Enhance Your Games with Made-Up Words

As Tyson mentioned a couple days ago, we’ve been on sabbatical from all forms of strenuous work. This has given me time to get some reading done, and I’ve spent the past several days engulfed in Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Consumed may be an appropriate term.

Sometimes authors make up words. Shakespeare personally added 3000 words to the English language, and since we still use many of them, he’ll never be surpassed. But I still get the impression that Stephenson wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject. And it’s gotten me thinkin’.

Some of my favorite settings make up language, and use it to create a unique feel. For example:

“That razorgirl’s spurs were totally wiz, right chummer? Sure, she’s a vatjob, but I’d totally jack that node.” –Shadowrun

“You burks just popped in from the prime, and already you’ve offended a power. You look like some fair cutters, though, so let ol’ Gruff show you around the Cage.” –Planescape

Most of it’s slang, but it’s fun to say. And it’s not that tough to create, either. You just need to make up a list of common slang for you and your players to use, and start using it.

Introduce Slang Slowly

The difficult part of this is that if you simply present a long list of slang, it will never get used, because it’s too overwhelming, and because the players need to consult a list every time a new word is used. Instead, do it a little bit at a time, and start with words that will come up often.

Greetings and salutations are a great place to start, followed by honorifics like sir and madam. These words come up all the time, whenever an NPC starts talking to players. Along the same lines, words like riend come up a lot too, like the example of chummer above.

Lastly, introduce words for things that are integral to the setting. For example, Iron Kingdoms is a steampunk setting, so it has terms like mechstuff, and gearhead. Also, Arcano-Dynamic Accumulator, but you don’t need to go that far.

A last piece of advice. Try to make sure your slang is pronounceable. Words like kn’drken may look cool, but defeat the entire point. Instead, be clear, and perhaps twist real words so you can get some connotation added in there.

Until later, good blogrusing.