I meet a LARP developer representing an outfit up north; he’s looking to hire a freelance to help them create six unique languages for the characters and races in their new game.  The writer would fine tune what they’ve already done: vocabulary, accents, and phrasing; make it all sound exotic yet convincingly real.  Wow, says I.  Sign me up.  I’ve done this before and have a good ear for it.  They send me the file containing the core vocabulary for the six languages.  I eagerly open the file and find–gibberish.  Random sounds and strings of letters that bear no relationship to one another, nor is there any pattern that makes one language distinct from the others.  Wow, says I again.  It’s a mess.  It’s… hmm.  It’s a challenge, I’ll give them that.  Ultimately nothing came of it; I hyped the guy into a frenzy one too many times and he stopped returning my emails. That’s fine. It was fun while it lasted and gives me terrific fodder for panel discussions on “What Not to Do”.