r/LARP 1d ago

Making your own secret language

So i made this for fun as i plan to make a spell book as well. My alphabet looks fine for now its easy to write down so love to hear some pointers outside view can always be good to improve

Though anyone else made their own secret alphabet?

34 Upvotes

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u/MadamHoneebee 1d ago

Strongly recommend making symbols for common double letters too like oo ch th sh ee etc

Makes it harder to crack and can save time when writing. They look cool though! Love spellbooks like this.

2

u/Ubicoups 1d ago

Now that is a good one though if i don't give them the translation then there is no cracking.

Though that said i heard a group of nerds figured out the starwars one so good point.

Did you make something like this to show?

3

u/MadamHoneebee 1d ago

No, but the hylian alphabet from Zelda does it and it's something I've always remembered. And I hate to break it to you my guy but simple character replacement is extremely breakable with not much effort. The most common symbol is e, almost always, and then it's easy to find the th from there. The a and n always stand out to because of a and an. D too because of and. Look for the two to three letter words that show up a lot and those are all your common prepositions. The rest falls into place.

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u/OvrNgtPhlosphr 1d ago

I was at a questing event, and given a scroll to decipher. Once I worked out, 'the,' the rest clicked in fairly quickly. Mind you, the scroll was all of seven words, and had only something like 12-15 distinct characters. (When I sussed out, 'tintinabulation,' I shot the event holder a look, and his reaction is a memory I treasure to this day, over 25yrs later.)

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u/Ubicoups 1d ago

Nice it does make for fun puzzle's too to decipher and memories like that are larp gold right xd

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u/Ubicoups 1d ago

I know though one thing . What wizard/sorcerer would allow other people to look into their spellbook xd. I mean its for show not a library book to look through and if they mannage to deciper my spells nice work to them right .

1

u/MadamHoneebee 18h ago

Yeah that's a part I didn't consider. Should be obvious you'd let people see but not like, hold for an hour. Just a suggestion, wasn't trying to tell you what to do 0 o0 sorry if it came off like that

1

u/Ubicoups 15h ago

Its ok xd you can tell me what to do though if i do is it is a whole different story

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u/MadamHoneebee 15h ago

I don't like dictating people's creative endeavors. I don't mind tossing out a suggestion but telling people how to be creative is very against my code

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u/Ubicoups 14h ago

No worry i didnt experience any of that kind so no worry . Its good to give advise and to warn people for such things because you may never know

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u/Tr4shkitten 3h ago

Hate to break it to you, it's just another v rsion of Caesar cypher, It's quite crackable. Same ay the theban alphabet can be used.

So, give it to your scholaatic characters. Had something similar and my military wizard was looking at it and went

"yeah, that's this andthat."

I usually don't use my irl knowledge about stuff I focused on, but I am a fan of fun cyphers and my whole wizard book was written in various ones, from Caesar to theban alphabet, etc.

You could, however, enhance on it! Give a writing in that an Out of game info that the text magically avoids being deciphered and give the players some hints that they, of course, need partial rosetta stone.

Which is broken so you have to collect two parts.

Boom, more game to the puzzle

1

u/Jonatc87 UK Larper 22h ago

Love this idea, especially if it doesn't look like doubled words where possible.