Discuss to your hearts content here
Woot!
You're between one and two posts away from the joining the others, so it's not a huge campaign or anything. It's just long enough that I didn't want to put it on the main thread.
I get what you're saying about the languages, but let's just say, it confuses me.
Paritosh doesn't speak high, low, or middle english. No Celtic, No German, etc.
He thinks his languages are elven, halfling, etc. I'll assume he can talk to everyone he runs across until you tell me otherwise.
If you speak "common", in this universe/multiverse, you speak English.
If you don't speak "common", you might to spend some time learning.
Yeah, I swapped out "common" because on my world the common tongue is "elvish." Now, is "elvish" on my world, what the Queen of England speaks? I dunno?
Paritosh doesn't have to know that common in Sigil would be English in the bizarro hell-world known as "Earth", of course. But I am trying to arrange an interesting and somewhat rational correspondence of language systems. I could be wrong but I don't think anyone else has delved into multiplanar D&D linguistic in this fashion.
At the same time, I'm defining these loosely enough that common can be any Indo-Aryan based language - for example, Urdu.
And certainly, you can expect a variety of complex and brain-straining concepts to be around in this world if you delve very deeply. Hope you're OK with that.
I’m ok with just about anything, but I will warn that, in my experience, when designers, call it movies, books, or games, start comingling real life and fantasy, one runs the very real risk of offending and being accused of racism.
I can provide examples:
In the movie “300,” where the Immortals in Xerxes army are portrayed as being bestial, and subhuman, modern day Persians (Iran) were quite upset, as it implies their ancestors were such.
Similarly, when “Real Steam” (I believe it is) came out, people were upset than Native Americans were replaced with bestial creatures for similar reasons.
I’ve seen game designers try and set an RPG in Europe, and say put the Orcs in Russia, Goblins in North Africa, etc. that naturally ticks off specific people.
Now, I’m a native English speaker, so thinking of English as “common” is fine for me, but say a German or Chinese speaker might be offended at the implication.
Anyways, game on!
OK,
I will consider the issue done. I have narrated Anzarra and Paritosh into the main game thread and you can begin there.
On a side note, I do my best to avoid anything that might smack of racism, though naturally I might make mistakes. I avoid "bestial" races and similar things. I don't think the commonness of a language is a statement of it's superiority. I'd view Sigil common as not "The Queen's English" but a pigin of a multitude of languages, approximately similar to English; the kind of language that a chaotic combining of languages on Earth might produce a single language in say 100-200 years. I don't think that's a racist trope but we take further discussion the subject offline unless someone is convinced there is a problem.
GM, with both of us checked in to the normal game thread, can you set this game to inactive please?