Languages

Community Larp discussion
#1

I was thinking about combat skills and how I’d prefer there weren’t any and people who were good at fighting could just fight well.

Then I wondered if there were other areas with similar skills that were good in a larp. Obvious ones like “hiding” and “sneaking” of course come to mind but I was wondering about “mapping” skills in a WYSIWYG kind of way.

Languages occured to me to be an area where some people know them and most don’t. We could map modern languages to racial languages. Something like:

French = Elvish
Maori = Fairy
etc…

That way, if you know the language, you can be the race and if you don’t you can’t. Elves would be rare and would talk with a sexy accent :smiley:

#2

German Orcs? yuch…
I’d say Elves would speak Italian. Italian has more of a sing-song like rythm… While in French, when spoken quick, you’d still get snappy sounding sentences

#3

Cool idea.
Although it would only work in a game that didn’t require many NPC’s at all.

You could also use groups of similair languages for races, that kind of represent regional dialects.
Eg: French & Italian for Elves
German and Dutch for Orcs
Maori and other PI langs for Fairies
Russian and Polish for Demons

#4

you know I think there would be a few people rather put out by the maori language being used for Fairies.

#5

I think the idea would be that we’re finding languages that there are actually speakers of the in the LARP community rather than one that would fit the stereotypical idea of a race. I’m inclined to think there are probably mroe French speakers given the New Zealand high school system than Italian which, for the most part (as far as I know) can only be picked up at university level.

I wish there were more Hungarian players around so we could have our own remnants of a fantasy race with our langauge that no one could understand. :frowning:

#6

I wonder what race Afrikaans would be? Im actually surprised thinking about it now that there aren’t more South African Mordavians considering how many of us there are in NZ

#7

what next, only those players capable of shooting fireballs from their hands are allowed to be Mages? :confused: I don’t know about anyone else, but one of the things I like about Larping, is the fact that it differs from real life. If you incorporate real languages into a game, you have to realise that, whether intentional or not you also incorporate the real life associations people make with the language. For example, if I were confronted by an elf speaking french, the first thing I would think of is the knights from Monty Python and the holy grail, not something I find particularly elfish. Another thing to consider is what about players who have human characters that are Italian, French or Polynesian and wish ?

I think certain aspects of larping such as combat proficiency do lend themselves to WYSIWYG rules, but restricting the type of character a person can play based on their ooc abilities and knowledge is wrong. I mean if you take this idea to the extreme, all anyone will ever end up being able to play is their real life selves.

#8

only people speaking Romanes should be allowed to be Gypsies. Good luck finding teacher though :stuck_out_tongue:

#9

Pretending to fight feels a bit like actually fighting, and hiding really does feel like hiding.

But speaking Japanese feel nothing like speaking Dwarven (I’ve tried this in a larp years ago). It’s not immersive, you’re constantly reminded of whatever you associate with the language, which isn’t the fantasy race. I don’t think it was immersive for the other people either.

If you had lots of people from multiple countries at a larp, like they do in Europe, and had “sides” base on your country of origin, I could see an argument for matching fantasy langauges to real ones. Because then everyone is largely speaking their native tongue to other native speakers, which would be immersive. But not when there’s hardly anyone who speaks much other than English.

#10

You do of course know it is possible to get completly made up languages. Elvish is only one of a myriad of them. do a search and see for yourselves. If you really wanted to do this, it is something that could be done, but it would take a great deal of deication from the players of these creatures to actually learn a language for their specific race.
You migt even want to give some kind of incentive for them, other than just being able to communicate with others of their own race. Setting up groups for this is to hard really. This is a very interesting idea, once you get past the idea of using something that is usual for the extraordanary. I think if you are going to do it, then do it all the way. I was translating my spells for Meryldoth into Tolkiens black speech, as it had a nice sound, gutteral and nasty, but sadly he was murdered and it never got finished.

R

#11

runes could be used for dwarves, and im sure there are other alphabets for other races. prehaps everyone speaks english, but writing is in a different alphabet so only those who know how to read it could. this would be a little easier to learn then speaking as well, and would mean noone like myself would make fools of themselves by mispronouncing things.

#12

The Demons from a few Mordavia’s back were planning on rusing Runes. I began to learn them but never ended up having the full dedication to go all the way. In the end my character died on the first night from a player character conflict. I didn’t really care, in fact it was a bit of a hoot really.

BUT, can you imagine how I would feel if I had learnt another language for this character, and them have them die in less time it took to take off my make up? Unless you are so rediculiously dedicated to your character, I don’t think its worth anyones time to learn another language to play a character in a LARP. If anyone is that dedicated to their character, I wouldn’t be very comfortable going into combat against that person.

#13

I would have used German & Dutch for Dwarves. Not because of the height thing but because of the German excellence in engineering and (slight) prudishness. :smiley:

#14

Well I’ve still got some fireworks left :smiley:

#15

[quote=“Ian”]The Demons from a few Mordavia’s back were planning on rusing Runes. I began to learn them but never ended up having the full dedication to go all the way. In the end my character died on the first night from a player character conflict. I didn’t really care, in fact it was a bit of a hoot really.
[/quote]

Actually, we DID use Runes. Elder Futhark, actually. Enough of us knew them beforehand to make it OK. There were a couple of scrolls around in the woods with interesting messages on.

Learning Elder Futhark as Demonik was reasonably easy as some of the letters are quite close to English (eg. R, M, B, A, F…)

I’m learning Elven cause it’s fun, and not only because I want to be able to play Elves. I do not, however, intend to learn French. Elven is actually based on Welsh and Finnish - I would consider learning Welsh if enough other people are willing to join in, but I don’t have that much time.