I don't think every author should come up with entire languages for their fictional worlds, most of the time that would be a tremendous waste of time that could be better spent on actually creating a story, but I do think that coming up with a consistent sound inventory for your made-up words is really quick way to add a stronger sense of unity and personality to them.
@torie As a conlang nerd I weep a lot more when I see the mock Latin people usually just end up using.
@montag Conlanging is fun, and I'm glad I did it. I wish I had the spoons to do more of it. I built an entire language for Planting Life and I don't regret it.
The only real impact on the story?
Some cool names that are culturally significant but most readers can't pronounce anyway.
I'm not saying I'll never build a full conlang for a story again.
I'm just saying that a naming conlang (sound inventory and rules for putting sounds together) is all you really need.
@montag when I built the Saurid language for 1879, I started by breaking down the one page of t'skrang words that Earthdawn had into phonemes, then feeding those into a perl script to assemble them into root words, prefixes and suffixes.
@montag in the distance, conlang nerds everywhere weep