No Common Tongue

I eliminated the spells Comprehend Languages, and Tongues in one of my campaigns, and forced wizards to take a higher age category to represent their many years of study. My reasoning was that the study and practice of languages was necessary in order to understand the secrets of magic.

For the most part, I made common tongue the language of the humans, and the language known to most races that deal with humans in the area where my PCs began their campaign. Eventually, they chose to take a trip to another continent. When they left the only large trade town in the area, they found their Common to be almost non-existent except for the rare traveling merchant.

The solution for my PCs was to simply spend a few days trying to learn the language. Based on what they did in town with the locals, each PC becomes competent at communicating their ideas. After a few weeks, I simply let them all communicate as they wish, although complex ideas or plans still require intelligence checks (and a failure can mean SO many interesting things). A few days drinking and trading stories with the locals tends to help ease things along quite well. Note that speech doesn't imply literacy.

I use a similar system for writing, but the timescale is much longer. It requres a skill point and a year of study with a native speaker. Also, if the party spends time with a local native (preferably a smart one) they can also teach him their own tongue. This helps greatly to speed up gameplay, and allows all simple communication while slowing down gameplay whenever cryptic writings, or long documents are encountered by the party.

In some cases the locals might not be enough to understand ancient writings, and a local scholar will have to be found. This is as it should be IMO.

Whatever system you use, try not to let the game bog down over a single translation. If your players are having too difficult a time with it, give them a translator who has an interest in helping the party succeed. Or if you want to have some real fun, ask your players to roleplay their in-character speech to the DM without using any English. I'm sure there are a lot of things the players can communicate even without understanding the local language.

Getting rid of "Common" altogether is a move that may lead to a lot of frustration among players and is one that I would not generally recommend.

However you can work with the definition of what is "Common" to make it more logical. Perhaps it is a merchants language, or a derivation of Draconic, or the language of a long vanished world-spanning empire or a root language from which many other languages developed. All of those make sense and would give you a single language that can be used to comunicate simple concepts, but perhaps not complicated ones.

Also there is nothing to say that every single person in the world does speak this common language, yes it may be something that all adventures know but there is no reason isolated races or communities would have it on their automatic languages list. This does allow times when the PCs have problems communicating without making it overshadow every session. So you have the best of both worlds.

Chonadathan in the Forgotten Realms will get you VERY far - though not all the way.

Joshua has a great point - even in areas without the EXACT language being spoken, you can still get the "gist" of a related language.

A good solution to simluate a language barrier would be to:

1) Eliminate a universal language. Instead have one or two esperanto-like tongues used by most people, though not all.

2) Create a simple "language tree" showing where each language descended from. Don't go into more than two or three demarcations.

For every "step" away from a language, the hearer unstands roughtly one-third or one-quarter less of the speaker's language. You break down the "gist" of the message, and all language skills (bluff, gather info, diplomacy, etc.) get a penalty (i recommend -2 to -4).

In other words, if you don't speak the language, you have to be a PHENOMENAL diplomat to succeed.

For instance, for the Forgotten Realms, you might have the following. But keep in mind this is a ROUGH idea, not polished at all, and stolen from Shadowrun's "Skill trees" idea. Hopefully it will give someone a better idea and act as a springboard.

Do you plan on your campaign being in one cultural area for the most part?

I like having nonhumans in my game mostly only speaking their own languages, and it can work for humans and demihumans as well.

Languages are pretty cheap to buy skill wise, but if the campaign is a hodgepodge it is harder to plan out what languages you should speak or what will be useful.

The occasional adventure with the party not speaking the predominant language can be fun, but if every day is a struggle then it can be annoying.

In a game with four players it shouldn't be too much of a problem. They can all start (for free) with the regional language, and then if they are smart they can use their intelligence languages to spread out. There are generally at least 4-5 bonus languages from intelligence, and I think this is relatively conservative.

They don't need to be able to communicate with _everyone_ in the world, just those around them. If it comes up, investing 2 skill pts in a language isn't much of a penalty. Moreover, you could insert pigdin languages that cost 1 sp and only allow for basic speech. Of course, your Kalamar system already covers that to a limited sense.

I'm not sure if that's really helpful, but languages are really a result of isolation.

If Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are different languages, it's because isolation allowed them to become different over time. Just like animal speciation. Dialects varies more and more, influenced by other nearby languages, up to the point that two languages that were formerly the same are now different.

In a magic world, where people may travel fast with teleport spells, portals, flying carpets and fast supernatural mounts like pegasi, hippogriffs, griffons or even more exotic creatures; you have a factor of unification of languages. (Just like today, where English is behaving like a linguistic Borg.)

I have been working on something for a new campaign based on the lack of world spanning common tongues over several of my past campaigns where I have had problems from being too detailed about it.

Alot of it comes down to your campaign setting, the size of the world and the 'play' area, continents and other geographic features that could possibly demarcate a language variation and then theres planar consideration too, alt primes, outerplanes, inner plane versions of humans, dwarves, elves and whatnot.

But for a single world setting I think the best bet so far is to have for humans, which in most settings are the most widespread race with most variation have maybe 2 or 3 base languages, dead languages, now called the ancient tongues, used by scholars, and/or preists, and/or mages, But possibly not so dead, large empires might use one as the official legal language for court and government documents. But with those 2 or 3 trees you can easily break down your human cultures and georpahic regions into numerious 'local' languages and/or dialects. Or maybe depending on how the world was created, how the gods did their thing there, there might be but a single ancient tongue that all the human languages are based on.

For the non-human races it tends to be easier to say there is but a single base language, ancient tongue. Then each sub-race would have its own langauge or maybe just dialect of that base tongue. Its possible for a sub-race to even have its own tongue based off the language of one of the other of that races sub-races. And just like humans you would want to add in variation for location and culture across the continent or major geographic demarcations. (The wild elves living in a 'lost valley' for two thousand years are unlicky to speak the same exact language as the group of wild elves three thousand miles away in a forest and have had contact of some sort with other elves and races over same two thousand years for example). And of course you probably want to have a couple of different trade/merchant pidgin tongues too, but depending on your setting maybe the various trade tongues are just such and such empires national langauge.

If your plotting out various kingdoms, cultures, regions its not that much extra effort to setup langauge variations for those races while your at it. For dialects maybe the written language is all the same for a single language, and for those languages whose written form is runes or 'picture' words maybe even with the spoken form vastly different and requiring hard study to learn the 'written' form might still be the same.

The part I am still working out is the game mechanics of it and what might allow for feasible use in a game without frustrating the more hack-n-slash oriented of my gamers without making it pointless for the role-play inclined of the gamers.

My thoughts are to allow the player at each level their INT bonus in langauge skill points. And instead of the extra languages at 1st level based on INT bonus convert those to language skill points and give it some type of modifer based on class same as normal skill points. So priests, mages, rogues and nobles for instance would have a higher bonus multiplier at 1st level over fighter or barbarian.

Then following along the lines of the KoK rules the more skill points in a language the more fluent you are. Your 'home' langauge you get for free say 5 points if we're using 5 points as the basis for the common native speakers level of education/fluency. Also a dialect or regional variation on a langauge would not have its own language skill and points, it would still be considered the same langauage(say someone from new orleans and someone from new jersey)

Then you would have opposed rolls or DC rolls when speaking with someone of another langauge or a dialect of the same language, and get a synergy bonus for each langauge that you know that was related to the langauge being used.

For example, we have Famer John and Farmer Smith both living within the boundaries of a large country we'll call Nation A. Both speak the same national langauge. However Farmer John and Farmer Smith both speak a different dialect of the same language. Both are commoners and considered to have 5 skill points in the language of Nation A. Since its the same language we make the DC 10 for them to understand each other. Farmer John only has an INT of 10, while Farmer Smith isnt so bright and has an INT of 9. So Farmer John gets to add 5 to his roll to understand Farmer Smith, and Farmer Smith gets to add 4 to his roll to understand Farmer John. If they both make their rolls their able to communicate as surely as if they both lived in the same area. But if say Farmer Smith missed his Dc check but not Farmer John, then we can assume Farmer John understood Farmer Smith fine, but that Farmer Smith misunderstood some word or its meaning, the greater the differance between their final adjusted rolls the more misunderstanding he had. It would be up to the GM to decide what failed in the communication or if Farmer Smith percieved an insult or whatnot. Maybe the greater the differeance in the rolls you step through the degrees of reaction, friendly to neutral to angry to hostile. Maybe a friendly misunderstanding, that is to say Farmer Smith knows he is missing something and not sure what but he knows it and is not offending or too upset, so he keeps on talking letting Farmer John know he didnt understand something he just said and he repeats hiomself or rephrases and they make another roll to see if he understood. A hostile reaction might mean Farmer Smith thought he was insulted in someway or challenged and he is so upset about it that he takes a swing at Farmer John, or stalks off.

Now for two langauges based on the same root.

Farmer John's and Farmer Smith's home tongues both share a root tongue which is Language A. Both have the 5 in thier home tongues. And Farmer Smith still isnt so bright so has that -1 for INT. They've both met up in an Inn while traveling somewhere and are sharing drinks and making idle chat, hello, how are you, hows the wheather back home, hows crops and such so we make the DC 10 because its just small not too complex talk. Since thier langauges share a common root they get a synergy bonus of 2 for each having 5 'ranks' in their home tongues. Farmer John gets a +2 to his roll and Farmer Smith only a +1 because he isnt too smart(-1 for INT). So though in this case its harder for them to understand each other its still possible. And of course you might add in reaction modifiers and such not and if the rolls are too far apart then things like CHR and other skills might mitigate the more hostile reactions to misunderstanding.

Say we have Adventure John and Adventurer Smith though, John with an INT bonus of +2 and Smith with no INT Bonus. John speaks 4 langauges all with the same root tongue and Smith speaks 2 languages with the same root tongue, both have 5 ranks in all these langauges. They both would get a +2 sysnrgy bonus for EACH of the related langauges they know. So Johns bonus to his roll would be +10 total (+8 for 4 languages) and Smith's would be +4. Know if their just sitting in the Inn's common room sharing drink and idle chit chat we might make the DC 10. If however their trying to discuss the political situation in the kingdom their traveling through or maybe swapping fighting tactics against orcs maybe that DC would be 15. If two alchemists where discussing brews maybe the DC would be 20 or even higher.

Anyhw even if they both make their checks oyu might want to tally the differance and use it for 'reactions' to help determine the tone of the conversation.

Depending on the itital reaction values maybe the conversation only requires a DC roll once be the conversation 2 minutes long or half the day. On the other hand maybe the attitudes and such make you decide it would be better to make checks every couple of minutes of the conversation, thus allowing the players use of their diplomacy, bluff, innuendo or other Charismatic skills to help soften a situation that started out with swords almost at everyones throats.

Two diplomats trying to converse over a language barrier on a treaty for instance you could have them make continual checks and base the npc's reactions on the differance in the rolls wether they failed or succeded, which would give oyu some baselines for making talks go from friendly to suddenly strained to having to try to smooth things out and back on course.

By regulating the number of times you require the rolls to be made and how much you allow reactions to influence the conversation along with the 'diplomatic' type skills you can probably keep your hack-n-slashers and role-players all happy. 1 or 2 checks when trying to get directions from someone on the street to having checks every couple of sentances(affecting the npc reactions each check) as you and the players talk out their encounter with the city watch as the group was caught crawling up out of some sewer grate.

Anyhow, I am still fleshing things out and probably my long rambling style of talking ( i tend to type as I think instead of think first then type it up later) doesnt help any, but so far this seems that in practice to be very flexible, it doesnt eat up the players skill points, as they get language points each level based on INT, though of course they can apply normal skill points to langauges too if they want and the GM can make the checks minimal or frequent depending ont he situation of the encounter or even the mood of the player group at the time.

I am also thinking for writing languages that you simply burn a single langauge point or normal skill point and then you ability in writing/reading that language is based off your spoken language score. Back to Farmer John, since he speaks a dialect of Nation A's tongue, he still writes it the same as Farmer Smith would and so there would be no need for a roll, to understand what the other wrote, take 10 on the check basically. But if say Farmer John came across a diary of the local Mage and he was writing about some esoteric arcane things maybe the DC would be 15 or 20 for Farmer John to understand what all the words were or maybe to just get the gist of what he was reading even without understanding what all those 'fancy' words are.

Anyhow, theres my two cents worth, any of the others who got rid of common tongues or are thinking about it care to make comment/suggestion, additional ideals on it?

If your one of those folks that thinks the common tongues and langauge system of D&D is fine as is feel free to stay shutup

I am looking for constructive feedback to flesh out my ideal not someone saying the D&D langauge system is fine as is or that I am being silly or stupid or going to bog my game down. It makes no sense for settings like FRCS to have all those regions and different langauges and cultures if everyone from some village dunce in the The Great Dale to an orc in some abadoned dwarfhold deep in the western Spine of the World can talk to each other.

I tried having lots of languages. My players hated it. I dropped the issue and re-worked my campaign so there would be a plausible reason for a common language and moved on from there.

-BG

PS Did I mention my players hated it? They really hated it. As in they approached me individually and told me they hated it. They really, really hated it.

Personally, I'm in the pro-Common camp, mainly because I see the Common Tongue as the "lingua franca" of my homebrewed campaign. Then again, the PCs begin in a limited area (a large kingdom), so they aren't really interacting with different human nations, only nonhuman ones. Even then, each nonhuman race has one core language (Elven for elves, Orcish for orcs, etc.).

I like the idea of a vast variety of languages in a setting (for the realism of it), but then again, I've come up with a few ways to explain why languages are the way they are.

For example, the Common language IMC is essentially English, if you look at the evolution of the English language. Originally from 1 linguistic group, with a lot of loan-words (like place-names and item names) from other languages. Then, due to invasion & conquest, it amalgamated with the language spoke by the ruling class (ala the heavy Norman French influence in Middle English, and before that the "marriage" of Old English and old Norse during the days of the Danelaw). This amalgamated version endured & evolved into the language now spoken by the populace. The human kingdom where the PCs start off at speaks this language, with various dialects in different regions (still understandable, but it "places" a person, so to speak).

For the OA setting, their Common language is due to the same thing, though it is from a completely different language family altogether.

For other languages, I envision them as something that reflects their speakers. Elven is a complex yet beautiful language that takes at least a century to master (i.e., an elf's life from birth to young adulthood), and hasn't changed in millenia. The "outsider" languages (Celestial, elemental languages, etc.) don't change at all---they are relatively "dead" or static compared to mortal languages. Dwarven is rather simple, with specific grammar and vocabulary. Orcish is a gutteral, simple mish-mash of a core language with a lot of loan words that have been mangled to match its unique phonetic sound. The languages of the long-lived nonhuman races (like elves, dwarves, gnomes, & fey) have very little (if no) dialects, while the languages of orcs, trolls, & the like have a large number of different dialects (almost a different dialect per tribe).

As time progresses and the PCs travel the globe, they will encounter other languages (mainly other human languages), and maybe even encounter scraps of the "parent" languages of Common. But, for the meantime, the languages IMC are pretty straightforward.

FR is another story, tho.

In my campaign, the PC races often cannot speak the same languages at all (dragons, snakemen, intelligent saurids, humans).

Common is an expanded trade language based on signing, since the one thing the sentient races share are hands (though sometimes different numbers of fingers) and arms.

Common is, thus, flexible and easy to expand or adapt words, though typically it requires some time to adjust to regional variations. OTOH, it is not a very efficient language for many other elements, like explaining minutiae of philosophy or magic.