Origin Stories: Mr. Stabby
After our successful sit-down with that adventurous adventuress Van Helscion, we here at the Handbook-World editorial board found ourselves in a pickle. Casting about for our next interviewee, we soon realized our difficulty. How could we possibly one-up ourselves? It’s not every day that the landed gentry condescends to give full access to our reporters! (And trust me folks, our staff are both irritating and persistent.) What with all those personal vendettas and heart-rending childhood memories brought to light in the Van Helscion interview — put on display like so many licentious library books for our readers’ prurient perusal — we needed something suitably steamy for a follow up. Happily, after a long and fruitless search for appropriate humanoids, our unpaid mail room goblins suggested talking to the cutlery.
HoH: How long have you and Fighter been an item?
Mr. Stabby: Blood-blood, blood… Blood blood? Blood blood.
HoH: That long? Well you both look great!
Mr. Stabby: Blood.
HoH: If you can think back to that fateful meeting though, what was your first impression? You see this young guy coming towards you, and what’s going through your mind?
Mr. Stabby: Blood. Blood-blood blood, blood blood. Blood blood blood, blood blood, blood blood — BLOOD BLOOD! Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood: “Blood blood blood!” Blood blood, blood blood blood? Blood, blood.
HoH: So it was an opposites attract sort of situation?
Mr. Stabby: Blood blood. Blood blood blood. Blood blood blood blood blood blood-blood. Blood blood blood? Blood. Blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood. Blood blood blood blood blood blood blood. Blood blood blood. Blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood… Blood.
HoH: That makes sense. We in the journalism business know what it’s like to bond through a little violence. I had to shank my photographer just last week. Let’s talk about that spooky altar though. What exactly were you doing out there in the Blasted Wastes?
Mr. Stabby: Blood blood.
HoH: I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m pretty sure Fighter is illiterate. Plus our readers are dying to know.
Mr. Stabby: Blood. Blood blood blood-blood. Blood blood, blood blood-blood blood. Blood? Blood. Blood blood? Blood blood blood, blood blood blood blood, blood blood blood blood blood blood blood, blood blood blood blood blood blood. Blood blood! Blood-blood-blood! Blood blood blood blood.
HoH: You seem to be a glowing a little.
Mr. Stabby: Blood? Blood blood.
HoH: That’s quite alright. I’m honestly more concerned for the fate of Handbook-World. Given what you’ve told us here today, do you still believe that Fighter deserves to lead a party that calls itself “The Heroes?”
Mr. Stabby: Blood. Blood blood. Blood-blood blood blood blood. BLOOD! Blood blood blood. Blood blood blood. Blood blood blood blood blood blood 1) blood blood blood blood; 2) blood blood blood blood; 3) blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood blood, blood 4) blood blood blood!
You heard it here first folks. As powerful as he is, it seems clear that Mr. Stabby is not the most significant artifact to come out of the Blasted Wastes. I can only hope that the special bond he shares with Fighter is strong enough to save that poor muscle-bound idiot (and the rest of the setting to boot!).
As for today’s discussion, why don’t we talk about untranslatable speech in RPGs? Do you like to go for the full “I am Groot,” improvising Undercommon or Sylvan with nonsense syllables? Or do you prefer to describe the tone of an NPC’s speech rather than imitating it? Tell us all about your own blood-blood-blood down in the comments!
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Well. 0_0 That was ominous. Even terrifying.
Is this the start of the next big arc?
If I were to guess I’d go with “throwaway joke that won’t ever get mentioned again” (what? “Reverse psychology”? Never heard of it).
I’m sure that the diegetic appearance of our titular artifact is a minor gag without any broader significance. I wouldn’t worry about it. >_>
I tend to either say that NPCs are speaking a language the PCs don’t understand and then give tone and body language indicators OR lean on my less-than-fluent second language if I feel the need for actual words (usually when I have an NPC I’m playing throw words from their native language into their Common sentences). For PCs I play it’s pretty much the same, although when I have them use languages that are signed instead of or in addition to spoken, I am pretty locked into just describing the vibe if nobody else at the table speaks the language in character, since I don’t speak any myself!
I remember a theater class a million years ago where the prof asked us to improvise nonsense dialogue. Surprisingly hard to pull off. I’d imagine the ‘actual second language’ thing sounds far more authentic.
There is no such thing as free loot. You will pay a price one way or another, with deamon bound chaos weapons like that, your soul being eaten is geting of easy.
How about free lunches? Can I get one of them?
„Tell us all about your own blood-blood-blood down in the comments!“
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Nullam convallis, odio at ornare placerat, leo diam maximus neque, vel viverra ligula quam sed diam.
Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz.
@mucat: Calvin and Hobbes, right?
@Agi: I’m not Captain America, here. I did not get that reference. Care to share?
@Agni – Nevermind. Google to the rescue.
good on ya, the explanation is a bit too long winded for a post here.
Just realized I don’t know the IRL origin of loreum ipsum.
Edit: Thanks, Google! https://www.lipsum.com/
The Foundry VTT actually makes this super easy- there’s a module called Polyglot that lets users choose a language from a dropdown of all languages their character knows- and if they don’t know a language, it shows up in chat as unintelligible gibberish. Otherwise, I’ve always been a fan of ‘you clearly understand this is a language, but you have no comprehension of what’s being said.’ with flavoring dependant on langauge, such as ‘otherworldly’ for Aklo, or ‘regal’ for Draconic.
Pretty sure Giant is just “rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb.”
I do a bit of both – describe what the untranslatable words sound like, and then (sometimes) give snippets of nonsense syllables. Never had a whole conversation, but then, I try to limit acting out conversations thst don’t involve player characters.
As an aside, I think Language is one of the fuzziest elements in a fantasy setting. I love good wordplay in both conversation and puzzles – but since typically noone is actually speaking English, one must suspend their disbelief to carry it off.
Just read a cultural history of Japan, and finally found a good translation of the Basho:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-pond/
The translation worked walked not because of the translation itself, but because the lecturer bothered with the context. Apparently, the first lines are in the style of serious-face contemplative verse. The frog onomatopoeia punctures that for comic effect. The English equivalent might be something like:
Walking alone at
night. The highway stretches on:
Where are my car keys?
Now the question is, was the Handbook the prison-seal for Mr. Stabby, or was Mr. Stabby the prison-seal for the Handbook? Is it more of a Sword-In-Stone arrangement, or was the Handbook stabbed by a particularly disgruntled previous owner?
Also, who wrote/created Mr. Handy the Handbook (yes, I’m giving it a name, you can’t do anything about it)?
Um, isn’t a name like ‘Mr. Handy’ more appropriate for the other Handbook…?
A day will come when I answer this question.
https://c.tenor.com/dZrF8nwEmIQAAAAC/aragorn-but-notthis-day.gif
So, by the canon presented here, all Handbook advice would have a large sword-cut roughly in the middle of every page.
Meaning some of the advice might be missing a few letters or short words.
Look, the daily advice doesn’t just tear itself into scroll-sized quotes on its own.
I actually got to drop some fantastical gibberish last night when we captured a foe and I played the sprekken ze par le vous tu hablo game.
Gird your loins for my massive copypasta on flavoring the different languages/accents!
Are your loins sufficiently girded?
The Dwarvish language sounds vaguely Slavic (The PHB says it’s harsh and consonative) and Dwarves have New York accents because Dwarves are basically New Yorkers. (Hardy, surly, substance-abusing workaholics) Duergar have Boston accents since they’re an evil reflection of Dwarves. Praise ~~The Patriots~~ Asmodeus!
Elvish sounds French and Elves have French accents. Undercommon is a mixture of Elvish (Uses Elvish script) Abyssal (Drow worship Demons) and Deep Speech. (Other major residents of the Underdark) Drow have French-Canadian accents.
Halfling sounds like an unintelligibly thick British accent Halflings either have rural British accents, (Tolkein saw Hobbits as a metaphor for the residents of the English countryside) or New Zealand accents. (Peter Jackson filmed all his LotR movies there)
Gnome sounds like a weird mixture of Elvish and Dwarvish. (This is mostly just my homebrew lore since in my setting Gnomes are an Elf/Dwarf hybrid race who happen to have enough of a population to sustain themselves as a species. This is because outside of Norse myth Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Leprechauns, Faeries and the like were used interchangeably. That’s why Santa Elves and Cookie Elves are basically just what we think of with Gnomes)
Draconic sounds like various hisses. (Lizardfolk and Yuan-Ti also speak it so it seems like something that would be optimized for speaking with reptilian anatomy)
Goblin sounds like Boomhauer and Goblinoids have Southern accents. This was mostly inspired by a passage in Volo’s that talks aboot how Hobs are exceedingly polite, but if you’re impolite to them they’ll draw weapons. This was confirmed by my Texan friend.
Orcish sounds like Mongolian.
Gith sounds like Klingon
Giant sounds like the Swedish Chef from The Muppets.
Deep Speech sounds like “R’yleh f’tagaan c’thulhu!”
Sylvan sounds like Gaelic since most of our Fae lore is rooted in Gaelic folklore.
Primordial sounds like Arabic. (Genies speak it)
Celestial sounds like Hebrew. (Like you’re singing and trying to hock a loogie at the same time)
Infernal sounds like faux-Latin chanting. (Think the Rosemary’s baby soundtrack, or the Sephiroth theme from FF7)
Abyssal sounds like death metal. (Lots of words that start with De sung from the bowels of your lungs. “Desecration, desolation, deli-style!”)
Modron sounds like dial-up.
Slaad sound like words you understand in a sequence you that makes no sense. “When lighting a fish on fire underwater, apply futons”. (It sounds like nonsense in any language you understand)
Neat, I actually use a lot of those myself for my headcanons ^^
My personal list (which is a lot less comprehensive sadly):
Common = English (stealing bits and bobs from many other languages, in-setting it originated from “trader speak” as merchants going to various nations would pick up the most languages and blend them together)
Undercommon = Chinese (Since China’s got the largest single country population, it’s a common language by statistics)
Dwarvish = Russian (cyrillic script make really easy dwarven rune analogs)
Draconic = German (based mostly on those videos where saying anything in german just sounds harsh and angry by default compared to english, spanish, or french)
Elvish = French (Snooty knife-eared bastiges)
Sylvan = gaelic
Gnome = Esperanto
Orcish = Thick cockney english stolen directly from 40k orks
Auran/Aquan/Terran/Ignan = pokemon speak but using noises associated with each element instead of a species name. Tone, syllabic emphasis, and pattern matter more that the actual words/noises.
I had never snorted coffee through my nose before. So thank you for that novel experience.
If something is magic language, I usually just ramble in lorem ipsum or quote Latin or Greek poetry (gotta put that college degree to some use), but for completely foreign and untranslatable, I often mutter gibberish from the play “The Foreigner”: Straznia bolyeeshnyaya, Mavra. Ta lu, Mavra. Ta lu. Blasny, blasny.
What’s fun is if the PCs have a barely-there Decipher Script roll or ranks in a related language, I throw in an occasional English word like “doom” or “next attempt” or “orc-chow” mixed with evil laughter to make them sit up and go “Wait…”
It is moments like this where I wish I wasn’t a monolingual scrub.
…”Drow have French-Canadian accents”…
For me now, they always will, Tabernac de colis 😉
When using characters that don’t speak any of the languages the players ‘know’ (or ‘forgot’ to write on their character sheet), I usually gave them a small chance of what they’re hearing being close to one they already know, with Bards and other widely-travelled characters getting a little bonus or a chance of a spellcaster adapting a ‘speak with…’ spell on the fly (a small chance but not zero)
The most fun sometimes comes from remembering that HOW something is being said can be as important, or moreso, than WHAT’s being said 😉
Of course, with the ‘small chance’ of knowing a similar language comes a greater chance of misinterpreting what they hear due to words having a completely different meaning.
French is similar to Spanish or latin and German is sort of similar to Dutch and English, especially being as English isn’t ‘English’ anymore and hasn’t been for a thousand years 😉
Having the same ‘root’ doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable though and hiliarity can ensue…
I remember sitting in a bar in ther Azores trying to have a conversation with a guy from a Dutch Hercules crew.
I know some French and a little German, he knew Dutch and German and a little English, odd because English is prety much Holland’s second language, but we spent the entire afternoon having a great time and laughing ourselves foolish at our attempts to communicate, the drunker we got the more we laughed and the more we ‘understood’. At the end we were both completely fluent in ‘drunkese’ to the point we even stopped saying ‘nicht verstehen’ for every second sentence:)
There’s a module in Starfinder where you encounter some ancient aliens. They’ve lost contact with their civilization and descended into barbarism. You can either learn their written language or their spoken language, but not both.
It’s a cool premise, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t get sick of charades about a session in before I was forced to say, “It’s been 24 hours. You’ve picked up enough to communicate fluently.”
I hated that this solution hurt the immersion, but damned if it wasn’t necessary for ease of play.
This comes off like a hexblade origin if he’d gone the “do a bit of magic” route, but alas he is only a “hit things harder” kinda guy.
For languages, I’d never try using pidging-real-world-languages to communicate, I figure someone at my table will know the language or feel iffy about it. Far easier for me to just describe the languave in other terms “guttural”, “flowing”, “fast-paced”, “long words”, etc.
Fighter are allowed to haver magic sentient swords. Just ask Artemis Entreri:
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Charon%27s_Claw_(sword)
Interesting to me that this might be acceptable at a table (if you could find a language that no one else knew) but does not work in actual play. When your audience expands, you have to be more careful.
The thought that Mr. Stabby might, at one point, have been performing an invaluable service in keeping Handbookworld safe by restraining an even more dangerous artefact is … sobering.
This is why we drink.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drinking-problems
One time, when I was working with a much more skilled artist to create a webcomic (that was never launched, alas), I did create the name of the fiends’ common language. I still use it in my setting: Tenebor.
As this was the age of skype, I spoke the word to her, using the gravelly growl I felt it deserved. She yelped and told me it gave her the heebie-jeebies.
This felt like a good day’s work done to me. :p
Rhymes with “cellar door,” so you know it’s good.
In a distant, golden past, I was working together with a far more skilled artist to create a webcomic. (It was never launched, alas.) I created all sorts of background material, which I still use for my own setting. One of the things I made was at least the name of a common language used in the Underworld, by fiends and things.
It’s called Tenebor.
As we communicated a lot over Skype, I told my creative partner the name in the gravelly growl I felt it deserved. She yelped and told me I’d sent a cold shudder up and down her spine. This felt like a good day’s work done to me. :p
Apologies for the double post. It didn’t show up the first time…
Your apology is not accepted. You will be shot and then jailed.
Fighter may be an idiot but from kid to guy he got buffed 😀
Wonder how he would be while a teenage 🙂
You know a little more older than this and more buffed but still not as much as when he is an adult 🙂
I always toyed with the idea of Fighter growing up with Jeremy after…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-13
They are brothers after all.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/jeremy-the-dragon-part-12
Nah, Jeremy and Fighter’s players are brothers not Jeremy the Dragon and Fighter himself 🙂
Believe me, i know the Handbook Lore better than you the author 😛
If Fighter and Jeremy the Dragon were brothers this would have happened much sooner: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/jeremy-the-dragon-part-22
“Ahem! I speak a little Dwarvish. Gold gold jewels gold stone mining axes gold silver anvils gold jewels dug-too-deep. D’oooooohhh, I’ve pissed them off-“
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f1/d0/de/f1d0de131fc88ddbae64fe5dd74abc9f.jpg
I created a character for a Deadlands game that never got off the ground, who I will probably recycle as an NPC for a new game (that is itself having difficulty getting off the ground due to technical issues on the company’s site making it impossible to download the full collection of PDFs).
He has the Veteran o’ the Weird West perk, which gives him a boatload more points to spend in exchange for a permanent consequence due to something in his backstory. In his case, a botched hanging has left him completely incapable of speech, and the mask he always wears makes reading his expression an exercise in futility. (He’s fluent in Indian Sign Language, which functions as a native american trade tongue in the setting, but most non-natives don’t ‘speak’ it). He’ll have to get by with body language and the occasional hiss or grunt.
I expect to use a lot of “He [does X], as if to say [Y]…”. But I’ll probably amuse myself some of the time by just letting them come to their own conclusions about what he could be trying to convey. Maybe I’ll even roll with their interpretation!
I said this elsewhere in the thread, but I tried to play a mute character once upon a time. I’d just read Stephen King’s “The Stand,” and thought that the writing on a small chalkboard business would be good shtick for an RPG. I did not make it through the first session.
As it turns out, the ability to speak is important in an oral storytelling game.
I encourage you to try this mess out in a one-shot before committing to a campaign.
I’m kind of the other way. I really dislike this brand of theatrics. Of course… I don’t like the conventional, in person table. And the reason I don’t is at least somewhat tied to my limitations as a person.
It’s difficult for me to judge, to know how severe this is, but supposedly the majority of people are audio learners first, visual second. I’m visual first, kinesthetic second. Notice audio isn’t even in that list? I have a very difficult time ordering my thoughts in an ‘in person’ game. My friends will start getting rowdy on chat and I ask them to tone it down because I literally can’t ‘hear myself think’ as it were. I lose track of people’s actions if more than one person is talking at a time, and people can’t contain themselves when things start getting silly.
It’s lousy because I know some other folks process and handle differently. But if I’m not accommodated when I GM, no one gets to play, so generally I hope most people see it as a reasonable accommodation instead of a power trip.
Audio or written? I mean, are you guys mic’d up on Discord or do you do play-by-post?
We’re mic’d up, but I make everyone post.
I like to use speech (so Discord/Vent/what have you) to clarify actions, but I like character actions where everyone can read them. Especially ME because I’m trying to keep in mind the actions and efforts of everyone and the units I have on the field.
The digital tools help me a lot, even if they are doing what I used to do with a notebook at the side.
Don’t have too many times where we had “Groot speak” in game. We have a player who plays a Kenku GOO warlock, but after the first few sessions, we basically handwaved most of his difficulty with speaking as it more stressful than it was worth for his player.
In regards to the comic, this is exactly what I do in most of my games. I’m the guy who tends to see the shiny plot device and latch on. It’s a boon to most GMs, but can be a pain in the ass to more cautious players.
I tried to play a mute character once upon a time. I’d just read Stephen King’s “The Stand,” and thought that the writing on a small chalkboard business would be good shtick for an RPG. I did not make it through the first session.
As it turns out, the ability to speak is important in an oral storytelling game.