The Articles of Dragon: "A New Name? It's Elementary!"

Since I was just writing about the use of foreign languages in roleplaying games, it seems only right that this week's installment of "The Articles of Dragon" should be Jay Treat's "A New Name? It's Elementary," which originally appeared in issue #72 (April 1983). Though it's a comparatively short article – just three pages and none of them are full pages – it's one of those articles that nevertheless had a profound influence on me. 

Treat begins by noting that "an appropriate and authentic name can add flair to any character's persona." He explains what he means by this by way of illustration. The Old English language has, to the ears of speakers of modern English, "the air of the exotic and archaic." Despite this, most of its sounds are familiar to us even now, making it relatively easy to pronounce. For that reason, Treat recommends using Old English names for fantasy RPG characters, since such names will sound plausibly foreign, while still being something the average gamer can say without much difficulty.

Even more than that, Old English names were typically made up of two or three elements, each of which had its own meaning. Provided one knows the meaning of these elements, one can construct a name that itself conveys something about the character so named. For example, he suggests that the name Windbearn, meaning "child of the wind," might make a suitable name for the King of Good Dragons, Bahamut, while traveling the Material Plane in human form. Windbearn is fine as a name in its own right, but it also reveals something – in this case a secret – about the person who bears the name. 

The article includes two random tables of elements, so you can easily create new names with the roll of some dice. Here's part of one of them to give you an idea of what they were like:

When I first read this article, I was thirteen years old and in the eighth grade. Though I, of course, already knew that all names had meaning, this was perhaps the first time I'd ever seen that fact made clear to me. To call it "revelatory" is perhaps too strong a word, but I can think of no other. In the months that followed, I took the lessons of this article to heart. As I began to lay the foundations for the Emaindor setting, for example, I specifically created a kingdom – Rathwynn – that took inspiration from pre-Norman England and I used this article and other sources to help me come up with appropriate names for the people and places there. This would eventually lead to my doing similar things for the other cultures of the setting.

That's why, even though "A New Name? That's Elementary!" is a very brief, probably forgotten article in the annals of Dragon, it's always been special to me. It's an article that further reinforced my growing feeling that language and names are important topics worthy of consideration in roleplaying, not mere afterthoughts. (It's also the forerunner of a series of other languages articles that appeared later this year in the magazine, many of which also captivated me as a kid, about which I'll have more to say in the coming weeks.)

What's in a Name?

Since I was a child, foreign languages (and foreign alphabets) have fascinated me. I'm almost certain that my fascination was a direct result of my having spent untold hours staring at the endpapers and appendices of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language that detailed the evolution of various writing systems and the relationships between Indo-European languages. Though I've never mastered any language other than English, I've formally studied a bunch of them, which has only strengthened my interest in tongues other than my own. Reading The Lord of the Rings probably played a role, too.

My fascination with languages inevitably carried over into my roleplaying games. Almost from the moment I discovered Dungeons & Dragons, I started creating riddles, puzzles, ciphers, and codes that depended on obscure, esoteric, and/or foreign words. I thought I was being clever, though, judging from the reactions of my friends, they weren't nearly as pleased with my brilliance as I was. Undeterred, I moved on to creating my own languages, complete with their own grammars and vocabularies, hoping that my players would want to make use of them in our games. Alas, outside of coming up with appropriate sounding names for characters and locations for my campaign setting, this rarely happened.

I think names are important. Having good, evocative names helps to lend a sense of place to an adventure or campaign, especially if they're meant to be something other than a generic fantasyland or galactic empire. One of my problems with a lot of RPG settings is that the frequently don't have good names, quite the opposite, in fact. Bad names – or even unimaginative names – take me out of a setting or adventure, which can lessen my enjoyment of them. I realize that not every roleplayer cares about such things, but, for me, they're important. A big part of my enjoyment of roleplaying comes from exploring an imaginary world and, in my opinion, good worlds have good names.

As a setting, Tékumel is well known for its use of constructed languages, most notably Tsolyáni, the language of the titular Empire of the Petal Throne. Everything in the setting, from monsters to gods to even coinage and units of measurement have unique names derived from Tsolyáni or another imaginary language. For someone like myself, that's a huge boon to immersion. However, I know plenty of gamers who are actually put off by it. They don't like having to wrestle with words like Ngóro or Dlamélish or Mu'ugalavyá when playing an RPG. Sure, words like these are more suggestive of a real world with a real culture of its own, but, if they get in the way of actually playing, then what's the point of including them?

This is something I think about a lot. Since I've lately been writing a bit more about Thousand Suns, I'm reminded of the fact that, in that game, I make use of the constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto. I did that for a number of reasons, though one of the main ones was that a number of sci-fi books that inspired me, like Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" series, for example, used Esperanto as the universal language of mankind. So, in Thousand Suns, I use Esperanto words and names in place of more common English ones as a way to add flavor to the game's meta-setting. I don't expect anyone to actually speak Esperanto while playing any more than anyone is expected to speak Tsolyáni while playing Empire of the Petal Throne. Even so, I've occasionally got complaints about the use Esperanto and its peculiar orthography (e.g. ĉ instead of ch or ĝ instead of j).

I've been pretty upfront about the fact that Tékumel was a big influence on me as I developed the setting of Secrets of sha-Arthan. One way that Tékumel has definitely influenced me is the use of unfamiliar, non-English words for people, places, and creatures within the setting. I really like the way these words have helped me to get a stronger handle on the various cultures that exist in sha-Arthan and how they relate to one another, but, as with Tékumel, I can easily imagine that someone not as keen on the use of odd words might find them an impediment rather than an aid to their enjoyment of Secrets of sha-Arthan.

It's a tough line to walk. My own interests and inclinations are to indulge my own love of exotic words, even if it's discouraging to some potential players. At the same time, one of my goals with both Thousand Suns and Secrets of sha-Arthan is to present something that were more easily accessible than the games and books that inspired them. Consequently, I'm constantly second guessing myself when it comes to how hard to lean into idiosyncratic nomenclature. I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts about this topic, especially if you can point to your experiences with games/books that either succeeded or failed to make use of peculiar names and words to help build a unique setting.

The Articles of Dragon: "Old Dwarvish is Still New to Scholars of Language Lore"

I promise this is the final article from issue #66 of Dragon (October 1982) that I'll talk about! However, since I'd already posted about the others devoted to languages in Dungeons & Dragons, I felt I'd be remiss not to do so for this one as well. 

"Old Dwarvish is Still New to Scholars of Language Lore" by Clyde Heaton is short in length and unusual in its approach. The piece purports to be the notes of "that illustrious pursuer of knowledge," Boru O'Bonker concerning the ancient language of Old Dwarvish. The language is no longer spoken regularly by dwarves, but exists as their ceremonial and traditional language. It survives mostly in poetry and religious rites and occasionally in old expressions and colloquialisms. The framing device of the article suggests that knowledge of the language is kept from outsiders, which is why O'Bonker is now on the run from "very short, heavily armed gentlemen" who had "a professional interest in him."

What then follows is a brief discussion of the phonology, grammar, and vocabulary of Old Dwarvish. When I say "brief," I'm not kidding. For example, here's the entirety of the vocabulary presented with the article. 

The grammar presented is similarly limited, presenting only the basic structure of Old Dwarvish sentences and the structural relationships between nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Within the context of the framing device, this is because O'Bonker is focused on unraveling the mystery of this ancient tongue. He doesn't yet have all the pieces, so his notes are, therefore, incomplete. That's a clever explanation, but one is then left with a question: Why? What's the purpose of this article, if not to provide the reader with a reasonably complete Old Dwarvish language to use in his adventures and campaign?

I have long suspected that the purpose of this article was, in fact, to show how little of a language a referee needed to create in order to make use of it in an adventure as a puzzle to be solved. In my youth, it was not at all uncommon for an important clue or piece of information in a dungeon to be hidden through the use of a cypher or an alphabet the referee made up. The players had to figure out a way to understand it and doing so was vital to moving forward. Most often, these cyphers used substitution or a similarly obvious method of hiding its information. More industrious referees would employ more elaborate methods. That's what I think Heaton is doing here, but I really can't say for certain.

Regardless of the author's actual intention, I was inspired by it to create my own partial languages for use in my Emaindor setting. I created fragments of Elvish (two varieties), Almerian (a Latin analog), Emânic, Tulikese, and more. I was no linguist, just a kid with an interest in foreign languages and a lot of time on his hands. So, I did my best to try to choose distinct sounds for each language and then a basic structure for sentences and enough vocabulary to name places and characters, as well as to, occasionally, make use of little phrases for color. I still have most of them in a binder my mother gave to me years ago, just before she sold my childhood home. They're nothing special but they were among my earliest attempts to create a coherent, "realistic" fantasy setting, so I retain an affection for them, which is why this article, despite its limitations, is one I look back on with similar affection.

The Articles of Dragon: "Fantasy Philology: Playing the Fluency Percentages"

Clearly, issue #66 of Dragon (October 1982) was a memorable one for me, because I'm – once again – devoting a post to one of its articles. To be fair, both of the previous two posts concerning this issue were also about a favorite topic of mine, languages, so it was probably inevitable I'd write about them. Even so, I'd hazard a guess that there will be comparatively few issues to which I'll return multiple times in this series, which probably says more about my own tastes than the quality of individual Dragon issues.

"Fantasy Philology: Playing the Fluency Percentages" by Arthur Collins (an author I hold in particularly high regard) is among a handful of articles I remember quite vividly, right down to being able to quote portions of the following dialog, which kicks it off:

Collins uses this dialog to illustrate what he thinks D&D sessions "ought to sound like (sort of)" but rarely do. His point isn't so much that he expects every player, let alone the referee, to make use of "accents and characteristic speech patterns." However, Collins does believe that "language differences can add a lot to a campaign, especially in terms of the challenge of communicating with people (and monsters) who speak other tongues and dialects." The dialog above is intended to show that these differences might extend even to members of common character classes and races. 

Collins then goes on to propose that each Dungeon Master get a handle on all the major languages in his campaign and how they relate to one another. Like A.D. Rogan, Collins is a fan of using language trees to aid in understanding the relationships between languages. However, unlike those in Rogan's article, which are mostly just ornamental, Collins's trees serve a purpose in the new language rules he proposes. These rules are the real meat of his article and why I was so taken with them back when I first read them more than four decades ago.

Under the standard rules of (A)D&D, a character either speaks and understands a language or he does not. Whether he does so is a function of his Intelligence score, his class, and his race. For most people, I suspect that's fine, but it's not what I wanted for my games. By this time, I'd been playing Call of Cthulhu for some time already and I liked its language rules. I wanted something similar in my D&D games and this article provides that. In fact, it provides more than that since, as I said, it takes into account how closely related on language is to another to determine a character's ability to understand and be understood. 

I make it sound more complicated than it actually is. Collins gives each character a fluency percentage in each language he knows, based on his Intelligence score, his level, and a few other factors. These establish how well he can make himself understood to speakers of the same language. These percentages are modified when trying to speak to someone fluent in a related language, depending on how closely related it is. The more distantly related it is, the harder it is to make oneself understood. It's a very straightforward set of rules – simple really, but still more complex than anything in any edition of Dungeons & Dragons with which I'm familiar.

One of the conclusions to which I've come, after decades of playing RPGs, is that we all use the rules we think are most important to the kind of play we want and tend to downplay or even outright ignore the rest. I've never cared a lot about combat, so I prefer simple, uncomplicated systems. On the other hand, I like dealing with languages and communication, so I appreciate attempts like this article to model better the nature of learning, speaking, and understanding different languages. Based on my own experiences, most gamers don't feel the same way, which is probably why I tend to remember articles like this one when they appear. 

The Articles of Dragon: "Languages Rules Leave Lots of Room"

Issue #66 of Dragon (October 1982) includes several different articles related to fantasy languages and their use in Dungeons & Dragons adventures and campaigns. While not all of them are good, several are – or at least are interesting enough that I still remember them after all these years, which is why I'll be devoting a few more posts to them, including today's. The first of these interesting language articles is A.D. Rogan's "Language Rules Leave Lots of Room for Creativity in Your Campaign." It's not the most inspired title by any means, nor does it really convey much about its content. Nevertheless, it does, in my opinion, raise some good questions about languages in (A)D&D and provides some intriguing answers to them.

The first thing one needs to know about this article is it's primarily concerned with linguistics, specifically the connections between languages, their degree of mutual intelligibility, and what sort of information a given language is capable of conveying. That probably sounds hopelessly nerdy, even within the context of RPGs, and it probably is. For a kid like me, who was deeply interested in foreign languages and their development, this was catnip. Add in that Rogan's article includes language trees showing how he imagines some of the demihuman, humanoid, and monster languages relate to one another (and, in some cases, to human languages), I found it really enjoyable.

Consider this language tree, which I hope is at least somewhat legible:

Here, Rogan makes connections between Middle Elfin and the languages of elven subspecies, woodland and fairy creatures, and even the secret language of the Druids. As I said above, it's hopelessly nerdy stuff, but simply looking at this language tree tells me a lot about the author's own fantasy setting. Ultimately, that's what makes the article so remarkable: it illustrates how something as specific as languages and their interrelationships can help to define a fantasy setting. 

Of course, Rogan doesn't limit himself to examining language trees, cool as I found that as a kid. He also devotes quite a lot of time to looking at what the AD&D rules say or imply about languages, literacy, and similar questions. As it turns out, the rules say quite a lot about these topics, though rarely in a cohesive way. That makes sense, since most of the comments are scattered across multiple books, written over the course of several years. Further, these comments are usually, like so much in Dungeons & Dragons, ad hoc rules put together to deal with specific problems, like how many languages can a character speak and so forth. Rogan attempts to make sense of them all, or at least raise questions for each referee to consider as he makes his own fantasy setting.

Naturally, I don't agree with all of Rogan's answers. For example, he assumes that members of the monk class must be illiterate, because they are unable to make use of scrolls and lack the thief's read languages ability. That's a defensible, if odd, extrapolation of the AD&D rules and one I don't share. However, it is, in my view, a good illustration of the kinds of things a referee might want to consider as he tackles the question of languages and literacy in his campaign setting, especially if that setting is an original one of his own creation. This article is, therefore, a useful one with a lot of recommend it. As I've said a couple of times already, I thought pretty highly of it in my youth and found, in re-reading it, that it still holds up reasonably well.

The Articles of Dragon: "Thieves' Cant: A Primer"

A great weakness of mine is constructed languages. While I can't say for certain – there's always the possibility that something else is to blame – I think it's quite likely that Appendices E and F of The Lord of the Rings planted the seeds of this lifelong fascination. I spent an inordinate amount of time reading those sections at the back of The Return of the King, especially the pages that displayed the Tengwar and the Angerthas. Likewise, when I got hold of The Silmarillion, I paid special attention to its appendix about Quenya and Sindarin names. Along with an old Random House Dictionary of the English Language, whose inside covers had diagrams of the evolution of Latin script, these books pretty much ensured I'd be a conlang nerd for the rest of my life. 

Consequently, I always took great interest in language-related articles in Dragon or other RPG periodicals. Issue #66 (October 1982) featured several of these, all of which left a lasting impression on me. The first, which I'll discuss in this post, was ""Thieves' Cant: A primer for the language of larceny" by Aurelio Locsin. It's a fairly short article that is presented as a document from a fantasy setting detailing the grammar and vocabulary of Thieves' Cant, the secret language of thieves from Dungeons & Dragons. 

Now, Thieves' Cant had, prior to this point, never, so far as I know, been described at any length in any D&D product. The AD&D Players Handbook merely calls it thieves' "own language" and says nothing more about it. I suspect it was on this basis that Locsin formed his ideas about how to approach creating a Thieves' Cant language for use with the game. He wanted to come up with something that had all the features of a "real" language – nouns, pronouns, modifiers, verbs and tenses, etc. – while still being simple enough that it didn't require a degree in linguistics to understand, let alone make use of it.

Of course, that's the crux of it: how were you supposed to use Thieves' Cant? What was its purpose? The article itself, as I said, is short and is presented in a detached, quasi-academic way, as if written by a scholar or linguist from within a fantasy setting, who's now sharing this secret language with the reader. There's, therefore, not even a sidebar or bit of boxed text hinting at how players or Dungeon Masters might make use of this constructed language in their adventures or campaigns. Instead, it's simply described, complete with a section in the center of the magazine that's supposed to be removed and then cut and folded to produce a 32-page two-way pocket dictionary of the language.

Another equally frustrating issue with the article is its very basis. Locsin's vision of Thieves' Cant is of an actual language, with its own distinct grammar and vocabulary, just as Elvish or Orcish would have their own distinct elements. This seems completely wrongheaded to me. Historically, thieves, criminals, and other outcasts have had their own unique ways of communicating with one another – you know, a cant or jargon that's known primarily by other members of group in question. There are innumerable examples of this in the real world and very few of them were created from the ground up by inventing a new grammar and vocabulary. It seems highly unlikely that Thieves' Cant would be an exception.

As I recall, the reaction to this article, both in the letters column of future issues and in later articles about languages in D&D, was not positive. I can't say that I disagree with those reactions. Re-reading the article in preparation for writing this post reminded me of just how weird and ultimately useless it is. I hate saying that, because it's clear Locsin put some effort into inventing the grammar and vocabulary, but I'm still left wondering why? What did he think would be done with the language? Heck, what did he do with the language in his own campaigns? Had he written about that, even a little, it might well have improved the article's utility. As it is, "Thieves' Cant: A primer for the language of larceny" is just an oddity and nothing more.

Fortunately, I have better things to say about this issue's other articles about language.

White Dwarf: Issue #70

Issue #70 of White Dwarf (October 1985) has a very striking cover by Brian Williams. Though the idol in the back recalls gaming's best cover ever, I find myself drawn to the blindfolded barbarian in the foreground. Why is he blindfolded? What is the significance of the runes written on that blindfold? What is that glowing device in his left hand? It's a very evocative piece and all these unanswered questions only makes it more compelling.

Ian Livingstone's editorial mourns the loss of Imagine magazine, which ceased publication with its thirtieth issue. His words seem genuinely heartfelt, especially when he notes "the good relationship between the White Dwarf staff and their opposite numbers." At the same time, Livingstone uses this occasion to downplay any suggestion that there is a decline in interest in the hobby of roleplaying. He likewise crows that "White Dwarf's circulation continues to increase," which, while undoubtedly true, seems – to me anyway – to be in slightly poor taste, given the circumstances. 

"Tongue Tied" by Graeme Davis deals with the questions of languages and literacy in AD&D. Davis offers a simple but "realistic" system for handling fluency and the learning of new tongues. It's probably more than is needed by most players of AD&D, but it looks to do a good job at emulating "the polyglot flavour of Howard's Hyborian Age or Moorcock's Young Kingdoms." I may look at it more closely as I ponder similar issues in The Secrets of sha-Arthan.

As usual, we get new installments of "Thrud the Barbarian," "Gobbledigook," and "The Travellers." The latter concludes its series of presenting Traveller statistics for the comic's many characters by giving us a look at "the galaxy's most repugnant pervoid," Jason Dinalt – no, not that one – and Felix the Dawlri, an "albino koala bear/tribble." We also get several superhero-related features, starting with Paul Ryder's "The Coven," a cabal of villainous magicians for use with Golden Heroes. There's also "Reunion" by Simon Burley, an adventure dual statted for both Golden Heroes and Champions. The scenario is a follow-up to the introductory one included with Golden Heroes, so I suspect it would hold much less appeal to a Champions referee (unless he happens to own GH as well).

"Open Box" looks at a lot of D&D-related items, starting with three Expert-level modules: Quagmire!, The War Rafts of Kron, and Drums on Fire Mountain, all of which receive scores of 8 out of 10. Dragons of Mystery for the Dragolance series does not fare nearly as well, receiving only 6 out of 10, which is frankly a much higher score than its text would suggest. The reviewer says that "its actual use and value is questionable" along with many other harsh truths. Battle System, meanwhile, gets a better hearing (8 out of 10). I was surprised by this, given that Battle System was something of a rival to GW's own Warhammer rules. Finally, there's The Lost Shrine of Khasar-Khan, the second entry in "The Complete Dungeon Master" series (8 out of 10).

"The Price is Right" by Marcus Rowland is a follow-up of sorts to last month's "The Surrey Enigma." The article describes in full the pre-decimal UK monetary system, along with a price list of common items. I'm a sucker for articles like this, so I found it quite useful. Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" is here once more and, as usual, I couldn't muster the interest to do more than skim its three columns. Oh well. "Dead or Alive" by Diane and Richard John presents a new career for Traveller: the bounty hunter. Along with the usual information on terms of service and skills, there's also a nice variant of the classic type-S scout ship – with deckplans!

The third part of Peter Blanchard's "Beneath the Waves" series focuses on "creatures from the depths." This includes not just the usual underwater menaces, like cephalopods and sharks, but also sentient species, such as aquatic elves, mermen, and sahuagin. As with earlier installments, this is a solid article but much too short; it only scratches the surface of its subject. "In Too Deep," also by Blanchard, is an AD&D adventure for 4th–5th level characters. The scenario concerns a maritime expedition for spices, the politics of the merchants guild, renegade mermen, and other submarine shenanigans. There are plenty of twists and turns in the adventure and I think it does an effective job of showing how to integrate underwater threats into an AD&D campaign.

"Monstrous NPCs" by Paul Ormston offers up three fully fleshed-out monster NPCs, each a unique individual with his own personality, history, and goals. There's a lizard man prince, a jovial stone giant, and an intellect devourer masquerading as a human. Though each description is short, they're all interesting. They also nicely demonstrate that even monsters can benefit from characterization. "Chop and Change" is Joe Dever's article on modifying miniature figures by adding or subtracting elements from the original molds. He includes several photos of conversion techniques in action, including one of a dinosaur playing a saxophone that I found rather amusing for some reason.

All in all, I mostly enjoyed reading this issue of White Dwarf, though I continue to see signs that the magazine is in the midst of its transformation into the Games Workshop house organ it will one day become.

Speaking My Language

A very early memory of mine is staring at the inside covers of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language my parents owned. Printed on those covers were all sorts of images pertaining to the topic of the evolution of the alphabet used by English speakers. I was incredibly fascinated by what I saw there, particularly the Greek alphabet, which I soon committed to memory and used extensively as a "secret code" throughout my childhood. My fascination with the alphabet eventually led to a fascination with languages more generally, though I tended to devote the most time to dead ones like Latin and Attic Greek – not very useful in the real world, alas!

Original Dungeons & Dragons addresses the subject of languages fairly early in Book 1: Men & Magic, with the following bit of text:

According to the guidelines set forth here, a character knows one additional language for every point of Intelligence above 10. That's in addition to Common and an alignment language, as well as any others known by virtue of the character's race. AD&D makes use of similar guidelines, as shown here in a section from the Players Handbook.

As you can see, Gygax set the threshold for learning another language lower than in OD&D – a score of 8 – and lowered slightly the maximum number of languages gained through a high Intelligence score (to 7, down from 8 in OD&D), but the overall change is slight, especially when dealing with demihuman characters like elves, who start the game knowing multiple languages regardless of Intelligence score.

Tom Moldvay's 1981 revision of OD&D makes more significant changes, as this table demonstrates:

In Moldvay Basic, no character gains an additional language unless his Intelligence score is at least 13 and the maximum he can gain is three at 18 Intelligence. That's quite a big change from either OD&D 1974 or AD&D, but it's a change of which I approve. 

In my opinion, OD&D '74 and AD&D both make language acquisition too easy, thereby obviating the need to find and employ translators or otherwise struggle with cultural differences in an adventure. In my ongoing House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, languages regularly play a role in the action, with characters taking the time to find tutors to instruct them in new languages or, when that's not an option, finding locals who can act as interpreters. It's not only led to some fun moments of roleplaying, it's helped to add a layer of reality to some sessions. 

I suppose the argument could be made that most players and referees of D&D don't care about such things. That they come up in EPT, a game designed by a professional linguist, only makes sense, but Dungeons & Dragons is not such a game. That's a perfectly legitimate position, but, if one really doesn't care about such matters, what's the point to Intelligence guidelines at all? Why not simply dispense entirely with worrying about how many and which languages a character can speak? That seems a better solution than making languages so easy to learn that even characters with below average Intelligence know at least one additional one and high Intelligence demihumans can speak huge numbers of tongues. 

Stress

When it comes to words in fictional languages, how do you feel about stress markers? Do they make a word easier to pronounce or do they make it seem more intimidating, especially if your native tongue does not make much use of them, as is the case in English? 

The words of some fictional languages, like those of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoomian, include no stress markers. Others, like those of M.A.R. Barker's Tsolyáni, are riddled with them by comparison. Because I have become familiar with the pronunciation of Tsolyáni, I don't find its use of stress markers to be off-putting. However, I've heard from many people that, rather than aiding pronunciation, they contribute to the sense that Tsolyáni is difficult to pronounce, which in turn alienates people potentially interested in Tékumel.

I'm currently working on a project that includes names, words, and even occasionally whole phrases from a couple of fictional languages. I ask again: would you find the use of stress markers or other types of notations ("accent marks") helpful or simply discouraging? Do you prefer, for example, "sha-Artan" or "sha-Artán?" 

Random Roll: DMG, p. 24

Page 24 of the Dungeon Masters Guide contains a great deal of interesting information relating to alignment. Rather than discuss all of them, I'm going to focus only on one section, that pertaining to alignment language. While I've personally never had any serious misgivings about alignment in Dungeons & Dragons, the matter of alignment language is something with which I've struggled, mostly because I'm not at all sure what it's supposed to represent. Gygax begins by stating the following:

Secret organizations and societies did and do have certain recognition signs, signals, and recognition phrases – possibly special languages (of limited extent) as well. Consider all the medieval Catholic Church which used Latin as a common recognition and communication base to cut across national boundaries.

Almost immediately, it seems to me that contradiction sets in. On the one hand, Gygax suggests that an alignment language would be a language "of limited extent." On the other hand, he references the use of Latin in the medieval Church, which, far from being a language of limited extent, was in fact an immense, living, breathing tongue that was used for diplomacy, law, commerce, and scholarship, in addition to religious purposes. He goes on:

In AD&D, alignment languages are the special set of signs, signals, gestures, and words which intelligent creatures use to inform other intelligent creatures of the same alignment of their fellowship and common ethos … Furthermore, alignment languages are of limited vocabulary and deal with the ethos of the alignment in general, so lengthy discussion of varying subjects cannot be conducted in such tongues.

From this, I take it that Gygax sees alignment languages as a kind of pidgin or secret code. His reference to medieval Latin above is thus a poor real world example of what he has in mind. He elaborates in the next paragraph that

the tongue will permit only the most rudimentary communication with a vocabulary limited to a few score words. The speaker could inquire of the listener's state of health, ask about hunger, thirst, or degree of tiredness. A few other basic conditions and opinions could be expressed, but no more. 

Gygax then compares alignment languages to the class-based languages of thieves and druids.

The specialty tongues of Druidic and the Thieves' Cant are designed to handle conversations pertaining to things druidical on the one hand and thievery, robbery and the disposal of stolen goods on the other. Druids could discuss at length and in detail the state of the crops, weather, animal husbandry and foresting; but warfare, politics, adventuring, and like matter would be impossible to detail with the language.

It's a very strange conception of a language and I must confess I have a difficult time imagining a real world example of such a narrow, specific language. I know of several types of jargon that are limited in the way Gygax describes but they're overlays onto existing languages rather than distinct languages of their own. If anyone can offer a good example akin to what he's describing, I'd love to know them.

Regardless, I can't say that this section of the DMG did much to clarify just what an alignment language or what it would look like. Unlike many other aspects of D&D, which have obvious roots in fantasy literature, this one seems to be almost wholly a game artifact, something created to facilitate communication, albeit of a limited kind, between creatures who do not share a more conventional language. Now, I may be misreading Gygax's intent, but, if so, I don't think I can be faulted for doing so, as the DMG does little to shed light on this matter.

Lessons from Tolkien

I've always been very interested in foreign languages and writing systems. My household had a giant Random House dictionary whose inside covers had charts depicting the evolution of the Latin alphabet from its Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician alphabet. I pored over those charts for untold hours as a kid, copying them, learning the names of the letters, and, in time, using them as the basis for creating my own alphabets (which I originally used as "codes," since I was really into espionage, too, as a kid). When I discovered Tolkien, I was probably more entranced by appendices E and F, which discussed the languages of Middle-earth than by the story of The Lord of the Rings (The Silmarillion was, in this respect, even more impressive). Then came several articles in Dragon that offered advice on the creation of languages for one's campaign setting and I disappeared down a philological rabbit hole from which I never emerged (thanks, in no small part, to learning Latin, French, and Classical Greek in school).

In my mind, creating languages – and alphabets! – are forever intertwined with the creation of a fantasy setting. That probably explains my fondness for Tékumel, which, like Middle-earth, boasts several of its own. It's also why I found this comic so funny: I was reminded of my younger self, who would have agreed with the notion that the first thing a referee must do when beginning his setting is construct an entire language from scratch. Nowadays, I'm both too lazy and too wedded to a "just in time" style of setting design to consider attempting such a thing. I'm still very fond of constructed languages, though, and respect anyone who has the determination and enthusiasm to make them for RPG use. It's a time-tested way to lend depth and texture to a setting, going back at least as far as Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom novels. 

Burroughs and Tolkien; that's certainly a worthy pedigree!

Languages, Real and Imaginary

One part of the Silver Age of D&D that I'm not ashamed to admit to having liked is the obsession with creating "realistic" fictional languages and names. There were several issues of Dragon back in those days that dealt with the nuts and bolts of imaginary tongues and the impact they had on naming both characters and locales. I ate those articles up back in the day, which is why I created several languages and scripts for the setting for my old campaign.

I, unfortunately, no longer have the grammars, lexicons, and alphabets I invented for those languages (or, if I do, I have no idea where I've put them), so I can't share them with you. And while there's a part of me that's a little bit embarrassed about the obsessive lengths to which my youthful self went to ensure that my campaign setting was "believable," there's still also a part of me that's quite proud of what I did. If nothing else, the names used in the campaign were neither knock-offs of real world names or random strings of letters without any meaning of their own.

Perhaps the reason that imaginary settings like Middle-earth and Tékumel tower over most others is that their creators gave a lot of attention to the languages their imaginary inhabitants speak. Now, even at my most obsessive, I never did anything to compare to Tolkien or Barker. Likewise, I don't think it's necessary (or even desirable) that most referees create anything remotely comparable to Sindarin or Tsolyáni when describing a setting for use with a RPG. Yet, I won't deny that there's something admirable about a referee who does give due consideration to languages and names. The Dwimmermount campaign is a case of where I don't follow my own advice. As a "just in time," seat-of-the-pants, sandbox-style fantasy campaign, I've only given the slightest thought to languages or names. Most of the time I pulled my names out of the air, drawing on whatever inspirations were available at the time. The result is certainly workable, but my teenage self would have been appalled at my lackadaisical ways.

For my new Thousand Suns campaign, I did give some thought to languages and names. Since Thousand Suns is explicitly meant to recall the sci-fi of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, I felt justified in taking a page from its naive optimism about a "universal language." Rather than invent one -- I'm much too lazy for that nowadays -- I borrowed a real one, Esperanto, feeling that, if it was good enough for Harry Harrison and other SF writers, it's good enough for me. Plus, Esperanto sounds familiar enough that no one is put off using bits of it in play ("Saluto" instead of "Hello," for example) and yet has an appropriately exotic feel (to English-speakers anyway) that it gives the impression of world-historical change between A.D. 2011 and 500 N.K. In short, Esperanto does a lot of heavy lifting for setting immersion for me, so much so that there was no need for me to create my own version of Lingua Terra, as I might have done 30 years ago.

Plus, it lets me come up with tables for first names and last names that lets me easily and quickly generate appropriate names for Terran NPCs (or PCs) that feel right, which is a great boon when running a sandbox SF campaign.