zompist bboard

The next step, if you are man, woman, or golem enough to take it, is to create a language for your burgeoning empire.

I'd also like to know what happens in the next millennium and a half-- i.e. Year 2500 to 4000. How did the larger realm happen? Did it stick together? How are relations with the neighbors? What problems does it face?

In terms of tech and social level, think of the first terrestrial empires, like Babylon, Assyria, the early Maya. Roman-level empires will come later.

To keep things comparable, your language should include these things:

1. Phonological inventory (and Romanization, if different)

2. A bullet-point list of its typology. What's distinctive about it?

3. Some place names (with glosses) for your region.

4. Translations (with glosses) of the following sentences:

I love her, but she hates me.

[Region name] is a land of contrasts.

The golem does not eat humans.

Try to keep to little more than this, because I don't think voters can handle reading a dozen full grammars. You'll probably have to work out more, which you can either keep for yourself or post separately.

I think the reward will be more territory-- i.e. the winner gets to be a Rome-level empire.

This stage is not limited to the existing cultures. If you claimed a spot but didn't develop a culture, you can submit a language for it. Or you can claim a new spot.

The languages I've started designing are all contemporary to the year 2500. I haven't through about making year 4000 languages yet, so I'm not sure what to do about year 4000 place names.

Also, I figure golem languages are not going to change nearly as much due to the golems' long lifespans.

I've also been developing for year 2500, and it'll take a while to get it to year 4000... Not to mention I'll probably want two more by then.

This doesn't really make much sense. So which cultures will do well depends on which languages people like? There's no point putting any effort into actually describing these empires?

EDIT: why don't we just develop the history, and then let people flesh out cultural details like language as they choose?

zompist wrote:1. Phonological inventory (and Romanization, if different)
2. A bullet-point list of its typology. What's distinctive about it?
3. Some place names (with glosses) for your region.
4. Translations (with glosses) of the following sentences:
I love her, but she hates me.
[Region name] is a land of contrasts.
The golem does not eat humans.

Try to keep to little more than this, because I don't think voters can handle reading a dozen full grammars.

That's far from enough for me to determine whether I like a conlang or not. I'd rather read dozen full grammars than vote for… what exactly? The language I like the sound of the most?

zompist wrote:I think the reward will be more territory-- i.e. the winner gets to be a Rome-level empire.

I agree with Sal, it makes no sense.

I'm not sure why it would be any harder to decide if you like a fictional language than it would be for a fictional species or culture. I think the idea is that people will come up with a brief sketch of a language, and you look for one that grabs you and makes you say "hey, that's a neat idea." As far as I know, that's exactly what we've been doing in all of the previous rounds.

As for the reward, maybe someone can come up with a better idea, but until them I figure territory is as good as anything. The voting is basically a gameplay element, not a part of the setting. It doesn't "make sense" for the shape of history to be determined by a vote carried out by beings who don't exist with the setting at all, so it doesn't make sense to me why we should quibble overmuch on this particular point.

Like Sal, I think we do want to have some history. I'm already having loads of ideas for what happens when Lulweon and the Č'irah run into each other.

I agree, but Zompist's post seems to say that we should talk about history from 2500 - 4000 in addition to doing language sketches.

I'm okay with what Zompist proposes. I think this project works well being light and mobile, but without losing the quality.

Mornche Geddick wrote: I'm already having loads of ideas for what happens when Lulweon and the Č'irah run into each other.

I've got various ideas. A brainstorming of ideas. I don't know where to start!

CatDoom wrote:I'm not sure why it would be any harder to decide if you like a fictional language than it would be for a fictional species or culture. I think the idea is that people will come up with a brief sketch of a language, and you look for one that grabs you and makes you say "hey, that's a neat idea."

Perhaps my doubts stem from the fact that I just don't know shit about species and cultures, so voting for the ideas that sounded neat was okay with me. Unfortunately for me, I know something about languages, so I would want more details. Whatever. We shall see how well it turns out.

It strikes me that, by the end of all this, we're going to have a fairly bare skeleton of a setting, which I think is fine. Once we've got the overall shape of things worked out, people can go back and grab onto parts they think are interesting and develop them further. It's sort of like we're creating a chain of related plot hooks; when we're done, we won't necessarily have much of a story, but we'll have the jumping-off points for as many stories as we want to write.

The reason for having short language sketches is that the voters evidently had trouble reading all the culture descriptions. Making people read huge swaths of text means not having many votes. (However, people can certainly post a full description in another thread.)

As for what's voted on, the aim is to work on different things each stage— so far we've done continents, species, cultures. I'd like to do languages, religions, perhaps political systems.

Besides, though I want to know what happens next to each culture, I think the next stretch of history will depend a lot on the previous one, which suggests that the votes would largely be a repeat, too. If people liked the insane golems, they'll probably continue to do so. Having the votes be about something new evens out the odds more.

As for the dating of languages... as a creator, you can certainly decide what the language looks like at any given year. However, to me, it'd be more realistic to tie the standard form of a language to the history, and the stage we're in— the first empires— is a good match for that. This is the time when your culture has a little golden age, expanding its territory and probably experiencing a boom in literacy and literature.

As an analogy, in the present stage you're working on Hittite. If you developed a phonology in the previous stage, you could say it was Indo-European... but it's simplest to say that it was Hittite, and you were using the better-known language of the later empire to describe the earlier kingdoms.

But if you're really attached to the date 2500, that's fine; you can always develop child languages later.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we need to swap.

Zompist is right that "Dagolms with guns" and "Dragolms with lazers" is going to lead to repetitive voting. We could ask people very nicely to make each culture very different from its predecessor, but then we still get petri dish cultures that don't interact and don't show any real change. If we have person(1) take over culture(2) and person(2) take over culture (1), then we will get something more interesting, and there will be more reason to cooperate with others. And it will prevent each round of voting from being repetitive.

Come on, everyone, I really think this is the way to go. I know we have our beloved little cultures that we don't want to give up, but that's entirely against the spirit of a collaboration. Let's do it!

How do you propose it? I have already designed the Ccuxu language to some degree, and I have a partial map and a basic idea of what I thought they would end up doing, but I don't mind if someone else takes them over. The Domun as well, someone can take. And I plan to split the En Soki into a couple different groups, so someone could take one of them as well. I guess I am resisting you though because I still kind of want to hold on to the evolved En Soki culture.

zompist wrote:As an analogy, in the present stage you're working on Hittite. If you developed a phonology in the previous stage, you could say it was Indo-European... but it's simplest to say that it was Hittite, and you were using the better-known language of the later empire to describe the earlier kingdoms.

I like this idea. I was not so attached to the date itself, but that I had already labelled everything in that language.

Well of course it would be voluntary; if you're really attached or you've already done a lot of work then so be it. But I would gladly let someone else take over Ggazzei. So why don't we go ahead and swap? Send me the stuff you have for Ccuxu, and I will flesh out the language and give them some history up to 4000.

I'd also like to talk to Ars Lande about subsuming one of our adjacent cultures into the other, but if you take over Ggazzei, that would be your call.

I'd actually like to stick with the Ngoor, for now; the arrival of finlay's two cultures in the vicinity has given me some interesting ideas for contact scenarios. That being said, I know that at least one person has expressed an interest in doing something with the Ngoor as well, and I'm totally behind that; it seems unlikely that they'd remain a cohesive, monolithic culture for long, especially considering that they're scattered across a bunch of islands.

I have three cultures, but wouldn't mind giving one to someone else.

Actually, whilst I'm thinking of it, I'm more interested developing the orcs and amphibimorph/monkees. So would anyone like to take on the Dragolm empire? I already had developed some ideas for it, so will share those, but it's up to the adopter what they want to do with that.

This morning I worked a bit on Dragolm history (in parallel with Guok and Gaak). But maybe someone else would like to work on the language part?

As for me, I'd like to continue with the Zörachok, at least in this round. Maybe I'll let someone else work on their descendants in later rounds, but I'm not sure.

One option that might work instead of swapping cultures is to not allow repeat voting for the same culture. Maybe not the top 5, but say the top 3.

Just a thought.

Clawgrip! Send me the damn language info!

Hydroeccentricity wrote: I'd also like to talk to Ars Lande about subsuming one of our adjacent cultures into the other, but if you take over Ggazzei, that would be your call.

I have actually two cultures; one with humans and one with nightpeople.
I'll be working on nightpeople language and culture, but I already know I won't have much time for humans.

So you can work with the human languages and culture if you like.

CatDoom wrote:I'd actually like to stick with the Ngoor, for now; the arrival of finlay's two cultures in the vicinity has given me some interesting ideas for contact scenarios. That being said, I know that at least one person has expressed an interest in doing something with the Ngoor as well, and I'm totally behind that; it seems unlikely that they'd remain a cohesive, monolithic culture for long, especially considering that they're scattered across a bunch of islands.

Cat, if you wanna write something for the dragon culture feel free, eg their reasons for wanting to go over the sea, or the effects of doing so and conflict with your culture. I didn't really flesh it out that much as it is.