Common Tongue

[Golandrinel]

Obviously the common tongue is a necessity for the game, but:

Far too little, in published modules and settings, do language barriers come into play. Most elves, for example, can speak to any other elf, country of origin having no bearing. And the common (human) tongue, in reality a very unlikely thing, almost everyone can speak it. The closest thing to it in real life would, I guess, be English (yes I know more people speak Chinese and that Spanish is a close runner) but even then it's in no way all encompassing.

Does any out there enforce language barriers strictly? Or would that be too detrimental to your game?

Does anyone you another racial tongue, say Dwarven, as the common tonuge?

Any other interesting points to make On Topic?

 

[WizarDru]

In lower magic games, I've enforced this somewhat, and often the players will encounter someone or something that they can't directly communicate with in my game. However, the bonuses provided by high intelligence combined with the ease of communication magic makes language barriers relatively non-existent to all but the most unprepared and hurried of parties.

Idioms, however, are much more fun. Just because you can understand what someone says doesn't mean you understand what he's actually trying to say. "Ooo-err. 'dats a gran' thing all right. I reckon 'e went round the moon and pulled a gryphon's tail, aye?"

 

[tleilaxu]

i agree. a discussion on linguistics in DND is well called for.

 

[darkbard]

has anybody tried instituting the alternative language rules from the kingdoms of kalamar players' guide? if so, to what effect? i'm toying with the idea of including such rules for my upcoming iron kingdoms campaign but am worried that it just might add a needless level of complexity.

edited for misplaced prepositions due to fatigue.

 

[Tiefling]

I prefer enforced language barriers and no common tongue, plus regional languages for demi-humans as well as humans. However, there are fewer demi-human languages because demi-humans live longer. If two regions speaking the same language are divided by physical barriers, the language spoken in each region will naturally drift away from the other's. But the long life span of demi-humans means that this occurs more slowly to begin with, and in that longer time the demi-humans have more opportunity to travel to foreign lands and integrate some foreign words into their own language. Naturally this works to a great degree with elves and nomadic halflings, to a negligible degree with settled halflings and to a negative degree with half-orcs. Everything gets more complicated when migrations occur.

I'd really like to see some sort of mechanic that determines the difficulty of learning a language by the languages the character already knows and how skilled he is with each of them. For example, if a character knows only French it would be pretty easy to learn Spanish, difficult to learn English and very difficult to learn Basque. On the other hand if the character's native tongue is something competely unrelated to Western European languages, say Mandarin, and the character knows only a little bit of French, then it might be moderately difficult to learn Spanish, very difficult to learn English and very difficult to learn Basque.

 

[Golandrinel]

Teifling - an interesting concept, a game mechanic for learning a language. How difficult would it be to learn entish??? ho ho ho.

It would be hard to put a practical game mechanic like that into play, merely saying x county speaks this tongue and y speaks that, but they border each other so it'll be easy to learn doesn't hold up. Perhaps you could base it upon the average intelligence score of the race (regional) speaking the language as it would be the trend, probably in a bell curve, that the more intelligent the race the more complicated the language, until you get to very highly intelligent races who actively try to make their complicated language 'easy'.... ho ho ho ... my poor muddled brain, just an idea"

 

[Aeolius]

Here is an excerpt from "Beneath the Pinnacles of Azor'alq", Chapter 101, detailing the difficulties in surmounting the language barrier.

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The actions of the sea turtle having drawn attention to their location, the party soon finds themselves in the company of six sea elven sentinels. Comprised of three men and three women, the band of elves encircles the party, holding spears at the ready.

"Who are you, to have slain such a beast as this?" he gestures, pointing to the remains of the gulper eel construct "I am called Malc. These waters are the home of my people."

Swimming towards the massive teeth of the obliterated construct, Malc admires the integrity of the shimmering metal. Spying the tarnished silver casket, the sea elf turns swiftly to face Rimus.

"Drylander?" he speaks in the language of Those Above.

"Human, are you not?" he repeats, this time in Dramidji, aquan dialect of the Dramidj.

Her attention solely upon the sleeping sea turtle, a female scout shouts to her commander.

"Malc! Dire blood!" she exclaims in elven.

Swiftly, the remaining sea elves swim to her side, save for Malc, who now eyes the party warily.

"Nay. It is of fiendish origin" a second female adds "Best to slay it while it sleeps. It is of no use to us."

"Stay your tongue, Peri." Malc orders in elven, before turning to face the party once more. Speaking in Dramidji, he asks "Who among you is leader? I would propose a trade, for the shell of that creature."

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BPAA is up to Chapter 104, this week. Rimus, btw, speaks ancient Baklunish, albeit in the form it was spoken three thousand years in the past (he has been asleep for a long long time)

 

[randomling]

Well.... sure, it's easier to begin to learn a language if you're fluent in another very closely related language (eg French and Spanish, Dutch and English). But I'm not sure how you'd implement this in rules terms.

Using different dialects is also interesting, but mostly a flavour thing, I would assume.

Personally I don't like the language-learning rules in D&D, partly because they make learning a new language far too easy (just spend 2 skill points??), and partly because they don't allow for a difference between different levels of language skill.

E.g.: I'm fluent in English, I can make myself understood in French, and I know a few words of German, Spanish and Italian. In D&D, there's no way for a character to be able to debate politics with kings and nobles in Common and Elven, know how to ask the way to the toilet and do her shopping in Dwarven, and be able to say "hello", "goodbye" and "I don't understand" in Halfing, Gnome, and Undercommon.

 

[carpedavid]

Tiefling - I've been playing around in my head with the idea of getting rid of a "common" tongue, and I think you may have convinced me to do so.

As a start for developing a mechanic for learning new languages, I'd suggest using language "families." Learning a language within a family that you're already familliar with would cost, say, half of what learning a language in a new family would cost. You could even extend this to dialects and say that they cost one-quarter of what a normal language costs, as long as you're already familliar with the language.

I'm not sure how to translate this into skill points, though.

 

[Tiberius]

I don't think the Common tongue is necessary or desireable. I found that there was no incentive to learn new languages or use the language-assisting spells while Common existed, so I gave it the boot. After all, why would these other languages even exist if everyone could speak with everyone else using Common? Currently IMC, each human nation has their own language and each nonhuman nation uses their racial language.

This has been, IMO, a positive change. The party develops a default language for communication (in the last campaign it was Elvish, despite the fact that there was only one elf ), and we occasionally run into the situation where you need to rely on a suboptimal character to do the negotiations (such as a 6 Charisma half-orc negotiating with an orc captain). Makes the game more interesting, and bards somewhat more useful.

-Tiberius