D&D General Languages in D&D Are Weird, Let's Get Rid of Them.

[the Jester]

This is one of those things that really further dilutes any sense that different races and cultures are, well, different right in the face. It's not for me. My game has more different languages than the standard D&D rules assume.

As for creoles or pidgins, that is what Common is. And as for Common, in my campaign, there are different "Commons" in different places. The Common Tongue in the most frequent starting areas is actually Imperial, in other places it's Peshan or Strog, in planar metropolises, it is Planar Common (a pidgin made from different planar languages). I have rules for learning languages more quickly based on its similarity to other languages you know, as well as for how much you can communicate if you are only partially proficient in a language, as well as for learning faster if you are fully immersed in a language, all based on the starting assumption of 250 days of training to gain proficiency.

I really don't want anything that makes the game easier at the cost of making the game world less believable. It would be one thing if my campaign was the size of, say, western Europe or northern China, but it's much bigger than that. I am a setting-first DM. While many others might prefer a simpler and easier system where you just handwave linguistic issues, that's why you have spells like comprehend languages and tongues (and know culture, for that matter) in my game. The trend toward erasing culture and differences between various peoples in D&D is not one I think I will ever adopt.


EDIT: A couple of words.

 

[bedir than]

My world has a powerful guild-religion that trades in the only regular source of healing available. So the common is the language of their region - most know enough to go to the Church of Quar to purchase healing, or listen to the prayers, etc. But they don't know the peoples and cultures of Telse and the West (the origin region of the church)

 

[Scott Christian]

Languages are an opportunity, not a hinderance.

 

[Sanguinarious]

In EABA one way to handle languages was based on how many skill dice you had in a language. EABA used dice for skil levels, like 2d in a skill usually was good enough for rotlutine stuff.

For every dice you had you could use words with that many syllables. So with one dice you night ask 'where is place to pray to gods near big stream? ' to ask where the temple by the river was.

I never played it but I understand a rpg, tekumel, was pretty much language based. I do know they guy who wrote it is now a bad guy you can't say anything good about and you can't even mention him or tekumel on some sites anymore.

 

[Lanefan]

Tongues is not an adequate replacement for languages.

Indeed.

Some of the most sought-after magic items in my game are those that provide always-on speech translation; even more so are those that work for translation of writing as well.

 

[CreamCloud0]

People mentioned upthread they don’t like how common Common is and I think i agree, I think it could be interesting if Common was less universal and there was more significance on languages and if they had categories, in the same way that languages like Spanish and Portuguese are similar but different, speaking the same language allows for perfect communication but similarly rooted/categorised languages can communicate with potential for mistranslations, like maybe elvish, celestial and sylvan were categorised as ‘fey’ languages, or draconic, infernal and primordial are all ‘ancient’ ones.

 

[Maxperson]

People mentioned upthread they don’t like how common Common is and I think i agree, I think it could be interesting if Common was less universal and there was more significance on languages and if they had categories, in the same way that languages like Spanish and Portuguese are similar but different, speaking the same language allows for perfect communication but similarly rooted/categorised languages can communicate with potential for mistranslations, like maybe elvish, celestial and sylvan were categorised as ‘fey’ languages, or draconic, infernal and primordial are all ‘ancient’ ones.

If new languages were easier to learn, I'd be okay with that. Otherwise you're unnecessarily limiting how far the party can range without having a ton of communication problems.

 

[bedir than]

If new languages were easier to learn, I'd be okay with that. Otherwise you're unnecessarily limiting how far the party can range without having a ton of communication problems.

A four PC party at first level should start with at least 9 languages and maybe around 15.

They aren't really a limitation

 

[Blue]

I don't see too many mechanical effects of languages.

But I love them from a world building perspective. They can create an in-game sense of otherness to help explain why these elves don't like those elves.

They also give minor spotlight to various character. "Anyone speak goblin? You do? Ember, they are yelling tactics, about how they are all going to rush around to the left go after the cleric."

But I'm back to not liking them if they lock away information. "There's an inscription in draconic along the ancient wall. Anyone read it? No? Okay." Sure, it gives mechanical hooks for abilities, invocations, or spells to allow languages, but meh - I started with not getting much value from specific mechanics about them.

Depending on your group, you could hit all of those with "hey, who speaks X" and let the players decided for their characters on the spot (and mark it). As long as they are good at sharing the spotlight (or perhaps a linguist who needs spotlight otherwise) that can work out.

 

[Dire Bare]

A four PC party at first level should start with at least 9 languages and maybe around 15.

They aren't really a limitation

If everyone "min-maxes" their languages choices, sure. But languages SHOULD be a limitation. Not an insurmountable one, of course.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

It's interesting that, if really Tolkien was the D&D inspiration for inclusion of languages, they botched it so badly as to have racial language, when Tolkien specifically didn't create elvish, but quenya and sindarin, because the race was split long enough to have evolved two different languages.

Languages in D&D are weird because they have a chance of being chosen before the campaign pitch. There are some games where character choices inform the GM about what the player wants, but I don't think it's often enough the case here to assume that if a character elects to learn Sahuagin, then the GM should feel forced to include some Sahuagin... he might have a desert-based campaign instead.

The weirdness also comes from D&D having no default world, as was mentionned already above: in the example, they have to resort to race language because anything else wouldn't really fit (class-based is weird, even Thieves cant, and alignment-based is outlandish...)

Also, there is a mechanical cost to learn new languages, and not all campaign can afford the required downtime.

All those flaws, however, doesn't mean they should be discarded in favour of a weird pre-Babel world where gods introduce languages into sapients brain (if they can put a language in their creatures' mind, they could also put there a fear of X and it's a ship that has sailed). It should be divorced from character creation as it shouldn't be a mechanical part of the character but a part of its backstory.

How to deal with language should be moved to the DMG with advice on how to use them and say "Everyone is speaking English for some reason in this world" if one doesn't want to deal with it, and introducing different options based on campaign scope and probability of actually having to use those languages.

[Assumption that Common = English is also something fun... I have seen adventure where an NPC was thought to be a male and was in fact a female, and yet the PC could find a piece of writing from said NPC... that would give away the gender unless being very careful in other languages where adjectives or worse verb carry a gender mark].

 

[Maxperson]

A four PC party at first level should start with at least 9 languages and maybe around 15.

They aren't really a limitation

If they're meta-planning rather than just picking based on RP, sure. If they're picking based on what their characters would learn, there will be overlapping languages, which is a good thing. It's useful to be able to plan in a language no one nearby knows.

 

[bedir than]

If they're meta-planning rather than just picking based on RP, sure

Unless they're all the same race with the same racial language they'd have a spread of at least three and that's with race being split evenly.

Plus, until One D&D comes out most characters start with more than three languages. It's hard to not have a party with double-digit languages.

 

[Hussar]

This is a great example of where world building butts heads with game play.

From a world building perspective it’s a fantastic resource.

From a game play perspective, it’s less than great. Enforcing language seriously nerfs any class that is language dependent, such as enchanters. It also really hurts any “face” type characters.

Which in turn means that those characters will search out auto translate magic items in which case the whole point of multi language campaigns as world building tool goes out the window.

It’s not an easy thing to resolve.

 

[Maxperson]

Unless they're all the same race with the same racial language they'd have a spread of at least three and that's with race being split evenly.

Plus, until One D&D comes out most characters start with more than three languages. It's hard to not have a party with double-digit languages.

Again, unless they are metagaming, there will be considerable overlap among the other languages chosen. You'll end up with a few taking elvish and orcish, maybe three pick goblin.

 

[bedir than]

Again, unless they are metagaming, there will be considerable overlap among the other languages chosen. You'll end up with a few taking elvish and orcish, maybe three pick goblin.

With your example you have at least four languages and probably eight without metagaming

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I’d much rather strengthen the mechanical significance of language.

Let language proficiency provide benefit when speaking to a creature in their native language, treat language proficiency as proficiency in the basic knowledge of the culture tied to the language, give languages relationships to eachother, etc.

 

[Maxperson]

With your example you have at least four languages and probably eight without metagaming

Okay. So they speak some languages. Probably half of those will be PC race languages like elvish and dwarvish. The rest? Nobody is arguing that PCs won't be able to talk to things. They just won't be able to talk to anywhere near everything. I don't mind the PCs communicating with monsters.

 

[CreamCloud0]

If new languages were easier to learn, I'd be okay with that. Otherwise you're unnecessarily limiting how far the party can range without having a ton of communication problems.

Part of the intent of grouped languages in my concept is that while Common isn’t as common, knowing one language goes further for you than just being used to communicate that specific language, so yes, while there’s a chance you might not know a specific language there’s a much greater chance your group may know something that can communicate with them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not just each species, but each culture within those species unless a species is assumed to be mono-cultural.

Gnomes might have a few distinct languages or dialects; Dwarves a few more; Elves a fair number; and Humans a boatload. And monsters would have their own. Yes this means there might be hundreds of spoken languages with a setting. So what?

There's enough real-world examples where one would expect exactly this to happen and it doesn't to tell me the creole idea doesn't hold water. Instead, different neighbourhoods within a city have and retain their own primary language, and one - ususlly the national one - is used as a defult for all often as a second language.

Or, and more appropriately, as an occasional hindrance to easy communication. I don't mind this.

That's exactly what I don't want to see. Sure it's convenient for play, but it's also highly unrealistic and rather boring.

If I'm playing a faux-Norse PC it just doesn't make sense that I can go to faux-Rome for the first time and immediately be able to converse with everyone there.

Sure, keep these languages - and the other few hundred as well!

The only languages I've never used are alignment tongues. I did have Thieves' cant in my games for ages but nobody ever used it, so out it went.

Your social-affinity idea might be on to something, but as an add-on rather than a replacement.

This. Your idea, while perfectly workable, is more of the sacrificing verisimilitude for gameplay stuff i would prefer to minimize.