Official New Player Post

Hello, everyone!

My out of game names are Riva or Nate, you may use whichever, I respond to both.

In game, I play Na'ar, a Bedouin healer.

I do have a few questions about playing the Bedouin properly in future sessions, though.

In keeping with the theme of the costuming, I came up with a rather nifty idea for a super-storage robe which I plan on sewing up myself. However, I also was thinking of a potential direction for my character, which I really really liked. It would require me to make some less-than-standard-Bedouin alterations to the design. Are those, in the name of character development, permissible?

Also, OOG, I'm a language student. However, even though I do know one of the languages of the RL desert, I don't know Arabic, which is the language in which most of the Bedouin names have been rendered, or close to it. Would it be suitable, for purposes of flavor and fun with the character, to let it speak Hebrew rather than Arabic? It opens up a lot of possibilities for me, in terms of roleplay, potential performances, and a couple props that I've been thinking about.

Thanks again for giving me such a complete dose of the game when I was there... and I'm coming back, so I'm pretty sure I must have liked enough of it. ^.^

Also, OOG, I'm a language student. However, even though I do know one of the languages of the RL desert, I don't know Arabic, which is the language in which most of the Bedouin names have been rendered, or close to it. Would it be suitable, for purposes of flavor and fun with the character, to let it speak Hebrew rather than Arabic? It opens up a lot of possibilities for me, in terms of roleplay, potential performances, and a couple props that I've been thinking about.

Stuff about languages can be found here.

In addition to the useful link Paul provided, I think this is the appropriate place to make an important distinction:

Bedoins are Bedoins - while the culture contains Middle Eastern ideas, cultural concepts, dress, and the like, it is not a specific real world culture but a fantasy society using real-world inspirations.  The same goes for Celts, Khitanese, Gypsies, etc. While you can pull from whatever inspiritations you'd like that make sense to a desert enviroment, the important point is that everything you do meshes with the written rules of the race as it exists in Knight Realms.  Remember that there is no Arabic or Hebrew in Arawyn; no Japanese or Chinese in Khitan, and so forth.  Furthermore, any conflict that might exist between a Hebrew speaker and an Arabic speaker doesn't exist as well, as both speak Beduoin and belong to this specific fantasy culture.

Does that make sense?

It makes sense, but doesn't answer the question.

In and of itself, though, the lack of an answer is sufficient.

It makes sense, but doesn't answer the question.

In and of itself, though, the lack of an answer is sufficient.

Let me see if I can take a shot at it.

In Knight Realms lore, there is no Arabic or Hebrew. So, to answer more specifically, and in brief: No, you may not speak Hebrew.

This is because there is no Hebrew, only a fantasy variant of all of the "Desert" languages called "Bedouin." The Bedouin language, as Kristen pointed out, replaces all of the semitic languages within Knight Realms, which for the purposes of our fantasy universe, have never existed. "Bedouin" is a language that encompasses all of those of semitic origins, but in actuality can not be spoken at all.

To elaborate on the games mechanics, players do not speak in any language other than English. Furthermore, characters can not "speak" in any language other than common (this is to prevent confusion over if a comment was made in common or another tongue), rather their writing (which can be any language, but must contain an English translation) may be marked to indicate that it is in a certain language. You can, however, use any semitic language's English accent to provide flavor to your speech, and this is widely encouraged and considered good roleplay.

You mentioned taking "less-than-standard-Bedouin alterations". I, personally, think it would be pretty cool to see you come up with something interesting that would be conducive for quality roleplay. What I think does not matter though, so I highly suggest that you pursue the proper course of action to get any character concept/background approved. For your convenience, I will list the (simple) steps.


Step 1.
Download the document from the following link: www.knightrealms.com/Documents/Public/KR...me-CharacterName.doc

Step 2.
Fill it out with all pertinent information. The specifics for your alterations should be placed under "Character Notes:"

Step 3.
Submit the finished file, with proper file name formatting (detailed within the document), to the following email:
character@knightrealms.com

Oh yes, on a final note, welcome to Knight Realms. I look forward to playing with you, and I hope to see you at the next event!

Hmm, I did try to answer the question - perhaps it was not the answer you were looking for?  As I say above,

While you can pull from whatever inspiritations you'd like that make sense to a desert enviroment, the important point is that everything you do meshes with the written rules of the race as it exists in Knight Realms.

You mention using props and such in addition to using the language - while the question of language was already answered with the link Paul provided, what I mean by the above quote is that you can feel free to come from a "Hebrew"-inspired Bedouin clan as long as everything you do still coincides with the rules for the race.  Personally, I would find this to be difficult due to the heavy religious connotations, but if you can manage to seperate out aspects of Hebrew culture from Judaism and make it work with the fantasy religious outlook of KR, awesome.  While most people have played Arabian-inspired Bedoins, there have also been Indian-inspired ones as well that still fit the cultural guidelines.  If anything is iffy, you should of course follow the above suggestion of submissions to get approval for your actions/inspirations.  Good luck and have fun with it. :)

And those answer the language question in the way I had hoped to proceed.

I apologize for needing to be cryptic, but I really do want to do a couple things with the character that I'd prefer not to reveal before actually, well, revealing them. I can handle handing them in on the new character worksheet, because I'm guessing that only gets seen by a few people, but... well, I'm a storyteller out of game, too, so if I get talking, I'll give away the whole character track. I don't really want to do that.

Anyway, thanks for the help. I'll ask more specific questions if I need to.

No worries, the people that will approve or deny your character concept aren't going to spoil the experience for you or anyone else. Metagaming is something that just does not happen with character backgrounds, and your story will be kept entirely secret.

Answering Posts
Posted questions regarding game operations, including rules and policy questions, should only be answered by a member of staff or a Rules Marshal. In the interest of disseminating only accurate information regarding the game rules and policies, Knight Realms reserves the right to remove posts which respond to these questions improperly - without notification to the user - and to suspend or ban a user's posting privileges in the event of repeated abuses.

Christopher:  There is a difference between offering suggestions for player motivation, and telling another player how the rules work, or the policies of the game work.  I understand it was done with benevolant intentions, but we cannot allow others to seem to be a rules marshal when they are not, or it will lead to confusion.

Sorry, didn't know that applied to new player posts. Was just trying to help.

I will refrain from doing so on any forum, to anyone.

Ok, so I have a question dealing with the spoken language issue.  I read the on-line rules about spoken language, and it doesn't specify that you are disallowed from speaking a language other than english.

The rules seem to assume that the player is speaking english, but the character is supposedly not.  And even if a player is supposed to speak in english I have to assume that we can use smatterings of other languages as slang, otherwise the use of the word "Gombai" by the Kierian characters would be against the rules.

The intent of the rules is to prevent an issue coming up with two people speaking in an OOG foreign language, and a third person who SHOULD know what they are saying, not being able to OOG without giving away that they can understand.

The occasional slang word is fine - it's passing conversational or pertinent information that is to be avoided.