♀️
I played exactly one pickup tabletop game at a game store, ever
a guy got mad at me for using NSEW directions on a map in a fantasy setting because “they’d have different names for it” so I scribbled some shit and handed him a map that had the directions:
Morth
South (pronounced “sooth”)
Squeast
Thwest
he gave me the world’s dirtiest look and 5 minutes later when I described something as being “about ten bmiles morth by morthsqueast of here” he left the table and walked out of the shop
I never saw him again
@kat lmao what a fucking baby
@shadow8t4 honestly can’t even blame him, I’d leave if I had to deal with my bullshit too
@kat @shadow8t4 completely justifiable bullshit imo
like, sure, let's say they have a different name for the cardinal directions, but that's part of the language, and you're most likely not speaking this fantasy language while you're playing, so you can just handwave it as "english is the stand-in for the native language"
if someone still wants to insist, then I'm gonna need a language history of a minimum of 4000 years, as the names for the cardinal directions are derived from proto-indo-european which was around 4000 BC, and your fantasy setting is probably ahead of that unless most of you are running around with stone tools and weapons
@ChlorideCull @kat @shadow8t4 To be maybe too fair to Angry Guy, I can understand wanting to examine worldbuilding assumptions and ask, would these people instead give directions based whether you're going to-the-sea or to-the-holy-land (or whatever), and can imagine a group that's into that level of immersion.
But you have to negotiate that, not start out mad that someone else didn't assume that re-inventing cartography was the fun part.
@Austin_Dern @kat @shadow8t4 fair, I'd argue also that's maybe something you can do between sessions like most general world building, and then bring characters up to speed at the next session
fun fact: north is possibly derived from the proto-indo-european word for left because north is to the left if you face the rising sun, meaning the idea of north being "up" might be a more recent one - it's completely possible in-universe that "up" on a map is different to north
@ChlorideCull Oh yes, absolutely; it's even a fun discussion to pitch when you're setting up a session. Even if other folks don't go for it, they'll likely enjoy that you're open to asking.
And yeah, that is a fun fact. And it's *extremely* plausible for 'up' to be some direction other than 'north' on maps. Like, any map of Manhattan has 'up' being a bit east of north, so the page aligns with the shape of the island. That logic certainly would extend to other settings.