Common Tongue

[clark411]

The lack of a common tongue also hurts, I find. An average Fighter or Cleric of average intelligence has hardly enough points to go around as it is, never mind forcing him or her to invest 2 pts per language simply so they can speak with the party. Alternatively, a intelligent Rogue or Wizard has points to spare.. it's creates a fundamental collapse of equity on this level. Non-human characters are also hurt more than human characters.

Oh it's realistic to remove it, but with removing it comes opening up a set of new problems as well. Allowing half cost Pidgen Languages helps.. or divying it up into Reading/Writing and Speaking it is an alternative that should be considered when doing it.

 

[Ace]

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?

IMC there are only two languages Shan and English.

Humans aren't native to the game world and neither are the Ur- Human Shan. All of the humans and Shan brought to the world spoke a single language at the time they were brough over.

If you heard Mideran spoken it would sound a greeat deal like 20th century english with a lot of Shan loan words and a few odd words from other languages spoken by the colonists grafted in.

Non Humans have their own languages but they aren't tough to humans normally

This makes the comprehend language and tounges spells less usefull most of the time but thats OK.

As for Bards they lose a bit since there are only two languages. I just assumet hat they can speak both Shan and Midrean English automatically.

 

[shadow]

As a linguistics major I feel obliged to chime in. The idea of a common tongue is completely unrealistic, however such a thing is used for the sake of simplicity. It's possible to eliminate common in a campaign world (I have done this before). However, such a thing brings up a number of communication problems in game. Any time the characters travel, they are likely to encounter a different language or dialect. This can present some unique role-playing situations, or at least force players to spend more points in speak language.
In a medieval world where people don't travel that much there is going to be many different languages and dialects. Even dividing the common tongue up into a few distinct languages is unrealistic, because within each language there are going to be many mutually unintelligeble dialects. In fact the boundary between language and dialect is fuzzy at best. (It's been said that a language is a dialect with an army.)
Moreover, the current speak language rules in 3e are completely unrealistic. The idea that a person gains fluency in a language with just one skill point is absurd. Proficiency in a language comes in varying degrees. I have studied Japanese and can speak enough to ask requests or get around, but I am unable to communicate anything more complicated. Even someone with a high proficiency in a language might not understand all the subtleties that a native speaker would. For example, I have a friend who is an exchange student from Japan. He speaks English very well, but he is still learning all the slang and colloquial words. A better system would probably be the system presented in the Kingdoms of Kalamar Player's Guide.
In spite of being unrealistic, the common tongue survives for ease of play. Most players want to either experience dungeon hackin' or a good story, but don't want to get into all the intricacies of language and communication.

 

[Kichwas]

But how far do characters really travel though?


Map out most campaigns, and the characters have probably spent most of their careers within a few hundred miles at most.

People in these kinds of societies just didn't go far.


Even if you drop common, you'r not going to have communication difficulties all that often unless you're letting your players get unrealistic travel speeds.

That trip far abroad should really not happen more than once or twice in a character's life.

Even trips to the neighboring kingdom are rare... and that's keeping in the same language most likely, if your kingdoms have the size of medieval kingdoms.

What you're going to get though, is the ability to add the flavor of having foreigners show up from time to time who actually have something distinctive about them.

 

[Olive]

But how far do characters really travel though?

IMC, the party has just travelled over 1000 miles to visit a seer. the average person doesn't do things like this, but these guys are ADVENTUERS!!!

 

[Utrecht]

Why do most campaign settings have dozens of human languages, but only "Elvish" and "Dwarven"? Why would elves or dwarves on one side of a continent speak the exact same language as the elves and dwarves on the other side? That doesn't make sense to me.

I would approach this differently and ask - why is there Elvish or Dwarvish???? It would make more sense from a linguistical sense to have regional language sets as opposed to racial.

Afterall, one race will have developed language first - and it is MUCH easier to copy than to invent your own. So while you may have a Region X elven, it SHOULD be close to region x's dwarven, halfling or human tongues - the amount of cross-pollenation is a factor of how much trade and interaction the varios races have.

 

[Utrecht]

Another interesting method of solving this was how Champions solved this. IRC, it used the idea of multiple levels of literacy and the concept of language group. So, the farther you moved from your language group, the less literate you were.

Foe example, your PC spoke english - they would be fairly literate in Dutch, German and Afrikaans. They would be less literate in Spanish, French, Portugues and Italian. They would be illiterate in languages such as Finnish, Hungarian, Russian or Mandarain....

Of course, this forces the DM to create language groups within thier campaign......

 

[Harold Mayo]

As a little aside that is related to the thread...

Check out Paul Henning's Langmaker software. This is freeware that you can find with any search engine (I don't have the URL right now). It is EXTREMELY interesting (to me, at least) in that you can give it a set of rules and generate a lot of vocabulary in a language with it. You can then make changes to the language to represent drift over time. If you're into microscopic details in your world (or just want to make some words in a language), check it out.

 

[Olive]

http://www.adventuregamer.net/html/langmaker.html

here's a URL. I love Google.

 

[Golandrinel]

Olive, none of the download links work ... for me anyway. Is it a ghost ship site?