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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7635679" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>I mix it up depending on how far up the magic scale the beings we're talking about are - the more magical a group of beings are, the less naturalistic I play their cultures and languages. For example, elves in my worlds tend to be pretty magical and tied to the rest of the fey, so the idea that they all speak a magical language that hasn't change since the dawn of creation is generally fine to me - likewise things like Draconic, Celestial and Infernal and other planar languages. Although if there's a reason to play the elves more naturalistically then I do that - for example when I run games in Mystara elves have different languages because elves aren't as tied to the fey and there are different groups of elves who have been separate for millennia and have allowed their cultures to evolve down different paths.</p><p></p><p>Dwarves are a bit of a different story for me, since we generally play them a bit more "down to earth" than the elves (HA!), but since in most of the worlds I've run there is exactly one place in the world where dwarves hail from, it's usually not an issue. They all speak the same language because they're all from Dwarfheim or Rockhome or whatever and so it doesn't matter.</p><p></p><p>For creatures like goblins, ogres, giants, etc. - generally I figure the creatures of the same type speak the same language, and adventurers identify that language as "goblin" or whatever. Basically just like there's a "common" for humans in a particular geographic area, there's also a "common" for humanoid types in a geographic area that may or may not be related to the human "common" (sometimes humanoid languages are a "pidgin" or a dialect of "common" or Elvish, sometimes it's their own thing - it depends on how I want to play it or if my players have ideas that would lead us down one path or another).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I've always taken "common" to be a family of languages and dialects - like Latin in Europe. The game doesn't really handle tracking individual languages at a granular level, and stopping play while characters try to mime what they want to shopkeepers and blacksmiths is fun maybe once in a while. As long as you're within a particular geographic area, all of the languages are related back to some common language so everyone can kind of figure out each other well enough to be able to trade. If you travel too far away from your home, you're going to find unfamiliar languages (but games don't usually go that far away, so it doesn't matter, and if it does then you use spells or magic items to deal with it).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 7635679, member: 19857"] I mix it up depending on how far up the magic scale the beings we're talking about are - the more magical a group of beings are, the less naturalistic I play their cultures and languages. For example, elves in my worlds tend to be pretty magical and tied to the rest of the fey, so the idea that they all speak a magical language that hasn't change since the dawn of creation is generally fine to me - likewise things like Draconic, Celestial and Infernal and other planar languages. Although if there's a reason to play the elves more naturalistically then I do that - for example when I run games in Mystara elves have different languages because elves aren't as tied to the fey and there are different groups of elves who have been separate for millennia and have allowed their cultures to evolve down different paths. Dwarves are a bit of a different story for me, since we generally play them a bit more "down to earth" than the elves (HA!), but since in most of the worlds I've run there is exactly one place in the world where dwarves hail from, it's usually not an issue. They all speak the same language because they're all from Dwarfheim or Rockhome or whatever and so it doesn't matter. For creatures like goblins, ogres, giants, etc. - generally I figure the creatures of the same type speak the same language, and adventurers identify that language as "goblin" or whatever. Basically just like there's a "common" for humans in a particular geographic area, there's also a "common" for humanoid types in a geographic area that may or may not be related to the human "common" (sometimes humanoid languages are a "pidgin" or a dialect of "common" or Elvish, sometimes it's their own thing - it depends on how I want to play it or if my players have ideas that would lead us down one path or another). I've always taken "common" to be a family of languages and dialects - like Latin in Europe. The game doesn't really handle tracking individual languages at a granular level, and stopping play while characters try to mime what they want to shopkeepers and blacksmiths is fun maybe once in a while. As long as you're within a particular geographic area, all of the languages are related back to some common language so everyone can kind of figure out each other well enough to be able to trade. If you travel too far away from your home, you're going to find unfamiliar languages (but games don't usually go that far away, so it doesn't matter, and if it does then you use spells or magic items to deal with it). [/QUOTE]
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