Unpopular opinions go here

[Hussar]

Unpopular in the sense that most people playing RPGs today only play D&D and have likely never heard of Robin Laws.

Eh? Robin Laws wrote all sorts of D&D books.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I can live with the idea of there being a Common language - it does kinda make some sense - but by no means do I insist all characters automatically know it. Players can choose it if they want, but IME most players roll their known languages randomly other than their native (or
birth) tongue, which with very rare exceptions is determined by the character's species/culture.

What common is trying to emulate is Lingua Franca, the Mediterranean trade tongue. But it completely misunderstands it by making villagers everywhere speak the damn thing.

(I suppose its also going for a weak copy of Westron as well, but Tolkien didn't make everyone in Middle Earth speak it! It was only those living in the borders of what was Arnor and Gondor.)

i think that having a common shared tongue is too much of a convenience factor for smoothing play experience to remove it as a standard feature, however i think that it could be given certain drawbacks so that it's not fundamentally better than using the actual languges, halving or negating proficiency bonus on charisma checks and suchlike made in common would mean you've still got universal communication pretty much but gives actual value and reason to using the more niche languages.

 

[Hussar]

i think that having a common shared tongue is too much of a convenience factor for smoothing play experience to remove it as a standard feature, however i think that it could be given certain drawbacks so that it's not fundamentally better than using the actual languges, halving or negating proficiency bonus on charisma checks and suchlike made in common would mean you've still got universal communication pretty much but gives and actual value and reason to using the more niche languages.

As a language teacher, it pains me to see the rules in D&D for languages.

But, it's one of those things that looks fantastic on paper but, really sucks in play. Doing charades and whatnot is fun for a session or two. After the third session, it's a drag. After the fifteenth session where you yet again have to mime everything out to try to get things from the NPC, and most people are ready to throttle the DM.

Yes, every group should have a language. Those languages should take years to master. Hell, ask anyone who's tried to learn to read Japanese or Chinese and watch their eyes roll up into their heads. Never minding every species has a language as well. How many dwarven, elven, orcish, goblinish, giant, etc. langauges should the setting have?

At some point, it stops being much fun.

 

[Squared]

As a language teacher, it pains me to see the rules in D&D for languages.

But, it's one of those things that looks fantastic on paper but, really sucks in play. Doing charades and whatnot is fun for a session or two. After the third session, it's a drag. After the fifteenth session where you yet again have to mime everything out to try to get things from the NPC, and most people are ready to throttle the DM.

Yes, every group should have a language. Those languages should take years to master. Hell, ask anyone who's tried to learn to read Japanese or Chinese and watch their eyes roll up into their heads. Never minding every species has a language as well. How many dwarven, elven, orcish, goblinish, giant, etc. langauges should the setting have?

At some point, it stops being much fun.

While I tend to agree with this, my issue is not that having people being able to communicate is a bad thing. It is the word; Common. It is boring and speaks to a lack of world building. Equally having people learn Dwarven or Elven is also poor world building. Or even more hilarious the alignment languages, though that might have been just a 3e thing?

Similarly not having words for currencies. I understand not wanting to deal with currency conversions but it makes it hard for me to take the setting seriously when we don't even bother coming up with a handful of words for things our characters regularly interact with.

Though this is all from someone who has Language as a skill in their homebrew game.

^2

 

[Thomas Shey]

What common is trying to emulate is Lingua Franca, the Mediterranean trade tongue. But it completely misunderstands it by making villagers everywhere speak the damn thing.

(I suppose its also going for a weak copy of Westron as well, but Tolkien didn't make everyone in Middle Earth speak it! It was only those living in the borders of what was Arnor and Gondor.)

I suspect you're overthinking it, and its a simple case of the designers not thinking messing with languages as being all that interesting most of the time.

 

[Thomas Shey]

While I tend to agree with this, my issue is not that having people being able to communicate is a bad thing. It is the word; Common. It is boring and speaks to a lack of world building. Equally having people learn Dwarven or Elven is also poor world building. Or even more hilarious the alignment languages, though that might have been just a 3e thing?

No, that goes all the way back to OD&D.

And the truth is, Common got its start when D&D really didn't have much world building (yeah, yeah, Greyhawk but it was so sketchy in OD&D it was just a name) and after that it was just a legacy thing as much as anything else.

Similarly not having words for currencies. I understand not wanting to deal with currency conversions but it makes it hard for me to take the setting seriously when we don't even bother coming up with a handful of words for things our characters regularly interact with.

Though this is all from someone who has Language as a skill in their homebrew game.

^2

There are certainly other games that have taken that more seriously; whether most people actually found that better is more debatable.

 

[Reynard]

Or even more hilarious the alignment languages,

Alignment languages make more sense in the context of Alignment actually being factions. The idea of secret tongues goes way back to mystery cults and such. Alignment languages are the members only code that let people identify one another and engage in secret communication. Outside of Alignment being a real thing in the world, the Alignment languages don't make much sense tho.

 

[Faolyn]

These are all things I consider in my homebrew campaign settings, and one of the reasons I just can't accept standard D&Disms like "Common".

I wouldn't mind Common so much if it were really a pidgin language, not suitable for much beyond trade.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wouldn't mind Common so much if it were really a pidgin language, not suitable for much beyond trade.

Well, once a pidgin is used long enough, it tends to accrue more function. There's a pretty good argument English started out as pidgin, after all.

 

[CreamCloud0]

while i think alignment languages are kinda dumb i can understand the fundamental concept behind them when good and chaos and the other alignments are tangible concepts of power, a lawful person would be tapped into the cosmic essence of order and the understanding is beamed straight into their brain, but stray too far away from law and that connection is broken and so goes with it the understanding, because you never really 'knew the language' you were just both plugged into the same greater whole that bypassed the need for what they said and just went straight to what they meant

or to put it another way, alignment language meant you don't need to bother finding the right adaptor cable between two computers because you can just send the data trough a wireless server, diconnecting from the server(alignment) means you loose the language