Oh man, you weren't kidding. Part of me wants to print out some of these pages to use in my D&D game, somehow.
(Although, part of me is also uneasy with that idea - using someone's culture & heritage as set dressing, without paying it any of the actual respect it deserves. It would be just as easy to copy a few paragraphs from Wikipedia, & use a Star Trek font to make something look fantastical, which is something I've done in the past.)
No-one's going to mind in the slightest if you lift Gaelic type or script for a D&D setting. (If you start larding in corny or inaccurate Irish stereotypes as well then people might start to be offended and/or amused.) If it matters, the writing style is basically just a long-surviving regional variation of what was once a mainstream form of Latin script, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule#/media/F... . So its story is quite similar to the story of how blackletter hung on as the primary script family for German until roughly the same time in the 20th century.
I wouldn't worry in the slightest - any cultural appropriation offense has long since been hammered out at the altar of American Television.
The Punch Magazine-esque depiction of bucolic ignorance in ST:TNG {1} is probably the worst representation I can think of, but you still have recent romcoms {2} which the Irish Times film review section best describe as "...stunningly regressive stuff."
That said, even the most cutting satire is fully appreciated when done well. Steve Coogan's fantastic double-billing as his own look-a-like from Ireland was very well received here, negative connotations nonwithstanding.
Stop worrying. It truly doesn't matter. No culture deserves respect. You might respect one culture or another for some reason but if you don't, as in this case, then there's nothing to worry about.
I don't know if I agree with that, but I will say that people in general deserve respect. If I were playing with an Irish player, I definitely wouldn't want to offend them by treating their language like set-dressing, and I wouldn't particularly want someone using my culture for that, either.
Luckily it's part of Irish culture not to worry about things like that.
Sure some people might be offended, especially if you're an asshole about it. But generally Irish people are glad to share their culture, and delighted to see genuine interest from foreigners. Sad though our history is, we don't have the kind of issues that make some other groups more reluctant to share the symbols of their identity†.
† Notable exceptions apply, especially regarding English upper classes.
While it's perfectly noble and fine to behave that way yourself, this idea very often extends to abusing people who don't follow it. That's when it becomes toxic and wrong. It's a personal choice and there's nothing wrong with anybody who uses some country's culture for whatever they like. I've been a victim of this kind of abuse myself and it does hurt. People need to treat humans well, not abstract concepts like culture.
Irish mythology gets bowlderised plenty, so we've a pretty thick skin about it these days. If you _do_ treat it well, any Irish players who have even the remotest interest in this kind of thing (which anyone playing TTRPG probably would be), would really appreciate it.
So, thanks for trying to be cool about this stuff!
Oh, I'm... absolutely going to steal things from Irish mythology in my game, and adapt it to suit my setting & plot so far. In fact, my players are about to leave "fantasy iceland" to go to "fantasy ireland", probably next session, so I need to read up on a few things to see what I can steal & borrow!
