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Thread: Words that break immersion.
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2022-12-29, 02:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Words that break immersion.
This morning I was reading a review of the Willow TV show and it mentioned how their immersion was shattered by a character saying "gesundheit" as that would imply that there is a Germany in the world of Willow.
This is a frequent complaint I have seen; people complain about "firing" arrows in Lord of the Rings despite it being pre gunpowder. I have seen people complain about the DM using the term "navy blue" to describe a color as that term was anachronistic to the medieval period. I have seen complaints about Greek fire and Portuguese Man O' Wars in D&D.
And, at my own table, the players always crack jokes whenever I refer to something that uses a proper name such as a Polish sausage or a Gatling gun.
This line of logic has never made sense to me. In a fantasy world, or indeed most movies set in foreign countries or ancient times, the characters are clearly not speaking English and the actors are only doing to for the audience's benefit. Similarly, every word has an etymology, most of them foreign, and many of the etymologies will draw their roots back to specific historical contexts or to proper names.
Anyone else have any experiences with this or thoughts on why certain terms break immersion or exactly where the line is that people won't recognize the etymologies?Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2022-12-29, 03:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
I feel like the question should really be about when this sort of thing is actually a problem, vs just a funny chuckle moment.
If I say, for example, "The shopkeeper is a young woman in a blue dress with blond hair done in a french braid" I'm providing a visual for the players in terms they understand, rather than going through hoops to avoid using the word "French" in a language without a France.
Similarly, in dialogue an NPC might say that they are "Training for a Marathon", even though the place (Marathon), battle, and subsequent events that lead to english using "Marathon" to refer to a long-distance foot race doesn't really exist. Trying to avoid this is where you get the shopkeeper in a blue cevelt with blond hair done in a tulven braid mentioning that she is training for a Paratel, or alternatively she's got a three-strand gathered plait braided together from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck and she's training to do a long-distance running race of a distance just over a day's normal travel on foot.
I feel like it becomes more of an issue when you start using these terms within idioms. Having an NPC refer to "Crossing the Rubicon" or describing a seemingly impregnable fortress as having an "Achillies Heel", feels off in a way that french braids and marathons don't. Probably because you could easily assume that "French Braid" is a translation of the fantasy term for that hairstyle, but once you get to specific events you have to start doing some assumed worldbuilding to get the same effect. "Achilles's Heel" implies a translation referring to some other famous weak spot. That such a term might exist in a fantasy culture is perfectly reasonable, but gesturing at it feels off somehow
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2022-12-29, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Not really any individual words, for the same reason - the characters aren't even speaking English, so obviously the exact words aren't the same.
Puzzles based off English homophones ("plain" / "plane", "mould" / "mold", etc), or other language-dependent features, do jar me a little. I mean, you can apply the same explanation - it's a translation of a different pun that would work in Dwarven - but it puts it more in the spotlight.Last edited by icefractal; 2022-12-29 at 03:42 PM.
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2022-12-29, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Mildly related, our current game is a Wild Beyond the Witchlight game, so we get to make up details about our PC's home dimension willy-nilly without much fear of it ever being actually relevant, and so there's a little game of every time one of these comes up, we make up why that phrase makes sense.
One example is that we decided our particular fantasy world has no Humans. "Half-Orcs" and "Half-Elves" are not half-human, they're just the types of orcs and elves that come from the continent of Half, which is largely controlled by Halflings (So named because they're from Half, not because they're "Half" of anything).
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2022-12-29, 03:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
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2022-12-29, 03:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
There's a difference in describing a thing as "they are eating food that looks like polish sausage" vs "they are eating polish sausage".
I think adding "looks like" might help you a bit...describe things without resorting to specific RL terms as briefly as you can, and then interject in OOC voice "it's sort of like a Portuguese Man o' War". Because it isn't really a Portuguese Man'o'war, is it? It's a ship the people of your setting developed, and have their own name for it.
describing something's color as "navy blue", as the narrator voice is fine. It is not the same thing as having an NPC use the term "navy blue", which does seem a little weird in a fantasy world.
So in short, if you're in narrator voice, and using those terms to help the players understand what a thing looks like, I'd say that's fine- it's really hard to totally avoid it. But it might help to say "looks like" rather than "is". If you're speaking in-character as an NPC using those terms, it is immersion breaking.
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2022-12-29, 04:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
I don't love it, but I can accept it most of the time. Though I think I'm more bothered the more obviously it's referencing something not in the setting, so "gesundheit" would bother me less than "Greek fire" (since it's specifically referencing Greece, rather than "just" being a German word).
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2022-12-29, 04:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Any words from a High School Physics class. Especially when half remembered and used without reference to the technical difficulties in applying such knowledge.
Ditto for High School Chemistry classes.
Double ditto for undergrad physics, chemistry, or engineering.
References to specific Earth locations in idioms is jarring. Even more jarring is taking said expression then redressing it. One example I remember is “ticking like a Swiss watch” getting redressed as “ticking like an ancient Earth chronograph”.
One that I feel may be peculiar to me was one GM who was an enthusiastic cook who liked to give elaborate descriptions of food. Trouble is I’m a professional chef and her descriptions just weren't technically accurate. They were close enough to pass by someone without technical knowledge, but for me it triggered ‘you don’t cook [that dish] [that way]” responses, which I couldn't say anything about without bringing the game to a screeching halt.
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2022-12-29, 05:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
a portuguese man o war is actually an animal and the name of the country is just part of the animals name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war
My experience with this is its wildly subjective some people will make a huge deal about some specific word but be fine with tons of others equally or perhaps more anachronistic. Sometimes this is reasonable other times less so their is no simply correct answer, though general I suspect people will be less bothered by it if it is spoken out of character.
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2022-12-29, 05:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
There are lots of things where the etymology is based off a place name.
For example, Turkey the bird is named after Turkey the country and Orange the fruit is named after Orange the region of France. We don't have another name for these species.
I don't personally find it any weirder for a person to refer to turkey the bird in a fantasy world, in or out of character, than referring to a chicken. In both cases they are not speaking English and are instead speaking their world's translation.
Although I do find it odd when puns or linguistic riddles come up in fictional works where the characters don't speak english. Even JRR Tolkien, the great linguist that he was, has a lot of this in his writings.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2022-12-29, 05:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
This line of logic has never made sense to me.
Never truly had a problem with it.
In a fantasy world, or indeed most movies set in foreign countries or ancient times, the characters are clearly not speaking English and the actors are only doing to for the audience's benefit.
So the critics of a movie were upset that the actors would not learn a dead language for the movie? Weird...Last edited by Alcore; 2022-12-29 at 06:37 PM.
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2022-12-29, 05:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
I try to avoid real-world place names. So the Portuguese Man-O-War might be called the Blue Bottle Man-O-War. Or even just Blue Bottle.
Foreign languages are something else I try to avoid, although with English (well known for knocking out other languages, dragging them into dark alleys, and going through their pockets for loose grammar) it becomes difficult to distinguish. "Gesundheit" roughly translates to "Health to you". I'd be more likely to have the character say that explicitly or call out a deity's blessing on the sneezer - "Hel spare you!" in OotS-World or something like that.
I agree about terms from Chemistry and Physics class, and a fair bit from Biology class being things to avoid. Also culture-specific idioms like the afore-mentioned Achilles Heel. But French braid? No problem. Navy blue? Sure. Especially coming from the narrator. If the PCs needed to describe her to someone else, I'd be fine with them using the same terms. It would be too much effort to come up with a different description
Long-story-short, I am occasionally bothered by it, but it depends on the terms, setting, what I'm doing with it, and how easy it is to avoid. Helpful, I know. I'm like that sometimes.Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
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2022-12-29, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
On a related note, what I find immersion-breaking in historical fiction is the jarring introduction of a modern term when that term has a context which isn’t appropriate for the period.
Prime example is from one of Bernard Cornwell’s Uhtred novels, in a marvellous passage in which he’s describing a Danish ship under oar approaching a riverside wharf, all of it perfectly period, until Uhtred calls for the rowers to ship oars and allows the vessel’s momentum to carry her in.
Momentum just killed the mood for me, because it’s a modern term developed in the context of a scientific tradition that just didn’t exist in Anglo-Saxon England. This is also why I can’t stand Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, because both the words and the ways they’re used are so often jarringly modern.
This sort of thing also bugs me in a game context, although less so when DM and players are talking among themselves, rather than in character. And it depends on the specific players and the tone of the game. I prefer my games more serious than silly, so tone and language matter more to me.
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2022-12-29, 07:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Like a lot of the people in this thread, it doesn't bother me unless it's 1) an obvious idiom referencing something Earth-specific, 2) something obviously referencing a real-world country/person (not just etymologically derived from it), or 3) just doesn't sit right with me on a personal level for some reason or other, like firing arrows in a pre-gunpowder setting. I have very little issue with things done in narration, even when they fall into these categories, though.
Unlike the person bothered by "momentum," though, I actually love anachronisms. And in a fictional setting that isn't supposed to be our Earth? I actually prefer anachronisms to Earth-historical accuracy for... pretty much everything.
What can still bother me? Idioms that don't make sense for the culture. There's a story (many stories, but one that is relevant) that I'm writing (that's my hobby, I don't actually publish things) in which the main character/narrator is an Earth human reincarnated in a fantasy world as a kobold. At one point, another kobold thanks him for being his "punching bag" to let off stress, and the narration (done in first person) notes that this wasn't a literal translation but that another idiom that meant the same thing was actually used, because... kobolds don't do boxing, and thus don't have punching bags. If I were to see "punching bag" used in a setting (or specific culture) without boxing or something similar that would have resulted in the creation of a literal punching bag, without it being called out as being an "equivalent idiom," it would bug me.
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2022-12-29, 08:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
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2022-12-29, 08:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2022-12-29, 09:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Originally Posted by icefractal
Out of curiosity, is there a period-accurate term they should have used instead? The scientific definition didn't exist at the time, but the physical property still did, and those who dealt with ships (or sleds, wagons, etc) would have needed to deal with it.
Originally Posted by Talakeal
I know there was a similar concept called "impetus" before momentum, but I am pretty sure the word is post anglo saxon english.
The other issue in this case is that Uhtred, raised a Dane and no friend to certain institutions promoting Latin, wouldn’t be likely to use the term himself. Thus the next question is what the Old Norse word for “way” or “momentum” was in a seafaring context. That’s probably a question for the folks at the Roskilde museum.
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2022-12-29, 10:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Personally, I lean very heavily into translation convention and don't really worry about it much. I'm speaking for the players, not the characters.
On the other hand, word-based puzzles that rely on OOC knowledge of English words and spelling annoy me. Because there's no way the characters could have a translated version, especially if it relies on puns. So I avoid those kinds of puzzles except as knowing gestures toward the fourth wall in comic relief, sparingly. I did do a rebus puzzle that came out to the Konami code once (something that only works in English and that only barely[1]), just to break the tension of a long-fought moment so that the finale wouldn't fall flat from exhaustion.
[1] pup pup crown crown heft wight heft wight beta alpha (using the Greek letters for the latter). Utter gibberish in any of the setting's languages, but for a bunch of nerds...puzzled them for just long enough.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2022-12-29, 10:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
I read something that gave me this idea I used once:
There was a completely empty, nicely lit room, no traps, no secret doors, no monsters… nothing. One particular player wanted to search the room and I said sure. Nat 20 (+ like 14 in mods or some such).
You see every little curve in the stone floor, you see each grain in the wooden walls, several candles lining the mantle each casting shadows only on opposite sides of your group, and you continue to follow your gaze upward. Beyond the walls, you notice fabric behind them in what seems to be every direction, each one a different color. That fabric suddenly plateaus in several areas. Atop each plateau stands a large face looking down at you and your companions, a total of 5 faces all surrounding. Directly up seems to be 5 large wooden planks very slowly rotating, in the center floats… the sun… made of what looks like… metal?
Suddenly it all turns to white and just as rapidly into darkness. You are now merely looking into the ceiling of the room, now deep in thought.
Basically rolled obscenely high when nothing was to be found and i took the opportunity to break the fourth wall, so to speak.Something Borrowed - Submission Thread (5e subclass contest)
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2022-12-29, 11:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2022-12-30, 07:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
I would have thought it would be really weird and jarring to have Uhtred speak entirely in English apart from one word of Old Norse dropped into middle of a sentence.
Originally Posted by Paraphrasing Bernard Cornwell
Originally Posted by Paraphrasing Bernard CornwellLast edited by hewhosaysfish; 2022-12-30 at 07:57 AM. Reason: fixing punctuation
If a tree falls in the forest and the PCs aren't around to hear it... what do I roll to see how loud it is?
Is 3.5 a fried-egg, chili-chutney sandwich?
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2022-12-30, 09:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
I'm into the translation variation myself. I don't speak common, let alone Klingon or Elvish.
Maybe I am a bit resilient to this because I've read actual translated stories with translation notes. I also prefer that to trying to redo everything in the new language. I've also read stories, only two off the top of my head, Lord of the Rings and Spirit Island (a board game set on an island with a fictional culture), that are in their own cannon "written" in a different languages and are translated to ... English in this case, but any living human/earth language would also qualify.
In those stories I only know one place people complained about the translation being jarring, the use of Bedlam being use in a spirit power name.* On the other hand, no one was caught by Should of Silent Mist even though the local population does not use funeral shrouds that it is named after (a literal translation of its name would be more like Attenuating Death-Cataract Enfolding-Blanket) but it seems plausible. Which leads to the conclusion that this has a lot more to do with the preconceptions of the listener rather than how well it actually fits into the setting.
* Funny story: You will not find the word Bedlam in that spirit and more. Not because of translation but because of connections to the mistreatment of people with mental heath issues. I don't think it is a strong connection, but it hadn't been sent to the printers yet so the change was made. To what I don't know.
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2022-12-30, 09:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
False. So long as the puns and wordplay (including riddles), word count (Sending, Message, etc), word viability (how much fits on a page, whether the letters can be easily carved, etc), and misreading, mishearing, and misunderstandings (which you struggle to determine which to fix, and how, as it is) are all based on English, the characters had better **** well be speaking English. Which is why I acknowledge “Common is English” at my tables.
And if we’re ever in a scenario where the language being spoken decidedly *isn’t* English, then I’ll crack down hard on any assumptions or actions based on English.
“Never put a gun in at 1 if it isn’t going to be used by act 2”.
If you have a character mentioned Polish damage or French fries, the campaign has better involve my character finding a portal to Earth.
If it’s used by the GM as conversational shorthand, that’s different.
D&D is canonically connected to Earth. So of course it can use Earth names for things. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
Unless, of course, the world in question is supposedly disconnected from the greater multiverse. Then it’s a fair complaint.
Even the fact that we say *anything* when someone sneezes is a cultural artifact (from a belief that the spirit leaves the body when one sneezes?), and should raise world building eyebrows.
And, the one time it came up in game, my Cleric explicitly said, “May the blessings of Amon-Ra shine upon you” when someone sneezed, rather than some idiom from this world.
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2022-12-30, 09:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
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2022-12-30, 09:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
There may be some settings where contact with Earth is common enough for it to make sense, but in most cases I feel like "the in-universe language borrowed the word(s) from a specific language native to another world for unclear reasons" would break my suspension of disbelief far harder than "it's translation convention".
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2022-12-30, 10:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Whenever immersion would get in the way of clear communication, wipe your ass with immersion. It's not like players can get immersed in the right thing if they don't understand what it is anyway.
Anyways, to summarize, there are a few related but different issues at hand here:
1) orphaned etymology - word is based on a thing that is known to not exist in a game setting. This will only bother you if you know what a word means AND the origin of that meaning. I would advice to not pay much heed to it. If you're using a natural language to describe something sufficiently removed from that language's origins, you will inevitably run afoul of this, and the only way around it is to invent new words. That's a nice hobby project, but unless creating and/or teaching a language is part of the point of your game, refer to the advice on top.
2) orphaned structure - puns, riddles, rhymes and other things that depend on words having a particular shape, and which strain any idea of "translation convention" that might be in play, since it's difficult (or in some cases, knowably impossible) to get that structure in the language the game characters are actually speaking. Here, the trade-off is between compelling verbal game design versus detail of the game world. At the end of the day, it's better to accept that your players operate in a real languages and make full use of those languages. The only real solution is to learn or invent an entire new language. Avoidance is not a solution, it's shooting yourself in the foot, as it keeps you from compact, memorable and fun uses of language.
3) knowing more than your game master, or the other people at the table, do. You know what a word means, but someone else clearly doesn't. Can occur within any field of expertise. Here, the question is about degree of accuracy the game is aiming for. If your immersion would require a level of detail that other players around the table are unwilling or unable to replicate, give it a rest - 100% immersion in such a game is not possible anyway. If, on the other hand, maintaining the level of detail is the point, this is where you speak up, to get things back in track and hopefully to keep the problem from occurring again.
4) knowing less than your game master, or the other people around the table, do. You think you know what a word means. You are wrong. Hopefully, this can be fixed by showing you a dictionary entry.
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2022-12-30, 12:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
For added giggles, I personally strongly disagree with the… “aphorism”(?). I just included it for those who think that way.
That depends. Are you the kind of berk who wants to pick up the cant, even if your anthill is filled with addle-cove bashers who haven’t the Voice?
(Ow, that hurt so much to type)
I personally favor minimizing the cognitive load on everyone as much as possible, and letting such flavorful additions act as a “bonus”, not a baseline requirement. Which relates to my “we’re speaking English, unless there’s such a sufficiently good reason we aren’t that you’re actually willing to police all the puns, mishearing, and other associated linguistic changes”. So, if we’re speaking English, the disconnect goes away; if we’re not, making the occasional transliteration is trivial next to the rest of the work that needs to be done to maintain sensible world building.
It doesn’t *have* to be a trade-off if you don’t unnecessarily complicate things by saying that the characters aren’t actually speaking English.
OTOH, if you leverage “not English” and translation (“speak friend and enter” springs to mind as a trivial example), great! Just… don’t evoke the cognitive load of “this isn’t English” without an adequate payoff - that’s just inefficient, and bad world building practices.
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2022-12-30, 01:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
I debated, and ultimately decided I am going to rant about this one.
Spoiler: rant modeFirst off, D&D as a franchise is canonically part of a multiverse which not only contains Earth, but includes multiple adventures which involve PC travel thereunto, and more that contain explicit or assumed travel therefrom. And this travel is not limited to medieval Earth.
Second, D&D contains *space ships* and numerous other technological wonders, some more subtle than others. The 3e DMG even has energy weapons statted out! If we’re thinking in terms of Earth, we should be thinking “future”, not “past”.
And do you really want D&D to feel like medieval Earth, where (depending on the setting) we’re probably burning at the stake all of the Wizards, most of the Clerics, all the lgbt characters, everything nonhuman, women who speak without being spoken to, and anyone who tries to help any of those, or who opposes slavery?
And are a lot of those anachronistic? Probably. I’m just going off the top of my head of things GM’s have done “for realism”.
I’m just not seeing any way in which complaining about anything - let alone a color - being “anachronistic” in D&D should be met with anything but rant-worthy levels of scorn and derision.
Yes, you should have good reasons for the things you do. But you should also have good reasons to stop doing things, and “D&D anachronism” fails every test for quality. [/rant]
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2022-12-30, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
Communicate in a way your players will understand, maybe leave out the pop culture references.
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2022-12-30, 01:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Words that break immersion.
TBH even commanding the archers when to draw and loose other than a first volley is silly (and that first volley at long range is mostly to try and make the enemy do something, in most pre-modern battles the army that moved first tended to lose). They perform better when each man is able to work at his own pace, trying to force the pace makes your archers tired and ineffective much faster.