| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Heya,
In the next campaign I'm to play a grizzled ranger down on his luck and for that I intend to be swearing a lot. However in real life I never really found the need for profanities which makes this role extra challenging. Therefore I ask you to supply me with best/worst in game swear words and curses. My goal is to bring a list to the table so please keep them coming. The setting isn't complete fixed yet so try to avoid the deity specifics unless they are easily changed to other gods as well.
xoxo
The Witcher series is full of lovely colorful language.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvkNlvAEbkA
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I like taffer, from the Thief series - at once a sort of medieval curse word, replacable by anything, but more specifically it refers to common criminals, low lives and cutpurses.
http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Taffer
Appreciate the links, and i get the point about the delivery being more important than the choice of words, however it is words I lack and not the timing :)
I would like to see both medieval words and simply combinations of words that might inspire me. Etc. "You troll loving son of a hill giant"
Thanks again
Make up dwarven swear words and use those often. It'll be funnier, less vulgar, and in character.
Or you could swear like Marty the Zebra from Madagascar!
... For any of you who didn't notice...
"oh Sugar Honey Iced Tea!"
Tell the group to pay attention to the first letters of your curses that, while dwarf-like, may a secondary meaning meant to amuse the table!
"Folgrit's Underwear Creases -" well... you get the idea.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, I'm also a big fan of making up insults and swears for the game.
For hill dwarves, I actually just steal Italian words and use them as curses; it works great, even if the meaning is a little off ("I say we kill this stromboli and feed his body to the fishes!").
L. Sprague deCamp's "Unbeheaded King" series had a lot of swears based on the anatomy of lesser-known gods; people would say things like, "By Imbal's brazen balls!"
Also be sure to check out the movie Johnny Dangerously: "You farging cork-soakers! Bastages! This is farging war!"
An accent or particular voice for the character can help contrast when the character is the one speaking profanities instead of yourself.
Religious curses were much more common in the past than today. Gadzooks, for instance, is a profane reference to God's Hooks, the nails used to crucify Jesus. So, take that and go with references to the Golarion gods-
"You Daughter of Calistria!"
By Asmodeus's Book
Abadar's Laws
Torag's Beard
Norgorborger's Nethers
I'll send you to Pharasma
Iomedar stike me done.
There are a ton of demons and a demon's name makes a fine swear.
I'm similar in that I don't often swear (except at inanimate objects at work when they arouse my ire), but I had a lot of fun with my Kingmaker campaign half-orc barbarian. He didn't swear during the course of normal conversation with his allies, but when someone or something was trying to kill him he got really liberal and colorful with his curses. Oh and often when he used Charisma-based skills too, or when he talked about his wives. I found it a lot easier to use modern swear words than to convincingly use archaic or made-up ones.
Since this outside of your normal range, and yet you want to do it, then I fully encourage you to get a little crazy and push boundaries. Its seems obvious to me that you want this to be fun, and I think it will be. As others have mentioned, you can explore this without doing it all session and getting on your party's nerves.
If you decide your ranger is a casually foul mouthed, then pepper your language with unemphacised curses in unexpected places. Don't draw attention to them. They should be as unremarkable as filler words, such as um or like. Replace with an even-tempered oh s&$% and f&!*in. Also feel free to substitute the exclamations you would normally use when something unexpected (but not bad) happens, such as Oh! or Cool! or Wow! Replace with S+$&snacks! T++*! and F~@#'n alright!
Another way to go is that all of your pent up urges pour out of the flood gate during combat. You could descriptively intimidate or degrade your enemies, or describe how how you''re going to kill them. If you one-shot an enemy with a X3 crit, you should probably jump out from your chair and let loose a string of swear words at the top of your lungs. Probably not every time it happens, just once or twice. :)
Marathon watch Deadwood and take notes.
More Western in theme, but no less educational certainly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFDYAz5LFjc
Marathon watch Deadwood and take notes.
Or Rome or Spartacus - lots of colorful Romanesque swearing in there, often referencing anatomy or bodily functions of various deities.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Do you bite your thumb, sir?"
You mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.
Give people green hats.
Explain to them that in your culture, giving a man a green hat means his wife is cheating on him, or that you are calling him a cuckold.
Watch a few episodes of The Thick of It.
One of the better role-players I ever gamed with was a master at Shakespearean style insults and gibes. One which always had us rolling when he used it was "May a crazed holy man set fire to your nose hairs!"
Think about statements of fact or wishes expressed about portions of the body that wouldn't normally be discussed. Example: "May a diseased spider nest in your armpits!" or "You humpbacked offspring of a bow legged camel and a rabid mongoose!"
As mentioned above, religion and gods are another good source for expletives. Think up some standards, and pepper your speech with them - things like "By Cayden's Tankard," "May Cayden pour ale in your face," or "May Cayden's Hound gnaw on your vitals".
Huh. I don't think he's scared that people will get offended - he's having trouble thinking of good, offensive swear words.
Don't know why the rest of you think he needs advice on how to not swear with his swearing character.
What are you looking for here, specifically? Insults, or simply swear words to add emphasis to your statements?
Bloody, F*ing and Damn(ed) are all good for the latter. The last one is a little soft though, the other two sound rougher, so I'd prefer those.
I like "By Desna/Shelyn's T#!*!". It's nice and crass, very appropriate if you resemble someone like Bronn a bit. Scantily-clad well-endowned dieties with two-syllable names are a dime a dozen in pathfinder settings, for some reason, so it should easily translate.
It's funny but I never even thought twice about language in rpgs until just this year, even though I've been gaming since 1990. Personally, I have a really foul mouth. I blame years of playing competitive sports for that habit. However, it was never an issue until earlier this year.
I was playing a grizzled veteran mercenary in a game, and naturally I cursed alot. My GM had an issue with the swearing and I told him my character kills people for money, it makes no sense for him to talk like a Disney Princess. Then I got that same feedback from another player, new to our group. Fortunately that campaign ended fairly quickly, so that didn't become a long term issue but playing a merc with a clean mouth was very unsatisfying.
In our current campaign, my character's first language isn't common, so I make up all the curse words. It solves the problem but isn't as fun as launching profanity laced streams of insults at bad guys during fights. When I watch Game of Thrones and listen to them talk I think "I remember when I used to be able to curse like that in games" lol.
|
I like taffer, from the Thief series - at once a sort of medieval curse word, replacable by anything, but more specifically it refers to common criminals, low lives and cutpurses.
http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/Taffer
For just a moment I thought you were talking about John Taffer the bar rescue guy. He could definitely be a model for a swearing blowhard.
Then I read "thief" series and totally agree. I missed so much folks tossing around a good ol "taffer" in the remake. Of course, I missed the original series entirely in the remake but thats another discussion.
If you're looking for good curses/insults, here are ones I've used in the past: c*ntface, c*ckrot, pile of trollsh*t, pox-faced son of a wh*re.
Some exclamations I used in the past include: "Gorum's c*ck!", or "Lamashtu's rotting c*nt!"
In the next campaign I'm to play a grizzled ranger down on his luck and for that I intend to be swearing a lot.
A ranger would probably mix profanity with a bunch of nature references:
"You [illegitimate] [son/daughter] of a wild boar!"
"You [copulating] disgusting dung beetle!"
"May your [genitals] be consumed by green slime!"
As others have also mentioned, deity body parts are also pretty standard. L. Sprague De Camp used this method quite a bit (The Tritonian Ring, The Goblin Tower, The Clocks of Iraz, and The Unbeheaded King for example), as did Harry Turtledove (Werenight, Prince of the North, King of the North, and Fox and Empire; also, his Videssos novels). If you really want to get some inspiration for creative cursing, read Werenight for the description of (IIRC) Nodric One-Eye.
From Battlestar Galactica: Feldercarp, Frak.
Guaranteed PG, 'cause it was on evening TV. :-)
There are several ways to swear.
1) Insert inappropriate words into a sentence:
"What the feldercarp do you think you are doing with that fraking tool?"
2) Insulting statements:
"You mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries"
[love Monty Python.]
3) Pithy sayings:
"By Beelzebub's brazen balls"
Easy to mix-n-match with deity names and anatomy of choice in Galorian.
4) Excruciating detail of events:
"So you solve the delicate puzzle with a 20 pound hammer and a heavy swing? Just perfect."
/cevah
[How do I know so much about swearing when I don't swear?....]
I second the suggestion to watch The Thick of It.
I like "barking bum-rags" from Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series. The girl in that series reminds me of those cant-spouting spivs from the Planescape campaign setting.
Calling the bar maid a Sugar Tart would probably be fun.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
People always get all weird about profanity. I don't know why.
Unless you're specifically playing in a family-friendly game, or you have personal beliefs against certain words (and we don't have to talk about why), this is like a permutation of the Stormwind fallacy. Should a serious roleplayer strongly consider the kinds of things that his character would find most insulting? Absolutely. Do your research and come up with something believable. But combining that with an F-bomb doesn't make the character or his insults worse, shallower, or less intelligent.
If anything, you should save your creative insults for your more intelligent characters, your incisive ones tailored to the target for higher wisdom characters, and just have better delivery for high charisma characters. You can roleplay a lower intelligence or charisma by using trite, familiar profanity with the casualness of a sailor.
Using real profanity doesn't preclude you from being intelligent or insightful. I knew some guys in college who turned it into a competitive sport, in fact, and you can bet they weren't saying drek and frak and frell.
Use what's appropriate for your game, obviously, but I'm confused by the value judgments some people make.
You cannot use any real life swear words relating to race/raceism.
So when insulting people use "Dirty Half-Orc" or "Bloody Gobz" and for humans use "Paste-e Simplytons"!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm confused. Swear or do not swear, there is no "try".
All of the not-swearing or setting-centric swearing is just that; not swearing. If your character has an uncouth mouth, DO IT. Using euphemisms, baby-language, and setting-slurs are devoid of impact. The visceral crudity of harsh language is lost when you soften it. Poo-poo-head just doesn't cut it.
So my vote is that if you've decided to go the way of the foul-mouthed, do so. Check with your fellow players of course, but don't pull punches.
I'm confused. Swear or do not swear, there is no "try".
All of the not-swearing or setting-centric swearing is just that; not swearing. If your character has an uncouth mouth, DO IT. Using euphemisms, baby-language, and setting-slurs are devoid of impact. The visceral crudity of harsh language is lost when you soften it. Poo-poo-head just doesn't cut it.
So my vote is that if you've decided to go the way of the foul-mouthed, do so. Check with your fellow players of course, but don't pull punches.
While I agree with this generally, note that you can do setting-centric swearing that also hits home, it just has to be offensive in the real world, too.
HeHateMe provides at least one example of this in action just upthread. I know it made me go "Whoah, that's disgusting!" and I'm not native to golarion, after all.
|
|
I'm confused. Swear or do not swear, there is no "try".
All of the not-swearing or setting-centric swearing is just that; not swearing. If your character has an uncouth mouth, DO IT. Using euphemisms, baby-language, and setting-slurs are devoid of impact. The visceral crudity of harsh language is lost when you soften it. Poo-poo-head just doesn't cut it.
So my vote is that if you've decided to go the way of the foul-mouthed, do so. Check with your fellow players of course, but don't pull punches.
Meh - both in gaming & real life I find that much profanity mostly just shows a profound lack of creativity.
Even in real life - rather than saying "Don't make me f*** you up", I'll say "Don't make me consume your soul". (Yes - really.)
Profanity has gotten to the point where it's just noise. A bit of creativity has people actually stop & listen - having more of an impact.
I was always partial to the use of "dren" and "frell" from Farscape, for the s-word and f-bomb respectively.
If you manage to actually insult or intimidate someone with "don't make me consume your soul" instead of amuse them, I feel bad for that person. The language of that one is so far removed from reality, you communicate nothing except the abstract idea of a threat. Unless you're talking to fundamentalist Christians who believe you're literally an agent of Satan, or something.
|
|
If you manage to actually insult or intimidate someone with "don't make me consume your soul" instead of amuse them, I feel bad for that person. The language of that one is so far removed from reality, you communicate nothing except the abstract idea of a threat. Unless you're talking to fundamentalist Christians who believe you're literally an agent of Satan, or something.
That was my point. Profanity has become so common that it's not inherently offensive either, so you might as well be creative. (And why do you want to offend them anyway?)
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Learn how to pronounce the following characters:
@ # $ % & * ! +
And then put them together to create colorful swear words that will impress and inspire.
You could go with the outrageous "#%@*!".
Or perhaps the more subtle and understated "+%*$@".
But never ever say "&*$+" because that's just taking things too far.
If you manage to actually insult or intimidate someone with "don't make me consume your soul" instead of amuse them, I feel bad for that person. The language of that one is so far removed from reality, you communicate nothing except the abstract idea of a threat. Unless you're talking to fundamentalist Christians who believe you're literally an agent of Satan, or something.That was my point. Profanity has become so common that it's not inherently offensive either, so you might as well be creative.
It has more impact on a personal level I find. I hardly ever swear, but when I do (even a minor curse word) people notice. More so than when potty mouth over in the corner is on his 20th "F*** this" of the day and he's only just powered up his computer.
I always imagined that the idea of insulting people was to offend them. If I didn't want to offend them, I just wouldn't insult them. And I don't.
Save for a few friends who are no strangers to comedic barbs.