I always just used German.

I could see this being 5 words in german.

D&D big bad who pays peasants to learn to cast message and uses them to send spam messages directly into the players’ heads

Same number of syllables though.

They had a sting like this on the old tv show Cops.

This would be odd to wait all the way until the funeral before the big reveal.

Yes but that’s not part of the limits, is it?

The main difference between German and English in that regard is that German compounds words while English puts a space in between.

There’s that famous example of the Donaudampfschiffkapitänsmütze, which in English would be danube steamboat captain’s hat.

Using English rules that word would be Donau Dampf Schiff Kapitäns Mütze, and using German rules it would be danubesteamboatcaptainshat.

That’s really all the difference. English does use compound words (e.g. steamboat) but in a much more limited fashion.

Neither does German have much more specific terms, nor are the words really much longer than in English. The only real difference is that German drops the spaces between some words.

Three words, six hundred forty letters, whole story.

Exactly. I wasnt quite that good, I usually did best when we decided to send a message at the end of a session and spent an hour optimizing it–i haven’t played a rules heavy game since i was a kid.

26 words. “He’s” is two words.

That’s not how contractions work

Anti-Clickbait. Much more likely to actually make me click, though.

What does sending mean in this context?

It would be a bit more: (this is real german btw.)

Beerdigungscrashende Frau schockiert auftragsmörderengagierenden Ehemann.

“Überraschung”, sagt sie, “Ich lebe noch.” Er ist jetzt inhaftiert.

Sending is a spell in dnd where you can only use 25 words per cast