'Old Draconic', or Elvish Draconic

Proto-draconic excludes some sounds that are quite easy for the human (or elven) mouth to make, such as rounded vowels, and includes sounds and sound distinctions that a human (or elf) would not find so distinct -- for instance, the difference between 't' and 'tc' in draconic.

Part of the fancy for Anvoria is that the dragons built a great civilization largely for the benefit of the elves -- to give them the good life.  This 'draconic empire' was later overthrown by the elves, who accepted propaganda that claimed they were slaves, and the dragons were largely slain or enslaved, but the language of the Empire, draconic dumbed down for and spoken by elves, became sort of the Latin for Anvoria.

So, first the straight-up sound changes:

Labial:
P - remains the same.
B - Is subsumed by V unless it is initial.
F - same.
V - same.
W - Elves add roundness to the letter.
I - as in machine
Ú - becomes U, and is pronounced as in 'flu'.

Dental:
T - Remains the same.
D - Remains the same.
TH - Remains the same.
DH - Remains the same.
L - Unchanged.
É - Subsumed by E.
O - As in the English Boat.

Palatal:
TC - Becomes 'TC', but is pronounced like the English CH.
DC - Becomes DJ, but is pronounced like the English J.
S - Becomes C, and is pronounced like the English SH.
J - Remains the same.
R - Unchanged.
E - Unchanged,
U - Is subsumed by E.

Velar:
K - Like the English 'K'.
G -  Unchanged.
H - Becomes an English 'H'.
Q - Unchanged.
Y - Unchanged.
A - As in "Ha!"
Á - Is subsumed by A.

The grammar also changes.

Proto-Draconic Sigils

Proto-Draconic is getting something of a revision.

For starters, the ancient Draconic language has, basically, four sigils (each of these sigils can appear point-down or point-up; they are shown alternating because I can).

Each sigil, then, represents a series of consonants (and vowels, but we'll get to that later).  The consonants can be voiced or unvoiced, and they can be a stop, fricative, or liquid.  Furthermore, each symbol can represent two vowels, one front, one back.  Thus, in the following order: unvoiced stop, voiced stop, unvoiced fricative, voiced fricative, liquid, front vowel, back vowel:

Labial:
P - same as English
B - same as English
F - sounds similar to English, but blow through your lips -- no teeth involved. (Dragons teeth don't play nice).
V - sounds similar to English, but blow through your lips -- no teeth involved.
W - same as English, but never round your lips (so it's much less distinct-sounding).
I - as in machine
Ú - as in the sound you make when you get punched in the stomach.



Dental:
T - Somewhat softer than English, almost a 'th' sound, made with the tip of the tongue against the teeth.
D - Somewhat softer than English, almost a 'dh' sound, made with the tip of the tongue against the teeth.
TH - As in English think.
DH - As in English this.
L - Sounds like English, but made against the teeth.
É - As in "Weigh"
O - as in the sound you make when you get punched in the stomach.  To an English speaker, this sounds almost exactly like Ú, but to a dragon, they are quite different.  (Ú is IPH ɯ, O is IPH ɤ).

Palatal:
TC - Exactly like the English T.
DC - Exactly like the English D.
S - Like the English 'SH' as in bash.
J - Like the sound of S in Measure.  A french J.
R - Lightly trilled.  Sounds almost, but not quite, like a 'D'.
E - As in Wet.
U - As in "Mud"

Velar:
K - Like the English 'K', but pronounced just a touch farther back in the mouth.
G -  Always hard as in get, not soft as in age.
H - Like the ch in loch, only a bit softish.
Q - This is hard to describe.  It's like a French 'r', an 'r' sound produced in the back of the mouth.
Y - Same as English.
A - As in "Ha!"
Á - As in "Awesome!"

Notice, Draconic has no 'u as in boot' or 'o as in note'.  These vowels require the rounding of the lips, a talent few dragons acquire.

So... when you see a draconic sigil, how do you know which of the seven possible sounds it represents?

First:  Each sigil has four variants.  It can have a curved 'vowel mark' put into it, to indicate that it is a vowel. It can have a straight 'voice mark' put into it to indicate it is a voiced consonant or a back vowel.

But what about the fricatives and the liquids?

As far as dragons are concerned, the fricatives and the liquids are not exactly separate letters.  They are how letters sound when tucked into different roles.  Basically, for all draconic words that aren't grammatical particles, there is a two-letter (almost always two-consonant) cluster.

Root words in proto-draconic have three key letters, and are therefore written by arranging the three sigils in a triangle, like the triforce in Zelda.  Once you move beyond the root vocabulary things start getting more complicated, so let's start there.

Here are two such trigrams, both of them (if read left-to-right, top-to-bottom) reading "Labial (Voiced)", Dental, Palatal (Voiced)", or for shortsies "B-T-DC."

The top one is in function formation, or point-down, which means that it is serving in the role of verb.  This also means that it is read "C1C2-V-C3-V" where 'C' is a sigil from the trigram, and Vs are vowels known to the reader (because there do not tend to be homonyms in proto-draconic).

In other words, because the two consonants are side-by-side, they are pronounced side-by-side, and in this case, the second 'mutates' into a Liquid.  So, this would be pronounced "BL(vowel)DC(vowel).  The vowel following the mutant consonant tends to take its form from the consonant, so the final word will be "blédcu", a word pronounced almost exactly like the English phrase "Blade, uh..."

The lower trigram is in argument formation, or point up, which means it is an adverb, adjective, or noun (in English terms).  Unfortunately, the modifiers (adverb and adjective) are pronounced one way, while nouns are pronounced another way.

The modifiers follow the form C1-V-C2C3-V.  Remember, consonants side-by-side in the trigram are side-by-side in the pronunciation.  C3, as you may expect, mutates into the liquid, which means the second vowel takes on a front or back position, as necessary, to indicate the original voicing of the sigil.  C2, however, becomes fricative at this point (leading to the draconic rule that verbs are harsh, and nouns and modifiers are gentle).  So, as a modifier, this trigram is pronounced B(vowel)THRU, or "bethrú".

The noun form is C1-V-C2-V-C3.  C2 becomes liquid, C1 becomes fricative (to allow flow to the next word despite the lack of a trailing vowel), and the second vowel, once again, goes front or back to maintain the information lost by the liquid transformation. "belij".

Oof.  So much for three sigils in exactly the same order.

The only differences if one of the sigils represents a vowel are that vowels don't mutate -- they flow enough as is -- that the vowel filling a 'consonant' role is separated from preceding and following vowels by a light breath, almost like the English 'h' (this is represented in transliterations by every fantasy author's favorite:  an apostrophe), and preceding or following vowels must be one of three diphthongs "AI" (pronounced 'eye'), "UI" (pronounced by running the two sounds together), and "EI" (pronounced the same as 'é').

Thing is:  the three pronunciations above are all the same word as far as dragons are concerned.  They are how the word B-T-DC is pronounced in different contexts.

Have you ever heard a hip young smartass say "I'm going to broom the floor" as opposed to "I'm going to sweep the floor"?  That is how Draconic works (although to the outside listener, a verb and its associated adjective/noun sound like very different words).  Nouns get verbed.  Verbs get nouned.

Two more things:  Observe the following Draconic Trigram:

Holy Moses!  Where do you even begin?

First off, when you have a trigram of this size, the central 'triforce' set, in this case T-G-B, is the heart of the word, as it is the word's root.  The outer sigils, the wings D and K, and the tail, E, represent further sounds that have been tacked onto this word, usually through compounding (the wings are a prefix, the tail a post-fix).  The central sigil, P, is a particle said before the word, to identify it's role in the sentence (most verbs and all nouns will have this; adverbs and adjectives will tend not).  The 'horns' on the point indicate that the point 'consonant' (first 'consonant'in an argument, last 'consonant' in a function) is a fricative.

This is as big as a trigram ever gets.

So, the phrase is "P DK-TGB-E"

"Pi dyathéyavu'e."

PnPRPG Combat system

The heart of a PnP RPG: conflict management (preferably with swords and/or sorcery).

Our goal?  Tradeoffs.  Sid Meiers' interesting choices.

Initiative:
Whomever has the highest initiative (however that is calculated) goes first.  Each character then chooses from amongst the players who have yet to go, which shall come next.  (That is, if it is your turn, you get to pick whose turn comes next, provided it is someone who hasn't gone yet).  This continues until all characters have taken their turn.  The last character to act chooses who will act first in the next round.

Battle Threshold:
Everyone has a threshold representing the amount of attention and reflex they can devote to doing stuff each round.  This will often be a number in the neighborhood of 7 (as a starting assumption, pending other mechanics).

Acting in combat causes one to accumulate stress that is compared to this threshold, perhaps in the form of counters.  Reflexes, like parries, result in one point of stress accumulating.  Acts that require conscious decision or commitment, like dodges, grabbing items off the table, and so forth, accumulate two points of stress.  Taking action to harm another character, due to the amount of mental commitment needed to do so, accumulates three points of stress.

There is no limit to the amount of stress a character can accumulate in this fashion.  However, the amount of stress over and beyond the threshold is applied as a penalty to any actions that require a roll or comparison.  That is, if you decided to attack an enemy, you have a threshold of 6, and you have 8 action stress, your attack has a -2 penalty applied to all rolls.  Moreover, as your attack accumulates an additional 3 stress, any further actions you take will suffer a -5 penalty to all rolls(!).

Stress accumulates after the act that causes it (so, the attack in the example does not start out with a -5 penalty, but only the -2).

When a character receives his turn, it is up to the player of that character how much stress to accumulate 'doing stuff', including attacking, and how much to hold back, to enable defenses to subsequent attacks.  This means the advantage of going first is setting the pace; the advantage of going last is knowing you can safely use up the rest of your threshold.

At the start of a new round, the total Battle Threshold of each character is subtracted from that character's action stress; if they had an amount equal to or less than their threshold, they now have zero stress.  If their stress exceeded their threshold, however, there will be residual stress.  This simulates actions that leave one more open, or need recovering from, and so forth.

Any player may respond to an action directed at him with any reflex, action, or attack (e.g. you can attempt to parry or dodge an incoming attack, or simply choose to attack simultaneously).  These responses are considered simultaneous to the action to which they respond.

Any player may choose to act out of turn at any time, at the cost of accumulating double stress for whatever action they take.  (You can, in fact, dive in front of an attack meant for an ally -- but you will accumulate four stress instead of two because it's not your turn).

Should two characters both attempt to act out of turn, their actions are simultaneous unless one of them chooses to accumulate additional stress to go first.  The other can then pay the same amount to act simultaneously, or more to go before, and there can be a nice little bidding war to see who acts first.  No bid can exceed the size of the Battle Threshold (though the results of the bidding can go beyond the size of the threshold.  I.e. if your threshold is 7, you can accumulate no more than 7 stress in any given attempt to go first.  However, you can bid up to 7, even if you already have 5 stress).  Moreover, no character can act out of turn if his action stress exceeds his Battle Threshold at the time of action.


These two mechanics together already make even a simple swordfight between two evenly matched opponents with no special abilities far more interesting than many RPG fights, as they jockey for position when deciding initiative, and then decide whether to go all-out and exceed the bounds of their threshold, or else conserve some brain-time for defending themselves.

Starting populations

Here's a rough map, lacking geographical features (which remain in my head for now), showing the initial distribution of stuff:

Places marked D are concentrated deposits of people who speak Proto-Draconic.  E means a Proto-Elvish-speaking population, B means a Proto-Bob speaking population, M means a location of mystic import that would be Named by all who are near it.

More info:
There are two primary races of this world:
The strong, powerful, naturally-armed-and-armored race that represents the Yang-esque elements of human nature, which I am calling dragons or draconic.  These naturally speak PD.
The weak, lovely, mystically-inclined, Yin-esque race, which I am variously calling elves, faerie, or whatever, but from which anvor's equivalents to nearly all the humanoid fantasy races shall spring.  These speak PE.

PB is spoken by hybrid-mudbloods created by the Evil as a slave-race.  You can think of them as sort-of orcs, though I have in mind for them to become the more widespread human-esque set, ultimately.  Post-war, their main goal in life at the moment is simply to be left be.

M1 = a place associated with Truth.  (The original Dragons Eye Isle is there).
M2 = a place associated with Goodness (This is where Uva would be, originally).
M3 = a place associated with Beauty. (Sulai lake in the original).

Linguistics:

Step one:  The begining.  There is a great war against the forces of badness, the supercontinent is shattered, and the mother of badness is trapped in a time-locked maelstrom at the center of the break.  While other continents drift onward, the scrap of land I am calling Anvor gets caught in the wings of the seal, and effectively lives in a bubble in the lamination that keeps evil in the core and out of the world at large.  Thus, Anvor is isolated from the world at large.

There are three main linguistic groups that settle down, forming the proto-languages that I will call Proto-Elvish [PE], Proto-Draconic [PD], and Proto-Bob [PB].  For PD, I will use a loglan I developed that has improbable consonant clusters aplenty.  So it is effectively done.  For PB, I want something that will yield English-sounding words because while I doubt original Anvorian names like Brian and Anthony are going to show up, I still want there to be a culture or three with names you would not be surprised to run into.  PE's purpose, of course, is to yield a language that I find pretty.

A good way to define sounds and phonotactics for a language (and generate some sample text as a result) is Mark Rosenfelder's language text generator.  I created the following phonotactics for PE:


Categories:

B=oau
R=ei
V=aoeiu
F=θfvδ
L=lwry
K=rnθu
C=kltrdbvyfθwδnmscj


Rewrites:
θ|th
δ|dh
c|sh
k|c
uu|u
oo|o
aa|a
ae|a

Syllable Types:
CV
FLV
CBR
FLBR
BVK
V
FLBRK
CVK
CBRK
VK
CRBK
FLRBK
RB



And it resulted in sample text like so:
"Luelacatan thlela fleci dhyaleca lueraoulothlo vlathrue cauar. Luirthwiu te dhyotolo loefui fluirvwafwa oli fyefwa ti."

Sounds lovely.  Now for Proto-Bob:


Proto-Bob

Cats:

V=eaoiu
C=rtnθsdlkmwfgyhpbvjz
S=s
L=rwy


Rewrites:
θ|th
c|sh
dn|nd
tth|tt
thth|th
bt|pt
dt|t
tn|nt

Syllables:
CVC
CV
VC
V
CVCC
CLVC
CVVC
CLV
CVV
SCVC
SCV

Which produces the following:

"Delthen kan. Nemunuthtethu e ni te nwa sot. Na thorne rer ni sa rit. Teth lir ti te a thef. Rek ret san te en tek rar."

One run of the Protobob tactics produced the word "losertest".  I kid thee not.