...or: English-speaking mongrels, I fart in your general direction!

Well, I've been browsing some stuff online and stumbled over the introduction to White Wolfs Sorcerer's Crusade.

At the very beginning, there's a tale of "Agnesa Gewebetochter", the daughter of a weaver. Now, in German "Gewebetochter" would be "fabric daughter" (close, but no cigar). How many more "game designer" will satisfy their need for a quick name by grabbing the next dictionary near to them? Even the WFRP got better with their second edition.

So, who else has sad stories about games and foreign languages to tell? I know that Latin gets treated rather badly, but how is Spanish or French treated? I know that the FR god "Illmater" is the all-mother in the original Finnish, which is rather weird...

(And no hard feelings, Anglo-Saxons, we Germans call our cell phones "handy" and our TV hosts "showmaster")

I couldn't agree more. I'm actually working on a setting book for Iron Gauntlets, which is based on a non-anglo nation (can't divulge it just yet, and when I say me, I mean myself and the writer--someone on this board actually). The 2 current methods for romanization are horrendous, and translations are tough when it comes to consistency. We have to stick to a particular method of romanization or come up with a new one, and hope that the translations do it justice.

Dude, White Wolf is absolutely NOTORIOUS for that kind of crap.

Whole game concepts named after random cities in India and shit.  There were times when reading their books made me want to bash my skull in for that reason.

They'll basically just take any word that sounds vaguely cool and slap it on there.

I think that's just part of the package when you use loanwords.  As commercial enterprises go global, we can all look forward to our languages coalescing into a mongrelized abomination.

I, for one, welcome our Cityspeaking overlords.

As commercial enterprises go global, they should fuckin' notice that probably some people who speak the language they just mongrelized prematurely will buy the products.

And come on, for what do we have this global network of tubes? As if it's so hard to get a native speaker for any language. That kind of crap is just laziness. I could probably get someone speaking Navajo fluently if I post it on the company's message board...

Quote from: SosthenesI know that the FR god "Illmater" is the all-mother in the original Finnish, which is rather weird...

That would be Ilmatar, the Maiden of the Air; and another name that they nabbed from Finnish mythology is Mielikki which makes it a tad difficult to read the Drizzt novels without giggling.

Quote from: GrimGentThat would be Ilmatar, the Maiden of the Air; and another name that they nabbed from Finnish mythology is Mielikki which makes it a tad difficult to read the Drizzt novels without giggling.

Especially since they didn't nab her husband or children (God of 'Big' hunts--known for over doing things a might bit, Tapio)

I'd like to add my newest discovery: I'm currently reading the second part of the Sellswords "saga" by Bob Salvatore. He really has not the slightest talent for names. In his previous book he actually had someone called "Rai-Guy" and I won't even mention "Cadderly Bonaduce"...

But now he has a ranger called "Mariabronne"... Which means he either liked Hesse well enough or was just listening to a Best of Kansas. Naming a ranger after a (fictional) medieval cloister?

Quote from: Sosthenes... I'm currently reading the second part of the Sellswords "saga" by Bob Salvatore...

My God.  What are you doing reading Salvatore?  :confused:

Well, I read the Drizzt novels when I was young and foolish, so it's some kind of guilty pleasure. But mostly I'm doing it because I was pushed in doing the unthinkable: I've started a Drow campaign. And strangely enough, it's working out alright. When everyone's high-powered, both FR and D&D 3.5 work alright. I had less fun when I pushed it into my usual, low-powered style. The first thing I did was kill Lloth...

Anyways, the Sellswords stuff isn't all that bad. You don't have to bother with the incredibly boring Drizzt. Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri (those names!) might be pretty two-dimensional, but sometimes a kind of "Pirates of the Carribean" vibe comes across. I still think that Salvatore does combats quite well...

As with most D&D novels, it's basically adolescent drivel. If I weren't a gamer, I'd probably never read that... Well, at least it's better than Shadowrun fiction

To be honest, I rather enjoyed the War of the Spider Queen stuff... though with the caveat that none were written (does he even do that?) by Bob himself. It was amusing to note both that the quality seemed to decline as the series progressed and the obviousness of D&Disms grew greater.

D&Disms such as Hit points, for example. At one point a character is struck from ambush by a mace to the back of the head, surely a fatal blow, especially for a fragile elf! Not so, for it barely depleted her HP (though the author struggled mightily with narrating AROUND the term Hit Points, you can be sure) and the fight began in earnest.

Yeah, the WotSQ books were of mixed quality. Sometimes I could see the editors of WotC cracking their whips. Spell resistance and saving throws were almost literally in the text and several 3rd edition "upgrades" were pointed out (stat boosters coming out of nowhere).

I found the end to be terribly disappointing. Not that the love story was very believable, but the sudden 180 degree turn of the double-agent priestess... Meh. IMC I let her kill Lloth. _Now_ there's chaos.

Quote from: SosthenesYeah, the WotSQ books were of mixed quality. Sometimes I could see the editors of WotC cracking their whips. Spell resistance and saving throws were almost literally in the text and several 3rd edition "upgrades" were pointed out (stat boosters coming out of nowhere).

I found the end to be terribly disappointing. Not that the love story was very believable, but the sudden 180 degree turn of the double-agent priestess... Meh. IMC I let her kill Lloth. _Now_ there's chaos.

Yeah... I loved the first two or three, after that it got harder and harder to not laugh at the silly shit going on, or the obvious futility of the subplotted shit.  You could just see that the entire thing was, much like the death of the gods thing that I mostly missed, all going to leave the FR setting mostly unchanged. Lolth was going to stay Lloth, there wouldn't be any deep Drow characters walking around making Drizz't look sorta lame Mary-Sue... eminently predictable, only surprising in just how untwisty it was. You kept expecting something... I dunno... cool.