After some playtests with English speaking audiences I’m feeling tempted to tone down the amount of Spanish in my #NahualRPG game. What do you think? Should I stand firm and try break some ground?
After some playtests with English speaking audiences I’m feeling tempted to tone down the amount of Spanish in my…
After some playtests with English speaking audiences I’m feeling tempted to tone down the amount of Spanish in my…
That depends. Are the Spanish words essential concepts that do not have a direct equivalent in English? Or are they Spanish for the heck of it?
Once you have answered those questions you will have your answer …
Imho nothing breaks immersion faster than having to use a dictionary just to understand the core features of a game.
I have a problem remembering foreign words that are short hand for things. Like if I have the stats Mooka and Bargle and the book explains when to roll each, I get it. But come time to roll dice and I get confused. Is this a Bargle roll? What is Bargle again? Lemme look it up.
I haven’t checked out Nahual, so I don’t know if I’d have that problem there.
A good one to compare is Malandros, which uses Portuguese names for moves and I can never recall which move is which.
I’d like to hear their specific feedback.
My gut is to keep it – the English-speaking world should adjust to other languages once in a while, damnit.
Also, do they complain about Norsk-sounding words and phrases in existing RPGs? What’s the difference?
Of course, I speak Spanish so perhaps I’m being unfair as it wouldn’t affect me.
Meguey Baker, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
It might be worth making special reference sheets with mostly English on them, just to help newbies adapt (and ESL players with no Spanish). But otherwise? Anglos should suck it up and learn something once in a while. It’s a Mexican game, make it Mexican!
Russian friend of mine used to have a sig line that said something to the effect of, “English is the language that will mug another language in a dark alley and turn out its pockets for loose verbs.”
As a native English speaker, it’s true. Ours is a total pidgin. We have hundreds of Spanish words we don’t think about.
Now, I haven’t read #NahualRPG, but I suspect if the Spanish flavors it you should leave it in. Paella has saffron and, while there are probably a few exceptions, almost everybody likes it that way.
Yochai Gal and I agree on this: keep the Spanish. I will personally stand by you in including as many Spanish words and phrases as you want. If players can read and understand “psychic maelstrom” and “Hx”, they can do un poco de trabajo and figure out a few words in Spanish.
OTOH, Mike Espinoza you are the one who has to decide what conversations you want to have about your game, and if having the conversation about how much Spanish is in the game is not one you want to keep having, then maybe consider where you want it most and keep that.
Learning a little bit of a language I find absolutely suitable. Especially from what I have seen in Nahual it nearly always brought a cultural reference point with it deepening the game. Beside Spanish that even more so goes for Nahuatl.
On a practical note:
My game Atitlan Riders also has Spanish names for the Stats (and some other elements). So to make it easier for one shot players I include a translation in a smaller font of the stats on the playbooks.
I 100% believe that the level of Spanish in your game is comprehensible (the version I played mostly used Spanish for playbook names and move names which were all explained in context) and important to the game so I would keep it. But support whatever decision you make!!!
Thanks everyone, I’ll keep it and try to make it easier for English speakers to grasp the meanings. (By layout and graphic design).
I’m for the Spanish. What you might consider is putting the English in smaller text right under the move/stat names in a light gray so the Spanish is dominant but the English is there for those who need it, kind of like subtitles/captioning for the Spanish-impaired. I think you did that in some places, but not all, if I recall… Considering part of the idea is that your characters are fighting colonialist traditions, it makes sense to keep the Spanish over the English. It might even make sense to use the First Nation words over the Spanish, following that idea…
I haven’t read it yet, but I think you should keep the Spanish. Consider Coco: They used a lot of Spanish and it gave the movie a more authentic feel.
There is nothing more annoying and insulting than an author who thinks that one should “suck it up”. That attitude stinks.
It’s his job to sell the game/text.
Mike Espinoza Do you have any examples of the Spanish in your rules ?
At the very least you’d need a good translation as that kind of helps learning the bits that aren’t English.
Also consider that not everyone is a native English speaker. So for some of us an additional language is an extra complication.
ron d Counter: there’s nothing more annoying than a consumer who feels entitled to tell an author to tone down their use of their native language in a game set in their native land and inspired by their native mythology and cultural heritage. That attitude stinks, it’s lazy, and it’s dismissive of the work of the author. If it’s too much for you to grasp the context and meaning of a dozen or two unfamiliar words, best avoid [pretty much all sci-fi and fantasy ever].
From the examples Mike Espinoza has shared over the last year of the game text, the Spanish words add a great flavor and color to the text and ground it solidly and purposefully in the world he is exploring. The words are integrated smoothly into a predominantly English text, making their meaning explicitly clear in context. It’s very worth checking out!!
The Spanish has been good as-is and, as a player and fan of the game, it’s been a part of my appreciation and enjoyment of the game to learn a little bit of the language.
Meguey Baker I’m not telling anyone to tone down anything.
However there are consequences to over-use of any foreign language.
Also keep in mind that as a consumer we have a ton of choice.
So an author has a simple choice :
– change nothing and accept the fact that you won’t ever have a top selling game
or
– adapt and trade authenticity for a bigger audience
That’s not me trying to insult anyone.
That’s simple economics of the market as it is.
The fact that he is asking the question shows that he has doubts about this matter. It still is his choice to make.
Obviously, I think there should be more Spanish used in our community! But it’s also worth nothing that between Pasión by Brandon Leon-Gambetta, the aforementioned Atitlan Riders, and Cartel… there seems to be a bit of a Latino groundswell!
In other words, Spanish words are going to be less “foreign” all the time. 😀
We’re a global community. I’m pretty sure any non-English member would like to see more of his language, but that’s not realistic and it’s pointless.
I’d argue that if people want to read the Spanish version then they should read the original instead of a translated variant that uses foreign words like the average fantasy writer uses fake words.
Mark Diaz Truman we have counted them before and I still find it amazing too to see all these games about Central and South America getting attention right now.
Since I’m German writing in English living in a (Mayan) Tsutujil town making a game with a Nahuatl word in its title (the Spanish renamed most Mayan places after the language of their Aztec allies) it’s not exactly Latino what I do but obviously there is a cultural framework in common for all the games here which makes Latino culture and hence Latin American Spanish the right common denominator.
It feels good and right to have Spanish phrases in place although it’s not my native tongue (as isn’t English btw) and just as with English roleplaying games that gives me an oportunity to learn and understand.
That is especially true for Cartel, Pasion and Nahual. Thanks to the three of you already now for confronting me with jefes, gemelos and cantinas in all their glory.
Mark Diaz Truman, agreed! Heck, I’m excited for there to be a whole damn library full of great games in not-English! There are some games in Italian that I’m still deeply committed to helping translate into English, and I’m super proud to have had Apocalypse World translated into so many languages. I think it’s at 10 now?
But beyond translation, this thing where Brandon Leon-Gambetta and Mike Espinoza and Gerrit Reininghaus are writing entirely new PbtA games in settings largely unfamiliar to me and using non-English words I’m going to have learn as a way to get me to understand where they’re coming from as designers? That’s a great gift as a designer, to see my work inspire people to push back against the English-as-the-way-it-must-be and seize the means of production into their own hands.
Some of the core tenets of PbtA (and forgive me Mike Espinoza for this aside in your thread) is inclusivity and accessibility in game design and play. If Mike’s game and the Mexican imagery and sprinkling of Spanish words make the world of role playing more accessible to some Spanish-speaking kids somewhere, that is what meets my design goals. I’m not looking for market-share, I’m looking to share the market.
Meguey Baker – Yes, yes. I am really excited that Miguel is working in both Spanish and English, a feat which my meager Spanish skills can’t accomplish. 😀
And totally agreed that AW is a great framework for empowering designers to take on language itself. I started on Cartel after I first played Sagas of the Icelanders because I saw how culture could be encoded into the mechanics of the game itself. 😀
Okay! I got here a little bit late to the party but I’m catching up!
Full Disclosure before starting up! I’m relatively bilingual to the point that I knew and understood all of the words in the Nahual playtest with the exception of the name for the opossom playbook! I’m also working on Pasion de las Pasiones which is a telenovela game that uses some Spanish!
My personal opinion tends to be that people have shown an incredible ability to understand a huge amount of words that didn’t really mean anything to them beforehand. Before the Lore podcast blew up, I joked that I could tell if someone was a D&D player because they would use the word ‘lore’ in converstion, but the same goes for a BUNCH of other words. For that matter, plenty of D&D players can tell you the difference between a githyanki and a githzerai!
I’d say that if rules are written out in long-form Spanish, that will make it inaccessible for non-Spanish speakers. The more important the words are to get the mechanics of the game, the harder it’ll probably make things.
So Mark Diaz Truman’s Cartel drops ‘pendejo’ in there a bunch of times because it adds to flavor and feels freaking good. That doesn’t touch the table (except maybe convincing the GM to call the skinny new halcón some names) but adds flavor and re-roots us into the setting.
All three of Cartel, Pasion, y Nahual use (at my last look) the Spanish names for the playbooks. That’s important because some of these names carry implication that isn’t in the English name. El Caballero isn’t the Gentleman. It’s the Gentleman and the Knight and the Cowboy and damn, all that shit’s important. If they look at the moves and the fiction and other ideas within it, they can pretty much figure out what it means. In my playtest feedback and seeing written out descriptions, I’ve never seen anybody translate the playbooks (people tell me about their Empleada even if the word clearly feels a foreign in their mouths) which I think is a good sign that it doesn’t need a translation!
In terms of Basic Moves, I think there’s a middle ground. I think it’s worthwhile to have both of the names of it available. I like the flavor, I like the feel, AND players need to interface with it a LOT. On the other hand, the move’s triggers are kind of a secret second name for every move, so I think it could be handled either with additional text or just trusting that people will speak with what makes them comfortable (especially because your triggers are probably bolded!)
I’ve prattled on a bit in this, but my overall take is this: We’re writing books that depend upon a level of cultural fluency. We have to do things to help people to get that to the table if they don’t have it and by baking Spanish into the player-facing side of the game, we help people hit that feeling. Just like the text of Apocalypse World being full of wonderfully apocalyptic words and phrases helps us to hit that tone, we need to tap our rules and mechanics into cultural fluff!
For what it’s worth, I’ve had people scream, “MENTIROSA!” at my table without having seen any telenovelas!
Also, hell yeah Latinx gamers revolution!
Dios mío, this was the longest reply. Sorry I got chatty!
I think people are underestimating the amount of non-English content that is available for all RPG’s.
Part of the problem is that most people out there focus on English products, because that is what sells. It’s not because they’re trying to be non-inclusive. It is a simple matter of economics of scale.
Brandon Leon-Gambetta it may be long, but it gets the job done 😀
I definitely agree that some concepts are so tied to a particular language that they can never ever be translated to another (the verb ‘gedogen’ in Dutch being one example). So class names (or playbooks as they’re called in this system) definitely are things that don’t need to be translated.
Skills/moves are tricky. IMHO the average ‘PbtA’ game makes the mistake of trying to reinvent the wheel by naming core concepts differently simply because the setting is different.
That’s the trouble with translations in general though. There’s a more than a few options between translating everything literally or using an alternate translation that is close to the same intent or using the original words.
Example ? The word ‘f*ck’ in English.
Does one translate this in the nearest equivalent in your target language or use it as is ? It is a judgement call that is never easy and one that always attracts critism no matter what is chosen.