Zompist Bboard Again

I like to call D&D "the MS Windows among the RPGs" - it is the market leader, and its design is inferior to many other RPGs as its advanced functionalities were added later to a primitive core and still don't work well.

I even seem to remember reading somewhere that D&D was initially marketed as a "wargame" and only latter called a "role-playing game". This is quite true: it started out as a table-top wargame, and the role-playing bits were shoehorned in later. I've replied to this where it...

Redirecting this discussion from the Venting Thread... I even seem to remember reading somewhere that D&D was initially marketed as a "wargame" and only latter called a "role-playing game". This is quite true: it started out as a table-top wargame, and the role-playing bits w...

Just that. RPG combat is boring, and I don't like stories where problems are solved with violence. Another way of putting this is that to most RPG aficionados, combat is about as central to roleplaying as scoring goals is to soccer. Trying to con my brother into doing an adventure with a bit more s...

I'd like to play tabletop role-playing games with some friends, and went to a RPG convention last weekend to meet some, but my experience there just confirmed what I have been feeling for long: most people who claim to play role-playing games really just play skirmish wargames, either abusing role-...

I'd like to play tabletop role-playing games with some friends, and went to a RPG convention last weekend to meet some, but my experience there just confirmed what I have been feeling for long: most people who claim to play role-playing games really just play skirmish wargames, either abusing role-p...

I have always wondered whether Caizu is inspired by Czech - it juts into Verdurian-speaking territory in a way very similar to how Czech juts into German-speaking territory in our world.

I know that feeling very well - my own worldbuilding and conlanging notes are in a similar state of disarray. It may be comfort for you to know that the greatest conlanger and worldbuilder of the 20th century, J. R. R. Tolkien, wasn't any different (except of course that he had no digital devices, a...

While one cannot say that some languages are "too complex" or "too simple", I do find the middle attractive, and Latin is just right for me.

Nort, are you deliberately trying to summon Cthulhu? T'kwga th'Khiw, tuwthow, yw'h m'yighyigh cticth tati quglqugl nh'tayw'h ti. Cticth tati ghn'gon tayw'h. Pa n'afh cticth fh'glak ti, wge ne'h, nh'mmtefw'nyuih, tom nh'mmtefw'nyuih on fifyh, nh'foy m'tefw'nyuih pa p'nenh, nh'qogl. Nh'qogl f'togh ta...

Thank you for sharing. This is a valid objection; but the author knocks at an open door when he points out that the *s > h shift did not happen in Continental Celtic - I don't think it has anything to do with Celtic. Well, it being Celtic was the original idea behind it being a substrate word for &...

I think there is a reason to assume that backwards time travel is impossible: Where are the visitors from the future? Of course, some people opine that UFOs are just that, but one would then rather expect that UFOs appear especially frequently near important historical events, which is not what we o...

though even here, there are cases where an element in some place names correlate with a salient feature of the named sites, such as *hal- in the names of some ancient Central European salt production sites which therefore probably meant 'salt' in whichever language it came from. Actually, no seriou...

abahot wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 1:45 pm Proto-Indo-European is a language with just as much of a complex and layered history as English, [...]

Yep. This is often forgotten. Some people treat PIE as a pristine, original language, which it was most emphatically NOT.

Good! I've always loved conlang families.

I am currently working on a universal RPG system called OURS . Of course, we have GURPS, which has been my favourite RPG system for many years, and OURS owes quite something to it, but I found some things I could improve and simplify, and moreover, I wanted something that could be included freely in...

We do actually have a North Germanic conlang with Old English influence - check out the Conlang Fluency Thread. Yes - Yorkish. Has anyone done something the other way around i.e. Old English with substantial Old Norse influence? Would be nice to see such a conlang! English as we know it already has...

Short answer: Nobody knows, as usual with such alternative histories. Longer answer: This may result in Old English gradually being replaced by a North Germanic language with a strong Old English substratum influence, which manifests in a large number of loanwords from Old English, perhaps including...

I travelled to southern Germany for the 1999 eclipse. I stayed with an uncle of mine who lived in the totality strip, but unfortunately the weather did not play ball - it was heavily clouded and raining. Later, I witnessed a partial eclipse where I observed what Travis B. has described. It was bizar...

I know this all too well, which is a reason why I prefer doing a posteriori conlangs. Of course, the a-posteriori-ness has to make sense within the fictional setting: a language of Bronze Age Britain, for instance, may be (indeed, is IMHO likely to be) Indo-European, but an exolang is not.