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Message: <blockquote data-quote="davedoty" data-source="post: 5452928" data-attributes="member: 6669597">I'm about to try to run my first game, and I think I've worked most of the kinks out, or at least enough to try running the first game.  The issue I'm having trouble with is the bonus language issue.Let me begin by saying that I'm running a world on Iron Heroes rules.  It's an all-human civilization, with monsters sort of roaming around wreaking havok (similar to the ancient myths).  Each region is based loosely on an era of the ancient world.  The main gameplay is in a region based on ancient Greece at the height of the city-states, and it's ringed by three empires based loosely on the Roman, Persian, and Minoan civilizations.I want to incorporate language more than it is in most campaigns I've played.  Instead of "common," they will know Phaleronian (Greek), which will serve them well until the story expands in scope to have them travel abroad, at which point they will have to either know the language there or depend on NPCs who potentially, by accident or deliberately, are unreliable translators.The problem is that while I've worked out their home region, their immediate neighbors, and a couple of other places I expect them to wind up, I haven't fleshed out every corner of the entire game world.  If they eventually travel afield to a region based on, say, ancient China, it doesn't seem reasonable to penalize them for not knowing the language of a country that didn't exist at character creation.  If it happens too often, it may turn the language barrier from an interesting twist to a constant problem that hampers the fun of the game.My question is: am I being too paranoid, or is this a valid concern?  And if so, how do I address it?  I'm thinking about the following rules:Since I'm going to be open about the countries being based on real-world ancient analogues, if they want to assign a bonus language to a RW culture, then if and when we encounter a country based on that, they can swap for the fictional language.  So if they choose "Chinese" and we wind up in a Chinese-based country, they will have that language.Another possible rule, either additionally or alternatively, is to let anyone with bonus languages leave one unassigned language slot if they choose.  It represents a random language they studied simply for the hell of it (the way I studied German).  When they encounter a language they don't know, they can make a check (knowledge? intelligence?  Straight percentage check? TBD)  and if they make it, this happens to be the language they studied.Too complicated?  Hidden problems I haven't seen?  Making too much out of nothing?</blockquote>

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