 50 different names. Whether its cities, countries or the different names of the deities, I'm looking at the names and going "WTF??". That one little gripe has always turned me off from the setting; I like my settings to have heroic names that run off the tongue like Evermeet, or Calimshan or Khorvaire, or Breland, not oddball names that look like they came out of Cthulu and require you to cut out your tongue to pronounce properly. Maybe if KenzerCo put out a pronunciation guide demonstrating how these things should be said I would be more sympathetic to Kalamar.
Mark Plemmons
Explorer
wayne62682 said:
Actually, there is a pronunciation guide in the back of the Atlas.
I hear the "I don't like the names" argument every so often among gamers that have glanced at the setting, but I just can't agree with it. Let's think about Earth. Unless you're already familiar with the language, do you expect African, Chinese, Russian, etc. names to be easily pronouncable by non-native speakers? Of course not. But you can look at most of these names and tell solely where the name originates by the way the word looks and sounds. The same is true for the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting. Each culture has its own defined alphabet, language and grammar rules.
For example, Kalamaran uses the letters A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, TH, U, V and W (although they write them in a different script, which is also defined in the setting book). B, G, K, L, P, R, S and T are the consonants used most frequently. Vowel and consonant sounds are never found in pairs (except for the TH combination); consonants not separated by a vowel (and vice versa) are always separated by an apostrophe, which indicates a delay when spoken, e.g., P’Bapar (puh-bah-par), Ka’Asa (kah-ahh-suh). Such words with apostrophes also indicate that the name originally came from another culture and was at one time altered to Kalamaran.
In Kalamaran, the emphasis is on action. For this reason, verbs precede nouns, and adjectives and adverbs always follow the words they are describing. Verbs are short, typically one or two syllables, and nouns and adjectives are longer. Articles are usually only one or two letters long. Possessiveness is indicated by the prefix ka-; gender is defined by the suffix -i, -e or -u for male, female and neutral, respectively. Plurality is indicated by the suffix -l or -al. Mixed groups of males and females are always given feminine gender. The naming convention for towns and cities is as follows: villages and towns end with the suffixes -idu and -ido; cities end with the suffix -eta, and capital cities are preceded by the word Bet.
So if your character hears about a mysterious sword that recently surfaced in some place called Pipidu, he'll probably immediately realize that Pipidu is a Kalamaran town. What's even better is that the same is true for players. The longer a player adventures in the KoK setting, the more it becomes a real world to him, and he can place words like "Izvan" as Svimohzish, as easily as you or I could place "Keiko" as Japanese.
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