D&D General Languages suck in D&D.

[pemerton]

when I went to France knowing some Spanish was no help to me in understanding French.

Knowing French helped me in Italy.

I've also heard that there can be a degree of cross-fluency between Italian and Spanish.

At the system level, the best you probably can do is have no languages listed, and simply say the PC will have X number of languages, based maybe on Int bonus, but the exact languages available will be given to you by the DM.

The issue here is that the number of languages a person speaks generally depends not on their INT, but on their circumstances (especially childhood circumstances).

I have family members who are fluent in 3 languages, and move between them in everyday conversation among themselves, simply because they grew up in a country where there are two national languages, neither of which is their family's community language. So they learned all 3.

A lack of linguistic knowledge is typically only a problem for travellers. A lot of D&D play involves the PCs travelling. Will it make for interesting play to therefore make a lack of linguistic knowledge an issue? I tend to agree with you that, in most cases, it won't.

 

[el-remmen]

Oh and the reason this thread interests me is because languages feel like a key world-building aspect for D&D - or at least for my general preference and style. So below I have shared a screenshot of the language table (here in PDF form) from the character creation chapter of my current houserules project (and based on how I have long used them in my game) and some copy/pasted text explaining parts of it (there is also potentially more detail, but players can access that if they are interested or it comes up in game). The rule are based on a microsetting that can expand as campaigns are played through in it. (well, micro when compared to typical D&D settings, still big enough to be home to multiple concurrent campaigns).

I think of this as "starting languages." Sahuagin might have their own language, but no one else has figured it out yet or know more than a few words (or have they? )

For my own part, my approach to the game means that I don't think about languages as a "hoop," "puzzle," or "roadblock" for PCs (though potentially it could be any of those), but just an aspect of the world to be explored. When I design a place or an adventure I think, "What would the people/creatures speak there?" Not, "What languages do the PCs at my table speak?" I honestly don't know all the language the PCs in my current games speak, I guess I find out when it comes up and how they go about handling it.

Languages
Languages are crucial to communicating and most travelers, people who live in cosmopolitan places, and scholars, tend to pick up one or two additional languages, even if they don't always know how to read and write in them or vice versa.

When you gain a language, the source - People, Class, Background, Feat - will tell you if you can only speak and understand it, or if you are also literate in the tongue. Typically, your choice of People will grant you 1 to 2 standard languages, while your Class or Background is more likely to provide an unusual language.

The Languages table provides more information about available languages and dialects.

Name. This how people commonly refer to the language.
Status. The status of languages are as follows:

• Active. Commonly spoken by various peoples of Makrinos
• Dying. Very few people speak or read this language anymore. It may be the language of a small dwindling population or an ancient language without use outside of the work of scholars.
• Dead. This language is no longer spoken in any common contexts and is limited to scholarly or historical treatises or surviving via fragments in religious or arcane rites.
• Exotic. This may be a commonly spoken language wherever it originates, but encountering it in Makrinos in unusual, and at best limited to a particular region or people.
• Rare. A rare language usually originate in another plane of existence, is incredibly niche, or is so old, either only its written form remains or a fragmentary oral form, making actually knowing it well very rare indeed.

Script. This is the written alphabet or runic code used to record the language. Some languages share a written script, but can use those scripts in very different ways.

Related Languages. The language emerged from influence of one of more the languages listed here or emerged from a shared language. Or, another language may have developed from it. For example, both the dwarvish and gnomish languages are evolved from Terran, a dialect of Primordial, the language of Primal Chaos, but gnomish is also influenced by elvish. Sometimes, it may be able to decipher simple ideas or phrases from a language in which you are not fluent using a related language in which you are.

Dialects. The languages listed here are variants of the language in question. Some rudimentary communication is possible between Peoples who know these languages. "Localized" indicates that there are likely countless minor local dialects of the language that are mostly interoperable with the standard language.

Who Speaks. The most common speakers of this language are listed here.

Notes. Other notable features or aspects of the language

 

[SkidAce]

Oh and the reason this thread interests me is because languages feel like a key world-building aspect for D&D - or at least for my general preference and style. So below I have shared a screenshot of the language table (here in PDF form) from the character creation chapter of my current houserules project (and based on how I have long used them in my game) and some copy/pasted text explaining parts of it (there is also potentially more detail, but players can access that if they are interested or it comes up in game). The rule are based on a microsetting that can expand as campaigns are played through in it. (well, micro when compared to typical D&D settings, still big enough to be home to multiple concurrent campaigns).

I think of this as "starting languages." Sahuagin might have their own language, but no one else has figured it out yet or know more than a few words (or have they? )

For my own part, my approach to the game means that I don't think about languages as a "hoop," "puzzle," or "roadblock" for PCs (though potentially it could be any of those), but just an aspect of the world to be explored. When I design a place or an adventure I think, "What would the people/creatures speak there?" Not, "What languages do the PCs at my table speak?" I honestly don't know all the language the PCs in my current games speak, I guess I find out when it comes up and how they go about handling it.

View attachment 399129

Languages
Languages are crucial to communicating and most travelers, people who live in cosmopolitan places, and scholars, tend to pick up one or two additional languages, even if they don't always know how to read and write in them or vice versa.

When you gain a language, the source - People, Class, Background, Feat - will tell you if you can only speak and understand it, or if you are also literate in the tongue. Typically, your choice of People will grant you 1 to 2 standard languages, while your Class or Background is more likely to provide an unusual language.

The Languages table provides more information about available languages and dialects.

Name. This how people commonly refer to the language.
Status. The status of languages are as follows:

• Active. Commonly spoken by various peoples of Makrinos
• Dying. Very few people speak or read this language anymore. It may be the language of a small dwindling population or an ancient language without use outside of the work of scholars.
• Dead. This language is no longer spoken in any common contexts and is limited to scholarly or historical treatises or surviving via fragments in religious or arcane rites.
• Exotic. This may be a commonly spoken language wherever it originates, but encountering it in Makrinos in unusual, and at best limited to a particular region or people.
• Rare. A rare language usually originate in another plane of existence, is incredibly niche, or is so old, either only its written form remains or a fragmentary oral form, making actually knowing it well very rare indeed.

Script. This is the written alphabet or runic code used to record the language. Some languages share a written script, but can use those scripts in very different ways.

Related Languages. The language emerged from influence of one of more the languages listed here or emerged from a shared language. Or, another language may have developed from it. For example, both the dwarvish and gnomish languages are evolved from Terran, a dialect of Primordial, the language of Primal Chaos, but gnomish is also influenced by elvish. Sometimes, it may be able to decipher simple ideas or phrases from a language in which you are not fluent using a related language in which you are.

Dialects. The languages listed here are variants of the language in question. Some rudimentary communication is possible between Peoples who know these languages. "Localized" indicates that there are likely countless minor local dialects of the language that are mostly interoperable with the standard language.

Who Speaks. The most common speakers of this language are listed here.

Notes. Other notable features or aspects of the language

My chart is similar. I even have dialects and derivative languages.

This is the way.

 

[MGibster]

Common is a simplistic trade language which isn't supposed to be nuanced or able to handle complex ideas like politics or magic, but it's also the de facto "Human" language.

This certainly isn't the case in 5E 2024 and it wasn't the case in every D&D setting of the past. In the 1983 Greyhawk boxed set, Common was derived from a combination of Ancient Baklunesh and a dialect of Old Oeridian and is the native tongue of many people. But then language was kind of odd in the boxed set.

It is frequently the case that one language must be translated into Common before it can be translated into another desired language.

Which just strikes me as really weird. If I wanted to translate a Chinese text into English I wouldn't translate it to French first.

 

[MGibster]

I've also heard that there can be a degree of cross-fluency between Italian and Spanish.

"Italian is just Spanish with all the words misspelled and mispronounced." -- My Spanish teacher.

 

[Voadam]

The Everquest d20 RPG had a little more in-depth language rules than 3e had. It took 4 skill points to get full proficiency in a language. It still seemed more mechanics and player resource commitment than I wanted in an RPG particularly with skill checks for every communication if one party is not fully fluent.

 

[Steampunkette]

Yeah, that's just doing too much. I feel like making the bar lower is more important.

 

[el-remmen]

This is the way.

Well, it is certainly A way (and the way I prefer).

I’d love to see your chart.

 

[SkidAce]

Well, it is certainly A way (and the way I prefer).

I’d love to see your chart.

Well, if you know where to look its got some rough edges, but here yah go...

 

[el-remmen]

Well, if you know where to look its got some rough edges, but here yah go...

Cool!

Rough edges are to be expected. We’re just home brewers (every time I go to share something I think is complete, I inevitably spot errors or oversights the second after I click send.).

Personally, I have moved away from equating my setting’s languages with real world ones (at least one to one correlations, I might still say that some aspect or sound is like a real language when I need to describe it at the table) but I understand the convenience of it for folks to grok it.