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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Feb 12, 2018 18:35:21 GMT -5
To the GMs/Referees here - I know many of you have drawn from our world & history in creating your campaign settings to one degree or another.
How do you decide what to include from our world & if you include it, how do you tweak it to fit your setting?
Do you ever mine real world languages in your designs - such as in naming your lands & people? If so which languages do you pull from?
In the past I used my study of Near Eastern history, cultures & religions to inform my cultures - in how they form & evolve, not the cultures themselves; though I do pull elements from them. I also used Old English in a setting I was working on but ended up scrapping as I didn't care for where it was going.
I've been debating that after my revisions to my current Campaign setting I might create a 'Sword & Sorcery' + 'Weird Fantasy' type setting that uses Sumerian, Latin & either Old English or Proto-Germanic to craft the core cultures, pantheons & monsters for the setting. Though I'll mine aspects of real world cultures but I want to tweak them to fit the flavor of the setting. As I'll be using real world languages some of the deities will share similar names & aspects with real world Sumerian, Roman & Germanic deities but that is because of the limits of language not being lazy. This is just an idea I am coming up with; whether or not it becomes realized or not I do not know. If it does, it could eventually replace my Skarn setting as my default setting for my campaigns.
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Post by The Old Ref Himself on Feb 12, 2018 18:39:50 GMT -5
Great topic, have an exalt. I am getting offline right now, but will have to contribute to this thread later.
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Feb 12, 2018 21:26:18 GMT -5
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Post by The Master on Feb 13, 2018 13:54:17 GMT -5
To the GMs/Referees here - I know many of you have drawn from our world & history in creating your campaign settings to one degree or another. How do you decide what to include from our world & if you include it, how do you tweak it to fit your setting? I draw from many of those that are listed here and from others, but I don't know that I pay a lot of attention to where I steal from, so it is not like I could easily make a list of this came here and that came from there. I don't really make conscious decisions and I just use what feels right at the time. Do you ever mine real world languages in your designs - such as in naming your lands & people? If so which languages do you pull from? I just pick names that sound cool to me and they come from all over, not just one specific source. In the past I used my study of Near Eastern history, cultures & religions to inform my cultures - in how they form & evolve, not the cultures themselves; though I do pull elements from them. I also used Old English in a setting I was working on but ended up scrapping as I didn't care for where it was going. I don't know that I have ever had the time to think about how they formed and evolved. Have you written any of this down? I've been debating that after my revisions to my current Campaign setting I might create a 'Sword & Sorcery' + 'Weird Fantasy' type setting that uses Sumerian, Latin & either Old English or Proto-Germanic to craft the core cultures, pantheons & monsters for the setting. Though I'll mine aspects of real world cultures but I want to tweak them to fit the flavor of the setting. As I'll be using real world languages some of the deities will share similar names & aspects with real world Sumerian, Roman & Germanic deities but that is because of the limits of language not being lazy. This is just an idea I am coming up with; whether or not it becomes realized or not I do not know. If it does, it could eventually replace my Skarn setting as my default setting for my campaigns. I would love to see whatever you do. |
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Post by mao on Feb 13, 2018 14:25:19 GMT -5
There is an amazing episode of the Smithsonian Channel series "Sky View" It is called Mystic England and Ireland, it give sky shots of supernatural ish places
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Feb 13, 2018 14:37:16 GMT -5
I have as well, I basically took bits & pieces from various cultures I've read about, tweaked them to fit my desired culture I was developing - at least concerning the World of Skarn. I did that with the World of Skarn & Jandigara. I basically mined Gary Gygax's book of names as I developed these settings. I think about these things simply because they interest me in a world building & academic fashion. I did write up bits of this in my Skarn setting write ups, though I am not sure this was included in the stuff I posted so far. Thanks The Master , I'll keep the community updated on the progress on the project & any other I'll be working on. |
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Post by ripx187 on Feb 13, 2018 20:04:56 GMT -5
The study of language is definately interesting. Language is like water, it flows and pools and changes. Language has a life of its own. They are born, and they die. This was totally ignored until I matured and seen the way that languages can color a world. There is definately a lot to meditate on, I don't ever want to get too indepth because it just wastes time, in the spirit of D&D languages are abstract. What is the common tongue? More often than not I think that it is a cop-out, something to make our games easier to play, but what is it really? I personally believe that this is a trade language. You look at English and it is full of singular words from LOTS of different languages, but I don't think that that is really what common is. I think that it can be a very basic means of communication but is only relevent if you are dealing with Mathmatics and common items that are bought and sold. This language could be incorperated into your home-tongue, but I doubt that it was anything that you could write poetry with. You don't have to know any English to know what a Dollar is. There was actually a really good Reddit post about the subject of Alignment languages, the post is located at https://www.reddit.com/r/adnd/comments/7vkd1c/a_way_to_justify_alignment_languages/Here is the snippet that I really liked written by DrewpdooI think that that says a lot! I am really considering getting rid of Common as a default language. Common would be based off of the richest nations language, but have a heavy relience upon mathmatics. In other words, one could go to a market in a foreign city and be able to haggle for a price on a new shield. Both parties would know what is going on, but they couldn't discuss the weather. |
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Post by ripx187 on Feb 13, 2018 23:15:16 GMT -5
Dragon Magazine issue #66 had a few really descent articles about languages.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2018 0:21:34 GMT -5
What is the common tongue? I think of it is a game-ism. The same way everything on the equipment list costs XXX gold pieces instead of silver or copper pieces, or magic-users can't wear armor, or clerics can't wield edged weapons, etc. It exists as a way to make the game a bit easier to play but the system can readily be adapted, something referees are encouraged to do in the rules themselves, to a much more complex system. A referee can have multiple major languages. Or, have everyone speaking a native tongue and only grudgingly switching to Common when the PCs wish to communicate. Or dialects/pronunciations of Common that are difficult for the PCs to understand. For a quick pickup game? All PCs and 20% of intelligent monsters speak Common! |
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Feb 14, 2018 2:25:03 GMT -5
The study of language is definately interesting. Language is like water, it flows and pools and changes. Language has a life of its own. They are born, and they die. This was totally ignored until I matured and seen the way that languages can color a world. There is definately a lot to meditate on, I don't ever want to get too indepth because it just wastes time, in the spirit of D&D languages are abstract. What is the common tongue? More often than not I think that it is a cop-out, something to make our games easier to play, but what is it really? I personally believe that this is a trade language. You look at English and it is full of singular words from LOTS of different languages, but I don't think that that is really what common is. I think that it can be a very basic means of communication but is only relevent if you are dealing with Mathmatics and common items that are bought and sold. This language could be incorperated into your home-tongue, but I doubt that it was anything that you could write poetry with. You don't have to know any English to know what a Dollar is. There was actually a really good Reddit post about the subject of Alignment languages, the post is located at https://www.reddit.com/r/adnd/comments/7vkd1c/a_way_to_justify_alignment_languages/Here is the snippet that I really liked written by DrewpdooI think that that says a lot! I am really considering getting rid of Common as a default language. Common would be based off of the richest nations language, but have a heavy relience upon mathmatics. In other words, one could go to a market in a foreign city and be able to haggle for a price on a new shield. Both parties would know what is going on, but they couldn't discuss the weather. I am not a fan of Common language either, it didn't make sense to me. You take Latin, it was the Imperial governmental & Temple language, but each Provence had its own local language depending on the local peoples who made up the citizenry. The same thing happened in Assyrian Empires, initially was the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian but it was later replaced by Imperial Aramaic; while Sumerian survived strictly as a Temple language among the scribes. I am not a fan of alignment languages they never made sense to me. I will not use them or common tongue, they'll use the local language and the most powerful local state where they grew up and did trade with their community. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Apr 3, 2021 11:08:01 GMT -5
Referring back to the OP, I use a lot of inspiration from books, movies, fairy tales and all the various things I have read, watched or experienced in life, but IMO most of that (for me) is done at a subconscious level and not as a planned out and written out thing before the game. I do TOP DOWN design for the big picture thing (how many planets, how many moons, the arrangement, number and size of the continents and major islands, mountains chains and major canyons, large swamps or deserts, etc) but in play everything at that point is for the most part BOTTOM UP and that is done on the fly in the moment as an improvisational event at the table. All of those inspirations mix and flow out spontaneously under the pressure/need of "now" in game. I create my NPCs, my unique magic items and unique monsters all on the fly. Generally my dungeons are created on the fly and nothing exists until the players decide to enter. I will deliberately have corridors pass through another corridor and occupy the same space with no contact between the two as one of the many things that makes mapping really tough as some of my dungeon areas are multi-dimensional. I do not do a lot with language (not my forte) but I do a lot with other things from time to time.
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Post by mao on Apr 4, 2021 4:22:19 GMT -5
If you don't use the real world, you are not doing it right
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Post by hengest on Apr 4, 2021 22:00:37 GMT -5
Referring back to the OP, I use a lot of inspiration from books, movies, fairy tales and all the various things I have read, watched or experienced in life, but IMO most of that (for me) is done at a subconscious level and not as a planned out and written out thing before the game. I do TOP DOWN design for the big picture thing (how many planets, how many moons, the arrangement, number and size of the continents and major islands, mountains chains and major canyons, large swamps or deserts, etc) but in play everything at that point is for the most part BOTTOM UP and that is done on the fly in the moment as an improvisational event at the table. All of those inspirations mix and flow out spontaneously under the pressure/need of "now" in game. I create my NPCs, my unique magic items and unique monsters all on the fly. Generally my dungeons are created on the fly and nothing exists until the players decide to enter. I will deliberately have corridors pass through another corridor and occupy the same space with no contact between the two as one of the many things that makes mapping really tough as some of my dungeon areas are multi-dimensional. I do not do a lot with language (not my forte) but I do a lot with other things from time to time. First of all, good thread and good post here. Re: the bold text above, this makes me wonder about top-down design, as all my attempts have been pretty granular (start from a room, object, experience or event). I think that starting out I would be seriously under the spell of Tolkien and his (in my opinion, brilliant) synthesis of a Flat Earth history with the historical and real-world ball-shaped planet. But speaking of other writers and planet-types, Larry Niven's Ringworld concept or even a Dyson sphere are ideas I haven't seen adapted to a fantasy setting. Something to think about or look for... As to myself and my own attempts, I feel anxious about basing anything too closely on real-world cultures simply because I don't know any of the ancient or medieval cultures very well. I don't think others shouldn't mine whatever they want, but I always feel like my attempt won't make sense or will later collapse if I just "strip-mine" some culture I've read about. I do enjoy older forms of English and often try to go for names that are either English in origin or were formerly used widely in English. As to place-names, I haven't published or posted anything like this yet, but I do like place-names that are immediately "meaningful" to anyone who speaks English. "Bluebell Valley," "Duckweed Lake," "Greenville," "Black Rock Quarry." I suppose my answer to the question "How do you decide what to include from our world & if you include it, how do you tweak it to fit your setting" is simply that I take things that suit my taste at the micro-level (i.e. taken out of context) and then I try to imagine a similarly pleasing immediate context for them. For example, I like the "Saul" and "Paul" spoons from the Sutton Hoo burial hoard. Image:  I would be inclined to mostly divorce this from its context (not that I have anything against its context) and simply go with the idea of "twin" spoons. Then, what is there to do with "twin" spoons? - Spoons for twins
- Spoons for a king and queen ("His" and "Hers")
- material focuses for an MU in a magic system built on balance. One effect needs to be balanced by an opposite effect within a certain time frame or the "imbalance" affects the caster.
Now we've already gotten pretty far from the original real-world item and have the option of exploring this as a magic system and tossing the material element or retaining it. Or retaining the item as a non-functional in-world "symbol" of the principle of the magic system.
Now, this I just made up as an example, but it gives an idea, I guess, of how I might incorporate something from the real world that might or might not be recognizable once it's in the game world.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Apr 5, 2021 2:52:12 GMT -5
If you don't use the real world, you are not doing it right On the other hand, I consider using the real world to be just one option among many. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Apr 5, 2021 2:55:29 GMT -5
I suppose my answer to the question "How do you decide what to include from our world & if you include it, how do you tweak it to fit your setting" is simply that I take things that suit my taste at the micro-level (i.e. taken out of context) and then I try to imagine a similarly pleasing immediate context for them. For example, I like the "Saul" and "Paul" spoons from the Sutton Hoo burial hoard. Image: I would be inclined to mostly divorce this from its context (not that I have anything against its context) and simply go with the idea of "twin" spoons. Then, what is there to do with "twin" spoons? - Spoons for twins
- Spoons for a king and queen ("His" and "Hers")
- material focuses for an MU in a magic system built on balance. One effect needs to be balanced by an opposite effect within a certain time frame or the "imbalance" affects the caster.
Now we've already gotten pretty far from the original real-world item and have the option of exploring this as a magic system and tossing the material element or retaining it. Or retaining the item as a non-functional in-world "symbol" of the principle of the magic system.
Now, this I just made up as an example, but it gives an idea, I guess, of how I might incorporate something from the real world that might or might not be recognizable once it's in the game world.
I like what you did with names and I think this is a good method to come up with stuff as well. |
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Post by Admin Pete on Apr 23, 2021 15:07:47 GMT -5
What is the common tongue? I think of it is a game-ism. The same way everything on the equipment list costs XXX gold pieces instead of silver or copper pieces, or magic-users can't wear armor, or clerics can't wield edged weapons, etc. It exists as a way to make the game a bit easier to play but the system can readily be adapted, something referees are encouraged to do in the rules themselves, to a much more complex system. A referee can have multiple major languages. Or, have everyone speaking a native tongue and only grudgingly switching to Common when the PCs wish to communicate. Or dialects/pronunciations of Common that are difficult for the PCs to understand. For a quick pickup game? All PCs and 20% of intelligent monsters speak Common! I am all for a Common Tongue, when you try to run a game with a lot of weight tied to the various languages and you make it really hard to communicate, what you get is this, it is fun for one session, but after that it is nothing but a time waster. If your group is a bunch of linguists, they will probably love it, the rest of us ordinary people there to have fun, not so much. |
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Post by Morton on Apr 24, 2021 23:32:33 GMT -5
I don't dip over into the real world for my game very much with one exception. The religion of all my monsters is based on a real world murdering, raping, slaving cult and they all worship the same demon and his "prophet."
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