Flavorful text in my rpg?

Hi mindwarper, it sounds like you've put a lot of work into your magic system!

In regards to using your fictional language within the game, my recommendation would be to keep the fictional names for flavour text only. Any functional text - that is, the rules, mechanic names, effects - should all be in plain language for easier understanding.

Having an intricate and engaging setting is great, but it's important that it doesn't get in the way of the gameplay. Players won't naturally know your languages, which would make playing a game that uses that fictional terminology exclusively incredibly difficult to play.

The exception to this is proper nouns of course. You should use canon naming structures for your magic spells. But when it comes to describing how they work, the plainer your language the better.

There's a fine balance when using fictional languages! Perhaps if you feel comfortable sharing an example, we might get a better idea of what you're trying to accomplish. =)

I was an English major, focused on poetry and creative writing, and dual majored in Secondary Ed. Anyways, we were told that language can make or break a good setting - there's no middle ground. We were given examples like Dr. Seuss, where his languages are often silly and make no sense at all: outside the realm of a children's book (and sometimes, even in that capacity) nonsense languages can sound absurdly stupid. Executed well, like in Tolkien's books and (grudgingly) Christopher Paolini's books, language can add a level of immersion to your story.

It should be noted that neither of the latter authors force their language on you - in fact, while Tokien developed the whole of the Elven, Dwarfin, and even Numenorian languages, he hardly even uses any of them in the books - by hardly I mean *maybe* one or two isolated cases of Elven and Dwarfin. Paolini on the other hand - trying too hard to be Tolkien - used the languages a bit more often, and almost lost the effect. Instead, it seemed like he was running around saying "look, I made this awesome language, learn it! Learn it like those Lord of the Rings fans do!"

Creating fictional worlds and creating fictional languages are two entirely different skill sets. The best fictional languages are formed by people who have studied Linguistics and more importantly Etymology. Understanding how words are organized within a language (German/Latin/Spanish having genders for words, whereas English has none) through Linguistics lets you begin translating sentences by restructuring them (Japanese, for example, finishes questions with a verbal question-mark). Etymology then steps in, and allows you to "evolve" words from one language to another.

What you *don't* want to do is simply 'translate' your way through a dictionary. You want to translate on an "as needed" basis until you have created a set of parameters for each word/sound (all nouns end with '-do' for example) and a template for each type of sentence. Then you can begin creating a "world dictionary" if you want.

Developing a language is dangerous, and unless you are going to pack your rulebook with short stories to thoroughly explain the cultures and origins of the language, then I would avoid putting them in. Your book and your game exist in two separate vacuums. I should be able to pick up and enjoy your game without ever knowing about your books, and I should be able to sit down and read your book without having to play some sort of companion game.

Back in high school, I tried something similar for my build-a-spell system. It didn't add anything.

People will name their spells as they like. RPers will call their "10-die fire-based ranged attack" "Fireball," or "Jor'duns Flaming Vengeance," while people who play for the mechanics will call it "Fire Spell #1" or "10-die ranged fire attack."

As others have noted, developing a language takes training and skill. When I looked at my game notes 10 years later, I realized how little of both I had. One of my best decisions was *not* to use the linguistics system.

Your mileage may vary, but as a general rule, the less specific structure you introduce into your game system, the more flexible it becomes and the more types of games you can run.

Good luck!

The old computer RPG Knights of Legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Legend) had a build-your-own spell system where spells were made by combining syllables of the elven language. Each syllable of the spell name corresponded to target class, range, power, effect, etc.

When buying "premade" spells from NPC mages the spells were written in elven, which means that you had to get out the game manual and translate to figure out what they did.

When designing your own spells, there was the option of renaming it rather than leaving it as the elvish name. In practice I always gave English names to my spells because they were easier to remember.

Overall, I think that having spells in a mystical language is rather cool, but in practice most players are going to use their native language rather than trying to learn a new language.

Regards,
kos