Every time I think I have a firm grip on what an RPG can be, something comes along and surprises the heck out of me. That’s just what Dialect (2018) did, by presenting an RPG that does something I’ve never seen an RPG do before.

This is a collaborative, card-driven storytelling game focused on a language created by the players and how it eventually dies. That might sound intimidating, but it isn’t in execution. The idea is that the characters are somehow isolated. That can be literal – a colony on Mars – or metaphorical – a clique in high school. Randomly drawn cards define key points of pressure on the community, which in turn spur the creation of new words. So we’re not talking about an entirely new language, but more a sort of specialized jargon (roleplayers should be familiar with the idea of using words non-roleplayers don’t understands, like grognard, munchkin, etc). Each player has a unique character that both molds and reacts to the new language.

Play continues through three eras, with new events (determined by cards) pushing the language to change in unexpected ways, and culminates with the legacy phase, in which players are prompted to narrate the aftermath of the events of play. At this point in the narrative, the isolation is likely over and the language it created no longer needed.

The rules are brief, clear and extremely supportive of play. The rest of the book is filled out with a selection of scenario seeds, many by notable RPG authors, some play variants and a fascinating essay on how language survives and adapts in the real world.  

It is hard to express exactly how wonderful this game is. Obviously, I assign a pretty high value to language personally, but even then, it was eye-opening to see how quickly just reading the rules shifted my ideas on communication. Words are powerful, we all know that on some level, and Dialect pushed you to think about how we use them. It is heady, and often melancholy, stuff.