Aquelarre Question

mythusmage · November 29, 2006, 08:22:29 PM

Does the game have a web prescence?

RPGPundit · November 29, 2006, 08:48:44 PM

Did you try googling it?

RPGPundit

mythusmage · November 29, 2006, 08:57:31 PM

Did a Gigablast. Got a bunch of links, all in Spanish and most for an Argentine rock band. Since I'm a Norte Americano (that is, monolingual) the links were not much help.

I did try searching for Aquelarre by the simple expediant of appending ".com", ".net", and ".org". Aquelarre.org is the one that worked.

However, that site is in Spanish. Which makes sense considering where the author lives, but in the original thread the OP did ask about non-American RPGs in English or translated into English. Is Aquelarre available in English, and from who?

RPGPundit · November 30, 2006, 08:08:51 AM

As far as I know, the game is not available in English.

RPGPundit

Imperator · November 30, 2006, 08:45:42 AM

Pundit is right. The game has a French translation, if I'm not mistaken.

JongWK · November 30, 2006, 11:06:05 AM

You have to wonder what would the rights for an English edition cost. That game could easily become a popular niche book.

Imperator · November 30, 2006, 01:55:55 PM

As I understand from the game mailing list, the game is quite popular in South America. Anglosaxon market is an entirely different beast.

Sosthenes · November 30, 2006, 03:09:27 PM

Then again, the US market is pretty big, so even if you're in a small niche there, that niche is probably bigger than quite a few of the other markets combined...

On the other hand, I've yet to find a translation that measures up to the original and actually gets continued support. That's the major problem. The big houses won't do it and the small presses can't.

Balbinus · November 30, 2006, 04:24:17 PM

I own an English translation, much helped now by having the Spanish too thanks to Imperator, but it was unofficial and never licenced.

Personally, although I doubt it would make huge money, I think it more than deserves a commercial English translation. The one I have would work fine. It's a great medieval rpg and gets it right more than any other I can think of.

RPGPundit · December 01, 2006, 07:35:15 PM

I think the main barrier is that they'd have to De-ibericize it a bit. As it is, its got a few too many cultural features that non-hispanics really wouldn't clue in on.

if you could do Aquelarre but set it in medieval England with all the English/celtic folk superstitions about monsters and demons in place of the spanish/basque ones, then you'd be cooking with gas as far as a translation was concerned.

RPGPundit

Imperator · December 01, 2006, 07:50:04 PM

Quote from: RPGPunditI think the main barrier is that they'd have to De-ibericize it a bit. As it is, its got a few too many cultural features that non-hispanics really wouldn't clue in on.

if you could do Aquelarre but set it in medieval England with all the English/celtic folk superstitions about monsters and demons in place of the spanish/basque ones, then you'd be cooking with gas as far as a translation was concerned.

RPGPundit

I totally agree on this. It would be easy-peasy to translate Aquelarre to each national folklore, making a game with good selling-capacity.

JongWK · December 01, 2006, 08:04:19 PM

Well, part of Aquelarre's charm is its setting. Switching it to the British Isles would take away a good chunk of the fun. It'd be like turning a game about the Franco-Prussian War into a Canadian-American conflict, because who cares about Old Europe?

RPGPundit · December 01, 2006, 08:49:12 PM

What you call "charm" someone who doesn't come from an hispano-iberian background would call inaccessible. Even a lot of the assumptions about religion, never mind all the stuff about moors, jews, and the different provincial types of catholic iberians.

You say "Gallego" to a Spaniard, an Argentinian or a Mexican and he will immediately get a whole bunch of context that will create an image in his head. On the other hand, "gallego" to an anglophone means fuck all.

RPGPundit

JongWK · December 01, 2006, 09:33:45 PM

Oh, come on...

There's a zillion games that introduce completely new cultures and races, and I don't see people not playing them because of that (say, Eberron and Forgotten Realms). If anything, a translation could include more background information to explain and enrich the setting.

Yamo · December 01, 2006, 10:12:45 PM

Quote from: JongWKOh, come on...

There's a zillion games that introduce completely new cultures and races, and I don't see people not playing them because of that (say, Eberron and Forgotten Realms). If anything, a translation could include more background information to explain and enrich the setting.

He's not saying that a foreign reader couldn't be made to understand such references, provided that definitions were provided, just that they would never have the same visceral resonance for that reader as they do for the game's target audience.

It would be easy to explain to a man from China who Robin Hood and King Arthur were in legend, but would he ever feel the same way about these figures that someone with a English-speaking cultural background does?