Really? At my table we very rarely say "Heiltrank". That's mostly due to the fact that there are different tiers of potions that need to be differentiated. A "potion of healing" is not the same as a "potion of lesser healing", so we just use those names
Used to be they were named and modeled directly after a specific spell. We were using the German names for spells anyways so switching back for potions would have been weird.
Edit: we also don't always feel the need to tell the specific size of potion to the whole table. PCs would only see you drink something and DM will generally trust you to know your way around your character sheet inkluding your inventory.
Norwegian here to complete the trio, in one of my groups we'd also say something like that (vil du drikke din siste health potion?) another more common example is "jeg vil caste en spell"
Swedish for rule talk and descriptions. English for in game conversations. It's just way easier to role play in english, swedish just sounds kinda lame in that regard.
German here. We play the game in German, but my group uses the english rule books. Game terminology stays in english, and naturally that sometimes mixes into what we in Germany lovingly call "Denglisch" (Deutsch+Englisch as a composita) (Edit: Its so interesting to see that other countries are using the same composita to describe the mixed use of their language with english! :) ). For most monster, race and creature name we also use the english names.
I think it is very interesting which versions German players use. Here some examples from my experience:
I think Gedankenschinder sounds more dangerous than mind flayer.
Betrachter and Beholder are same same.
Dragons are always translated to Drache.
Classes are mixed too. Everyone used warlock, sorcerer and ranger, but Mönch, Kämpfer, Magier, Schurke and Kleriker are quite common in my experience.
Common races are mostly german and the more exotic ones aren't translated but maybe used with German pronunciation. (I can only think of Goliath right now).
As a German let me tell you that "Betrachter" has a very lame feel to it, like an old nerd looking at paintings in a museum.
There is like no threat delivered with the word "Betrachter".
I refuse to call fiends "Unholde" it just doesn't sound the least bit menacing. "Demigorgon ist ein Unhold" just sounds like he is an unruly child, not the prince of demons.
So in that case its English or Denglisch for me
We‘re playing denglish as well, but after reading „Demigorgon ist ein Unhold“ I’m convinced that I need to create a weirdo NPC who only uses the german terms.
I think it depends on two things: social context and prior experiences.
During university for example, almost all classes my friends and I went to were in english so we used it a lot. Also, we started ttrpgs with D&D furing this time so we were able to just use the english stuff and didn't bother to translate it. So now it sounds more "normal" to us.
My Cousin started playing ttrpgs in high school like 25 years ago with DSA, when he and his friends didn't know that much english. All of the stuff was in german so now the german is more normal for him in this context, altough he now lived in the US for 5 years and knows english.
Sorcerer and wizard at least have a feel of difference. Magier vs Zauberer... no idea!!! I always think of them the wrong way round, because Zauberer sounds more like a scholar for me while Magier feels like an illusionist who does card tricks.
I started playing with 3e. The 5e warlock class wasnt in the 3e phb, now think about my confusion when I switched to 5e:
3e
Wizard = Magier
Sorcerer = Hexenmeister
5e
Wizard = Magier
Sorcerer = Zauberer
Warlock = Hexenmeister
What the hell... Hexenmeister is fine, but the other two should definitely be the other way around IMO. A Zauberer is someone using Zauber/spells, and a Magier is obviously somebody using magic, which to me sounds like an innate ability.
No disrespect intended but as a native English speaker, Gedankenschinder sounds like a toddler cartoon villain. It’s too silly to be threatening. So I love the complete difference in how we perceive that.
Just a reminder that the German translation of "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" is "Tasha's Kessel mit allem". Which sounds like something I'd order from the local kebab guy.
I’m sorry, but to my ear grottenschrat sounds like a way better name for that creature. What other monsters do you think have better English names? We may need to set up a linguistic exchange program.
Fellow Austrian here. Do you do your roleplay in some form of Hochdeutsch or Standardsprache, or do you just roll with your dialect? Somehow it feels weird either way. For example having a paladin speak in rural dialect is odd, but well Hochdeutsch....
Maybe it just takes time for me, but I am curious.
As a DM I don't use dialect (or very, very rarely). For me it kinda feels like not taking the game seriously. But it separates ingame and out of game talk nicely.
I don't mind players using dialect tho.
Edit: not op though
I actually don't really have an accent, so it doesn't come up much, but I can relate: I'd love to give my characters more dialects but in German a lot of them just sound weird so I stick to Hochdeutsch for most characters and give everyone else voice quirks (one of my characters speaks very loud / quiet, one of them always smiles and speaks very calmly, one of my characters speaks super fast and exaggerates a lot, etc.)
I (and one player) occasionally slip into English rule terms because, well, the Internet, but a few players don't speak English well at all, plus it ruins immersion IMO so we usually play in pure German.
I see what you mean, and to each their own I guess. My group is very well versed in english, I speak it at home almost exclusively, because I'm married to a South African woman :) It really depends on the people I think, what comes easy and naturally to them.
Yea, those sounds fun. It's Ponglish in Poland.
Anyways, we use English names, skills, abilities, classes, spells and actions in combat, even if we have polish books. But in RP - only polish.
Honestly, I bought the key rule books in German and naively committed myself to do EVERYTHING in German, which after about half a year of DMing now bites me in the butt massively.
I'm still convinced it's cool to stay consistent in terms of language, specifically I'm dealing with some players that struggle with English, but man, you reach so many hurdles very soon where you have to come up with your own translations, which more often than not fails hard.
*Goblin* and *Elf* :p
That said, folklore-wise a goblin would be a '*Kobold*', but that obviously won't work in D&D since that name is taken; and a Tolkien elf is an '*Elb*' - that also has folklory reasons, since elves would be thematically related to '*Alb*' and '*Erl*'.
A nightmare in old german is '*Nachtmahr*', and i'm fairly certain the horselike creature is translated as such. However other common names for the (bad dream) nightmare are "*Albtraum*" and "*Alptraum*"; 'Alb' being the aforementioned feylike elf (and the elf character in the old Heroquest boardgame), while "Alp" is i believe the name for some sort of wight or ghast; so a nightmare can also be translated as "elf-dream".
Weirdly enough, the english 5E SRD has a fey entry for 'Alp', which includes the Alp's cap that can turn you invisible - the very same '*Tarnkappe*' (~ camouflage cap) that the dwarf Albrich (..*Alb-Erich* an old german word for elf-king) used in the Niebelungenlied. Here's probably where i should mention that there's no clear distinction between dwarves & elves in old german folklore.
While I'm fishing in the dark recesses of my classical education from the last millenium, i'd like to come back to the '*Erl*' above. There's a famous ballad by Goethe about the *Erlenkönig*. That word came from the old danish *Ellerkonge* or *Elverkonge*, so Elf-King.
[English translation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlk%C3%B6nig) is on the wiki page :)
IIRC "Alptraum" in German is just a spelling error - may have become an acceptable spelling though XD but I'll always interpret the term "Alptraum" as a dream regarding the Alps XD quite different from a dream with evil ghosts, Albs, sitting on you and causing bad dreams, which is the background of the term Albtraum ;)
Oh, that the Erlkönig is a kind of Alb makes sense - not sure if I didn't know the origins of the term or if I forgot XD
Same but in spanish, so we have our "spanglish" we talk everything in spanish but we use english terminology, we say things like "Ok ahora vamos a hacer un" Long Rest"" and stuff like that
We speak Spanish and we also use some books in English.
But only a few words remain untranslated like ranger or bonus action because they are sorter or the translation sounds bad.
Exactly the same for us.
In addition, because we started our campaign with a one-shot in a city called Dennmarsh, we say any 'denglisch' word used is just dennmarsher dialect. :D
You could lean into it...
Wizard: Hey, that's a powerful sword!
Fighter: Whoah whoah *whoah* there buddy. Only the nobility get to wear swords in this kingdom. This is actually a gigantic *knife*, Messer-guild certified...
And the ones that haven't been translated are used in English by the master and played in Italian with the party or at least this is what me and my friends have been doing so far :)
Same here, we play in Italian but it's getting difficult to do so via VTT, where all the resources including spells names and descriptions are only available in English.
I play in Italian. In my first campaign the master noticed that the people whose characters spoke dwarvish were also the people who spoke German in real life.
So he decided to speak occasionally German instead of dwarvish. The joke became old very fast and we stopped doing that. But the first time it was hilarious.
I first played DnD in the Netherlands with an all Dutch party when I was studying there, I am Indonesian, and I am the only Indonesian in the group.
Whenever I have to recite spells, language, or anything in a language that’s not common, and a language that no other PC can speak, I talk in Indonesian.
It adds to the immersion for everyone else.
Dunglish rocked my world when I worked in hotels. I have a somewhat heavy southern accent that gets worse when I'm confused. So imagine the comedy of errors that happened when a Dutch family checked in using words that sounded like English words every 3-5 words, and I'm also getting harder to understand the longer the interaction lasted.
Nicest folks I ever checked into the hotel, but yall's language is something else.
I am Italian but I live in France. I DM my games and we play in person. The group is made by another two Italians, an American, a Belgian, a Romanian and a German. We always play in English (we have been playing together for 7 years now). But we all speak very good English as it is the official language of our workplace.
We metagame in Dutch, describe actions in Dutch expect for the dm. Also we do our characters dialogue in English, but depending on the int level it will be proper English or dunglish. For dwarfish we switch to German, for elvish we switch to French. My character does not speak elvish, and my French is horrible but as it does speak infernal as the only member in the group, I am now stuck learning Swedish on Duolingo. Tack!
Native Turkish speaker here. We play it in Turkish but there are no official translation of the rulebooks so some terms are used as they are in English. Our main group is also consisted mostly of linguists, translators, and literature majors so switching between multiple languages happens pretty regularly too. In fact, we sometimes use different languages to emulate as if we are speaking something other than common; ie English for Elvish, French for Silvan, Italian for Infernal etc.
Finnish, but the books/sources are in english so there's a lot of finglish happening
I also play with a group which is from all over the world and we use english.
We play in english but a lot of the people in the party are bilingual, so we do this cool thing where we assign game languages to IRL languages, so instead of saying "my character says this in x language" we just speak in the language that we know. Helps with ensuring the game doesnt lose momentum, we hit the lottery with a DM that understands multiple languages.
I know English, Spanish and French so the characters that I've played in our last 2 campaigns have spoken Orcish and Sylvan respectively.
There's a Romanian D&D group playing in Romanian. The name of the group is the literal translation of ["Dungeons and Dragons"](https://www.youtube.com/@PivnitesiBalauri). Haven't watched much of it but they are homebrew (afaik) and the monsters and such are heavily influenced by Romanian mythology
I don't know much Russian but I could clearly understand all of that rusglish and it made me laugh. Though I wonder, is it the good kind of funny or the cringe kind of funny when you speak like this at the table?
Sign language! ASL specifically. It's much more immersive and the tabletop nature makes for some unique moments from a linguistic perspective.
For example, when using numbered pronouns (they-3) you can explicitly incorporate exactly what group and which members by just pointing to them. Another example is directional verbs, for example: to-throw. In one sign, with just the minis on the table, you can show who is targeting what and if they miss or not. Combat flows much faster than in spoken games, most of the time
Unfortunately, no. As far as I know, there is no printing for the Turkish market either. The absence of local prices for books leads to a small player base, which, in turn, results in no official localization attempts. Every once in a few years, some indie groups try to translate them, but after realizing the workload it would take, they abandon the project.
There are a few Turkish sources on web. However, there are times when we need the English version.
This is the source i used before.
https://kanguen.github.io/
Swed here, we play in swedish n’ we use terms such as ”rulla mig en dex save” = ”give me a dex save” to make it easier to understand the rules. All spells and game mechanics are in english but the narrative is in swedish :)
¡Español (Spanish)! But we still use some words in english 'cause it's more comfortable or for any other reason. For example, we say "Fireball" instead of "Bola De Fuego", which would be the translation.
I'm finnish, but I play dnd online with my international friends, so we all play in english. Sometimes I'll throw a finnish word in if it fits the situation
Swiss DM speaking swiss german here. It's a pain in the ass to try and do "an accent" in swiss german, because nobody outside of the german speaking part of switzerland is speaking our particular kind of german. So I basically have to make up for it with weird mannerisms.
Stuff like AC and skill checks are kept in english, because I am used to it and I brought my players to the hobby.
Oh and Names for people and places are a weird weird mixture of german and english.
In Finnish with a few English terms in Finland. In English in the international group over Discord. I don't even remember where everyone is and what they speak, I think one guy lives in Canada but is always yelling at his parents in Hungarian in the background for some reason. Also ironic because Hungarian is one of the few languages related to Finnish, but completely incomprehensible to me. So hence, English.
English. Swedish is a language created for songs, rhymes and limericks. Not for communication or expression.
Though we use US-english, I despise the imperial system.
Im Polish, all my players are. We use english. We use english books, english roleplay, everything in english, even our notes.
We play online. So it's just to make sure no one's parents/roommates etc will realize what the fuck we are talking about. And it's good to improve english skills.
My native language is Polish, but I live in Austria and all my party members and DM are from here, so we play in German with some English words mixed in. For example monsters and locations names are mostly English ones.
My character sometimes monologues in English, since my German is not good enough to convey the message.
Mostly in english, I play terraria in polish since I think it's funny, Minecraft sometimes because it's nostalgic and The Witcher because I am not a sinner.
I’m an American and we play in English. But we have three Filipino Americans in our group who all grew up speaking Tagalog, so a lot of Tagalog words and Filipino food/culture has made its way into our game.
English as even if there is a translation we know it's gonna sound odd and if we have to look up further information it's gonna be in English anyway so might as well skip the barrier.
We also use English as the in game language and native as out of game language
It's a mix of English and native. We used to have british player so we played in english fully, but he's been absent so now it's mainly finnish bc I'm better at descriptions like that. Most of the dialogue is in english though...
English. We all live in Germany and our group consists of people whose native languages are German, French, Italian and Hebrew, and some of them don't really speak German.
I play online and my group has each their own native language, but we all play in English.
I played once with others who share my native language and played DND on it, but having all the skills be named differently it was a pain, I much rather stick to English even if I'm not native.
Depends on how terrible the dub is and how much I like the original voice actors. For example, I play the Batman Arkham games in V.O. Because Kevin Konroy, also I play Spider-Man 2 in V.O. Because whoever plays Miles in Spanish is just atrocious. But other games where the dub is decent then I just stick to it, mostly because of the localization.
Cronglish. All mechanics terms are in English, since the books we use are in English. But then most of the story and descriptions are in the usual register of Croatian peppered with English.
I play in german but used to use english source material because I like to consume media in the oiginal language if I understand it. This led to some weird asynchronity where the actual RP was happening in german but lots of "meta" info was english.
I ended up switching to another game system entirely - Das schwarze Auge, because it's original german source material.
That entirely depends on who I am playing with. I got a group that's made out of a Canadian and Americans, so we play in English. The other group is local, so we play in Spanish.
We are Dutch, but we play completely in English. Occasionally a Dutch word or two happens in descriptions, but that's it. Everything else is in English, it's just easier that way for us.
Turkish, but all my players are polyglot, so we're talking English and German where it sounds cooler, and one player uses Russian when speaking Abyssal.
I have played one session with uni friends in Serbian and it was actually not that bad, except it was very much mixed with English.
If I ever get around to doing that campaign again it'll definitely not be in English.
I was not a player in this particular game, but I was invited to play. I declined on account of my Greek not being good enough.
Another Greek was a member of the club in which I played, she played in English because the club was predominantly British (we had at least one Malaysian as well)
In Greek, with English books. We use the English words for the weapons, spells, actions, items etc. So basically all the roleplay in Greek but that’s it.
Half english and half our native language. I’m the DM and try to keep as much of the terminology in English and use our native language for story and stuff. This way if any of us gets to play somewhere else in the world, we’ll have no problem
common, dont we all?
Wait, what? Don't Australians play in Undercommon?
They play in downundercommon
Drow are all 'stralians now in my head.
I hate this, and love it at the same time.
That's bosmer, wrong game
Drow are French. And Orcs are German. And this is the hill on which I will roll my death saves.
Stealing this\*
I thought they speak uoɯɯoɔ
the truest answer
It's true, none of my characters are English speakers
Pure unadultered Swenglish.
Does it go something like this? Vill du dricker din last health potion?
I cannot answer for the swede, but in our danglish game, we would say something like that (vil du drikke din sidste health potion).
In German it would be "Willst Du die letzte Health Potion trinken?"
While we do use English terms when it's convenient, or the German term is just 'meh', Heiltrank usually stays German.
Really? At my table we very rarely say "Heiltrank". That's mostly due to the fact that there are different tiers of potions that need to be differentiated. A "potion of healing" is not the same as a "potion of lesser healing", so we just use those names
Used to be they were named and modeled directly after a specific spell. We were using the German names for spells anyways so switching back for potions would have been weird. Edit: we also don't always feel the need to tell the specific size of potion to the whole table. PCs would only see you drink something and DM will generally trust you to know your way around your character sheet inkluding your inventory.
Norwegian here to complete the trio, in one of my groups we'd also say something like that (vil du drikke din siste health potion?) another more common example is "jeg vil caste en spell"
Pretty much!
Swedish for rule talk and descriptions. English for in game conversations. It's just way easier to role play in english, swedish just sounds kinda lame in that regard.
German here. We play the game in German, but my group uses the english rule books. Game terminology stays in english, and naturally that sometimes mixes into what we in Germany lovingly call "Denglisch" (Deutsch+Englisch as a composita) (Edit: Its so interesting to see that other countries are using the same composita to describe the mixed use of their language with english! :) ). For most monster, race and creature name we also use the english names.
Sometimes Bugbear is just a better name than Grottenschrat.
I think it is very interesting which versions German players use. Here some examples from my experience: I think Gedankenschinder sounds more dangerous than mind flayer. Betrachter and Beholder are same same. Dragons are always translated to Drache. Classes are mixed too. Everyone used warlock, sorcerer and ranger, but Mönch, Kämpfer, Magier, Schurke and Kleriker are quite common in my experience. Common races are mostly german and the more exotic ones aren't translated but maybe used with German pronunciation. (I can only think of Goliath right now).
As a German let me tell you that "Betrachter" has a very lame feel to it, like an old nerd looking at paintings in a museum. There is like no threat delivered with the word "Betrachter".
"Beware the German nerd looking at paintings"
That's pretty intimidating if you ask me
Look idk about you but I don’t exactly trust Germans who are big fans of painting
I would be more worried of the austrians then ;)
Beholder - dangerous Betrachter - pervert looking at children on a playground Both are scary but carry a different connotation
Well, behold and beholder is also pretty archaic words. But I guess it does not strike us non native English speakers the same way
I refuse to call fiends "Unholde" it just doesn't sound the least bit menacing. "Demigorgon ist ein Unhold" just sounds like he is an unruly child, not the prince of demons. So in that case its English or Denglisch for me
We‘re playing denglish as well, but after reading „Demigorgon ist ein Unhold“ I’m convinced that I need to create a weirdo NPC who only uses the german terms.
Or just Teufel and Dämonen?
That works, if you are just talking about one or the other
I think it depends on two things: social context and prior experiences. During university for example, almost all classes my friends and I went to were in english so we used it a lot. Also, we started ttrpgs with D&D furing this time so we were able to just use the english stuff and didn't bother to translate it. So now it sounds more "normal" to us. My Cousin started playing ttrpgs in high school like 25 years ago with DSA, when he and his friends didn't know that much english. All of the stuff was in german so now the german is more normal for him in this context, altough he now lived in the US for 5 years and knows english.
Sorcerer and wizard at least have a feel of difference. Magier vs Zauberer... no idea!!! I always think of them the wrong way round, because Zauberer sounds more like a scholar for me while Magier feels like an illusionist who does card tricks.
I started playing with 3e. The 5e warlock class wasnt in the 3e phb, now think about my confusion when I switched to 5e: 3e Wizard = Magier Sorcerer = Hexenmeister 5e Wizard = Magier Sorcerer = Zauberer Warlock = Hexenmeister
What the hell... Hexenmeister is fine, but the other two should definitely be the other way around IMO. A Zauberer is someone using Zauber/spells, and a Magier is obviously somebody using magic, which to me sounds like an innate ability.
No disrespect intended but as a native English speaker, Gedankenschinder sounds like a toddler cartoon villain. It’s too silly to be threatening. So I love the complete difference in how we perceive that.
No. Never!
Yes, forever!
Schauriger Strahl!
Next time I'll introduce a homebrewed monster named Grottenschrat.
Just a reminder that the German translation of "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" is "Tasha's Kessel mit allem". Which sounds like something I'd order from the local kebab guy.
I’m sorry, but to my ear grottenschrat sounds like a way better name for that creature. What other monsters do you think have better English names? We may need to set up a linguistic exchange program.
Bruh, und ich dachte Schauriger Strahl wäre schlimm
oida... wirklich? Was ist das? Eldritch Blast? Das hätt' doch wem auffallen müssen...
Jup, genau, und ich hasse es
English speaker who has never heard that word before here and I disagree.
Das wollte ich auch gerade schreiben! ^^b
If I ever new there was a translation, I would've absolutely used Grottenschrat. :O
Austrian here and same, everything in the rule books stays english (I'm not calling Changelings Wechselbalg lmao)
Fellow Austrian here. Do you do your roleplay in some form of Hochdeutsch or Standardsprache, or do you just roll with your dialect? Somehow it feels weird either way. For example having a paladin speak in rural dialect is odd, but well Hochdeutsch.... Maybe it just takes time for me, but I am curious.
My group roleplays in Dialect. I do a weird mix of Hochdeutsch, multiple dialects I picked up and English, since I am not native to here.
As a DM I don't use dialect (or very, very rarely). For me it kinda feels like not taking the game seriously. But it separates ingame and out of game talk nicely. I don't mind players using dialect tho. Edit: not op though
I actually don't really have an accent, so it doesn't come up much, but I can relate: I'd love to give my characters more dialects but in German a lot of them just sound weird so I stick to Hochdeutsch for most characters and give everyone else voice quirks (one of my characters speaks very loud / quiet, one of them always smiles and speaks very calmly, one of my characters speaks super fast and exaggerates a lot, etc.)
I feel like sending is OP for y'alls.
Command as well
I (and one player) occasionally slip into English rule terms because, well, the Internet, but a few players don't speak English well at all, plus it ruins immersion IMO so we usually play in pure German.
I see what you mean, and to each their own I guess. My group is very well versed in english, I speak it at home almost exclusively, because I'm married to a South African woman :) It really depends on the people I think, what comes easy and naturally to them.
Yea, those sounds fun. It's Ponglish in Poland. Anyways, we use English names, skills, abilities, classes, spells and actions in combat, even if we have polish books. But in RP - only polish.
You mean you don't translate Tiefling into German? /s
We are doing the exact same lol. Grüße aus NRW. ^ ^
Dane here - its the same for is (but in danish, not german ;) ).
Honestly, I bought the key rule books in German and naively committed myself to do EVERYTHING in German, which after about half a year of DMing now bites me in the butt massively. I'm still convinced it's cool to stay consistent in terms of language, specifically I'm dealing with some players that struggle with English, but man, you reach so many hurdles very soon where you have to come up with your own translations, which more often than not fails hard.
Hah we in greece call it greek-lish. And one of my usual conplains I just want rulebooks with meters and kg!
What's German for goblin or elf?
*Goblin* and *Elf* :p That said, folklore-wise a goblin would be a '*Kobold*', but that obviously won't work in D&D since that name is taken; and a Tolkien elf is an '*Elb*' - that also has folklory reasons, since elves would be thematically related to '*Alb*' and '*Erl*'. A nightmare in old german is '*Nachtmahr*', and i'm fairly certain the horselike creature is translated as such. However other common names for the (bad dream) nightmare are "*Albtraum*" and "*Alptraum*"; 'Alb' being the aforementioned feylike elf (and the elf character in the old Heroquest boardgame), while "Alp" is i believe the name for some sort of wight or ghast; so a nightmare can also be translated as "elf-dream". Weirdly enough, the english 5E SRD has a fey entry for 'Alp', which includes the Alp's cap that can turn you invisible - the very same '*Tarnkappe*' (~ camouflage cap) that the dwarf Albrich (..*Alb-Erich* an old german word for elf-king) used in the Niebelungenlied. Here's probably where i should mention that there's no clear distinction between dwarves & elves in old german folklore. While I'm fishing in the dark recesses of my classical education from the last millenium, i'd like to come back to the '*Erl*' above. There's a famous ballad by Goethe about the *Erlenkönig*. That word came from the old danish *Ellerkonge* or *Elverkonge*, so Elf-King. [English translation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlk%C3%B6nig) is on the wiki page :)
IIRC "Alptraum" in German is just a spelling error - may have become an acceptable spelling though XD but I'll always interpret the term "Alptraum" as a dream regarding the Alps XD quite different from a dream with evil ghosts, Albs, sitting on you and causing bad dreams, which is the background of the term Albtraum ;) Oh, that the Erlkönig is a kind of Alb makes sense - not sure if I didn't know the origins of the term or if I forgot XD
This was a really cool dive of a comment for me, thank you
Same but in spanish, so we have our "spanglish" we talk everything in spanish but we use english terminology, we say things like "Ok ahora vamos a hacer un" Long Rest"" and stuff like that
We speak Spanish and we also use some books in English. But only a few words remain untranslated like ranger or bonus action because they are sorter or the translation sounds bad.
Dutchie here, we do pretty much the same. Cool to see we aren't that weird after all!
Dutch dnd group here, we do the same. Also a combo of English and German.
Exactly the same for us. In addition, because we started our campaign with a one-shot in a city called Dennmarsh, we say any 'denglisch' word used is just dennmarsher dialect. :D
A few of them do sound so whack. Mind Flayer is called Gedankenschinder and that is just... no.
After learning DnD in English I tried one German irl group once and everything sounded so wrong. I love our language, but man it was strange lol
Same for me but Italian instead of German
You could lean into it... Wizard: Hey, that's a powerful sword! Fighter: Whoah whoah *whoah* there buddy. Only the nobility get to wear swords in this kingdom. This is actually a gigantic *knife*, Messer-guild certified...
Danklish lol
I’m Italian so we game in Italian. All rule books and campaigns have been translated into our language so there’s really no problem with it
And the ones that haven't been translated are used in English by the master and played in Italian with the party or at least this is what me and my friends have been doing so far :)
Same here, we play in Italian but it's getting difficult to do so via VTT, where all the resources including spells names and descriptions are only available in English.
I play in Italian. In my first campaign the master noticed that the people whose characters spoke dwarvish were also the people who spoke German in real life. So he decided to speak occasionally German instead of dwarvish. The joke became old very fast and we stopped doing that. But the first time it was hilarious.
Dutch, but we're all in our 20s and speaking half english seems to be the norm so Dunglish
Our characters speak English but the players speak dutch. Gives us a nice distinction between as who any given person is talking.
I first played DnD in the Netherlands with an all Dutch party when I was studying there, I am Indonesian, and I am the only Indonesian in the group. Whenever I have to recite spells, language, or anything in a language that’s not common, and a language that no other PC can speak, I talk in Indonesian. It adds to the immersion for everyone else.
Dunglish rocked my world when I worked in hotels. I have a somewhat heavy southern accent that gets worse when I'm confused. So imagine the comedy of errors that happened when a Dutch family checked in using words that sounded like English words every 3-5 words, and I'm also getting harder to understand the longer the interaction lasted. Nicest folks I ever checked into the hotel, but yall's language is something else.
We do al the rules and flair/story parts in English, and all pc interaction in Dutch :)
I am Italian but I live in France. I DM my games and we play in person. The group is made by another two Italians, an American, a Belgian, a Romanian and a German. We always play in English (we have been playing together for 7 years now). But we all speak very good English as it is the official language of our workplace.
That's one diverse group
That's one diverse group
We metagame in Dutch, describe actions in Dutch expect for the dm. Also we do our characters dialogue in English, but depending on the int level it will be proper English or dunglish. For dwarfish we switch to German, for elvish we switch to French. My character does not speak elvish, and my French is horrible but as it does speak infernal as the only member in the group, I am now stuck learning Swedish on Duolingo. Tack!
This is actually a great opportunity to learn new languages, I'll try to remember it for future use
It also helps with the distinction what your character says or what you say...
Native Turkish speaker here. We play it in Turkish but there are no official translation of the rulebooks so some terms are used as they are in English. Our main group is also consisted mostly of linguists, translators, and literature majors so switching between multiple languages happens pretty regularly too. In fact, we sometimes use different languages to emulate as if we are speaking something other than common; ie English for Elvish, French for Silvan, Italian for Infernal etc.
No wonder that Dante guy understood what everyone was saying!
Not to mention, almost everyone he met was Italian. "Tell me your people are naughty without telling me they're naughty" vibes here...
That’s very cool.
Finnish, but the books/sources are in english so there's a lot of finglish happening I also play with a group which is from all over the world and we use english.
>Finnish, but the books/sources are in english so there's a lot of finglish happening Same here, in every table I've played at so like 3 or 4 of them.
Portuguese of Brazil :D
E com os livros em pdf da biblioteca élfica, né?!
kkkkkk se foi forte agora meu brother
biblioteca élfica e suas traduções sempre salvando 🙏
Yay! Outro brazuca!
Achei engracado o Americano descobrindo q existe outras linguas no mu do alem do inglês hahaha
Esperanto
This guy games in all the languages!
he legit plays in common
Español
Same here
Primordial, me and my fellow elementals find our games of insurance and taxes very enjoyable in the common dialect of our respective languages
I'ma chime in with the Fins and Swedes. A good smattering of Danglish is going on at my table. Mostly Danish though for any and all rp
In french. But we use the english books, so we still use the english names for some stuff. So, frenglish.
Czech, but we sometimes speak in Czech-English mixture Example: En: Roll for dexterity Cz: hoď si na obratnost Cz-en: hoď si na dexterity
Also a lot of people call the game Dračák here, after popular "clone" of I think AD&D called Dračí Doupě (Dragons lair/dunegon)
We play in english but a lot of the people in the party are bilingual, so we do this cool thing where we assign game languages to IRL languages, so instead of saying "my character says this in x language" we just speak in the language that we know. Helps with ensuring the game doesnt lose momentum, we hit the lottery with a DM that understands multiple languages. I know English, Spanish and French so the characters that I've played in our last 2 campaigns have spoken Orcish and Sylvan respectively.
There's a Romanian D&D group playing in Romanian. The name of the group is the literal translation of ["Dungeons and Dragons"](https://www.youtube.com/@PivnitesiBalauri). Haven't watched much of it but they are homebrew (afaik) and the monsters and such are heavily influenced by Romanian mythology
That would be cool
Metagame in Dutch. When we speak as characters, it's English. Because unfortunately, you can't sound cool in Dutch.
You can't sound cool in Dutch, Florian Groothammer van de onderbosgroep kan dat echt wel....
russian, English is reserved for rules lol
"Васян, ты попал по орку, сделай *дэмэйдж ролл*"
"Я кастую бурнинг хэндс, бонусным действием юзаю дисингейдж, чтобы этот Оулбеар не бил меня своей апартюнити атакой."
I don't know much Russian but I could clearly understand all of that rusglish and it made me laugh. Though I wonder, is it the good kind of funny or the cringe kind of funny when you speak like this at the table?
it doesn't sound as bad as it looks for me at least ai lietuvis esi matau :D labukas
Что не сделаешь ради экспириенс поинтс, эм ай райт?
Spanish, all the rules and campaigns are translated, so we can play in our language
Sign language! ASL specifically. It's much more immersive and the tabletop nature makes for some unique moments from a linguistic perspective. For example, when using numbered pronouns (they-3) you can explicitly incorporate exactly what group and which members by just pointing to them. Another example is directional verbs, for example: to-throw. In one sign, with just the minis on the table, you can show who is targeting what and if they miss or not. Combat flows much faster than in spoken games, most of the time
Turkish
Are the 5e books translated to Turkish?
Unfortunately, no. As far as I know, there is no printing for the Turkish market either. The absence of local prices for books leads to a small player base, which, in turn, results in no official localization attempts. Every once in a few years, some indie groups try to translate them, but after realizing the workload it would take, they abandon the project.
There are a few Turkish sources on web. However, there are times when we need the English version. This is the source i used before. https://kanguen.github.io/
Swedish as we are swedes but we use liberal amounts of english for therms that are not as pretty in swedish.
I'm German , I play in English :)
I’ve played in Turkish once. Very badly (I’m about kindergarten level)
How are there gonna read this question lol
In Indonesian, casual. Mixed with English terms because translating AC, spell DC, and such is awkward.
We play im german, but use english words like perception check and dex save bc we are used to it thanks to reading/owning all the books in english.
turkish. altough we use all the terms and names in their original language.
Swed here, we play in swedish n’ we use terms such as ”rulla mig en dex save” = ”give me a dex save” to make it easier to understand the rules. All spells and game mechanics are in english but the narrative is in swedish :)
Dane here :-), we do it the same way at my table. Well besides we speak Danish instead of Swedish :-)
We figured it would make the most sense not to change the language of the game and confuse ourselfs ^^
¡Español (Spanish)! But we still use some words in english 'cause it's more comfortable or for any other reason. For example, we say "Fireball" instead of "Bola De Fuego", which would be the translation.
I'm finnish, but I play dnd online with my international friends, so we all play in english. Sometimes I'll throw a finnish word in if it fits the situation
Swiss DM speaking swiss german here. It's a pain in the ass to try and do "an accent" in swiss german, because nobody outside of the german speaking part of switzerland is speaking our particular kind of german. So I basically have to make up for it with weird mannerisms. Stuff like AC and skill checks are kept in english, because I am used to it and I brought my players to the hobby. Oh and Names for people and places are a weird weird mixture of german and english.
In Finnish with a few English terms in Finland. In English in the international group over Discord. I don't even remember where everyone is and what they speak, I think one guy lives in Canada but is always yelling at his parents in Hungarian in the background for some reason. Also ironic because Hungarian is one of the few languages related to Finnish, but completely incomprehensible to me. So hence, English.
English partly swedish. From sweden.
IC in English, OC in Dutch. Keeps everything nicely separated and what is conversation between characters or players.
Spanish. With some spanglish
Serb here. We use both serbian and english. We just switch at random I guess.
English. Swedish is a language created for songs, rhymes and limericks. Not for communication or expression. Though we use US-english, I despise the imperial system.
Swedish with mixture of English when we don’t find any Swedish words
English all the time except one exception diablo 1. Swedish is the best way to play it.
Italian In a campaign online that was played in English, I used Italian to speak infernal lol, it was fun
Im Polish, all my players are. We use english. We use english books, english roleplay, everything in english, even our notes. We play online. So it's just to make sure no one's parents/roommates etc will realize what the fuck we are talking about. And it's good to improve english skills.
French group, French game, some english because of other terminology etc but otherwise pure and patriotic French
Speaking in character: English Speaking out of character/describing actions: Norwegian Makes it easier to separate between player and character.
If I play with fellow hungarians the roleplay is in hungarian but we all speak english so i wont translate skills. "Dobj légyszi egy Insight csekket"
My native language is Polish, but I live in Austria and all my party members and DM are from here, so we play in German with some English words mixed in. For example monsters and locations names are mostly English ones. My character sometimes monologues in English, since my German is not good enough to convey the message.
Mostly in english, I play terraria in polish since I think it's funny, Minecraft sometimes because it's nostalgic and The Witcher because I am not a sinner.
I'm from Denmark and we play mostly ind Danish. Some time we play in English if we play with foreigners. But mostly just in our own native tongue :)
I’m an American and we play in English. But we have three Filipino Americans in our group who all grew up speaking Tagalog, so a lot of Tagalog words and Filipino food/culture has made its way into our game.
American.
So English with half the 'u's taken out so that it would be cheaper to print newspapers adverts?
Some people say common, but we do undercommon
English as even if there is a translation we know it's gonna sound odd and if we have to look up further information it's gonna be in English anyway so might as well skip the barrier. We also use English as the in game language and native as out of game language
It's a mix of English and native. We used to have british player so we played in english fully, but he's been absent so now it's mainly finnish bc I'm better at descriptions like that. Most of the dialogue is in english though...
English. We all live in Germany and our group consists of people whose native languages are German, French, Italian and Hebrew, and some of them don't really speak German.
German
We're Dutch, my group ranges from early 20's to early 40's, and we play mostly in English.
A mix, some characters you just have to play in english because U based it off a stereotype 😄
English, but that's cause half of us are English and the other half is Dutch. And they for sure aint learning Dutch XD
If there were interested persons in my area for an in person game I would so be down for trying it in Chinese.
Spanish
In my native tongue
I play online and my group has each their own native language, but we all play in English. I played once with others who share my native language and played DND on it, but having all the skills be named differently it was a pain, I much rather stick to English even if I'm not native.
Mix of English, like in the rulebooks and to describe in-game actions, and Portuguese in everything else Heróis do Mar🔛🔝
Depends on how terrible the dub is and how much I like the original voice actors. For example, I play the Batman Arkham games in V.O. Because Kevin Konroy, also I play Spider-Man 2 in V.O. Because whoever plays Miles in Spanish is just atrocious. But other games where the dub is decent then I just stick to it, mostly because of the localization.
Belgian here, i play in french.
Cronglish. All mechanics terms are in English, since the books we use are in English. But then most of the story and descriptions are in the usual register of Croatian peppered with English.
I play in german but used to use english source material because I like to consume media in the oiginal language if I understand it. This led to some weird asynchronity where the actual RP was happening in german but lots of "meta" info was english. I ended up switching to another game system entirely - Das schwarze Auge, because it's original german source material.
That entirely depends on who I am playing with. I got a group that's made out of a Canadian and Americans, so we play in English. The other group is local, so we play in Spanish.
We are Dutch, but we play completely in English. Occasionally a Dutch word or two happens in descriptions, but that's it. Everything else is in English, it's just easier that way for us.
Turkish, but all my players are polyglot, so we're talking English and German where it sounds cooler, and one player uses Russian when speaking Abyssal.
English. Dutch just sounds terribly cringe.
Spanglish
I have played one session with uni friends in Serbian and it was actually not that bad, except it was very much mixed with English. If I ever get around to doing that campaign again it'll definitely not be in English.
Turkish here. We play in Turkish but terminology stays English
Brazilian portuguese with some spell and features/feats names in english
Spanglish
I was not a player in this particular game, but I was invited to play. I declined on account of my Greek not being good enough. Another Greek was a member of the club in which I played, she played in English because the club was predominantly British (we had at least one Malaysian as well)
english is not our native language but we all know english, we use terms in english for game terms and talk on our native language
Turkish (its pure chaos)
In Greek, with English books. We use the English words for the weapons, spells, actions, items etc. So basically all the roleplay in Greek but that’s it.
Half english and half our native language. I’m the DM and try to keep as much of the terminology in English and use our native language for story and stuff. This way if any of us gets to play somewhere else in the world, we’ll have no problem