Throughout the entire RPG blogosphere in July 2024 this mysterious incantation was muttered, chanted, ululated unerringly and with great enrapt fervour: "Words! Linguistics, Etymology and Onomatology!" Below is an individualized account of those poor fellows who succame to the call and whose incredible verve and creative curiosity allowed them to create some pretty cool blogposts.
Once again my time hosting the Carnival has been rather rewarding. This month there was a total of thirteen entries which is pretty good. Find details about signing up here. Also check out the August 2024 Carnival 'It Came from Beyond Time'. Now, on with the roundup. Below is my roundup of all the entries received and a couple of entries I received late for my previous time hosting the Carnival; Anthropology and Archaeology. I'll do so through little micro-blurbs and sharing a thought or two on each post. As for the etiquette of reading this roundup, take your time - there are a lot of blogposts to read, leave some comments on the author's blog, consider a follow, it's always appreciated - the Carnival is foremost about building blogger camaraderie after all.
Game Design Pattern: Concept Crafting by Maxcan7: - Maxcan7 of
Weird and Wonderful Worlds brings us a post on Concept Crafting - a system that uses words as building blocks. Maxcan7 wants to spread the word for Concept Crafting through the RPG Carnival and I support it. Playing with and combining words is certainly something I really enjoy. My most successful blogpost by all metrics;
Naively Simple Alchemy uses similar concepts as does its oft overlooked cousin
Naively Simple Mad Science.
- I've long been intrigued by Maxcan's use of Concept Crafting for Mechs. One thinks of the components and armaments of giant robots to be these mechanical things rooted in technobabble, but when concept crafting is used for machines like Mecha, it gives them a quite surreal and dreamlike quality - which is wild and cool.
- Check out Maxcan's post and deep dive some of those links. See if Concept Crafting tugs your creative strings, it might have given me an idea for a madlib-esque cooking minigame.
Code Talking by Throne of Salt- Throne of Salt reflects on using the cipher of the
Navajo code talkers as a particularly successful puzzle in a campaign of theirs as well as discussing its implementation, potential improvements, and suitability for games set in real-world-inspired settings.
- Using codes and ciphers is certainly a puzzle I had not actually considered up to this point and I'm interested in trying something going forward. In the comments of Throne of Salt's post Skerples makes a good point about book based codes, If you personally have any other code ideas, please leave a comment on Throne's post, I know we'd both like to read them.
- It's conlang time! What fellow doesn't want to, or hasn't already tried to make their own language? I know I have. July's Carnival has given Sofinho the impetus to begin his own conlang journey and he begins with a
syllabary.
- It's an ambitious task but Sofinho is really going for it, check
this out.
- Watch this space, wherever there is an Entry #01 an Entry #02 is sure to follow 👀.
RPG Linguistics by Benign Brown Beast- Benign Brown Beast suggests streamlining language in D&D by reducing the number of languages characters have to learn by emphasizing the narrative function of a language over cultural/racial diversity.
- The list of languages suggested is a very fun and novel idea and can be fluffed out in many different directions and will generally make you go 🤔.
AND Saying Magic Words- In this post (which is a good companion to the RPG Linguistics post above) we explore the potential of integrating language with magic in D&D. Could certain spells grant the ability to speak specific languages?
- I'm used to Lotfp style languages that don't predetermine a player's languages at character creation which certainly helps with the problems Benign Brown Beast sees - after 6+ months of play my current character can speak 16 languages for instance. That said, the system doesn't really cater to magical of extra-planar languages which is where this post could really prove useful.
"Planars got a lot of words for 'ethereal'" by Xaosseed- This headying post pairs quite well with the above writing of Benign Brown Beast. It deals with Xaoseed's own feeling towards using languages in games that align somewhat with my own; "that names, words, places and the like are the outputs of generic fantasyland slush and not actually backed by anything meaningful and thus not worth digging deeply into". But what to do about this? Perhaps a setting's language could be influenced by extraplanar connections, inhuman perceptions or cultural contact?
- The post makes me think of some slumbering dragon in a lost cave who is the last fluent speaker of a extinct human language, a lost tongue that the players have to learn in order to save the day or steal a blue jewel or whatever.
The Onomasticon Quernorum by Beneath Foreign Planets
- A post in which I give some obvious and meandering tips that I did or did not follow when coming up with the names for the Onomasticon.
- Over 900 names for a setting you know little about!
- Do you you want to know how to use it in your games? I'm going to.
- Here is my prophecy rendered in Prophetic Perfect Tense; "You read this post and enjoyed it, it made you want to add some prophecies to your own game".
On Names by Empedocles the Wizard- Empedocles presents some very good and clear advice on the topic of writing and generating fantasy Names. The post is practical, useful and festooned with interesting links. I particularly liked
Kate Monk’s Onomastikon which was valuable to me when creating my own Onomasticon (it has a great URL too). In fact, this post is so good I edited my own post down and referred to this one instead.
- I love the notion of 'nominative destiny', it's much classier and precise than my phrase of 'definitional baggage'.
Languages of the Sea of Stars by Sean H- Sean shares some detail on the linguistic landscape of their Sea of Stars setting and the languages spoken therein along with sharing some practical thoughts and experiences with using language in game.
- Sean highlights the benefits of having a lingua franca for your game but what really interested me was how this common tongue can impart so much setting info and tone so simply, the Sea of Stars Imperial Tongue's origins bely interesting historical implications.
- The other languages referenced in the setting each sound intriguing and almost function as plot hooks or rumours in of themselves.
- Inspired by my very own post
Morpheme+Word+Epithet, Dozens has coded it up in a way I could not. They have properly factored in honorifics as well as introducing more variety by using different combinations of the eponymous Morphemes, Words and Epithets.
- I am very grateful my work could inspire others to build upon it, and wish to say a personal thanks to Dozens.
- TRAIPSE solves his struggle with toponyms; Never run out of place names with this one clever trick!
- A good companion alongside the prosoponymic thinking of Empedocles' post and my own.
- Generally check out this cool fellow's cool blog.
Anthropology and Archaeology Latecomers
- Hex Brawler might just turn your perception of conflict on its head.
- The academic snippet Hex Brawler has selected is just right.
- I need more of this kind of violence in my setting.
- Enrich your world and dungeons with archaeology!You might know of dungeon rooms as being either trap, treasure, monster, empty, special or any combination of the above but have you ever considered archaeological?
- Pity Crit proposes the begins for a true archaeological minigame of sorts wherein the players quite literally uncover abstracted 'fragments' of lost civilizations and use those fragments to uncover knowledge about said civilization. Pretty cool stuff.
- Pity Crit also gives plenty of examples of finds from their own lost empire and they're all pretty cool. I particularly like the weird Lacunae Crest.
