I haven’t been called son by anyone but my dad in decades.
It was also by a condescending asshole the last time it happened.
Seeing as how one side of my family goes back to Baden-Wurttemburg and nearby areas, I can be as insensitive about my own ancestry’s culture all I want.
I was playing my evil cleric, just hiding amongst a party of do-gooders, as a follower of Cyric do, and had recently leveled up to where I could now cast Touch of Death(?), a touch attack spell that has basically a 50/50 chance of straight up killing your target and I happened to be talking to an NPC, all alone, that was crucial to the rest of the party’s plans. Naturally I tested out my new spell.
The party investigated, of course, but none of them were spell casters or had enough ability to discern anything. Including interrogating me, since I also had +30 to deception due to some special feats and items I earned previously in the adventure. Since we play entirely online, only the DM and myself knew the truth as the events. Up until my ultimate reveal toward the end of the campaign, they suspected nothing. That was a fun-ass game.
I don't know your group and maybe this went over well. But I was in a group that had a similar situation happen, but when it happened in my group it completely killed the campaign. We didn't know a party member was doing it, but we felt like we were being undermined at every step and the DM wasn't allowing us to make sufficient progress to enjoy ourselves.
They’ve repeatedly asked me to bring back the same character in other campaigns so I think they thought it was fun too. Everyone generally has their own goals and our primary DMs are all into the political intrigue angles over straight dungeon crawling, so there’s always a kind of Game of Thrones thing going on between the party members even when they’re all good guys.
Kind of a reason why I use a cleric of Cyric; the goal isn’t to straight up fuck everything up as that may lead to war, the domain of Cyric’s rival god, Tempus. It’s to plant the seeds of doubt and make everyone paranoid. 😁
Victim talking to Cleric: “No clue. I was stabbed from behind. They might try to kill me again, so maybe keep an eye out? Thanks for the resurrection, though. Those flames looked seriously unpleasant. I think I was robbed when I died, so don’t expect me to pay you for the diamond.”
“Oh, sorry mate, this is just Speak With Dead, the ‘welcome back’ was just a pleasantry. You’ll be heading back where you belong once the paperwork’s done.”
“Ah hells. I know I don’t exactly have a lot of useful information, but you could always ask me three more questions if you like. I might be able to give a vague clue to build deductions from. Just the three questions, though. No need to use up the entire spell tonight, right?”
The last time I ran a dungeon, it was with old-school dungeon exploration rules: torches that only last an hour, rations, random encounters, and relatively slow movement.
On top of that, the party was being chased by a squad of angry zombie drow. They’d already burned a bunch of resources, and were fairly hurt, so it was a nail biter.
I understand the backdoor shortcut in Skyrim since it’s all open-world with no “levels” or cutscenes, but in a pen-and-paper game the DM can just “yada-yada” the multi-hour uneventful walk back to the entrance of the now-cleared dungeon.
If, as the DM, you’re letting your players trek unimpeded and unchallenged back to the relative safety of civilization after looting a hoard dry, those players will never understand why murderhobos are the worst.
To put a finer point on it: next time your players’re heading out on an adventure, have them cross paths with a clearly depleted group overburdened with treasure and magic trinkets making their way back to town… Do your players stand aside and wish them safe passage or, do they choose the efficiency of quick & easy cash over deadly risk over yonder horizon?
Au contrare, sir or madam. I’m all for “shortcuts” as they’re quite simply an illusory sigh of relief. Let them take the elevator up after all’s said and done — even let them anticipate doing so as they begin the final showdown, et al.
See the hope in their eyes as they hang future plans on that gleaming shaft of transit tech, listen to them enmesh it in their exit strategies, (complete with skill-checking on the various buttons and backslapping each other when whatever they did made it work suddenly) and watch it evaporate as the chime sounds and the doors whoosh open on an array of fresh troops heading down to work…
This is that slo-mo second when they find out it’s the same elevator the site’s reinforcements were about to use when the heroes happened to be coming up with the exact opposite of intentions. 😜
To be fair, I’d be pretty damn skeptical of something that easy. There’s always a catch, and I’d bet dollarydoos to hexed donuts that someone in the party arriving at said inn is no longer precisely who they were going into the portal.
I use portuguese for common, english for elvish, japanese for abyssal and i’m learning dovahzul to use as draconic, i’m thinking on learning german too but i don’t know what it will be yet
Goblinoids are German, with various tribes having dialectual differences (my personal fave is the Heßisch goblins of the wooded riverlands, famed for their spider silk surfing), but the most insidious in both regards is the hobgoblin Sweiß-Deutsch.
Heßisch goblins are not unlike SoCal coasties, though landlocked; in stark contrast to the assumed harshness of the German language, this dialect reflects its cultural roots in a laid-back and oft syncopated meter with a healthy seasoning of slang, my groms. I guder vie, oder? 🤙🏼
I have my own language mappings in my homebrew. Most of them only appear as names since most people speak Common, but I did include some people in my game who don’t. (I make sure that they are some who speak a language that I speak too.) So the mappings are:
Common - English. We’re playing in English, duh. (Before contact with Elves, humans spoke “proto-Common” which would be mapped to German if I had to use it. Many humans still have German names.)
(High) Elvish - French. Yes, in-universe the Common language has plenty of Elvish influence. (Classical Elvish is Latin.)
(Wood) Elvish - Greek. Most Wood Elves speak High Elvish, but their names are Greek and many of them still speak their own language as well. The continents and seas are often named in Ancient Wood-Elvish (i.e., classical Greek) because they used to be the primary explorers before the rise of the High Elves.
Dwarvish - modern Dwarvish is Norwegian, old Dwarvish is Icelandic.
Halfling - Frisian. (Fortunately I haven’t had to say anything in Halfling so far.)
Gnomish - Welsh. (Again, fortunately I haven’t had to say anything in Gnomish yet.)
Orc - Russian.
Goblin - Mongolian.
Tellurian (not a species, but an influential country) - Spanish. Many people alongside the Bay of Luria speak Tellurian as their native language instead of Common or their racial language.
Sylvan - Finnish. (My go-to for weirder names as well. Many Fey-related creatures have Finnish names, as well as those who live near Fey portals.)
Giant - Hungarian. (They feature a lot in Hungarian folk tales.)
Draconic - Hindi.
Hashiman (not a species, but a group of eight islands - though they are also the Kenku homeland so most Kenku speak this as their native language) - Japanese-ish. The language comes in two dialects, Hanego which is used primarily by Kenku but also Aaracokra, Owlin, Tortles, and other creatures with hard beaks that have difficulty pronouncing M and N, and Hadago which is used by the rest. They are identical in writing, differ mostly in pronouncing those sounds.
Works at larps too. One I go to (in NL) has Dutch as common, and we use English as Elvish and, depending on with whom I talk, I express Dwarvish with either Scottish English, Northern English or German. If I really want to commit to the bit, I should learn High German or an Austrian dialect for Dwarvish.
Just want to point out that draconic has quite a lot of words already defined, as well as a few grammar rules. 1. Draconic, 2. Draconic Primer, and 3. Lonely Planet Vayemniri (vayemniri being the endonym for dragonborn in the Realms—a race that absolutely despises dragons wouldn’t exactly be happy about a name that says “dragon”).
I’m not sure what real-world language would be the best analogue. Maybe something Germanic?
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