For hobbyists who like to get their settings "right," drawing on historical and cultural materials from the real world to generate a convincing, fun fantasy, role-playing gamers do an awful job with foreign words.
I remember when I saw the title of the game supplement Byzantium Secundus published in 1996 for Fading Suns. Nobody told the author, from playtesters to printers, that the title is fundamentally ungrammatical. There are just two words. All we ask is that adjective goes with noun. They did not even bother to ask anybody if it was correct. It must have felt right.
Imagine somebody published a game called Cops and Crooks of Las Angeles and Los Vegas. That's what Byanztium Secundus looks like, right there on the cover. Just change it to Secundum and you're fine.
But that is a sci-fi game. Maybe in this fictional future people decide that Latin grammar was no longer a part of the Latin language.
In that case, how about the "authentic medieval" sorts of games, then, where the games' authors are supposed to know their medieval setting?
Ars Magica, set in a fantasy version of medieval Europe, was known for its innovative magic system (hence the name), in which players combine Latin verbs and Latin nouns to generate spell effects. Using Latin sounded cooler and more authentic than saying the English equivalents: "I make... fire," for example, to, you know, make fire. "I perceive... water," to locate water. Not as cool in English. The game went through two editions and years of supplements before somebody bothered to point out that the noun form corporem (for "body") in the list of nouns doesn't exist in the Latin language. It's not Latin. Corporem is simply not a word. The form needed is corpus; the authors wrongly gave it the ending suitable for an animate gender. No wonder the spells do not work! You learn this in the first month of a Latin class. How did this escape Ars Magica medieval buffs for years?
I'm even sadder to see Chronica Feudalis (2009). The game was carefully designed as a non-fantasy, "realistic" medieval adventure game. No monsters, no magic, just humans and intrigue and advenure. I suppose the author wanted the title to say "Feudal Chronicle," or something like that. There are two problems. Chronica is plural (an ancient loan-word from Greek), so the adjective should be Feudalia. But no, it shouldn't, because the word feudalis is not Medieval Latin. Even Wikipedia will tell you that the adjective feudal was created in the seventeenth century. This doubly incorrect title is right there on the cover in fancy letters. Didn't anybody think to tell the author, who describes himself on the game's web site (tongue-in-cheek or not) as "Renowned medievalist and RPG scholar Jeremy Keller," that this was wrong before it went to print? Didn't he think to check with anybody? How much do you trust his rendition of Medieval culture if he's this careless with the seemingly authentic title? Why did he use the term feudal in the title when many medievalists--since the '70s, folks--have argued that it's a false term of analysis for the period, anyway?
Let's move eastward. Did any of you use the supplement for AD&D called Al-Qadim (1992). The name is hardly impressive or inspiring for anyone who knows a tiny bit of Arabic--hundreds of millions of people--as it just means “Old” or “Ancient.”
"Would you like to explore my Middle Eastern fantasy game world? I named it... 'the Ancient'..."
A similar thing occurs in the title of Greg Gillespie's megadungeon, The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia (2017). Archaia is Greek and it just means "old" or "old stuff." Anybody who knows any Greek, or has heard the word "archaeology," will recognize that. The Forbidden Caverns of Old Stuff! Now that's evocative.
I could go on.
Gamers: before you send your writing to press, please check your fancy foreign words, as well as the words and names you thought you made up on the basis of English words that actually come from other languages. I'm begging you. If you don't know the language, and you can't be bothered to ask anybody who does know it, just make up something else. You drive a hole through the fantasy bubble when you introduce real-world grammatical errors into an imaginary world that is connected with the language you are mangling.
Feel free, readers, to submit your own basic language outrages from the pages and covers of role-playing game books.
I remember when I saw the title of the game supplement Byzantium Secundus published in 1996 for Fading Suns. Nobody told the author, from playtesters to printers, that the title is fundamentally ungrammatical. There are just two words. All we ask is that adjective goes with noun. They did not even bother to ask anybody if it was correct. It must have felt right.
Imagine somebody published a game called Cops and Crooks of Las Angeles and Los Vegas. That's what Byanztium Secundus looks like, right there on the cover. Just change it to Secundum and you're fine.
But that is a sci-fi game. Maybe in this fictional future people decide that Latin grammar was no longer a part of the Latin language.
In that case, how about the "authentic medieval" sorts of games, then, where the games' authors are supposed to know their medieval setting?
Ars Magica, set in a fantasy version of medieval Europe, was known for its innovative magic system (hence the name), in which players combine Latin verbs and Latin nouns to generate spell effects. Using Latin sounded cooler and more authentic than saying the English equivalents: "I make... fire," for example, to, you know, make fire. "I perceive... water," to locate water. Not as cool in English. The game went through two editions and years of supplements before somebody bothered to point out that the noun form corporem (for "body") in the list of nouns doesn't exist in the Latin language. It's not Latin. Corporem is simply not a word. The form needed is corpus; the authors wrongly gave it the ending suitable for an animate gender. No wonder the spells do not work! You learn this in the first month of a Latin class. How did this escape Ars Magica medieval buffs for years?
I'm even sadder to see Chronica Feudalis (2009). The game was carefully designed as a non-fantasy, "realistic" medieval adventure game. No monsters, no magic, just humans and intrigue and advenure. I suppose the author wanted the title to say "Feudal Chronicle," or something like that. There are two problems. Chronica is plural (an ancient loan-word from Greek), so the adjective should be Feudalia. But no, it shouldn't, because the word feudalis is not Medieval Latin. Even Wikipedia will tell you that the adjective feudal was created in the seventeenth century. This doubly incorrect title is right there on the cover in fancy letters. Didn't anybody think to tell the author, who describes himself on the game's web site (tongue-in-cheek or not) as "Renowned medievalist and RPG scholar Jeremy Keller," that this was wrong before it went to print? Didn't he think to check with anybody? How much do you trust his rendition of Medieval culture if he's this careless with the seemingly authentic title? Why did he use the term feudal in the title when many medievalists--since the '70s, folks--have argued that it's a false term of analysis for the period, anyway?
Let's move eastward. Did any of you use the supplement for AD&D called Al-Qadim (1992). The name is hardly impressive or inspiring for anyone who knows a tiny bit of Arabic--hundreds of millions of people--as it just means “Old” or “Ancient.”
"Would you like to explore my Middle Eastern fantasy game world? I named it... 'the Ancient'..."
A similar thing occurs in the title of Greg Gillespie's megadungeon, The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia (2017). Archaia is Greek and it just means "old" or "old stuff." Anybody who knows any Greek, or has heard the word "archaeology," will recognize that. The Forbidden Caverns of Old Stuff! Now that's evocative.
I could go on.
Gamers: before you send your writing to press, please check your fancy foreign words, as well as the words and names you thought you made up on the basis of English words that actually come from other languages. I'm begging you. If you don't know the language, and you can't be bothered to ask anybody who does know it, just make up something else. You drive a hole through the fantasy bubble when you introduce real-world grammatical errors into an imaginary world that is connected with the language you are mangling.
Feel free, readers, to submit your own basic language outrages from the pages and covers of role-playing game books.
To their credit, the writers of Ars Magica admitted they got Corpus wrong when it was pointed out to them and changed it in the 3rd edition (and Imagonem > Imaginem). When people critcised the 3rd ed. D&D Libris Mortis for having a nonsense title, the writer got defensive and claimed it was the Celestial language, not Latin.
ReplyDeleteVampire had plenty of bad Latin, but I've not looked at it in years. I will never forget, though, the whole 'the blood is the life' thing, where vampires refer to blood as Vitae (biography).
The early Cthulhu Invictus line for CoC was especially bad. Malum Umbra (the first companion volume) is another boring, if pitiful, grammatical error, though it does contain the following disaster: "In suus domus procul R'lyeh mortuus Cthulhu exspecto somnium". Aside from all the unconjugated/undeclined words and the general nonsense of the phrasing, I like the idea that Cthulhu's house is procul (nearby) R'lyeh, making the Great Old One a suburbanite.
The second companion is called Extrico Tabula, which they supposed to mean Unravelling Borders but the best meaning I can wring out of it is "I disentangle by means of a tablet".
I can probably think of more. This topic is an especial bugbear of mine.
Greetings, AIE!
DeleteThis gives me an opportunity to congratulate you on whatever role you played in producing the splendid-looking 2nd-millennium BCE-based role-playing game you have shown on your own blog. Am I right to assume, from your comments here, that you are the Akkadian specialist on that team? Or maybe the sole author?
I winced at first when I saw an early-Babylon-based game, expecting another "Chronica Feudalis," and then, two seconds later, I saw amazing renditions of Akkadian! I'm not a specialist in that early period, though I've been through Huehnergard's Intro for my own interest. I have to say, well done! I'll be mentioning your game in another musing that is cooking here on ways to get around the eurofantasy. I have not seen the book, but you have put a lot of work into this. It must be a labor of love.
I gave my Ars Magica books away years ago. I forgot about imagonem! Ugh, you're right. My question, though, was how it was possible for a game pitched to land on the "realistic" side of the medievalism spectrum to go into two editions without anybody saying anything.
Extrico Tabula! Yes, maybe it's a spell in translation, deriving from the days of cuneiform tablets. Or, it could be meta-gaming magic: "I extract from the table!" as in a table of results in a role-playing rule-set. You cast the spell and you pick the outcome rather than rolling the dice. Could come in handy, especially in the games written for random-table fans.
I've heard gamers complain about "stupid languages" in role-playing games. I'd go along with barely-baked conlangs rather than ungrammatical real languages any day.
My favorite ungrammatical Latin is from the movie Evil Dead 2. In this case, the erroneous Latin goes perfectly with the style of the film, only adding to the cheesy effect. Yes, "Necronomicon Ex Mortis... Roughly translated as... The Book of the Dead!" I remember seeing this with one of my genuine medievalist friends and we looked at each other and started laughing. Then we were laughing for much of the rest of the film, too.
Here's a Youtube link to the movie intro for those who don't know or remember.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6vfczl7fo
My only role in BFJB is buying it and all its supplements :) The author is a specialist in his own right.
DeleteI started learning Akkadian a couple years ago, and got the 1st edition of the game when I saw the cuneiform in the previews; I actually copied it all into my study notebooks to help learn OB cursive forms.
I've had more than one friend ask me if 'Necronomicon Ex Mortis' is correct. My personal favourite (?) bad Latin is from a cheesy vampire poster that was hanging in this gothy clothing shop I used to live by. The vampire is standing in the doorway of a crypt emblazoned with the legend 'Noctem Aeternus'. I used to fantasize about taking a red pen to it whilst my wife was trying on dresses.