24V: TRANSLATE
Having discussed the use of language in RPGs in my main post, how does it work for the Darkness family of games in particular?
Starting with Vampire: The Masquerade first edition, the games used a specialised lexicon with foreign and obscure English words for in-character terminology. Camarilla means “small chamber” in Spanish and in English refers to a small and possibly secret group of advisers. The Prince’s small and possibly secret group of advisers is called the Primogen. The clan names come from a variety of languages, and most of them aren’t old enough to have been in use in the Dark Ages setting. And of course there’s the question of how to pronounce Tzimisce. Which was originally Tzimisces. And indeed as a Scot I’ve always found “clan” a strange choice.
The furthest I took this myself was with a Brujah vampire from Roman Carthage, going with a possible Latin root for “Bruja” (Plusscius, “who knows a lot”) and having him use a couple of Latin terms for other clans, calling the Ventrue “Venator” and using one of the questionable bases for Nosferatu. (Which comes from the film out of character... and in-character as of V5.) Others have reverse-engineered entire collections for Clans, titles and Disciplines in historical settings, as well as examples for non-Anglophone modern groups like the Laibon.
The Vampire games don’t go as far as Blade, where vampires have their own language mixed with Russian and Czech loanwords, as well as the glyphs being drawn from an entire writing system.
Vampire: The Requiem emphasises the shifting lexicon and slang with examples of the Cacophony, codes hidden in graffiti and signage and other things people see every night.
Like RPGs in general, Vampire uses the historical and fantasy fiction approach to how its ancient characters speak to show their age, a bit more formal in many cases and often avoiding specific modern idioms, and language only comes up when it clashes. So you might have a medieval character in the present “thee” and “thou” to stand out, the trick then is not overdoing it and making them sound goofy.
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| Clan Booyah. |
And translating ancient texts doesn’t come up as often as in Call Of Cthulhu, but the Book of Nod and others exist in-game and also as books you can buy, translated in and out of character with translation notes questioning some phrases to add some verisimilitude and options.
And on top of all that there are language issues people have every day.
2:12: Understanding
The coterie find a vampire poaching in their territory - a refugee from a Sabbat city in Mexico who knows hardly any English.
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