Which can be paraphrased profitably as:
>do you insist that your !players! speak Sartarite when
>they are speaking in character? That's *** a straw man of [my] own
creation.
I probably shouldn't respond at all, given (a) I promised not to post re: silly names and (b) the apparent hostility level in the quoted post (nonstandard punctuation and all) is pretty high and plainly flame bait.
However, my experience in editing work by a very good game designer leads me to conclude that not everyone sees the problem with naming things with partially translated names. It's more akin to clipping your toenails at dinner with the President than it's like trying to divide by zero: you can do it, but it's esthetically and socially displeasing. I fear that I still haven't gotten this through, or the basic message that silly names within the world are fine; but if I found out that Pittsburgh was named for God's friend Pitts, rather than some human being, I'd be surprised, to say the least. And if I'm gaming in a world, I'd at least like to know what people call something, even if I then choose to use the translation.
There are some funny bits in Neil Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" about RPG'ers, one of which is to the effect that they take any declarative statement as a challenge and immediately try to refute it. It's cute, but wearing.
And in case anyone missed my prior post about the four levels of Glorantha, I'll say it again:
If you're content with the literary reality, where jokes, parody, and all manner of silliness abound, fine; I enjoy it too. But when I'm working at level 3, which is the goal of the better roleplaying groups, I want to know what Gloranthans call their cities. Old, stale jokes don't cut it at this level.
Powered by hypermail