Author: Aengus Maqq Brude (---.76.22)
Date: 06-28-2002 13:06
I ran a game which was set in a Dark Ages Britan(on crack). We hade Norse invaders, Norman invaders (checked by King Arthurs(Arctos) alliance of Britons, Celts and Saxons), internecine squabbles and Pictish weirdness. I do tons of research on the period and decided I would make the Dark Ages with all the stuff I liked in it, therefore the "on crack" caveat. I made Latin more pervasive and longer lasting so we could have a sort of common tounge, of course my pc's foiled my plans.
They played a greek ship's captain, a greek n'er-do-well, a Jewsh educator from Toledo, a Frankish proto-paladin("We can kill but no raping!"), a norse rune-witch, a Picitsh warrior woman and a Rus Ranger. Boy did we have language problems! We had chains of communuication that were really hillarious. The Christian Frank was the only one who could explain things to the Rune-witch who translated to the Rus. The Jewish woman could tanslate latin from the Frank to Greek that the Olympian pagans ;the sailor and ner-do-well. It was quite funny for a while but it quickly became a pain in the ass more for me than the players. They were haveing a great time and their characters formed unusual associations due to the limits of their languages! For me it sucked,I could never remeber who spoke what when an npc had to talk to them...arrgh.
In play, I had worked out that a Saint would adopt the party(wheather they wanted to or not!) and manipulate the wolrd around them. Later I got the idea to have Saint Christopher grant them glossolalia so that they could freely understand each other! Not to cheeze it out too much, nearly every npc who heard the party speak to each other in tounges got freaked out in hurry. Burn them! Who will belive that St Chris adopted a Norseman? ;>
As far as pure fanatasy setting, how can we incorporate different languages without being too cheesy? Language is one of the biggies, if the THE biggie in defining culture. Elves, dwarves and their ilk think differently than humans in part because of their languages. Imagine if you live darn near forever you would have quite a strange language, mayhaps not one that changes fast but a wierd one none the less. How can we incorporate these types of things in D&D? I love adding cultural detail to all my games, it the Tobasco sauce of my RPG life! Any ideas?
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