Seattle Conlang Club

Pidgin Island Quest

Pidgin Island Quest is the Seattle Conlang Club's tabletop roleplaying game/pidgin creation game.

What’s this?

Pidgin Island Quest is a text-based (mostly), survival role-playing game played on our Discord where players have to form a pidgin to communicate with the other players. Each week, the DM rotates between the players, who controls the island and makes up scenarios for the players to react to.

Scenario

A band of feral transient mountainfolk (you) have been kidnapped in their sleep on a big tropical island with wildlife for some unknown purpose. Create and elevate your new shared culture and survive by creating a pidgin language together.

Scheduling

The game is mostly asynchronous in the text channel, but we have a synchronous session every week where we get together in the voice channel and play the pidgin game. The synchronous session is 3 PM on Saturday (on weeks with a general Conlang Club meeting) or 3 PM Sunday (on weeks without a general meeting).

How to say things

• Things your character says: You must say them in Pidgin
• Things your character does: Can be in English, in parentheses. Must be a short physical simple description. Avoid direct or indirect objects.

  Good: (pointing)

  Iffy: (pointing up)

  Bad: (pointing up at a bird)

• You can also point out something nearby by posting a picture of it. You can only point to things that are around you. In other words, no pointing at a computer that doesn’t exist.
• Slate and chalk are abundant on this island, and everyone carries some around to draw pictures. You can post drawings of anything a transient mountainfolk would know of.

Rotating Dungeon Master (DM)

What the DM does

• The DM is the God of Pidgin Island, controlling the world and making up scenarios for the islanders to react to.
• If a player needs to take a complicated action (e.g. inventing something) or something that could fail (e.g. attacking a boar), they tell the DM
• The DM uses English to describe the players’ surroundings, and the success or failure of players’ actions
• DMs’ scenarios should try to encourage communication/cooperation.

When you’re the DM

• All players in the Pidgin Game are added to the DM queue when they join
• Every week, the DM changes to the next person in the queue
• The DM’s player character will be temporarily whisked away from the island by an unknown entity

How to join

• Randomly roll an language from the random language roulette. You will learn a tiny bit of vocab from that language.
  • Check the #pidgin-rules-info channel for disallowed languages and languages that have already been chosen.
  • If you don’t want it as your initial language, you get 1 veto.
  • If you speak that language already, or someone is already assigned that language, that language is autmatically vetoed for free.
• Figure out a grammatical feature from your initial language that you like and keep it a secret. Try to make the pidgin have that feature.
• Choose 15 words related to one of the following semantic domains to learn in your initial language:
  • hunter
  • fisher
  • gatherer
  • builder
  • shaman
• If you need any more words after this, you must either learn a word from someone else or make one up.
  • If you make up a word, try to use the phonetic and phonotactics inventory of your initial language.
• Ping Frederick with your chosen language, and he’ll give you the Pidgin Islander role and add you to the end of the DM queue