D&D General Languages suck in D&D.

[Maxperson]

Try running a campaign based on your theories and get back to me.

It's fine if you are all from and stay in the region where you start. As soon as you enter a new region, though, unless common is spoken universally, now no one can communicate with the locals.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Just finished with a duet-series of sessions with a player whose character ended up in Sigil and was trying to find a way back to his prime to the rest of the party. Tongues was the most important spell of the series and a constant source of attrition.

What would have happened, had the character not been able to cast Tongues? Well, I imagine they would have had to hire a translator or specialist to cast it for them (repeatedly).
Or enquired about purchasing a magical item which allowed universal communication. The item would have required an attunement slot.

 

[Corinnguard]

1) Race is being used as a proxy for culture (Thank you, Umbran) which supports some pretty racist assumptions.
2) New Races and thus new unique languages are added, CONSTANTLY. Practically with every release.
3) Languages thus are diluted to relative uselessness because Elves don't get Common, Elven, +1 language to choose the racial language of another party member. So everyone -has- to default to Common for every conversation to ever happen.
4) Every race speaks Common and their own language. Or just common if they're human, meaning little overlap.
5) 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.

All of which culminates in the 6th issue...

6) We now have to invent ridiculous explanations for why every elf everywhere ever speaks exactly the same form of Elven regardless of any social differences across time or space. All elf slang is exactly the same in all worlds and is utterly unchanged from the moment Elven was first spoken, and the language is perfectly preserved... And so is Orcish and Goblin and Tabaxi and...

How many of these issues do you think were addressed in Level Up? curious

 

[Corinnguard]

Everything you need to know about languages

I came across this article a couple minutes ago. It provides some lore regarding the languages spoken in the Forgotten Realms setting.

 

[Celebrim]

It's fine if you are all from and stay in the region where you start. As soon as you enter a new region, though, unless common is spoken universally, now no one can communicate with the locals.

That would also require that there is a regional common tongue or that at least one PC (presumably the one that is "the face") also has the role of translator. But this just further silos social encounters toward a single PC.

My biggest problem is that NPCs that the party can't communicate with are less fun than ones that they can. Not only are you putting up another door in front of many of your breadcrumbs, but you are putting up a door in front of a lot of your fun.

But, really, the more I read the thread the more I realized it wasn't actually a discussion of campaign design. The title and the argument are really proxy arguments for what is actually be discussed. This is really an argument more along the lines of: "A game without alignment is more realistic and sophisticated than one that has alignment." It's an argument that doesn't actually rest in game design but in unfalsifiable person values, and since neither side of the argument can actually prove their axioms, I decided to just not get involved in the main argument.

 

[Steampunkette]

How many of these issues do you think were addressed in Level Up? curious

None were remotely addressed.

Mostly because it's meant to be "5e but More" so I dunno if it was even something considered or just one of those things where languages exist as they exist because they do.

 

[Micah Sweet]

None were remotely addressed.

Mostly because it's meant to be "5e but More" so I dunno if it was even something considered or just one of those things where languages exist as they exist because they do.

I feel like adding the culture metric to character creation addressed some of it to some degree.

 

[Steampunkette]

I feel like adding the culture metric to character creation addressed some of it to some degree.

Moving the languages into cultures helps, to some degree. At least now everyone raised in the "Deep Dwarf" culture knows common, undercommon, and dwarf...

But what is "Dwarf" as a language except an example of a racial monolith spoken across the dwarf-related cultures?

The VRC cultures all give you "Common, plus another language" or two. Or three. Or whatever. But what are those languages? Dwarf, Elf, Auran, Gnome, Minotaur...

Which are the same across every planet, because no matter how far apart elves are in the galaxy they all speak Elven in the exact same way.

 

[Lanefan]

That would also require that there is a regional common tongue or that at least one PC (presumably the one that is "the face") also has the role of translator. But this just further silos social encounters toward a single PC.

If different PCs speak different languages that role can shift around within the party depending on which language the locals happen to be using.

My biggest problem is that NPCs that the party can't communicate with are less fun than ones that they can. Not only are you putting up another door in front of many of your breadcrumbs, but you are putting up a door in front of a lot of your fun.

But, really, the more I read the thread the more I realized it wasn't actually a discussion of campaign design. The title and the argument are really proxy arguments for what is actually be discussed. This is really an argument more along the lines of: "A game without alignment is more realistic and sophisticated than one that has alignment." It's an argument that doesn't actually rest in game design but in unfalsifiable person values, and since neither side of the argument can actually prove their axioms, I decided to just not get involved in the main argument.

I'm missing something here for sure, as I've no idea what languages have to do with alignment (at least since the removal of alignment tongues lo these many years ago).

 

[Maxperson]

Moving the languages into cultures helps, to some degree. At least now everyone raised in the "Deep Dwarf" culture knows common, undercommon, and dwarf...

But what is "Dwarf" as a language except an example of a racial monolith spoken across the dwarf-related cultures?

The VRC cultures all give you "Common, plus another language" or two. Or three. Or whatever. But what are those languages? Dwarf, Elf, Auran, Gnome, Minotaur...

Which are the same across every planet, because no matter how far apart elves are in the galaxy they all speak Elven in the exact same way.

It's because it's more convenient to have all dwarvish be the same. It's not fun to not be able to communicate without magic or miming stuff and hoping you're understood.

More complicated language systems belong in 3rd party products, or perhaps as an optional module in the DMG for folks who want to go that route.