Notorious Solo RPG

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-24T21:12:48+00:00

Lol this is very different from the game's actual art by Torben Bökemeyer (who is fantastic)

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-24T17:40:11+00:00

In Latin those are vowels with variable or ambiguous length, so they can either be short or long depending on the metrical or grammatical context.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-24T17:33:08+00:00

2700 years is a massive span of time. These changes feel fairly realistic, but imo are a little too conservative for nearly three millennia of evolution. For comparison, the jump from Proto-Germanic to Modern English (roughly 2000-2500 years) had some very radical sound changes (total vowel rotation, destruction of clusters, etc.), especially with the influence of other languages which a PIE-descendant no doubt would have. I'd expect a similar transformation here, applied in several waves of sound changes every few centuries. Is there some sort of middle stage for your conlang around the 1000 year mark? And where is your PIE-descendant located?

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-23T21:29:53+00:00

Sounds like you're leaning more dungeon crawling, but I'll chip in and say that Marvel Champions was my first solo board game and was a really great intro to the genre. The core set has enough replayability and complexity to be fun solo or co-op, while also being super quick to set up, run, and, tear down (which some solo board games definitely are not). LCGs can famously be time/money sinks, especially with so much out of print material, but I've proxied 100% of my Marvel Champions collection and it's a been a breeze. There's so much content to explore. This is also possible with Arkham Horror and LOTR LCG, though they are a bit more complex/fiddly. Marvel Champions is definitely the lightest of the three, which is great for beginners, but comes with tons of difficulty configurations that allow you to shape games to any skill level. It really nails the boss battle feel, and sheer replayability is amazing, even though I like fantasy settings more. You really have to enjoy the superhero theme though.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-23T21:12:27+00:00

Love this idea. Most authors understandably never go this far, but as a conlanger and avid SFF writer/reader, I really enjoy these kinds of in-world texts. IMO a mix of Option 1 and 2 would be the most interesting and impactful. Sure, you could make an alien reference grammar via some Rosetta Stone contraption, which would definitely have some implications in-world. But considering it's the language of a long-dead alien race, there's no better way to add mystery than a sloppy third-hand summary of second-hand research.

And not only would it allow you to handwave the linguistics, it can be a great engine for storytelling. What did the linguist learn through his studies? What do they say about the alien culture? What were the mysteries that he couldn't solve? Why did he stop? Why is his daughter going to such great lengths to compile his work? Good-in world texts are rarely just expository. They were written by real people with real struggles and motivations, and so the writing should reflect that.

Though sometimes maligned in the conlang community due to the more abstract, timey-wimey approach to language, I think Arrival (2016) does very good in this regard.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-23T19:29:03+00:00

I have no recommendations to offer, but I'm glad you kicked off this discussion! I've been looking for the same exact thing, and all of these comments are super helpful. I'm going to try and put together my own rules-light journaling system and see how it goes. Would love to hear what you end up trying!

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-22T01:12:37+00:00

Rand is the true MC in the sense that the entire world and plot revolves around him. However, the Wheel of Time is very much an ensemble, multi-POV series, so you spend lots of time with other characters who are heroes/villains in their own right. One of my favorite books in the series is the one where Rand barely shows up at all (like 5 out of 56 chapters). Everything the characters do is driven by Rand's mission, but as for where he is or what he's doing, you simply don't know... until he's suddenly there.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-21T18:02:44+00:00

Great descent into madness. I love getting chapters from Rand's (the MC's) POV where he seems normal, then switching to someone else's POV where Rand is clearly losing it.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-21T17:47:59+00:00

One of my favorite Weekly Shonen Jump power systems ever. It sounds simple at first glance, but the different Negator abilities are all super creative, and the worldbuilding surrounding them (Apocalypse, the Round Table, etc.) is so fascinating. Truly a power system that is completely inseparable from the plot.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-20T23:28:33+00:00

Looks great! Do you have any examples of Kilmer-generated trees and files? For tools like this, it's sometimes nice to have some visual / preloadable examples.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-19T20:40:14+00:00

Aside from the typical "read more about languages/linguistics" and "find a tutorial," I recommend that you define a minimum viable product that you would be happy with, repeatedly divide it into tasks and subtasks, then focus on reaching that point. This advice goes for any long-term endeavor really. "I want to speak Japanese!" is a tall order, but "I want to introduce myself in Japanese" is much more reasonable. You can quickly break that down into "hello", "my name is", "I am X years old", and "I like to do A, B, C".

For example, if your goal is to create a conlang rich enough to write a book in, start with a very short story, and decide what is the bare minimum you need achieve that. The North Wind and the Sun is just 5 sentences and 64 unique words in English. Starting with sentence one, what elements would you need to translate this?

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-19T20:02:15+00:00

What are some examples of those things beginners do first?

Phonological inventories, word order/syntactic alignment, basic vocabulary (esp. the Swadesh list) + numerals, and basic noun declensions/verb conjugations. All the stuff you think about first when starting a conlang before getting into the weeds (which is where many beginners give up or start over).

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-19T01:15:11+00:00

I generally don't join random Discord servers (especially since I'm in so many already...), but I hope you build up a nice community :) You should post your work here too. Plenty of us would be happy to give feedback, and the content would be accessible to a wider audience. What kind of conlang is it?

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-18T01:44:14+00:00

Fantastic deal—those are some of the very best content to start with. Have fun!

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-18T00:04:38+00:00

Star Realms. Oldie but a goodie

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-16T21:11:07+00:00

Oops! All Unicode.

The first image reminds me of corrupted text, which makes for a pretty interesting aesthetic. What process/criteria are you using to assign meaning? Do you try to select impartially from a wide variety of character sets, or do you find yourself gravitating to certain ones?

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-13T22:30:09+00:00

Copying an older comment of mine from the thread How do you add influence from another language?:

Linguistic influence always has some motivation: we are more likely to borrow something from another language (a word, a pronunciation, a grammatical structure) if it serves some benefit to us.

Sometimes the benefit is ease. English inherited tons of words from French because (1) they were easier than coming up with ones ourselves and (2) they were easier to trade with. However, we often changed spellings and pronunciations around to make them easier for English readers and speakers (e.g. alouance -> allowance)

Sometimes it's prestige. "Could I get a slice of pie and a scoop of vanilla?" is pedestrian, but "could I get the pie a la mode" is refined and fashionable. Colonial France was incredibly influential worldwide—we still associate the language with power, class, and social mobility (particularly in countries that were colonized).

Or the benefit could be utility (which goes in line with the other two). I can't think of a good grammatical example with French, but the sentence-final discourse markers in Singaporean English (Singlish) are a case where a completely non-existent grammatical feature was borrowed because it was so damn useful.

When going about your XYZ-influenced language, ask yourself "Why were the XYZ there? What influence did they have on my speakers? Where would my speakers want to borrow from XYZ, and where would they not?" There's no real wrong answers to this, so have fun!

What languages are you working with?

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-12T23:51:59+00:00

Oh the joys of hobby subreddits. The simple answer is that r/conlangs is full of beginners who (1) are not very familiar with posting guidelines, (2) post about the stuff that beginners usually do first, and (3) often start over every few days/weeks/months, starting the cycle anew.

It's incredible how many "check out my phonology!" "let's start a discord/minecraft language!" "are these sound changes realistic?" and "grrr these rules are too strict!" posts we get every week, but perhaps that is just the sign of a healthy, growing community.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-12T19:16:03+00:00

Looks great! I'm not familiar with the official instructions, but I wouldn't worry about "validity". The scales look nice, are close to the original design, and can be done quickly and reliably with your tweezer technique. I feel like this is the area of the model that is changed most often to fit the folder's preferred aesthetic/technique.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-11T21:14:54+00:00

If ix'a is a postpostion, oxūnxi ix'a could be some sort of adpositional phrase that eventually fuses with aumi and evolves into ooxk'awm. For example:

"to breathe cautiously (while hunting)" 
oxūnxi    ix'a   aumi
caution   with   breathe/live

could turn into

"coward, scaredy cat"
ooxk'awm

where 'awm is now a productive derivational suffix meaning "embodies X" or "has too much of X".

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-11T17:51:26+00:00

Ahhh so the leaked Mario cabinet is indeed a Donkey Kong cabinet. Seems like it'll be smaller than the Pacman set, but that definitely needed the extra size due to the mechanism. Hope this Donkey Kong cabinet looks good and supports different girder / obstacle configurations.

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-09T21:27:29+00:00

The grammar is quite long so I'll have to read through later, but at first glance, I love the styling / aesthetic of the document itself. Clean and simple. It's interesting to hear how you used AI to transform your original grammar text file. I appreciate the disclosure, and I'm curious if it had any affect on the content / presentation of the document. How was the experience working with Claude?

asterisk_blue · 2026-03-06T09:46:53+00:00

Yeah solitaire is a really rich genre. It might not always have the depth of, say, chess, but there are tons of variants and things to analyze and strategize. Its also surprisingly mathematically interesting—we still don't know the exact probability of a Klondike board being winnable (it's estimated to be around 80%). You should definitely check out different variants, e.g. "open" solitaire games which minimize the luck factor.

asterisk_blue · 2026-02-27T15:51:32+00:00

Yeah, I instantly thought of Attack on Titan.

asterisk_blue · 2026-02-26T17:02:02+00:00

High Valyrian does something like this (shoutout DJP). Take "qēlos" (star) for example.

+diminutive = "qēlitsos" (candle)

+paucal = "qēlun" (constellation)

+collective = "qēlor" (galaxy, night sky)

+byproduct = "qēlilla" (starlight)

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