Making a Stargate game

[Ashtagon]

Yes, stargate as in the movie and subsequent TV series and assorted spin-offs.

re-Discovery of ancient mysteries and how they relate to the modern alien races is a big part of the story. For cinematography reasons, past the initial movie everything was done in English, and language issues were essentially ignored, which kind of glossed over why Daniel was even part of any expeditionary team.

But if we wanted to make it so that language was a real issue for a game, how could this be done? Teal'c had no particular reason to know English, other than Daniel the Earth characters had no reason to be able to read or speak the alien or ancient languages.

"universal translators" are a common trope, but I'm not sure how common those would be. The Asgard and other ascended races might have them, but not the Gou'uld. I'd rather avoid "montage sequence" accelerated language learning, by mid-series three, the other main characters were beginning to pick up smatterings of alien languages ("What does Jafar, Kkree mean?"). Except for the Asgard, most alien races would have no reason to even know that modern English exists, let alone speak it.

[geeky_monkey]

It'll turn meeting every single NPC into a game of charades and massively cripple and slow down the game.

There's a reason that TV shows make all the aliens speak English and Fantasy has a Common language - without it the narrative grinds to a halt.

If you want to play a game where everyone has to guess what's going on through doodles, hand gestures, and miming you might be better off suggesting a game of Cranium.

[Ashtagon]

It'll turn meeting every single NPC into a game of charades and massively cripple and slow down the game.

There's a reason that TV shows make all the aliens speak English and Fantasy has a Common language - without it the narrative grinds to a halt.

If you want to play a game where everyone has to guess what's going on through doodles, hand gestures, and miming you might be better off suggesting a game of Cranium.

Surely there is some middle ground between the two extremes?

[jedipilot24]

While the language issue was ignored in many cases, there were still plenty of times when translation issues came up requiring Daniel's presence--namely pretty much every time they found an artifact or needed to access an alien computer.

[geeky_monkey]

Surely there is some middle ground between the two extremes?

I suppose you could speak in gibberish and throw in the odd word of English so the players have some clue whether the NPC is offering them a quest or trying to sell them fish but I can't see what language barriers add to the game. You've just added a massive stumbling block between your players and the plot.

Unless you are running a game for a load of cryptographers or professional translators working out an entirely alien language is fiendishly difficult and massively time consuming. Mechanically how would this work? Would you give them a series of cyphers to decipher or would it just be dice rolls until they pass? I can't see either adding anything to the game and run the risk of eating up whole sessions.

Either you make languages so trivial to translate that you may as well have the universal translater/Common or you have a load of Players who need to spend 20+ mins interacting with every NPC, regardless of importance, or who wander around aimlessly until you throw some plot at them.

[Khaelic]

I'd rather avoid "montage sequence" accelerated language learning, by mid-series three, the other main characters were beginning to pick up smatterings of alien languages ("What does Jafar, Kkree mean?"). Except for the Asgard, most alien races would have no reason to even know that modern English exists, let alone speak it.

Surely there is some middle ground between the two extremes?

Given what you're asking, you want the extreme of having to figure out languages. The middle ground is having checks done for the "accelerated language learning."

[Ashtagon]

Now that I think about it, in that scene where Apophis was dying and his host temporarily regained control, the host spoke in ancient Egyptian, whereas Apophis was speaking either English of "English". That contrast does suggest that Apophis (the gou'uld) knew English but the host didn't. We could hypothesise that gou'ulds are incredible language lerearners or have had some Earth contact as recently as about 1500 AD (perhaps the gou'uld who imitated Satan shared his language knowledge). That does leave the question of Teal'c's English knowledge though.

[KillianHawkeye]

Ti'uk

His name is Teal'c!



Anyway, I have wanted to do a game based on Stargate for a while now but just haven't had the chance. Check out the Tsochar from Lords of Madness for a great baseline for Goa'uld (with some slight modifications, such as being able to inhabit people and fully control them without killing them).

As for languages, remember that the Goa'uld have a genetic memory, so they'll know English if any of their ancestors ever learned it. That still doesn't explain Teal'c and the other Jaffa knowing it, of course.

[Bulhakov]

From IMDB:
"Joseph Mallozzi, one of the writers of the series, has tried to explain it on his blog by saying that in his mind everyone who travels through the Stargate gets implanted with translator nanites that work both ways - it allows the traveler to be understood by people who have not gone through the Stargate and vice-versa. According to him, some languages like the Goa'uld were resistent to these translator nanites. It is unknown if the other writers and staff of the series agree with this explanation."

As always, TV tropes lists all the other possible explanations:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...peakingEnglish

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...peakingEnglish

[Hunter Noventa]

There already is a Stargate RPG actually, but it's likely very hard to find, and it was a variant of Spycraft d20.

We played a short campaign and somehow ended up making gatling staff weapons.