Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 roystonlodge Jun 17, 2008 6:35:19	Here's a weird idea that I'm hoping y'all might be able to help me with. For a D&D campaign world I'm working on, I'd like to be use real-world place names but encoded so they sound like "fantasy-world" place names. The key is that the "code" would be decypherable so a really smart player could figure it out, but not too blatant so the names sound obviously encoded and give the joke away too early in the campaign. Anybody know if this has been done before? Are there any fantasy writers who have used this sort of method when designing languages for their books? If there's a web site that can do the encoding automatically, that would be really convenient. The idea is that the geography of the campaign would be from a "real-world" map. Over the course of the campaign (weeks, maybe months) as the players map out their characters' progress they should start to notice familiar elements of the geography - IF their mapping skills are any good. As DM, I don't plan on helping them very much with the mapping. They'll have to create their map from my description of how many days they travel, the direction they go, and the landmarks along the way. I'll actually feed them disinformation if/when they fail a navigation/survival roll, telling them they're North when they're actually going North-East, or whatever. I'm really curious to see how similar their map ends up to the real thing.
#2 pass_the_remote Jun 17, 2008 15:20:51	I've never heard anything like this before. So I'm not sure how feasible it would be to try, as interesting as it might seem. The only solution I can think of would be to have different languages, and some translation errors. Using a new, different alphabet you could probably spell out the names of places phonetically and then run it through this new language that doesn't translate exactly to the "real-world" language. Eventually you can have the PCs discover that someone, somewhere, at some point in time, royally screwed up a key component of the translation. From there, with this new information on how to translate, maybe one could figure out the actual names of the "real-world" places that you're using. That's the only way I can really think of doing it, and making it difficult enough to crack, but still possible to.
#3 umadin Jun 21, 2008 15:54:18	Rotate vowels to next vowel. Rotate consonants to next consonant. Mexico -> Niyodu Italy -> Ovema Idaho -> Ofeju Etc Or just backwards.... Qeynos in everquest is just Sony EQ backwards, coulda fooled me.
#4 glak2 Jun 22, 2008 9:48:53	Grimm's law is pretty cool, I'd combine it with vowel rotation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law follow the other links in there too basically the idea is that sounds wear down over time and as they shift from language to language. You could reverse it. So "cold" would become "golt"
#5 Kyarie Jun 22, 2008 12:27:27	Robert Adams old series about the Horseclans does this. Post-apocalyptic fantasy. Los Angeles is the fabled city of Ellai Cumberland is Grand Duchy of Kumbuhluhn The Horseclans speak a dialect of Mehrikan (American English) The Middle Kingdoms also known as the Burkers or the Northern Barbarians, are descendants of US citizens who survived WWIII. They occupy what seems to be the Pennsylvania area. There are several Burk kingdoms, including Pitzburk, Harzburk, Getzburk... "Bob Sanders from Mundania Press LLC has signed an agreement with Pamela Crippen Adams to republish all of Robert Adams' works. This includes the Horseclans series, Magic in Ithkar, and (I guess) the Castaways in Time series. The first volume of the series, The Coming of the Horseclans, has been released by Mundania Press." This last bit was news to me until just recently so you might be able to get your hands on the Horseclans books much more easily than I thought... Most of the information above comes from memory and this page. Hope you find this useful. I may have to dig into my book storage boxes and pull these out again as soon as I finish the latest Harry Dresden book. Oh and a word of warning... Robert Adams gets a little explicit with his sex scenes at times. I just skip over it... makes me think of what I've heard about the Gor books and some of the old Conan books (sorry if I slander those series-- it is association, I haven't read them).
#6 elderdrake Jun 22, 2008 12:50:18	It has been my personal experience that people, on average, are very ignorant when it comes to geography (no offense intended). I use real world place names ALL of the time in my campaign and very few players are ever the wiser. I don't use "well known" places like capitals but I frequently use names of smaller towns, rivers, etc. Few people outside that region will likely have ever heard of it.
#7 Ramien Jun 22, 2008 16:09:33	Another way to do it is to take city or place names that are already in a foreign language and either just use the English equivalent or translate it into a different language, so 'Los Angeles' becomes 'City of the Angels'. It doesn't work of every place, obviously, but if done well, it can preserve the feel of separate cultures in the fantasy world.