Cram Asks Anything

[LMNO]

3. If you were to sort all Gods into five or six categories, what would those categories be? For example: Love, War, Nature, Wealth, Trickery, Sovereign. (function: same as above)

up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom

Someone shut down the internet; Cain just won everything.

[Triple Zero]

Cram, about 1500 words being enough to "say everything" in English, did you ever check out "Basic English"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English#Word_lists

it has a word list of about 850 words.

it's also got a wikipedia: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

[Cramulus]

yes, when I was originally writing Brisbanian (circa 2006?), I kicked it off by absorbing the basic word list and a few other lists of "most common english words".

The problem with only having an 850 word set is that you can say anything, but you have to talk very simply, and have to be creative to get around certain words. I was originally aiming at 3000 words (including compounds and whatnot), but 1500 seems to cover most of the bases.

I never know when I've reached the edge though -- my litmus test is to take some piece of writing and translate it into Brisbanian... if I don't have to come up with any new words, I'm doing well. But often, I try to translate a sentence and find two or three words I'm missing. For example yesterday I realized I don't have any words relating to warnings, like "forebode", "beware", or "caution". Then there's all this little stuff which would fill itself in naturally if I had a real grammar -- like I have a word for "create", but was missing a word for "creation".

I find this to be a really interesting process. It's actually really difficult to come up with over a thousand gibberish words.. but you start to build on concepts. You have to get inside the Brisbanian mindset, and start to connect different meanings. Like in NERO, the world used to be more magical than it is now ; magic is slowly fading from the world. So the word for Old and the word for Magic are similar. The word for Green, Youth, and Enchant are all very similar. It makes me understand why Tolkein had to write a book which showcased this fantasy race he came up with. He had all these ideas about who these people are, ideas that evolved just from making up words.

[Cain]

3. If you were to sort all Gods into five or six categories, what would those categories be? For example: Love, War, Nature, Wealth, Trickery, Sovereign. (function: same as above)

up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom

Someone shut down the internet; Cain just won everything.

I was sure someone here would get it.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

This is the opposite of an "ask me anything" thread. Feel free to answer any questions you feel you're qualified for. These are kind of random (and specific) because they relate to various creative projects I've been brewing.


1. I'm putting together an english to conlang dictionary. What FONT should I use for the body? (in b4 "lol arial") Right now I'm using Centaur, but it doesn't look very good bold at 9pt size.

Code2000. That way, you can draw the funny Universal Phonetic Alphabet characters.

2. Id / Ego / Super ego (freud). Lion / Lamb / Bull / Eagle (leary's circuits 1-4). These are two ways to describe the forces underlying individual human psychology. Do you know of any other ways to categorize the forces within the human mind? (the function of this question is actually to brainstorm different races one might play in a weird live adventure game)

Jung's set of archetypes fit that. I can't really remember all of them, and I don't think anybody uses the same terms. They might be closer to 'occupations' in an RPG -- thief, wizard, warrior, whatever. Think hero/child -> warrior, senex/sage -> cleric, animus -> king...

3. If you were to sort all Gods into five or six categories, what would those categories be? For example: Love, War, Nature, Wealth, Trickery, Sovereign. (function: same as above)

* Knowledge
* Culture
* Fertility
* War
* Trickery

4. Is anybody interested in playtesting a larp? This means actually gathering up 3-5 friends with boffer weapons and playing this game I'm writing. If not interested in play testing, anybody interested in reading over some rules and telling me if they're comprehensible?

I'll read the rules.

6. Can you recommend a website which will teach me web design / css? I want to start putting together profitable projects, and one of the key elements is learning how to design a goddamn wobsite. I dabble in html, but feel like I should advance my knowledge until it is worth cash-money.

Often, once you are at the dabbling stage, the best thing to do to advance is to attack something ambitious and use only a reference. I think the w3c site has links to a comprehensive reference.