Hey y'all,

As I've been typing up the mechanics, and also working on a setting timeline, I've realized that Aislng is too culturally biased. While there are certainly Celtic varieties of Otherworldly beings, there are also Native American, Hindu, African, Asian, and others present. So I want to give it a new name, and replace the few terms I've borrowed from Irish.

The basic premise, as I've mentioned before, is the conflict between human, fae, and breed, particularly in environmental regards. The "good" fae feel that they can solve the problems only with humanity's help, since humanity created most of the problems to begin with. They want to get back to a proper raletionship with us. Historically, the Otherworld (aka the Tell, a borrowing from Irish "an t-saol" or the world) and This world are obligated to each other. We provide them the means to solve problems and the energy to maintain abundance there, and they do the same for us, and on both sides it's been particularly important in war and conflict (we're not as different as we'd like to think!).

The "bad" fae are against humanity, and think we should be put down. We have violated the compact and ignored our duties so long that no reparations can be made, in their eyes. They take their anger and hatred out on us, and anyone who sides with us. Occasionally they'll work with humans, but only if they're particularly hating individuals whose aims further "bad fae" goals.

And there's the "wild" fae, who have decided that reality and the world changes, and you have to change with it. Sure, they may have once had a compact with us, but we don't anymore. There may have once been thousands of miles of forest to live in, but now there are very few places - it's adapt or die, baby. They try in general to stay out of all the arguments, and tend to avoid humans in general just because of the complications we introduce to their lives.

Players can be human Awakened (in this version of the rules), or some kind of Otherworldly being (slated for either a sourcebook or the next version upgrade). Stories will obviously tend to focus on the interplay between the various factions and human society.

So, with that background, anyone have some non-cultural specific terms for the following ideas? I'm open to culturally specific terms, if I can get terms that come from all over and thus introduce a sense of internationality to the game. Imagine a mix of Charles DeLint, Clive Barker, and Robert Holdstock. There are a few terms I like as they are, but I'm open to other suggestions.

What I want a new term/name for:

Aisling
Seelie
Unseelie
Fianna
Fae, Faery
Otherworldy being in general (they're not all fae)
Otherworld (I just need a bunch of names for it)
Thisworld
Seanchaí / GM
Courts- a generic name to cover the "factions"

What I'm happy with, but won't say no to more:

the Tell (the Otherworld for any particular Reality - there are many)
the Untell (this world)
the Forest at the Beginning, the primal reality that underlies all of them
Guardian, or the people (human or fae) who dedicate themselves to guarding over the metaphysical environment of a particular area, ensuring that fae don't kill or mess with humans and vice versa

Need a term but haven't a clue:

the border between worlds
the many-realities theory: each reality is Reality-prime to a number of other realities. The farther you go from this, the greater the difference between this reality and the other. An extremely close reality might differ only by the month Octember, and a distant one might only be populated by Smurfs (which is smurfy, but not all that close) or other hyperintelligent shades of blue.

Your ideas are immensely appreciated in advance.

Aidan

I say keep the cultural denotations and name. Give the "default" setting the same Irish feel, but make it known that people can play whatever flavor of game they want.

It's unique the way it is, and if something is unique, without being bizarre, or different only for the sake of being different, then it adds something to the game.

But this is just one (forceful) gamer's opinion.

-One (1) vote to keep Aisling

I'm with Wolfen; it's pretty okay the way it is. Cultural bias isn't necessarily a bad thing in game design, anyway. You could maybe come up with alternate lists for different cultures and slip 'em in the book's appendix, but as the only cultures I have any real knowledge of are long dead, someone else will have to help with that. ;)

However..

the border between worlds

the many-realities theory

IMO half the appeal of an "otherworldly" game is the flavor of it, and I'm a big fan of having that flavor reflected in the game itself. If you "deculture" the text I think you rob it of a great deal of appeal.

My preference would be to keep the core of the game celtic-ish, but keep an eye on areas where other cultureal variations would have a slightly different approach, and save it for a mini supplement that keeps the same basic rules but assigns new flavor terms to the different features and maybe slightly different ways for them to interact.

Generifying the terms and the background flavor would be very disappointing for me.

Hmmm...

The problem with genericizing it is that you then have no cultural reference rather than too specific of one. Since everyone is culturally embedded, it is unlikely that anyone would use generic terms. Thus, the terms you describe things in out-of-game wouldn't be used in-game. That seems clunky.

My suggestion? Keep the cultural references, but make it clear that they are cultural names and that other cultures use different ones. Give some alternate examples, but stick with the ones you are most comfortable with throughout the text. If you want to include variations between cultures, put them in a separate chapter or an appendix. Make it clear when the Celtic references are actually more than name-deep.

Stuart

Hmmm. I want to dissent with the crowd here. That is, I think that one can come up with a background that's got all original terms, and is not beholden to a particular cultures norms. But the problem becomes one of Suspension of Disbelief. That is, where are the terms coming from? I assume that they're "our" terms for "them", and as such, you'd expect that we would have terms for them over the years. That the celtic "fae" is the word they used to describe these creatures no matter how pan-cultural they may be.

So what I'd do is this. Make your description from a particular POV. Call the section in which you define all these things, The Book of the Fae, or something. Therin, describe the creatures in celtic terms. Then, when you get to the rest of the text of the game, drop out of that pretense, and define things more concretely. Stick with the terms, but make it clear that they are only used for convenience. Thus:

Fae - as described in The Book of the Fae, these are magical creatures from the Otherworld that are played by the characters. Known in other cultures as sprites, boggins, giants, elves, goblins, trolls, oni, nymphs, and a plethora of other names, these creatures all share a magical origin...

That sort of thing. Then:

Unseelie - those fae that are ill tempered.

Or whatever your definitions are. The point is to set up the flavor from a particular culture's POV, but then to allow players to define their character's in any old way they choose, using human terms to describe them only as they see fit. That way, one gets the idea, but can play it out without being tied to cultural ideals.

I feel I'm being a bit muddy. Does the idea come across?

Mike

Edited to note that this is pretty much just backing up what Stuart said.

Keep the names Celtic... most associate the Fae with them, so it's less confusing. You might want to mix in a few terms for things that don't have names in the Celtic form, though... and explain some of the other terms that other cultures have. I always like a game that has 'flavor,' so long as it doesn't get in the way of understanding the mechanics.

I understand the point about "cultural embeddedness". I am also one of those fans of cultural flavor (the only thing I like about WoD). So, I like the idea about using the terminology as a "placeholder", and I can deal with that.

Two things still really bug me though.

1. Aisling - Something more generic would be nice. I suppose it will work, as it's been following me around and been in development for a couple of years at least. This is probably my indecision striking here.

2. I really don't like the Seelie/Unseelie/Fianna terms. Yes, they've been used forever, and so people would understand what they were basically about. However, the terms have been used to mean different things than I mean them (Unseelie Fae are not "bad", they're just democrats - liberals - republicans - insert-your-political-opponent-here with particularly intense solutions to the problem). They've also been coopted by Changeling: the Colon-ized. I think my game is significantly different (even if it does have fairies and such), and don't want this as a point of similarity.

So, anyone have ideas for them?

Or am I just taking it too personally?

At any rate, I'll keep the majority of terms (including the Pale and some variation of Mirror Trick - thanks anonymouse).

While I agree with the general tone of the above replies, I want to make a distinction here. So far, it appears everyone is for culturally embedded terms. So am I. Those terms in this instance appear to be of Celtic nature due to the fae flavor of this game. And I love them all, loving all things fae and Celtic myself. Yet Celtic terms and our human view of the fae come from our human perspective and our human culture.

There is nothing wrong with flipping that. Take the terms from the fae perspective. Maybe they don't even call themselves fae. Rewrite the mythology from the Others' perspective. Have them maybe even recognize what the silly human's call them, but that it is either outdated, one faction of human-loving Others, or just plain wrong. Supersede your in-game culture over that of what the humans know. As a human character, you're entering not only a new world of beings and magic, but of culture as well.

I liken this to de Lint, Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" and "Sandman" or Clive Barker's surrealist worlds in many of his books. They hint of something us humans know and think we're familiar with, but completely steal the mythos for themselves, not just changing what names we thought something was called, or the way something might act or look like, but the entire cultures become something new, something the fae have always been to us humans - magical.

Ooh! Perfect!!!!

Thanks MJ, that's exactly what I'll do. Being a conlangers (people who construct languages for fun), this gives me plenty of room do so. I see a meld of English words (since the game is in English) mixed toegether in "strange" ways, with an archaic feel. Using the word Yliaster (from medieval alchemy) for Ki/Qi/the Force, for example. I can see slithy Borogrovian words already....

Aidan

I definitely think you should stick with the celtic words as a default and then explain other culture's 'fae' in terms of that.

On the other hand you seem quite entheusiasticfor MJs method.

Taalyn wrote: I can see slithy Borogrovian words already....

Thanks for your enthusiasm for my idea, using cultural terms is what I am attempting to do with my game on the wiles of Fate, Free Will and Fortune. I've enjoyed reading how your mechanic with the stones is working out, I have been brainstorming on a system that uses three stones rather than 7 with 3 cherries.

And of course, how far you take your terms/culture from that of humanity creates much of your games flavor and context. Is it like Neverwhere or Lewis's works which seems to play or twist or reverse what is simply taken for granted in our daily lives, what I would almost call nonsensical? Or is it bizarre and surreal, like Barker's Imago, what I would call alien, as in the way alienist was the original word for psychologist?

Maybe, do both. The nonsensical could be the human-loving Others, using metaphor and dream-image language to express terms and meanings the human mind doesn't quite grasp. The human-hating Others use their original tongue, not caring that humans won't understand what they mean. The friendly metaphoric words act as the in-game definitions for the terms used by the unfriendly Others. And lastly, keep the mysterious Others as that - mysterious. If forced to conduct business with either the lovers or the haters or even humans themselves, they would disparagingly use the recognized terms. But maybe they are a bit more wild, more primal, closer to whatever makes magick "tick".

taalyn> I like where you are going with this. Keep it up, and you might create a game about the fae that people from non-Celtic heritages can enjoy. If you don't mind, could you send me a RTF file of what you have so far? I really like what you've done, and I would love to playtest it. Who knows. It might even replace Changeling.

Green, thanks for the vote of confidence! Unfortunately, I've got at least a month more to go, and considering that I'll be finishing my masters in Celtic langs during that time, it may take longer. ;) I will definitely want to have folks here at Forge playtest it, though, so I'll keep you up to date.

MJ, you're just perfectly sparking off all my inspiration buttons. Thanks.

Thomas, I do like Elsewhere and Dancers, but detest Elohim. But then, I have an idea about the real life meaning, so I'm biased.

Thanks all of you for your continued ideas - they're helping to keep me focused, which is really nice.

Aidan

So out of curiosity, I think I get who would be Humans and Fae, but what are Breeds?

I don't love Elohim, either; I don't know if it means something in some Celtic language, but it's got a very specific meaning in Hebrew, and I don't really think you want that.

I'm confused, though. You started this thread by saying that you wanted to get rid of "cultural bias," specifically the Irish/Celtic bias. So why not do that? It seems to me that you could take the point someone made about these beings not thinking of themselves as fae at all, and run with it.

Suppose that's in fact a big part of the point. Humans have a nasty tendency to colonize what they perceive, to impress upon things their own desires and cultures. This is precisely what's wrong with the environment, for example. So to call these beings "fae" is to accept human-Celtic ideas about them. Now some of them think that it's best to get humans to understand themselves better through a better understanding of the creatures they call fairies; others think that this colonization and imperialism and destruction is inherent in humanity, and thus they should be stopped by whatever means.

So what terms do you use? A scattered mixture. And include lots of bits and pieces about how wrong all of them are. Unseelie/Seelie -- these are prejudiced views imposed upon so-called "kami" by humanity. Among some of the more radical, the word "seelie" has come to mean something rather similar to the word "oreo" among African-Americans, and "Unseelie" becomes a badge of pride. Others think using these words at all degrades the whole nature of natural-spiritual being in the first place, by buying into human categories and defining oneself in those terms.

And so on.

Seems to me if you use a lot of Celtic terms, your game will be read as Changeling: Next Generation, which I doubt you want.

But that creates its own problems - if you have their own terms then the players have to put a hell of a lot of effort into just working out what on earth you're on about because none of the terms are familiar.

I've run into this with Nobilis - A game I've finally decided is excellent, but for 3 months after i bought it I wanted to sell it simply because it's such heavy going until you've come to terms with what everything means. Even (to a much lesser extent) exalted can be confusing since it has so much unique jargon.

I guess I agree with Clehrich on terms, which goes along with my earlier posts. The familiar terms can be there, and if you tend to use them a lot you are playing a human-oriented game with "Seelie" overtures, as Clerich used it. If the group goes with the new terms, then the game is more spirit creature-oriented game with "Unseelie" overtures.

I didn't actually mean that taalyn should invent a whole new set of terms. As you point out, Thomas, this will just seem pretentious and unnecessarily difficult. My thought is that there would be a little stock list of terms, ranging from the very well-known (fae, elf, fairy) to the more obscure (shen, leshii) and a kind of freeform swapping around of these. The point being that none of them really means anything from Their point of view. It's kind of like when Sam asks Galadriel about Elvish "magic," and she says she doesn't really know what mortals mean by that word. Similarly, these beings really don't have a single term for themselves, and in fact they don't really have a consistent culture or identity as beings (one of their problems, politically speaking). So in explaining the game, you walk around the need for the term as much as possible, and when you can't get out of it you use something quite generic and not very consistent. About the best term one could come up with would be Them, but of course that's from a human perspective; the problem is that They don't think of Themselves as "Us."

Ermm. Does that make any sense at all?

Fae are the spirits of nature - beings who embody wind, or a stream, or gold-backed beetles. Humans are, well, humans. Once, the two groups had a Compact, by which they cooperated to each side's benefit. When the Comapct was broken (sometime during the 5th century, I think, when the Age of Philosophy reduced the physical world to a 'Bad Thing' and Christianity really started to take hold), the Luck than humans create started to flow in directions other than towards the Fae. This Luck pooled, and drew reality from human dreams and works to create Breed. Breed are the fears, hopes, and dreams of humanity. Fae are leprechauns and naiads, where Breed include bogeymen, werewolves, and the lesser spirits of machinery known as gremlins. Breed tend to predominate in urban settings (along with Wormwood fae (the unseelie court) whose homes have been polluted), and Fae in the countryside or in parks (including Dream Breed, whose development depended only on human dreams, not on human works).

It's actually unclear whether humanity dreamt Breed and created Fae, or whether Breed realized humans together with Fae. Are Humans just the tendencies of Breed made real in the Untell (this world), or are Breed the result of human desire in the Tell (Otherworld) - it's like the chicken and the egg.

Aidan

Clehrich, I get what you're saying. And I agree - this is why I as looking for some way to get a little more culturally imprecise. There will always be a bias, because I'm American and know certain cultures and don't know others, but if I could make something less precise, or incredibly unique, then I'd be able to defeat a lot of culturally inspired assumptions. If I call the Fae the Squigglies, other than the silliness of the word there's less implication of what that means. I'm free to create whatever I want it to be. Clive Barker's Weaveworld, Imajica, Great and Secret Show - these are all good sources for the kind of thing I'm aiming for. When terata are introduced, you don't know what it means, so he has freedom to define it however he likes. Same with the mystif (vaguely mystic, but not...).

That's the example I'm trying to work towards by replacing the specific Celtic terms. As you correctly observe, I do not want to be Changeling: the Next Generation. I'm trying to work towards something entirely different, and more like Barker than DeLint or Bull (though both are still useful inspirations).

I want the term for 'Fae' to be vague - if I can come up with one term, unique and innovative, I won't have to resort to 'Them'. Though I still want to bring up the other terms just to give an idea of how meaningless they really are from the 'Fae/Breed' perspective. They're called Inchoa (in-COH-uh), and that's what they call themselves (to whatever degree they recognize themselves as distinct from humanity), but they're also valled kami, larvae, spirits, totems, manitou, fairys, and so on.

Is this making sense? maybe I just need to read Imajica again....

Aidan

Imajica, Weaveworld, Great and Secret Show, they all rock. If you can capture the mysterious surreal mysticism of Barker, you definitely will have something original on your hands. The actual pure power, majesty, mystery, and vulnerable threat of what the Fae are I think would be much more a kin to that which Barker presents us than Changeling does.

Interesting take on the Breeds... like you are seperating the spirit creatures born of nature and human dreams, from those of nature corrupted by humans and born of darker desires.

It's capturing that 'surreal mysticism' (excellent terms) that's the hard part. I think my mechanic is conducive to a concept like Gentle's Pneuma or to characterizing the operation of a Boston Bowl. The setting allows for Cenobytes as well as unicorns. It's not that we're making all these creatures up, but rather that we're remembering them.

I know that some of the ideas and concepts that Barker presents will come over directly into Aisling (which I've decided is just a working title). Terata, raptures, pneuma, the conspiracies that hide magic, these will be a recognized part ofthe world. At the same time, I wan't some of the ideas of DeLint, Windling, et al. to be visible as well (I'd argue that the same themes are treated by Barker, but in a darker and more opaque way) - heroes struggling with humanity, love, personal meaning and place in the world - these are the sources of our fears and our dreams. That's a big part of the draw of these authors (for me), and what I want to accomplish in Aisling.

Aidan