Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Aenshint Naemz And Werdz In Thu Myuetint Fyuecher

One of the more interesting facets of post-apocalyptic RPGs is seeing how the Ancient world (i.e., ours or our near future) is viewed (and "misviewed") by the denizens of the Mutant Future. I always had a soft spot for the mistranslated and phonetically-spelled names of Ancient cities and states found in Gamma World materials. The players often got a thrill when they realized that the Ancient city of "Kullumbis" they've been investigating was actually the ruins of "Columbus."

In keeping with that thought, I discovered a site that takes any English text and translates it into a simple phonetic notation. So the Ancient metropolises of "Chicago" and "New York City" become the Mutant Future villages of "
Shikkaagoe" and "Nue York Sitee." When crossing the plains, beware of the herds of mutant "bufuloe" and "biesin." Perhaps your party will discover that Ancient mode of transport known as a "VW Beetool." A clever Mutant Lord will find a ton of uses for this handy tool. Have fun: Truespel Converter

5 comments:

  1. Nice link!

    In my game, the home town base of the character is Skinny Butt (Skinner's Butte in present day Eugene OR) and the Knights of Genetic Purity have taken over Spanky Butt (Spencer's Butte). The Willamette River is the Willing Mate river and the Amazon Slough is the Amazing Sludge (all too appropriate if you are familiar with Eugene...).

    It took some of my players nearly a month to realize that they were gaming in their home town, hundreds of years in the future - one of them called me at work when he figured it out because he was so excited!

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  2. I am currently detailing the northwest, based on notes I did during a start-up for an After The Bomb campaign. We have Seattle as "Sea Town", Tacoma as "Tac'ma".

    Some areas have altogether new names associated with knew holdings such as the Southern Free Ranges which are populated by mostly mutant farm stock. There are also several miiltary bases that retain their original names.

    Oh and the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula is called Banana Land for the community of mutant Banana Slugs that live there.

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  3. If I ever get to run a MF game I was want to have the players originate in a town where the people follow the religion of the prophet Martin. His highly structured wisdom and teachings allowed their village to fare much better through the chaotic apocalypse than their infidel neighbors, who didn't follow it. Eventually the players would figure out that "Martin's Law" was really martial law...

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  4. Less immediately applicable than your Truespel converter, but useful brain fodder: Futurese: English in 3000AD.

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  5. Ahh. Asolutely one of my favorite parts of Post-Apoc RPGs. It came in handy when the community theatre group I work with did a production of the Scottish Play set in the year 2309.

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