A quick way to get an alien alphabet.

[Amechra]

Namely, use shorthand!

I like using Gregg's shorthand on words translated into Esperanto for my magical text (it looks alien, let me tell ya...)

But there are many other shorthand systems to look up. Be aware that, unless you work on internalizing the symbols, it will take a while to write (but once you master the symbols, you can hit ~200 wpm. Yes, you read that right.)

Why am I posting this here? Because it is a relatively easy way to make symbols, and if you can figure out the sounds for each stroke and loop, you can remember what they mean as well... hide jokes and such.

The following is the Lord's Prayer in Pitman shorthand:

[Elemental]

While I agree that shorthand is pretty alien, it doesn't really fit as a formal script. Perhaps modifying the symbols and adding some elements of calligraphy to them would add a degree of... What's the word I'm looking for... Stability? Formality? Arcane-ness? I don't know, but it's lacking something.

[Ganheim]

Or there's Omniglot, because I doubt many players would be familiar with Russian Cyrillic, Japanese Katakana, Sanskritic Devanagari, and if they are there are dozens of other writing scripts that you may not even need to transcribe if you either use a unicode-textpad or something else to electronically convert the text for you.

Using this would behoove you to prepare beforehand, but that's really what world/scene building is about anyway, isn't it?

[Amechra]

True, you will want to alter the symbols used, but it lets me put my Shorthand dictionary from the '40s to good use; besides, if you aren't comfortable with the idea of shorthand...

I have one friend who literally gets headaches while looking at shorthand, because she can't wrap her head around it; and she is self-teaching herself kanji (she already has katakana and hirigana down, so...)

But yes, I do agree that it does lack a little something on the arcane front; of course, in that situation, I would use something like a (heavily modified) Blissymbols with the same grammatical backing as, say, Lojban.

[Raistlin82]

I've had to make myself a whole "Dwarven alphabeth" in the past, and I'm creating my own world/setting as well, so...

I'm sure I could make great use of this. If only somebody cared to explain me what on Earth does "shorthand" mean!


No, seriously. English is not my first language. I just see a bunch of lines and dots, and some comment on how easy they are to make and even something about hiding "jokes". Wha...?

[Elemental]

Shorthand is essentially a quick way of writing. As such, it's relatively simply, and once you know what you're doing, you can write with it really fast.
I myself can't do it, but it's really useful for rapidly copying down what someone is saying.

[Raistlin82]

Ooooh... I get it now.
It's what journalists do.

[Amechra]

Look up Gregg Shorthand- there probably is a version for your native language if you go ahead and look.

[flabort]

Or there's Omniglot, because I doubt many players would be familiar with Russian Cyrillic, Japanese Katakana, Sanskritic Devanagari, and if they are there are dozens of other writing scripts that you may not even need to transcribe if you either use a unicode-textpad or something else to electronically convert the text for you.

Using this would behoove you to prepare beforehand, but that's really what world/scene building is about anyway, isn't it?

That's cool. I looked up Constructed scripts there, found one called Genesis, am now having fun "translating" various words.