Oh Sir, you are a tease, ain’t you? A lot to pique the interest here but, for reasons I won’t go into, I don’t give itch.io any time, attention or clicks so I’ll wait for the BackerKit version or what have you.
On naming conventions, I have subjective preferences, but a pet hate of mine is when authors name geographical features in fantasy realms as if the people who named them had satellite images to hand. ‘The Sickle Mountains’ might look like a curved blade from space and ‘The Teardrop Lakes’ might be an accurate description from 30,000 feet, but how the hell do ground dwelling folk know that?
Have you seen the chap here on Substack - a linguist - who posts every now and then about fantasy languages? He has some excellent stuff on language and the limits of conceptual expression for demons, angels, reptilians and insects. It’s mostly way beyond my pay-grade linguistically speaking, but he raises some very interesting points. We spend so much time thinking about ‘languages’ in fantasy games, but much less time considering distinct methods of communication within the same language family, so that was good to see here.
I’ve also always been interested in dialects and bespoke forms of communication like 18th century ‘thieves’ cant’ (‘the rattling lay’ meaning ‘to steal from a moving carriage’ is one of my favourite terms), the ‘hobo codes’ of the 1920s and 30s, the track-side bookies’ gestures of tic-tac and the Polari used by British street hawkers, performers and mariners from at least the 1800s.
I haven't seen that account, if you manage to uncover it please send it my way. I'm fascinated by what informs the way a group lives and acts, following that historical path to new and exciting revelations. Language is but one of the markers of that, I've also been looking at coinage, armors, and weapons and how those would be informed by the setting as well - rather than the bog standard DND array.
I like the new name. Ouch on the comment that Shattered Isles sounds like it came from AI. I don’t feel that at all. To me Shattered Isles sounds like a country of Islands and people facing some real crap. Your new logo looks great. I’m def gonna check this out. 😊
Oh Sir, you are a tease, ain’t you? A lot to pique the interest here but, for reasons I won’t go into, I don’t give itch.io any time, attention or clicks so I’ll wait for the BackerKit version or what have you.
On naming conventions, I have subjective preferences, but a pet hate of mine is when authors name geographical features in fantasy realms as if the people who named them had satellite images to hand. ‘The Sickle Mountains’ might look like a curved blade from space and ‘The Teardrop Lakes’ might be an accurate description from 30,000 feet, but how the hell do ground dwelling folk know that?
Have you seen the chap here on Substack - a linguist - who posts every now and then about fantasy languages? He has some excellent stuff on language and the limits of conceptual expression for demons, angels, reptilians and insects. It’s mostly way beyond my pay-grade linguistically speaking, but he raises some very interesting points. We spend so much time thinking about ‘languages’ in fantasy games, but much less time considering distinct methods of communication within the same language family, so that was good to see here.
I’ve also always been interested in dialects and bespoke forms of communication like 18th century ‘thieves’ cant’ (‘the rattling lay’ meaning ‘to steal from a moving carriage’ is one of my favourite terms), the ‘hobo codes’ of the 1920s and 30s, the track-side bookies’ gestures of tic-tac and the Polari used by British street hawkers, performers and mariners from at least the 1800s.
I haven't seen that account, if you manage to uncover it please send it my way. I'm fascinated by what informs the way a group lives and acts, following that historical path to new and exciting revelations. Language is but one of the markers of that, I've also been looking at coinage, armors, and weapons and how those would be informed by the setting as well - rather than the bog standard DND array.
As it happens, he had a new post drop a couple of days ago. https://open.substack.com/pub/craftinglanguages?r=3smyh1&utm_medium=ios
Subscribed. Thanks!
I like the new name. Ouch on the comment that Shattered Isles sounds like it came from AI. I don’t feel that at all. To me Shattered Isles sounds like a country of Islands and people facing some real crap. Your new logo looks great. I’m def gonna check this out. 😊
Appreciate the kind words!