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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5861956" data-attributes="member: 22424">The problem is that language issues are a major pain for the group to work through. They're okay for an occasional issue, but if they come up all the time then they're just annoying.What I believe should happen is that the game should generally avoid having named languages in the rules at all.Instead, PCs are assumed to speak the language of "wherever they are". Most people in the local region speak some relatively close variation of this, so there aren't any communication difficulties.However, on occasion the PCs will encounter people and creatures who don't speak their language - whether that's because they've encountered ancient snake people under the earth, or they've been cast to the other side of the world by a treacherous wizard. Either way, in such circumstances, they have to apply their Linguistics skill (or their ability with mime, or some sort of skill challenge, or something) to "get by" for a while.And if the PCs relocate long term, they should be assumed to pick up a working knowledge of the new language between adventures, so you don't have to constantly repeat the "language difficulties" thing every game session for months.Doing this then frees the setting to do whatever it wants with languages. Perhaps there's just a common language that everyone speaks. Or perhaps it's a "Lord of the Rings" style game where there is a common language and a handful of other tongues (Elvish, Entish, Old English, and the dark tongue of Mordor which I will not utter here). Or perhaps it has dozens of regional languages and dialects, like medieval Europe.</blockquote>

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