Straw poll for readers

[bouteillebleu]

How many of you learned code languages like this at school to have secret conversations with friends? What sort of codes were they? How easy or hard did you find it to learn?

(The one I learned was called "Uvuguv", because you put "uvug" between the start of a syllable and the rest, so "what" because "wu-vu-got" and so on. It took me a few weeks of listening to other people for it to click, and then I could speak it fairly fluently.)

How many of you would consider a LARP (or tabletop) game where something like this was used for representing/physrepping multiple languages? If you wouldn't like it, what are the problems you see with it for you and for a game in general?

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I've floated this idea in a couple of places, but (a) do not have a game idea that needs language physrepping, and (b) am aware that when I've suggested it, people have said they'd find it difficult to do. I plan to follow this post up with some more thoughts about methods of physrepping language in LARP games.

Comments

[lady-dinosaurus.livejournal.com]

The main flaw I can see with this is that I am not a good fighter, and my key advantage at larp tends to be my ability to speak persuasively and coherently in order to abuse other people's trust. As such, having to speak in a dialect would probably get in my way somewhat.

(also it'd make filk bloody difficult)

[bouteillebleu.livejournal.com]

Both very good points, and I admit I hadn't thought of the problem that it creates for persuasion - the one I learned at school takes about twice as long or more to speak than English would at that speed, so is rather rubbish for fast-talking someone. These languages aren't something I'd want to spend a long time talking IC.

Hmm. Sounds like it would work best in something where the language being physrepped by English was being used by pretty much everyone, and extra code languages were only used within a group intentionally as "very few people outside our group will be able to understand this". So, pretty much as a secret code language anyway...

[wererogue.livejournal.com]

I can see it being fun, but once you can speak the language, you'll understand it regardless of which character you're playing, so the obfuscation of information only works for new players.

There was a WWII heroes one-off LARP that my friend monstered for - super camp/cheezy - that had a language system where you had to just say a recognizable/cliched phrase from the language before you spoke to denote that you were speaking it - so you had lots of "Achtung! Vere are you going?" and "Zut alhors! How are you today?" It worked pretty well, but it's harder to adapt to a non-farcical and fantasy system.

[bouteillebleu.livejournal.com]

With you on the "you'll understand it regardless", so it's not a perfect method for hiding information.

However, if it's used as "here are the languages you know and how they're represented", then with most codes you can hear that it's a code you don't have the right character-skills to know how to speak or understand, which is a bit of an advantage over the "cultural phrase at start of words" or "name of language at start of words" (what my local system uses) for the purposes of eavesdropping or wandering into a conversation mid-way.

[chess]

I've already used the letter-substitution code I used at school in several LARP events, and think this sounds awesome, although I've never tried to learn one of those languages seriously so I have no idea how difficult it would be. I still occasionally say certain phrases in German or French because that's the first version that comes to mind, though, so I suspect if I had enough pre-event froth sessions with people from my language group where we practiced, it'd go okay.

[knightclubber.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on what you want to get out of the game, but it might represent more of a bug than a feature in a lot of circumstances.

There are times when it might be fun- the best example to come to mind was last Serenity, where one culture on the planet was a bunch of inbred, radiation addled hillbillies (kinda). They spoke their own form of gibberish and there was some fun trying to communicate with them. However, I'd say that of all my interactions with those folks, the most fun ones were based on the cultural differences rather than linguistic ones. Where the language was a real boon to the game was in allowing cultural misunderstandings to blossom fully, rather than as a benefit in itself.

For use by PCs, I'd see a code language as mostly being a barrier to communication (aka A Bad Thing). If over coming these barriers is a major feature of the game, all well and good (I am put in mind of that neolithic role playing game, where players are only allowed a limited vocabulary), but I wouldn't want to be doing it all the time.