If (theoretically, of course ) one happened to be writing a game with a culture that doesn’t use gendered pronouns, and wants to reflect that in the writing, which set of pronouns would you feel is the best / which do you feel most comfortable reading?
Taking into account that it’s only for a short part of the game, the culture would not be speaking english even if the game is written in it, and using they/them has turned out to be frustrating, both in regards to writing and reading the text.
Sincerely I think most people won’t get anything. Most casuals… and not natives will directly Skip that And probably everything . You will have to explain it very very well and even then … Even myself won’t understand it really. You can’t choose pronouns in a vacuum. I don’t want use pronouns i don’t understand ifI am offending others.
Tbh I’m fine with they/them that’s what I’m used to in these games. But maybe offering the choice in game to set whatever pronouns the player wants might be the way to please most players?
Anyway in my native language we don’t have he or she pronouns (it’s the context what makes it clear if we talk about a man or a woman). But we don’t use “they” this way either, when we say “ő” (hungarian word for he/she) it’s clear we don’t talk about several people, for that we use “ők”. Guess this is kinda hard to explain for english native people, tho the point is I guess that I get what you are talking about I’m just not sure if it would work this way in a game written in english.
We have masculine femenine and neutral but sometimes words are feminine to address masculine etc and all words are mostly gendered So use they is difficult as our adverbs and nouns are gendered.
So explain casuals that You have different gender and you choose what is that pronoun should be well explained to not cause confusion about what they are choosing.
@Laguz made an excellent suggestion a while ago regarding gender-neutral pronouns offered to the player. When someone selects non-binary as their gender, offer them a choice between they/them/theirs, he/him/his, she/her/her, and custom pronouns. This covers pretty much every base in existence.
I tend to go with “they,” almost purely because its use as a singular gender-neutral pronoun has been around since Shakespeare. The vey/ver/vis pronouns seem like a good choice as well: unlike some alternate pronouns I’ve seen, they’re audibly distinct from he/her and easy enough to pronounce.
I don’t think I explained the situation very well.
The pronoun set will be used for everyone in the prologue, but the player gets to choose their own pronouns later. it is not about the PC being forced to use a specific pronoun.
I have been writing it just using they/them, but I keep makes mistakes, because I forget to switch plural/singular when I change a sentence between using “they” or the character’s name. It also gets confusing to read, in scenes with multiple characters involved.
Considering that the culture wouldn’t be using a plural pronoun, but a singular one in their non-english language, I want to change it to something different.
It would also mean that I can have an NPC (and the PC if they choose so) use that set of pronouns, as a sort of cultural statement.
Also, I should probably mention that it’s a fantasy game, not a real world culture.
My humble opinion choose one yourself. Is your creature you know your specie language or culture tone. Imagine they are elegant design and post using Arrrggh, for instance, won’t be sound. That is more like Orc.
Choosing in vacuum for species that don’t even exist with confusing everyone. Put one yoyrself
The culture doesn’t really have social genders, so using gendered pronouns would be weird.
I was very worried about the gender-neutral language, when I first uploaded the demo, but the feedback I got was that it was fine…
@poison_mara Yeah, but I’m an indecisive idiot.
I’m fully aware that the game prologue will be strange for most people, and I want to make it as comfortable as I can. Considering that both @Caspiera, who I asked a while ago, and the people who chose an option in the poll, all pointed to ve/ver/vis, which I had expected to be the least favored, I really think that was a good idea.
And it’s not like I’m forcing people to help me choose, if they don’t want to.
To make it clear: Are we talking about pronouns for NBs here? A fictional culture where gendered pronouns don’t exist? Or about a few characters who moved from a country where the pronouns are non-gendered to a country where gendered pronouns are used?
If it’s the first I already made my suggestion, if it’s the second then I think whatever fictional pronouns could work if there is sufficient enough lore, if it’s the third then I don’t think the non-gendered pronouns are necessary bc someone moving to a different country would probably start with learning the basics of whatever language is used there.
) one happened to be writing a game with a culture that doesn’t use gendered pronouns, and wants to reflect that in the writing, which set of pronouns would you feel is the best / which do you feel most comfortable reading?
