Pidgin Language & Writing [was RP Thesis]

[Matt Chatterley]

On Mon, 26 May 1997, Marian Griffith wrote:

> On Sun 18 May, Matt Chatterley wrote:
> 
> > > Written language makes a lot of things more interesting, too.  A smart
> > > mage will scribe his spellbook completely in a language that is relatively
> > > unknown, since it means other mages will find it pretty useless unless
> > > they take the time to learn that language.
> 
> > Absolutely. Since we do intend on having writing, it would be more likely
> > that those who can write would not write in the common, IMHO.
> 
> Common or trade language should be something like pidgin english. Only
> enough words to be able to communicate but nothing fancy. And certainly
> not enough complicated concepts to get into trouble with other cultures,
> let along races. Something like an approved wordlist for each race.
> That also cracks down nicely on the issue of OOC conversation in an
> IC setting as the words for the OOC conversation simply don't exist
> in the common language. <gr>

Heh. I like this, really. It's not what I'm aiming at, but I'd be really
interested to see something of the sort in action. 

As to writing.. I plan on (among other things) random scroll drops from
monsters likely to carry them, and if you can't read it.. you can't use
it. Even if you can read it, there are associated problems. Some scrolls
will be maps, and suchlike, others will be magical, and so on. Different
languages required (ie the language the scroll was written in). One
language of magical runes for the magic stuff.. perhaps racial languages
for the rest.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Fishing is complete and utter madness."  -Spike Milligan