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Silly roleplaying games.
Last year - I think - D., a coworker of mine, ran four sessions of an Alternity game. And it was fun. It was just, there were no three players whose schedules significantly matched. Ooops.
What follows, for those who are interested, is a tale of language barriers. And the danger of tearing off random chunks thereof.
I played a t'sa (whose name I have forgotten - drat), a lizardlike critter (sorry, not sure how else to describe them), and I was the only non-human. Everyone else was from the modern day, except at the closing session, where we had a couple of ancient Romans. (There were both stasis pods and time travel involved. No, you probably don't want to know. Yes, there were three copies of the same computer - simultaneously - and yes, it took us a while to sort them out, too. And yes, MY character moved in the OPPOSITE time cycle from everbody else. Sort of.)
Needless to say, my character's English wasn't exactly exceptional (in fact, she had none at the outset). The computer could translate (well, one copy of the computer could - the one subjectively "after" the others had actually learned enough by then). But she put the effort into learning English, between game sessions and during them, so that by the last gaming session, she had a decent English understanding, and an awkward-but-understandable (most of the time, sort of) use of it in speech. (At least as relates to the concepts needed to survive aboard a starship in poor shape with low supplies.)
Remember those ancient Romans I mentioned? They didn't speak English, of course. But one of the other people could speak to them. They were doing so - we were trying to convince them to do what we wanted, as I recall - and my character was going out of her mind from frustrated boredom because she couldn't follow. The following is roughly paraphrased (the key line is as said, the rest may or may not be precise, but hey):
T'sa: "What they saying? What say?"
Translator: "They don't believe we're in space. That we lie."
T'sa: "Show them!"
Someone Else: "The computer's broken. We can't." (The computer was needed to run the viewscreens.)
T'sa: "Use airlock!"
At which point even the Romans' players, who had been managing to pretend they weren't hearing the conversation, stared at me in shock, and what it sounded like to them hit me. I knew - I knew because I was in her head or she in mine! - that my character had actually meant, 'put them in a suit, take them to the airlock, tether them, and show them'. But she couldn't have expressed that coherently in English, and besides, the point was sort of self-evident.
I mean, we were trying to save the guys, so it didn't even occur to her (or I) that someone would think she meant "space them".
I don't think the airlock was actually used. I can't recall how (or if) they were convinced of that fact, or why it mattered that they believe, honestly. But we all had a good laugh before we went on, and they did eventually do what we wanted.
What follows, for those who are interested, is a tale of language barriers. And the danger of tearing off random chunks thereof.
I played a t'sa (whose name I have forgotten - drat), a lizardlike critter (sorry, not sure how else to describe them), and I was the only non-human. Everyone else was from the modern day, except at the closing session, where we had a couple of ancient Romans. (There were both stasis pods and time travel involved. No, you probably don't want to know. Yes, there were three copies of the same computer - simultaneously - and yes, it took us a while to sort them out, too. And yes, MY character moved in the OPPOSITE time cycle from everbody else. Sort of.)
Needless to say, my character's English wasn't exactly exceptional (in fact, she had none at the outset). The computer could translate (well, one copy of the computer could - the one subjectively "after" the others had actually learned enough by then). But she put the effort into learning English, between game sessions and during them, so that by the last gaming session, she had a decent English understanding, and an awkward-but-understandable (most of the time, sort of) use of it in speech. (At least as relates to the concepts needed to survive aboard a starship in poor shape with low supplies.)
Remember those ancient Romans I mentioned? They didn't speak English, of course. But one of the other people could speak to them. They were doing so - we were trying to convince them to do what we wanted, as I recall - and my character was going out of her mind from frustrated boredom because she couldn't follow. The following is roughly paraphrased (the key line is as said, the rest may or may not be precise, but hey):
T'sa: "What they saying? What say?"
Translator: "They don't believe we're in space. That we lie."
T'sa: "Show them!"
Someone Else: "The computer's broken. We can't." (The computer was needed to run the viewscreens.)
T'sa: "Use airlock!"
At which point even the Romans' players, who had been managing to pretend they weren't hearing the conversation, stared at me in shock, and what it sounded like to them hit me. I knew - I knew because I was in her head or she in mine! - that my character had actually meant, 'put them in a suit, take them to the airlock, tether them, and show them'. But she couldn't have expressed that coherently in English, and besides, the point was sort of self-evident.
I mean, we were trying to save the guys, so it didn't even occur to her (or I) that someone would think she meant "space them".
I don't think the airlock was actually used. I can't recall how (or if) they were convinced of that fact, or why it mattered that they believe, honestly. But we all had a good laugh before we went on, and they did eventually do what we wanted.