Collect Call of Cthulhu

This evening, I ran my very first Call of Cthulhu scenario! I had one player with his English occultist investigator, Larry (called 'the Lucky' by me). I have the basic rules that are downloadable from the Chaosium Website. I ran the sample adventure 'The Haunting' that is in there, and it went great! Larry did the required research and digging, didn't find everything but knew pretty much what was going on. After searching the house he killed the undead evil in the basement and emerged victorious into the light.

Points of interest:

• Larry asking three seperate times for information about the kids. Each time I told him the exact same thing.
• Larry ignoring the thumps, scrapes and tappings coming from the upstairs bedroom. When he eventually looked around in there he decided that the blood dripping from the ceiling wasn't interesting enough to investigate.
• While battling Walter in the basement, Larry tried unsuccessfully to shoot him with the nice shotguns that Larry brought with him a total of four times.
• The enchanted dagger repatedly missing Larry (at one hit point) due to his outstanding luck (which is why I call him Lucky).

Everything went great. Afterwards Larry told me how much he enjoyed the game, and expressed interest in playing again.

Translations!

-The man goes to the child.
Weory Runmas Yeoryng

-You go to the men.
Runman/Runmal Weoriph

-We inform the men. The men run to the women. The men tell the women
Instratak Weorik. Weorin dashas Mameoriph. Weorin Instratas Mameorik.

Note: If you are serious about learning this then you should, out loud, say the declension and the conjugation. Maybe even make some vocabulary cards for the words. The repetition of the words with the endings helps you to memorize them.

Traanslations!

A note on Da. The to be verb is peculiar in the fact that it uses the Predicative Nominative. Simply stated, this means that the direct object of Da uses the nominative case as opposed to the normally used accusative case.

-The man runs to the woman
Weory dashas mameoryng

-The boy is a child
Ory das yeory

-The men kill the child of the woman (Yes, I know, very bloodthirsty)
Weorin slavaz yeoryl mameoryt

MyLanguage (or Dracklerese)

One day as I was sitting there, doing nothing and quite bored, I picked up a piece of paper and a pen and began writing down a language as I made it up. After four and a half years of studying Latin and two years of Greek, I have some experience in how to do said thing.

According to experience, I started by laying out the endings for the different forms of the verbs (first, second, and third persons, singular and plural). These are as follows:

Singular Person Plural

-a 1^st -ak

-an 2^nd -al

-as 3^rd -az

In case anyone does not know, I will explain what the different persons do. When speaking in first person, you say 'I' (singular) or 'we' (plural), second person, 'you' (singular or plural), and third, he/she/it (singular) or they (plural). For instance, if I were to be saying that you tell me something (that I have way too much time on my hands, perhaps), then I would say 'instratan, or Instratal'. Insrata is the 1^st person singular form of what I said, it means Instruct or Tell. When it is put in the 2^nd person singular, the ending changes from '-a' to '-an', and when you change it to 2^nd person plural, it changes to '-al'.

Simple, isn't it? Alright, now that we have a verb (Instrata) to pay with we can get a little more coherent.

S. Person P.

Instrata 1^st Instratak

Instratan 2^nd Instratal

Instratas 3^rd Instrataz

Now I've written out the forms of the verb Instrata in such a way that we can easily see how the endings fit on the verb. Next I think we'll tackle the nouns.

If you have ever tried (successfully or not) to learn Latin, then you'll probably know that there are five different declensions, each one having a different set of nouns, making translating even harder because you have to know which declension the word is from. There are also four conjugations for verbs and one specifically for the 'to be' verb.

My language, however, is much simpler. There are a total of two declensions, one for common nouns and one for proper nouns, and one conjugation (of course, there are different endings for different tenses, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it).

The Common declension is as follows (I am using the word 'Weory' to illustrate the endings. Weory means Man):

S. Case P.

Weory Nominative Weorin

Weoryt Genitive Weorith

Weoryng Dative Weoriph

Weoryl Accusative Weorik

Weoryg Ablative Weorint

I have put the cases of the endings with each set of them. The cases each have their own meanings that are put on the noun. Nominative is the subject case; when a man is doing something he is the subject and, therefore, in the nominative case. Genitive is the possessive case; when something is of a man (or a man's), man is possessive, and in the genitive case. Dative is the Indirect object case; when someone is doing something to something to or for a man, man is the indirect object, and in the dative case. Accusative is the direct object case; when someone is doing something to a man (such as telling) the man is the direct object, and in the accusative case. Ablative is sort of the miscellaneous case; if something is by with or from a man, then man is in the ablative.

That's quite a bit of stuff right there, in my opinion. So I'll leave it at that for now. Well, not quite, I am going to leave you with a short vocabulary list:

Weory Noun Man

Mameory Noun Woman

Ory Noun Boy

Meory Noun Girl

Yeory Noun Child, Charge, or Ward

Blany Noun Sword or Knife

Sava Verb Kill

Instrata Verb Tell or Instruct

Da Verb Am (Conjugated just like any other verb, unlike in latin)

Dasha Verb Run

Runma Verb Go

A note on pronunciation: All 'y's are pronounced 'ee' (speed). All 'i's are pronouced 'I' (Dinner). All 'e's are pronounced 'ay' (May). All 'a's are pronounced 'ah' (Ha). All 'u's are pronounced 'ooh' (food).