Conlangery 144: Conlanging for Dungeons and Dragons
George brings on two conlanger DMs, Joey Windsor and David J Peterson, to discuss how to incorporate conlanging into Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games. Top of Show Greeting: Boral (by Jack Keynes) Links and Resources: The 5E d20 Standard Reference Document Matt Colville’s YouTube channel The Chain Matt Colville speaking “Gith” D&D Beyond Shadowrun A list of role-playing games Transcript PDF Download Plain Text Download {00:00:00} Greeting: Nos som Ideologofaction, l’astravocal lengaç costroit e lour y ci hom realisour partenent. /no ˈsɔm ˌideoˌlogofakˈʦjɔn | ˌlastʀavoˈkal lɛnˌgaʦ kosˈtʀɔjt e ˌluʀ i ʦi ˈɔm ˌʀealiˈzuʀ ˌpaʀteˈnɛnt/ “We are Conlangery, the podcast about built languages and their creators.” (Boral, Jack Keynes) {Music} George: Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages and the people who create them. I’m George Corley. With me over in sunny California, we have David J. Peterson. David: Hi. I have a balloon with me. George: I don’t know how to respond to that. But up in Canada – David: It’s letting out air. George: Okay. Up in Canada, we’ve got Joey Windsor. Joey: Greetings from Calgary where kitty litter in the back of a car is for ice not pets. George: Ah, okay. So, I’m guessing it keeps the ice down without being as corrosive as salt would be, right? Joey: It gives you emergency traction on the road and confuses David wonderfully. George: Yes. Yes. Emergency traction. Joey: It’s also a service. George: Hm? Joey: It’s a service to the neighborhood. After you get your car going, you drive off and, pretty soon, there’s a lot of cat poop on the road. George: That might be unpleasant for some people. All right. We have these two gentlemen on here because a topic came up during Lexember actually, mostly because of Joey’s tweets because Joey was doing D&D conlangs. I was just thinking about, you know, there are people who use conlangs in D&D. I’ll get a couple of them on. I know that Joey does it and David does it. Both of you are actually DMs and use them in DMing right? Joey: Most recently, yeah. I also use them as a player once in a while. George: Yeah. I think we’ll talk a little bit about that too. I mean, it’s something that can be used on both sides of it, though there’s probably the question of if you’re doing it as a player, is it something that your DM allows you to construct for him. We’ll get into that. First, I’m just gonna say Conlangery is supported entirely by our patrons over at Patreon. If you would like to help the show get better, give me a little bit of money in my pocket, then you can over to patreon.com/conlangery and pledge a monthly amount. We have some rewards up there. I have some things in the works. Right now, the main thing that I’m looking at is I’m talking to someone who’s a transcriptionist and I’m gonna budget a certain amount for her to start transcribing the show. But if I could get more pledges, I could get through the backlog a lot quicker than I would be doing now. So, look out for that. Go pledge some money to us because, you know, right now I have to have a day job. I’m very bad at Patreon pitches. David: I’m convinced. George: All right. Let’s get started. Conlangs and D&D – this is a really nice place to apply conlangs if you’ve got a group that is into it because you’re – David: I’m gonna be on the “It doesn’t matter” fence. It doesn’t matter whether they’re into it or not. We’ll get to that in a moment. George: Oh, okay. Well, we’ll talk about that. But basically a big part of D&D is the world-building. Conlanging is part of world-building. It’s a great way to add some verisimilitude into the world. Why would you not want to apply your conlanging to things? I have not been able to find the time to actually play D&D, so I watch way too many videos and livestreams of it. {00:05:01} Matt Colville says, “Take the things you like and put them in your game.” Well, our listeners, you like conlangs. Put the conlangs in your game. Let’s talk a littl