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Devil's Advocate
 
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I find it interesting that Accents in LRP are normally dubbed "Silly Accents". I think it's probably perfectly possible to do an accent in a sensible way.*
To avoid the whole only talking in accents thing (which would get confusing) I think it's better that when first meeting a foreign tongue speaking, they speak in accented gibberish:
"guttertag mon herr, sprechen zie deutsch? Ya dumkoff, die bahnhoff is kaputz"
Or basicly german sounding nonsense words (heavily accented).
The PC's can either ignore them (if they can't speak the language) or start to conversve by speaking in an accent:
"Ah, a german! Guttentag! how are you today, and how may i help you?"
*except welsh, that's ALWAYS silly.
If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.
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Heroic Knight
Group: System Moderators
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Tart (7/21/2006)
To avoid the whole only talking in accents thing (which would get confusing) I think it's better that when first meeting a foreign tongue speaking, they speak in accented gibberish:
"guttertag mon herr, sprechen zie deutsch? Ya dumkoff, die bahnhoff is kaputz"
Or basicly german sounding nonsense words (heavily accented).
The PC's can either ignore them (if they can't speak the language) or start to conversve by speaking in an accent:
"Ah, a german! Guttentag! how are you today, and how may i help you?"
That is an interesting idea (but it does still use accents), As long as the languages were clearly defined it work well I think. It still has the problem of picking accents that people can do... but I like it.
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-Governor of California throwing a hunting knife into a man's chest
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Heroic Knight
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balor (7/20/2006)
One way, obviously, is to make it a hard skill and expect the players to learn another language (whether real world or made up) but the effort involved would be massive for little in game benefit that I can see.
Given that the number one thing people do at LRP events is talk to each other, I think the effort involved in adding hard-skill languages is definitely worthwhile. (Analogically, it doesn't really matter how combat is handled in low-combat games, but in high-combat games, players frequently relish the chance to make use of hard-skill combat ability).
Especially (IMO) when it comes to written languages. I've seen so many language physreps which are simply English (standard, idiomatic UK english at that) rendered in a silly font that requires a bit of glyph-substitution to decypher; and I think that robs most of the joy of thinking about how words and meanings change and grow and influence things.
Remember, Tolkien wrote most of his stuff simply as an excuse to give a living development and history to his languages. I'd love to play in a lrp with such an intricate background.
(chris)
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Prodigal
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Tart (7/21/2006)
To avoid the whole only talking in accents thing (which would get confusing) I think it's better that when first meeting a foreign tongue speaking, they speak in accented gibberish:
"guttertag mon herr, sprechen zie deutsch? Ya dumkoff, die bahnhoff is kaputz"
Or basicly german sounding nonsense words (heavily accented).
The PC's can either ignore them (if they can't speak the language) or start to conversve by speaking in an accent:
"Ah, a german! Guttentag! how are you today, and how may i help you?"It might work- although it sounds as if it might feel a little bit artificial (it would depend partly on the style of game). There’s also still an issue of what to do if there are two people discussing important secrets in German while non-German people are around- it’s really irritating to wander past some people in mid-conversation, overhear something interesting, and then discover that apparently your character didn’t hear that after all because everyone involved was speaking a different language.
Ravensbourne (7/25/2006)
Given that the number one thing people do at LRP events is talk to each other, I think the effort involved in adding hard-skill languages is definitely worthwhile.Sadly, the reverse of this is that it means that any system you use for physrepping different languages has to be unusually idiot-proof, providing you expect it to get used regularly. That doesn’t make it impossible to design a really good one, but it complicates things somewhat.
WARNING: the information above may have been subjected to dangerously high levels of ignorance.
OOC (and on Pagga): Carrie
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