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<blockquote data-quote="Ondath" data-source="post: 8802895" data-attributes="member: 7031770">In case this was directed at me, I'll disagree with the idea that removing mechanics from languages and replacing them with social affinities sacrifices verisimilitude. If anything, I'd say it increases it. As they are currently designed, Languages are things you can be perfectly fluent in a few weeks' time, have no gradients of proficiency, and are the same across cultures and even worlds. There is nothing that gives a sense of closeness to reality (which I think is what verisimilitude aims) in this format.If instead you say that language has no relevance mechanically and that the GM is able to run it however they'd like, then the GM can design their world with more complex languages, and there is no game balance expectation that everyone should know Common + 1 Language + 1 Tool (which seems to be the way One D&amp;D is taking things). That path, which started from racial languages, is where we ultimately ended up with sacrificing verisimilitude for gameplay stuff. If instead language has no mechanics, you can have a world with Tolkienesque degrees of conlang design or a world where languages work on the MCU logic of &quot;everyone seems to understand English&quot; and mechanically it wouldn't matter. If anything, accounting for how different social classes fare between each other (it is easier for an aristocrat to convince a king while an urchin can use their street smarts to find a shady contact) should add more verisimilitude to how social encounters are run.Perhaps I presented my idea incorrectly (though saying &quot;let's get rid of languages&quot; does engage people more easily than &quot;let's remove languages mechanically from the rules and let GMs do what they want for each campaign&quot;).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ondath, post: 8802895, member: 7031770"] In case this was directed at me, I'll disagree with the idea that removing mechanics from languages and replacing them with social affinities sacrifices verisimilitude. If anything, I'd say it increases it. As they are currently designed, Languages are things you can be perfectly fluent in a few weeks' time, have no gradients of proficiency, and are the same across cultures and even worlds. There is nothing that gives a sense of closeness to reality (which I think is what verisimilitude aims) in this format. If instead you say that language has no relevance mechanically and that the GM is able to run it however they'd like, then the GM can design their world with more complex languages, and there is no game balance expectation that everyone should know Common + 1 Language + 1 Tool (which seems to be the way One D&D is taking things). That path, which started from racial languages, is where we ultimately ended up with sacrificing verisimilitude for gameplay stuff. If instead language has no mechanics, you can have a world with Tolkienesque degrees of conlang design or a world where languages work on the MCU logic of "everyone seems to understand English" and mechanically it wouldn't matter. If anything, accounting for how different social classes fare between each other (it is easier for an aristocrat to convince a king while an urchin can use their street smarts to find a shady contact) should add more verisimilitude to how social encounters are run. Perhaps I presented my idea incorrectly (though saying "let's get rid of languages" does engage people more easily than "let's remove languages mechanically from the rules and let GMs do what they want for each campaign"). [/QUOTE]

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