Intro
I'm joined by DimaJeydar. He initially popped up on my radar when he released a Ukrainian translation of the starter rules for Draw Steel. In the time since he's posted an update, published a starter adventure, and a fourth level adventure set in the timescape. This episode is all about translating: how do you preserve the emotion of a phrase, how do find the right word and how do you make carefully crafted multi-word names sound just as good in a completely different language and culture?
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon de Nor: Welcome to Goblin Points, Dima!
Dmytro Serbin: Hi! It's great to be here.
Jon de Nor: Give us a introduction of who you are. And also, how did you end up in the Matt Colville/MCDM community?
Dmytro Serbin: I am. My name is Dima. It's short for a Ukrainian name, Dmytro. And my full name is Dmytro Serbin. So yeah, you can also — you might also know me as DimaJeydar on Discord. I sort of wasn't part of...I knew about Matt Colville. I sort of started my TTRPG journey in, like, 2015, ten years ago. And it was, like, a slow climb towards the D&D stuff, because I didn't start with D&D. I only started playing it like five years ago during the pandemic, after I watched a lot of Critical Role. And so, yeah, it's same as always for a lot of people, I imagine. And, I was...I wanted to be a better DM.
I sort of, you know, I saw like, how Matt Mercer runs. And I was like, "Oh, wow, like, he's really cool. I want to be like him." Which is usually not the case when I see someone who's better than me. I'm usually like, "Oh, well, I shouldn't even try. I will never be like them." But yeah, in this particular case, I was like, yeah, I want to be a better DM. And I knew about Matt, they mentioned him on the show and I sort of was, like, vaguely aware of him, about Matt Colville.
And during the invasion, the full-scale invasion, I suddenly had a lot of free time, and I was staying indoors a lot, and I was, well, trying to keep my mind occupied. So I started watching the Running the Game videos. And I watched them all. I thought they were fine, because, you know, like, they had excellent points to them, but I was disagreeing on many of them. I was just like, "That's not how I would run this!" And, yeah. And that was...I watched them all, enjoyed them a lot, and then...I sort of forgot about Matt Colville. I just went to do different things.
We played, we started playing D&D around that time, with my friends, and we played for, like, two years at that point. And I started to become more and more frustrated with the game, the way it works. And especially, the thing that I really hated was the null result. I didn't have the language for it back then, but I was like, so frustrated with the way this game works. And I started to look like, well, I didn't start to look for other games, but I sort of was like finally open to it.
And then this thing happens. I saw...I was scouring the internet for different fantasy arts that I wanted to, you know, to take inspiration from or something. And I saw this one art in particular that had small figures and they were all, like, different, they were really cool looking. And they had names next to them and the names were like, the censor, the beastheart, the troubadour, the operator. And I immediately realized that this was, like, an art for some sort of class, for a class system in some sort of TTRPG. And this is a very famous art, I think, fanart of the game. It's by zazB. I forget the actual name of the artist. Something like Guil [Guillaume Bonnet]...I shouldn't probably say it because I would just mess it up, but known as zazB. Yeah, it's the art that's on the shirt that Matt has.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. From the crowdfunder.
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's just...I immediately fell in love with this art. I mean, I want to say that this is probably the reason why I backed the game, that art.
Jon de Nor: Wow. (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, I saw it, and I immediately realized what it was. Like, that's, this was some sort of TTRPG that was not a hack of D&D, that was like its own thing. This was like, "Hey, we don't need to make it, like...we don't need to make a cleric, a barbarian, a druid, right?" Especially the druid, like, I think...I really like that the stormwight exists. Because that's what I always imagined, like, yeah, it should be the guy who rages a lot that transforms into a bear. Not some kind of, you know, person with, I don't know, leaf magic. It didn't make sense to me at all.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Sure. I can see that.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, yeah. I didn't grew up with D&D, so, you know, for me, a lot of D&D things that are unique to that, how do you say, like, sphere? They are very strange to me. And I was...and I saw that this game was actually, whatever it was, I saw that it was actually its own thing. It didn't try to be some sort of offshoot of D&D, and that's when I started to follow it. That was like two weeks before the campaign started, and I was like, "Ooh, exciting. MCDM's making their own game? Interesting. I should probably follow that."
And I was...like, I followed it, I watched the streams, I joined the Discord to try to figure out, "Should I even back this game or not?" Because I wasn't sure at all, because 70 bucks is a lot of money for me on something that I'm not sure I will ever use. Yeah, the game was like one, like, one and a half...oh, that's...well, one and a half years away? Yeah.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. Eighteen months. Yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: And so, yeah. So it felt like a long time. So I was trying to figure out, should I back it or not? I joined the Discord, and people, told me, hey, you should join the Patreon. They have the playtest, right now, open playtests for patrons. You could run and figure out if you want it or not. I decided to do this with my D&D group. I ran for them The Tower of Swords and Coins. And they...didn't care at all about the game.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, their reaction was something like, "Yeah, I guess that was fine. That was pretty cool. Yeah." And I was so disappointed. I was so sad. But I, when I ran that game, I actually saw it for what it was and it finally...it finally hit me like, yeah, I can see what it will become in the future. And that gave me this confidence to finally back the game. But then I actually decided to be a $1 supporter because it's still, that's a lot of money. But yeah, I started to follow the game and I was like, I should probably leave the Discord because I have no need for it at all. And I was like, eh, I'll wait a bit. I'll leave it later. And I never left it. I am still here.
One reason being that I actually, I really liked the community that MCDM has. Like the Discord community is great. Like truly wonderful. You have this, all sorts of, you know, like, values that the community actually stands for, I guess. I mean, stuff like, okay, we don't discuss AI art, for example, here. Something like this. And the mod team is great. And the community — you don't even really need the mods from time to time because the community is self-governing in a lot of ways. Yeah, we're like, "We know the rules and you shouldn't probably do this." Or maybe, "Hey, let me stop you right here. Maybe you should switch to the other channel," or something like that.
And my favorite thing about the community is the slow mode. I love it. It's just great. When the game came out and the slow mode was like, what, five minutes, or maybe even greater than that?
Jon de Nor: I think it was ten minutes in some of the channels.
Dmytro Serbin: Oh my god, ten minutes. Amazing.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: I love it. Yeah, I think more communities should have slow modes on. Yeah, it's a good thing.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, I think so too. It feel...I feel it actually works to kind of keep the conversation topical.
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, yes!
Jon de Nor: When people actually have to spend some time working on their responses.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, I have a Ukrainian community about the stuff like TTRPGs, and they don't have a slow mode on, and they have a lot of people in one chat, and it just goes on and on and on and on, and you will just never be able to catch up to it. Yeah. It's like I'm not even there. I'm not even part of the conversation.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. Some of the communities, or some of the servers I'm on, on Discord, it....it's just so much, I can't even start to participate.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have other stuff to keep in mind too. I don't need this. I'm not 15 anymore. I don't have this time.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Speaking of time, I guess, one of the reasons that I...it has become multiple reasons, but one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because you've made an effort to translate the Starter Rules, I think, into Ukrainian. What was kind of...what was the initial inspiration to start translating the rules?
Dmytro Serbin: Well, I think the initial inspiration was just that I was curious, like, it was interesting. You know? I noticed that it's been a few years that I started to become interested in the way things are translated. Because I know English pretty good, I would say. And I know Ukrainian even better, thankfully. And I was like, huh, that's an interesting way to translate things. Or, you know, I would notice stuff like that from movies or books or other stuff. And I would also translate my own stuff, small things, not really anything substantial, but just, you know, just because I was curious.
So the same thing happens with Draw Steel. I just was, I saw stuff like the wode elves or the stormwights, and I was like, "How the hell do you even translate that?" It's like...I like the challenge, you know, I want to see if I can figure this out. So yeah, I started from that, and I started making my translation around the first backer...backer gates...what's it called? Pack? No.
Jon de Nor: Backer pack?
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, one of the — that thing. Packet! Backer — Backerkit packet.
Jon de Nor: *(laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: We can leave that in. Yeah, somewhere around that time. And the funny thing is that during that time, the game was, like, pretty small. I actually...I translated — well, I wrote out all the terminology, all the names, the stuff that I will need for translation. And I think at the time it was, like, either 800 words, or 1200, or something like that. Right now, my glossary has 8 — oh, no. 4,800 entries. And that's not everything. It's just the stuff that you can see repeating itself, you know? Yeah. Because there are even small — minute, more minute things, that needed translation.
But yeah. So, like, the game grew a lot and if I started translating the game, like, at release, right, when it's fully released, when all 800 pages are out there, I mean, I would just drop it. Because this was like too huge of a project to start. But because I started it when it was like only 70 pages of the rules, I think, so it was much easier for me to get into.
And yeah, I started translating it. I just started from the glossary, because I knew that this was like the most important thing in translation, to start from your terminology. Because you have this stuff that repeats, you know, in different parts of the game, and you have to check that it's not in any conflict with other parts of the game. Yeah. Because you can have stuff that seems fine in English, and then you translate it into another language, and, wow, suddenly, you have one word for five different terms. And you have to figure them out. Yeah.
Jon de Nor: Ah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I know they made a concerted effort to kind of, to use different words for different concepts.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, yeah.
Jon de Nor: To avoid having one word mean multiple things in the rules.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah. Like a level. Yeah.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah. For example, a level is a very good example.
Dmytro Serbin: A level. A D&D — a dungeon level, a monster level, a something else level...yeah. Well, that's very good for the game that they did that, and it's very bad for me. (laughter) Because I have to figure this all out. Yeah, sometimes, during my translation, I curse Matt Colville for, you know, for making this stuff up. That he was like, "Yeah, and then this guy from this place goes to this tower, and they never hear of any of them again." They just appear this once in one entry, and I have to translate — I have to figure out how to translate "Work the Fell-handed". How to know what the f —? Is this this important? Couldn't you just say, like, some dwarven hero or something? Okay, alright.
Jon de Nor: There are a lot of game terms that have very specific meanings in the game, as you said. And you started with the glossary. Was there any of the words in the glossary that was kind of...that was harder to translate than others? That you specifically remember?
Dmytro Serbin: Oh, yes, there were lots. I mean, like, again, I said, I like the challenge. And so it was like, okay, I have to figure this out. I have to find a way for it to be, to make sense. And I think I have two words that I particularly have fond...no, fond memories are wrong. That I really hate with my, just everything that I have.
One of them is, everything that's related to the fury. That's, you know, the Fury itself, its Heroic Resource, the...what is it now? Ferocity, right?
Jon de Nor: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: It was rage before, now it's ferocity...
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: Then also you have stuff like...oh, and then, the rampage was also — it's not related anymore, but it was related because it's also related through the Beastheart, right? So that's, the beast could go into a rampage. Then you have a rampage in the monster book. And then, it's also connected to the werewolf, who also has rage, but different kind of rage. And that was a pain in the ass to figure this out. How would I even fill this all?
Because the words that I would use for ferocity, fury, and rage is basically the same word. Yeah, we have different kinds of those, but they mean the same thing. And I have to figure out what would fit better, these categories, what would be a better name for the class? And, you know, I'm not 100%, satisfied with the result, but, you know, it works, and, yeah, okay, fine. It's fine.
But that was, that's just the second place. The first place...ah, the radenwights. Radenwights! I was just, I went insane trying to figure them out. Particularly because, first of all, the first part of the word, "raden", means...what? What does it mean?
Jon de Nor: If it's not a made up word, I believe it somehow means "rat"?
Dmytro Serbin: I'm not sure. Matt would say that this is not a made-up word, it's a real word, but I never found it. I found something that's close to it, and it means, like, twisted, or something like that. I don't remember anymore, and I don't want to remember. I just want to forget it.
But, yeah, I figured out that, yeah, okay. Because you have these different kinds of stormwights, right? You have radenwights, corvenwights, boren...boren? Okay, yeah, corven, boren, and...vuken. Yeah. And they sort of sound real enough. And this was also a hard part to translate, like, should I translate it — should I just transcribe it? Meaning that, should I just use the same sounds? Right? I transcribing it from one script, from Latin script into Cyrillic script, but using the letters that produce similar sounds. So, for example...
Jon de Nor: Yeah. Transliterate, basically.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, transliterate, yeah, yeah. Same stuff. Yeah. So should I just use that or should I...because if I do this, it won't make any sense to anyone who reads it. It just will be some sort of...because we have different words for those animals, right? And so, "boren" will not tell you anything. It might tell you something if you're English speaker, you're like, okay, I guess it's like an old word for bear, right?
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: You can sort of figure it out. And in Ukrainian, it just doesn't make any sense. Or, should I find an old word for "bear" in our language and try to somehow fit it here? And yeah, I decided against that. That was just worse to do. It's just...it wouldn't add anything to the installation.
And then you have the second part. The "wight", right? People — you can see it all the time. People come into the community and say, like, "What the hell is 'wight'? I thought wight was more like undead."
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: You have to tell them, "No, it's actually a real word that meant 'a creature'," right? A thing. Particularly a creature, like, a human thing. So I was like, okay, what should I do here? Because we have one word for the undead wight. Then we have another word for creature. Should I use the old word for creature? That's not...but, we actually, the old word for creature is the same as the one that we use today, basically. Like there is a second one, but it's...it would be rude to call someone that today, because you basically call them an animal, right? You call them, like, "You dog!" So I'm not sure that's the intended, you know, meaning.
So I was like, okay. And I struggled for a long time to make it all work because I. It should be consistent across the whole game, right? I can't just call radenwights this one thing, and then call wyrmwights this other thing, and then the stormwight some other thing as well. I have to sort of keep it consistent. At least, try to.
And so that was a big struggle for me. I sort of finally figured it out. I playtested — playtested. I just played it. Ran The Fall of Blackbottom for Ukrainian people, for a group, and they encountered the radenwights there, and they saw their name on the screen and they couldn't pronounce it. It was too hard. What I made, what I translated it into, it was just too hard to pronounce.
Jon de Nor: Wow.
Dmytro Serbin: I was like, "Oh, my God. I have to go back to the drawing board again."
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, this was just the worst part. Yeah. At the end...again, I started it, like, in July or August of 2024, and I finally figured it out after a conversation in the Discord — people in the timescape channel helped me out with, how would you translate "wight"? And I figured, okay, I have this cool word. It basically means face. It's an archaic word for face. So it's like, rat-faced, dragon-faced, and, you know, storm-faced, this kind of...
Jon de Nor: Oh, that's...oh, that's pretty good.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, I'm satisfied with that as well. That's pretty good. It's not the best. It's not the easiest way to say, as well. It's sort of like, a bit...makes it a longer word. But still, it's, yeah, it works. And that's all I need. This would work. Yeah. And that's, that conversation happened in May this year, I think, or maybe even June. Like somewhere close to the release of the game. So, yeah, I had, I spent a lot of months thinking about it, and I don't want to think about it anymore. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Yeah, I've been wondering about...because "wight" is an old word, and English and Norwegians share the same roots. And if you travel back like a thousand years in time, English and Norwegian — or rather, Old English and Norse — were very similar, in such a way that they could communicate with each other. They would have understood each other to some degree. And still, a lot of these words, they're like, yeah, I feel like some of these should have survived in Norwegian, at least! (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: (laughter) Yeah.
Jon de Nor: Because some of the, a lot of these, like..."boren", for example, in Norwegian, a bear is called "bjørn", which is derived from boren through some layers of...
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there is actually...you told me that we can go on tangents, and I want to go on a small tangent that's actually about bears. I think it's a very fun, mystic thing that you can see in different languages. If you compare the word for bears, or bear, from different Indo-European languages, you can see that the actual Indo-European word was something like "harktos" or something like that. So, you can see it like in Latin and other southern languages, that they're "arctus" or "ursus" and stuff like that, right?
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: Yes. And...but then you go to the northern languages and you don't see that at all. You see all kinds of different words. Bjørn. Beowulf, right, it means "bear" as well. "Bear" itself. And you have, like, Slavic languages: "medved", "ведмідь" [vedmid], and stuff like that. And you realize that it's actually sort of this...was a way for our ancestors to, you know, like, they believed that if you say out loud this name, the bear will hear you and will come to you.
Jon de Nor: Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: So, yeah, they made up a different word for it that means "brown" or, like "the honey eater". Right? "The one that knows where the honey is" is what it means in Ukrainian. And, yes, or like, what's the bee...the "bee-wolf", right? This stuff. So yeah, that's an interesting tangent.
Jon de Nor: Yeah. In Norwegian, it's kind of close to the word for "brown". We've got "bjørn", which is the bear, and "brun", which is the color brown. Yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: So yeah, this was like, our ways, our ancestors' ways of sort of like, "Oh, don't, don't say the name. They will come for you."
Jon de Nor: I don't know if you've specifically come across this, but I'm gonna, I'm going to ask about this specifically because it was in one of the questions from my patrons.
Dmytro Serbin: I — yeah, sorry. I want to just to say, it's crazy to me that someone on Patreon would ask for my — for something from me specifically.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) At least some of them are mainly English speakers. I think they found...
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, right.
Jon de Nor: ...translations very interesting as something...
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, of course something they don't engage...
Jon de Nor: I assume they don't encounter too often!
Dmytro Serbin: Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon de Nor: But one specific question is, they mentioned an ability specifically, but also just other abilities with wild names, and they ask about, specifically, Your Entrails Are Your Extrails!
Dmytro Serbin: Oh, yeah, I have this. This one was actually pretty easy. I have the glossary open right here. And I sort of know it by heart, so I don't even need to look it up. But, it was easy for me because we have a word for entrails, that also has this root for...that means "inside", right? So it's, the word for entrails in Ukrainian is "нутрощі" [nutroshchi]. And this first part, "нутро", means "inside". And so I would just replace that part with the word that means "outside". And the word itself, it doesn't exist at all. It's the same as in English, right? There is no word, "extrails", as far as I know. But, yeah. So I just replaced it, so it's basically the same. Yeah. And it works great, I love it. It was one of the easy ones for me.
Jon de Nor: You know. Now out of them, because of now I'm trying to translate it into Norwegian. And I think I would just do the same.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah. That's how I started. I was like, hm, how would I translate it?
Jon de Nor: As for your translation, there isn't a word that does the same thing where...I can't just do the same where the first part of the word, I can just change that to to "outside" instead. And then it becomes a new word, that kind of...you know what it means, but it's not a real word. (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, in this particular case, I was just lucky. That's it. So, I just noticed that I have this in my glossary commentary section, and sort of reminds me, like, you know, I would make a translation and I would leave a comment, why I decided to translate it like that.
Jon de Nor: Oh, smart!
Dmytro Serbin: And then I would...yeah, months later, I would go to the same section, the same name or terminology or whatever, and I was like, "Who the hell decided this was a good idea to to say it like that?" And then I look at the commentary like, "Oh, that's actually pretty good, yes..."
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: So yeah. So that's very important for me. And now I see that, in the commentary section for Your Entrails Are Your Extrails!, I left that it's actually a reference to a movie, A Knight's Tale. I think that's something that was said in that movie. So, yeah, another route for me to translate stuff would be to, if there's actual reference to something. And I caught it, I had to go and see the translation of the scene, of the movie, of the book, or something.
And usually we have...sometimes we have, like, two translations. It's, you know, one translation that would be, one guy or maybe two, three people just translated the whole thing. And you can hear the sounds, the original sounds somewhere in the background, and then you...
Jon de Nor: Oh yeah, it's like an overdub, where you would just talk over...yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, overdub. And then you have an actual dubbing that, like, fully replaces everything, and maybe like, you know, one would be run on TV and the other in the actual cinemas. And that was like, it's not...it's not the case anymore. But yeah, it was, for a lot of old movies, it's particularly the case. Yeah
Or maybe different translations. So I would have stuff to compare to. And sometimes it would be just fun to connect to that particular translation of that movie, you know, not to figure it out on my own, but just to make a reference, make a reference to the translation that the original references. Yeah.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) That's such a cool way to kind of bring part of, like, your own culture or history.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon de Nor: Along with...into the game.
Dmytro Serbin: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So cool.
Dmytro Serbin: It's not...you don't have a lot of opportunities to do this, but yeah, it's also something that I enjoy when I have the chance to do.
Jon de Nor: One of the questions that I got from the patrons was actually kind of related to this, where...how do you decide whether to go literally and whether to kind of go with the spirit of the game?
Dmytro Serbin: Oh, yeah. That's a very good question. That's sort of...when I started translating the game, I...it wasn't obvious at the start, but then soon I realized that I have this sort of theory for translating, what a good translation is, what rules does it follow. And I realized that for me, it's, three main principles. And there's actually a fourth secret one. But, you know, it's not important. Yeah.
So the three principles are, that you need to...for translation to be good, you need to remember...well, you have to translate the meaning, right? You have to...translation to make sense. If this word means "that big, glowing yellow orb in the sky," then it should probably mean "this big yellow glowing orb in the sky" for us as well. This is, like, the most obvious one, right? It's what you think of when you think of translation.
But then the second principle is that, it should also translate the feeling, like, what feeling does it evoke? You know, like this principle, this thing that, when people were asked, what would...what do they think when they hear these two words, like, "kiki" and "bouba", right? And kiki means, like, this pointy thing, and bouba, this round thing, and so...stuff like that.
You know, something that makes you think of...you know, well, stuff like that, stuff like, Your Entrails Are Your Extrails!, right, something that's more, like bombastic, that's epic, that makes you...for example, I have this, I really like this ability name for the fire elementalist, because I play one, and, there is...it's one of the most amazing, right? It's The Flesh, a Crucible.
Jon de Nor: Right, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, I love it. It's very evocative, right? And I wanted to translate that feeling as well that I get from this. Because when I read The Flesh, a Crucible, I can't just say it, I have to shout. I want to shout it. And I wanted to do this as well for the translation, like, to evoke this feeling, and it's sort of...if I translated it as-is, it would just be, like, you just read it out loud and you wouldn't want to shout it. But I decided to change one small bit. Just add one small word, and suddenly it sounds like, if you just try to read it out loud as-is, you realized it's...no, it's something wrong. I have to say it, say it, and...yeah.
So this is like a second principle that I think is important. And the thing about this principle is that sometimes you have to sacrifice one for the other. You have to decide from case-by-case basis. So should I lean into the meaning or should I lean into the feeling? Oh, that actually sounds pretty good. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter) I was just wondering because sometimes I know when when translating just phrases from English specifically — we get a lot of American and British television and movies in Norway — and sometimes when you try to translate, like, a phrase, or like, a catchphrase specifically, into Norwegian, just trying to make it Norwegian, it just sounds kind of dull, or it kind of falls flat.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah!
Jon de Nor: Do you get the same thing with trying to translate to Ukrainian that? That this thing sounds so cool when it's in English, but when I say it in my language, it sounds just...mundane? (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Mediocre. Just...yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of this. It happens a lot, actually. And it really saddens me when I can't figure it out, when I have to say, okay, well, I should probably stick to the meaning and lose the feeling. But yeah, I try to...I think that's the main...the most time that I spend on the translation of this terminology is actually the time that I try to figure out how to twist the words in such a way that it will actually work, that it will translate this evocative feeling that you get.
And I have right now in front of me Behold the Mystery, right? Another elementalist ability. And I'm like, okay, the mystery — the word that you would see in the dictionary for the "mystery" is actually this. But it doesn't sound arcane to me. It doesn't sound mystical enough. And I just change it a bit to a different word that means the same thing. It means the same, but it actually now works better, I think, I feel like. And it's stuff like that. I spend a lot of time to try to...twist the words just a bit.
I also have this third principle that I didn't...yeah. The third principle is also very important. It's actually that you have to remember the context. You have to remember that this is just a game. People will say this stuff out loud at the table. Yeah, you know, there's this famous quote of Harrison Ford, and he was working on Star Wars, and he was trying to say his dialogue, and he was like, "You can write this thing, George, but you can't say it."
That's, yeah, that's the same thing with this game. Because as I said in my example with the radenwights, right? I translated it, it finally...it translated the meaning, it translated the feeling, and then we go and we play it, and people just cannot say it at all. It just breaks. So yeah, it's stuff like that is you also have to remember, keep in mind, and sometimes you have to sacrifice the first two principles to keep the third one. Because it's also very important. Yeah.
And you have also this secret fourth principle — or I have, I guess — that means...it's something that I follow. It's not necessarily something that I think it should be, everyone should follow it, or not. But I think that you have to...the transliteration, right, as we talked about? It should be your last resort, not your first one. It's a very useful tool, but you have to keep digging for words in your own language, I think, that would have the same meaning or the same feeling, right?
Because I think transliteration is useful and people would understand it if I just said that the elementalist class is called "елементаліст". But I was like, oh, it should work with the elements. And the way we translate "elements" is another word. And, okay, I should probably then translate it as the "mage of the elements" instead of the elementalist.
Jon de Nor: Right. Right, right. Yeah. That's easier Norwegian, because we also just call it element. (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Well, yeah, we sort of do as well, but it's not as...it's not as common. This is my, the rules that I follow for my translations, trying to just figure it out.
Jon de Nor: That actually brings me to something that I was wondering about. You have these four principles that you try to follow, and...I'm wondering then, are you working on this alone, still, or has someone else kind of wanted to kind of participate, or do you want to keep it to yourself as your personal project?
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, I guess I want to keep it to myself. I had a couple of people, like, reach out to me and say, "Hey, if you need any help..." And this was after I already released the Starter Rules. So I was like, yeah, the biggest help that you can actually offer me is to play this game with my translation and sort of playtest the translation itself. Does it work at the table? Because I don't know, actually.
I ran...Ukrainian, I ran Draw Steel, like, a few times. I don't know, seven times or something like that. So, I have sort of some experience behind me that I can rely on, but it's not enough. And yeah. And so you realize that, you know, just bringing more people into this translation would probably not make a huge difference because I have already this process set up. It's, I actually...the way I translate stuff. And I would have to figure out a way to delegate some parts of this game, but that would still make sense together with my parts of the game.
And, I just, I mean, this is not something that...you know, it's something that I made for myself, right? It's not something that I made for money because I got basically no money from it. Right now, at least. I mean, it might change in the future, but, yeah, right now. And so...well, yeah, it's sort of like this thing, this personal project to me. Yeah.
Jon de Nor: And speaking of personal projects, just the other day when we're recording this, you released an adventure.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah!
Jon de Nor: Called From the Ashes. Which is a starting adventure for, like for a new campaign, right?
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, yes. It was, thanks to Geoff? Yeah, the manager at MCDM, who told me that I cannot translate The Road to Broadhurst. I don't have the permission. So I was like, okay, I have to figure out a way to create my own first-level adventure, because I made the Starter Rules, right? I remade them into the whole quickstart set. You can...the Director sheets, all the pregen characters, the Starter Rules, more monsters...right? And you have this whole new adventure that you would just be able to start to play a whole session of it, and figure out if you want this game or not. Yeah. So thanks, Geoff, for not allowing me to translate The Road to Broadhurst. I had to make my own. (laughter)
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: I made it, and I released the whole quickstart set. And then I was like, "Huh, that adventure actually, like...at the end, it's original enough that I think I can just translate it into English and release it as its own product. Because I think that would be just, you know, neat for people to have more options. There are already great starter adventures. Like for example, You Meet in an Ambush, right? Excellent adventure. I was like, yeah, but there is a second option, an alternative for you, that you can...maybe you want for your players to clear out a small town from the undead at the end, and then they have to rebuild this town from...from the ashes. Oh, wait, that's the name of the adventure!
Jon de Nor: Oho, name drop! (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: (laughter) Yeah. And now you have this base of operations for your campaign. So I was like, yeah, I'll translate it. And I released it, and people seem to really like it, like, I had a lot of...it seems really popular. Yeah. I look at the analytics and...yeah.
Jon de Nor: I bought a copy for myself! (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Oh, thank you. So you are one of those six people.
Jon de Nor: I try to keep up to date to the with the stuff that's released for Draw Steel.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah. I think that's the whole point of Goblin Points, right?
Jon de Nor: Basically, yes. (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: (laughter) Yeah. I have this adventure that I'm working on right now. It's maybe...it's going to be...maybe I will release its initial version. It's not going to be final. But I wanted to release, maybe it's going to be released before this episode comes out. Maybe not. We'll see. But at least, I really want to release it in December, and it's a timescape adventure. I commissioned art from an artist that I actually know, that I met in real life, and he made this excellent art. Just really wonderful. I could...maybe I can even send it to you.
Jon de Nor: Oh, that is brilliant. I love that piece — that's really good. I love it.
Dmytro Serbin: Yes. It's now on my desktop. I love it so much. Yeah. And it's something that I had to pay my own money to, you know, just because I wanted to. And I think this one part of the MCDM community that affected me, it's just that I want to support other people. And I wanted to support this artist that I met. And I want to like, hey, throw them some money, and I got this awesome, just, excellent art, and now I feel like I have to finish this adventure because otherwise it would be a waste.
Dmytro Serbin: And I want to like, hey, serve them some money. And I got this awesome, just excellent art. And and now I feel like I have to finish this adventure, because otherwise I'm gonna waste.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! It has almost like, a comic book vibe, I think.
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, yes. He has this really great art style that I really like, and yeah, I was like, "Hey, can you make something that looks like an old sci-fi retro story?" Yeah, he nailed it.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Is it — it is a spaceship, right? Flying into the mouth?
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, it is a spaceship! Look how huge that thing is.
Jon de Nor: Man, this is so good. Wow, that one eye even has, like, stuff hovering around it! (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, yes. Well, your listeners don't see the picture, so...I mean, I don't want to spoil it, because it's actually kind of like a reveal in the adventure itself. So like, if you're a Director, yeah, it's fine for you to see this cover art, but yeah. So yeah, keep in mind, for the adventure, that it's called The Matter of an Overmind.
Dmytro Serbin:
Jon de Nor: Oh, okay. (laughter) What levels are you targeting, or what level are you targeting with the adventure?
Dmytro Serbin: Fourth level. And I don't know if people think it's too low of level to fight something like that, but for me, I think it's just the right level to do this, because, you know, if you look at Crack the Sun, you...no, not defend. You save the world, save Orden from...at what, at at fifth level, I think? And then you save the universe at seventh level, right?
Jon de Nor: Yeah, basically, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: Draw Steel is, like, a lot more heroic. A lot more epic stuff happens at lower levels. So I think, like, the fourth level will be just right for this.
Jon de Nor: Interesting. Cool.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah.
Jon de Nor: I'm really looking forward to this. I love the art. The adventure has to be good with this piece of art! (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: I know, I know. (laughter) Oh, actually, yeah. Paul Ligorski helped me a bit with the outline, at least. I asked him for help, and, yeah.
Jon de Nor: I love to hear it. The community helping the community. (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, well, if we're talking about the community helping the community, I also have to mention the Draw Steel Brewery server that has these excellent people that will help you with your homebrews that you want to make. And so there are actually playtests that's happening. Yeah, it's one of the things I'm working on as well, a subclass for the shadow called the College of the Ardent Skull. They helped me a lot with figuring this stuff out because, as we have seen from the Jams of the Timescape, I am pretty bad at balancing stuff. At least with the...
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: I was like second place in presentation, and almost last place in balance.
Jon de Nor: We're closing in on the hour and the end of our time. And I always ask my guests to bring some kind of recommendation that they want the listeners to check out or be aware of. So what have you brought for our listeners?
Dmytro Serbin: I — you know, you asked me like, hey, also keep in mind that I'll ask you for a recommendation. I was like, what should I recommend? Maybe a movie I like, or a game, or something. And then I was like, no, everything that comes to my mind, people know about. These things don't need my recommendations, right? And I was like, if I was in place of your audience, I would want — and I would hear someone from this other culture that I probably know next to nothing about, like, you know, someone from Brazil — I would want them to tell me about their culture, the Brazilian stuff that I would never even know about. This good stuff, right?
Jon de Nor: Ah, yeah.
Dmytro Serbin: So yeah, I decided to recommend some Ukrainian things, different things. And then I sort of like, "Oh, that's a good idea. And this is a good idea. And this is also a good idea!" Then I kept going, and kept going, and I realized that I should probably stop. I managed to cut it down to four recommendations, but one of them is actually three recommendations in a trenchcoat.
Jon de Nor: (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah. So the first thing is, if you want to learn about Ukraine, Ukrainians, Ukrainian history, right? Our...why stuff happens the way it happens? I have this excellent video by Overly Sarcastic Productions. It's a very famous channel and they have this excellent...I really love the way they present history and mythology. And they have a video. It's 12 minutes about the summary of the whole of Ukrainian history. And it's really good. As a summary, I really like it.
Jon de Nor: Ah, interesting!
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah, it hits all the right points, like the nuance that people would, you know, they tend to forget. I endorse it. It's really good. I also want to point out that I really like the way the guy in the video pronounces, Ukrainian names, like, for example, like Kyiv. And he really, he's not 100% there, but he's actually really close. He actually tries to pronounce it correctly. You know how, in Draw Steel, you have this negotiation rule that if you speak to someone in their native language, their patience increases by one immediately? That's a real thing.
Jon de Nor: Yeah, yeah. (laughter)
Dmytro Serbin: It really happens. Recently I had someone at a supermarket, they wanted help. Someone, a foreigner, someone from across, abroad. And I was like, I helped them out, and after that, they said "thank you" to me in Ukrainian, and I was so happy! I was just, that's like...so yeah, this thing is real. Yeah.
The second thing that I want to recommend is a movie. It's, one of the classic Ukrainian movies, called, The Eve of Ivan Kupalo. The thing is that it's kind of...you can find it on YouTube. It's, 1968. You can type in YouTube, "Ukrainian folk horror, 1968", and then you will find it. It has actual English, subtitles to it, to the whole thing.
Jon de Nor: Oh, nice.
Dmytro Serbin: Yeah. And it goes, it's short. It's like one hour long. And it's really good, like, just, it's interestingly shot, visuals are interesting...and you have this story about, you know, the usual stuff that's, the boy and the girl, they really, really love each other, but they can't be together. And then the devil comes into town, and this is where the movie starts. Yeah. So check it out.
I think I — I just need to point out, to warn you that there is, somehow, there is an instance of blackface in the movie, in one scene near the end of the movie. And it's, like, it's not even related to the story. It's just, you know, like the scene makes fun of this, empress, Russian empress. And she had, she has this one servant somewhere in the background. She just stays there, does nothing. And I'm sure that people, when they were making the movie, there was no ill intent. They just, they didn't even realize that would be offensive. But it is there. And if it's something that bothers you, you can skip it. The scene starts exactly one hour mark, and it goes on for two and a half minutes. Yeah.
But other than that, the movie is actually great. I watched it the other — well, not the other night, but like a couple of months back, in the theater and on the big screen. Yeah. This was...I was just amazed. So, yeah, this is, like, an actual...a pretty good window into Ukrainian folk culture.
Another thing is music. I have, you know, we have a lot of cool artists here, and I would just, go on, like, on this huge list that I would recommend all of them to you. But I decided that I want to particularly to point out діти інженерів. Their name is translated to...can be translated as — well, it is translated as Children of Engineers. And you can just, Google Translate "The Children of Engineers" into Ukrainian, then you can Google that, the result of this translation, and you will find them.
Yeah, give them a listen. If you do, listen to the song that has a dog on the cover. And, yeah, and try to, translate the lyrics if you can. It's, I really like that song. And it sort of connects to the classic Ukrainian poem by Ivan Kotliarevsky — our, like, this great poet that lived 150 years ago, or less than that — and the song connects to that poem, that's about the stonebreakers, the people who break the stone and make the path for others to be happy. I think about this poem and this song a lot. And yeah, they're connecting those times and our modernity together, linking them.
If people want to actually learn about Ukrainian, what we do with TTRPGs, right? Maybe some Ukrainian TTRPGs or something. First of all, we have this online festival — Roleplay Ukraine, I think it's called — and, yeah, it's like once a year, or maybe once, two years, it happens. You can find it, you can maybe join it, and you will learn like a lot of cool things that we have over here. One of which is, we have this game that everyone is talking about right now called The Wildsteppe. And it's based on the game The Wildsea.
But instead of this forest — I think, right? In the original game, you go through the forest — instead, you go through this endless steppe that is filled with mythical creatures from Ukrainian folklore. And it's like...yeah, it's pretty cool. A narrative game, more or less. And unfortunately, it's not yet translated into English. The translation is going to come sometime later, but right now it's sort of still in development. Yeah.
So my actual thing that I wanted to recommend to you is a game that is actually translated into English, called Mosaic. I have it right here in front of me. It's a small booklet. It's basically like a one-page game. It's called Mosaic. It's by First Floor TTRPG. And it's...how do I describe it? It's weird. It's very strange. It's, you know, surrealist, abstract. And it doesn't have a GM. You just, it's a GMless game, right? You go with you and your players...well, everyone is a player. The players just get together and they build this narrative that has very strange, dreamlike logic to it.
It's really hard to describe. You have to check it out for yourself. And again, it's like, it's one page long. It's translated into English. It's really fun. And I want to point out that it was actually made by someone who I run Draw Steel for. So I want to say, like, the guy actually survived The Fall of Blackbottom. So please check it out, and maybe give him a couple of bucks.
Jon de Nor: (laughter) Definitely.
Dmytro Serbin: Yes, yes.
Jon de Nor: It has been, fantastic to have you on, Dima.
Dmytro Serbin: Aw. It was wonderful.
Jon de Nor: I'm a bit of a language nerd myself. So hearing you talk about how difficult it is to translate something is close to my heart. (laughter) Because I feel the same pain sometimes!
Dmytro Serbin: I imagine, yes, yes, yes. It's something that everyone feels. The people who work on other translations, right? I wish them the best of luck.
Jon de Nor: It has been fantastic to have you on, Dima. Thank you so much for coming on.
Dmytro Serbin: Thank you for inviting me. I never thought that this would happen, that I would be on the same podcast as the designer for Lancer, for example, or James Introcaso.
Jon de Nor: It feels wild to have had them on! (laughter)
Outro
Thank you again Dima for coming on. It was such a good time. As I mentioned towards the end, I'm a bit of a language nerd myself, and hearing all the struggles Dima had with making phrases and names work in his language was near on therapeutic.
I also really appreciate him recommending a video on Ukrainian history. It's not hard finding a video on Ukrainian history, but it's hard, especially as an outsider, to know which ones are any good. I watched the one he recommended immediately after the interview, and can really recommend it too.
I want to thank Diego Storck, Rise Heroes Rise!, and Antan Karmola for submitting questions for Dima.
If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on tips@goblinpoints.com.
Links to everything, including this script can be found in the show notes, and on goblinpoints.com.
If you want to support my work, you can become a Patreon supporter. As a paying member you can submit questions for upcoming guests. You also get access to premium features on Stawl. Stawl is digital tool set for playing and running Draw Steel: digital hero sheets, looking up monsters, or read the core rules. Go to Stawl.app. S-T-A-W-L-dot-app.
Next episode is on the 25th. That'll be another returning guest: The Dice Society!
See you next time. Snakkes.