D&D General Languages suck in D&D.

[QuentinGeorge]

Core D&D has 16 languages. And they all suck except MAYBE one.

That's not to say that it 'sucks' to speak a specific given language or whatever. Or that people speaking Goblin being incapable of communicating with people who don't speak Goblin is somehow unrealistic.

I'm saying that, as a concept, the languages that are provided are terrible and provide an image of cultural monoliths and narrative identity-stripping to a ridiculous degree. Sincerely just awful.

Essentially: Every "Race" gets its own language. And every "Race" that you add gets to speak it's own unique special snowflake language which further dilutes all understanding to being Common and nothing else. Common, as a result, is the language that everything in the entire game gets communicated in, unless the party's elves want to talk trash about the dwarf in the bar without anyone overhearing them.

... which is a valid use of other languages, of course, but the point is most languages are rendered utterly moot.

It also means that every Goblin speaks the same language everywhere in the world. Every Bugbear, Hobgoblin, and Goblin from the Moonshae Isles to the ass-end of Kara Tur speaks Goblin in the exact same way... Though depending on your DM they might speak it with one of several offensive accent caricatures.

Goblins in the Underdark? Goblin. Goblins on the mountaintops? Goblin. Goblins isolated to a fast-time demiplane for 10,000 years with a hyper-evolved society and space-fantasy technology? Goblin.

Meanwhile, in the -REAL WORLD-, people on the "Wrong Side" of the Alps spoke such a different language the Romans called them barbarians to insult the mealy-mouthed pronunciation of their 'Bar Bar Bar Bar' language.

Hell, even the countries conquered by Rome, that once all spoke Latin because it was -THE- language to speak, now mostly speak new languages that are still based -on- Latin... But don't make sense to each other. Don't believe me? Go to Spain and speak Italian, exclusively, while telling everyone you're speaking the Roman tongue and they should understand you!

Okay, don't do that. But you know what I mean. Even though French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish are all "Romance Languages" based on Latin they've all evolved in very different ways due to native cultural languages, neighboring languages, and conquests.

And it's not like Pathfinder is -much- different in that regard. Oh, sure, they add a ton of different human languages to go along with 'Common'... But then they keep all the other Race languages and add in some fresh ones like Vanaran and Sahaugin and Rougarou and...

Like come the hell on, Golarion, you -almost- had it and then you biffed the landing!

So what's the one maybe good language? Undercommon. Because even though it, like common, is an insane trade language, it almost makes sense because it is, itself, a regional language. The region is Underdark.

Regional languages make infinitely more sense for a story purpose. If you absolutely HAVE to have at least ONE racial language, make it Elven to show they're a united people for all their disparities... united in being old and unwilling to adapt their language based on the cultures and languages around themselves.

But imagine a setting where there are, maybe, 6 languages to choose from for the area you're in. Your character's heritage as an elf or a halfling doesn't really play into which of those 6 you know, but one is the most common, like English in England, but there's still Gaelic, Scots, and Welsh about, the nobles speak French, and the Germans are a potential threat. Way easier to pick languages that make sense for your character in relation to the setting, and even if there's only a handful of pieces of German in the entire game it'll still be more useful than freaking Rougarou...

Corollary: Thieves Cant is trash. It's meant to simulate Cockney rhyming slang being used to confuse cops and stuff, but adding in a universal "Thief" language doesn't make any more sense when your thieves from opposite ends of the world can communicate without any issue.

TLDR
Racial languages, which D&D runs on as a foundational principle, suck. Regional Languages are way better.

D&D handles languages terribly so I completely throw it out for my games, including the ludicrous "common".

 

[Reynard]

D&D handles languages terribly so I completely throw it out for my games, including the ludicrous "common".

What do you gain, gameplay wise, by eliminating common and embracing more "realistic" language systems?

 

[Micah Sweet]

People really have to stop imaging D&D as some sort of reality simulator.

Languages are what they are for purely gameplay reasons. They are not a treatise on culture or worldbuilding or how things "are" or "should be".

People can image D&D however they want. Making it fit that vision is up to them and their players, not anyone else.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think that folks that really enjoy that sort of detail should absolutely lean into in their world building. But I don't think D&D as a product meant for mass appeal benefits from that sort of thing. I mean, we don't talk about different Klingon languages, even though the Earth languages are apparently all still active in the Star Trek future.

So what? Who says we're talking about mass appeal here? D&D comes in many forms, and the current official WotC form is just a narrow piece of that spectrum.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What do you gain, gameplay wise, by eliminating common and embracing more "realistic" language systems?

Satisfaction that you are interacting with a more believable fantasy world?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've never been one to really get concerned about languages in games such as this myself, because at the end of the day there are really meaningfully only two-- the language that the players (and their PCs) use to communicate with each other and the world... and the language that no one in the group understands and thus basically becomes a "puzzle" for the the party to try and figure out to get the info out of. Whether that "puzzle language" is just flavored as a single unknown language, or any one of a dozen different in-world languages doesn't really matter. All that matters is that the DM is highlighting the fact that people are talking in a language that the party doesn't understand knowing full well that the party is going to try and figure it out. Because if the foreign language being said had no import whatsoever, the DM wouldn't have made it known to the party that the NPCs were talking in that way. After all... NPCs speak all kinds of unintelligible things in the backgrounds of scenes all the time and the DM never bothers alerting the players that there's background noise of this sort because it is a waste of everyone's time if the party were to suddenly decide to stop what they were doing to try and translate it.

It's like characters going to the bathroom. We all know that every PC and NPC does it, but we never mention it or bring it up during the game because it is pointless to. It's information that serves no purpose, so why waste each other's time passing it on? But that also means that the one time the DM does mention a character going to the bathroom, it's because this is the one time where there IS a purpose for mentioning it.

 

[Voadam]

Mostly I consider dealing with languages in D&D to be not that fun to interact with at the table.

One offs where nobody speaks the language or only one does can be interesting and fun but dealing with it a lot is mostly just frustrating and tedious.

I ran games where most non-pc non-humans only spoke their own language and not common for flavor and immersion and it can go OK but I ended up with important monster NPCs speaking common because they did trade or diplomacy.

And it gets dealt with by pc magic tongues and comprehend languages spells pretty quick if it is an issue so it becomes a background thing with a minor resource management cost if you have a cleric or wizard or bard.

Probably the best use I have put in for languages is to tie them to ancient cultures in the world in my setting such as my fantasy ancient Egyptians being elves so hieroglyphics being in elvish and so doing research on Ancient texts from there and players knowing this when creating archaeologist characters they can plan out their languages to fit that which brought the world a little more to life.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

What do you gain, gameplay wise, by eliminating common and embracing more "realistic" language systems?

A more immersive experience, a sense of verisimilitude, a piece of wordlbuilding that doesn't offend my intellectual sensibilities, an actual reason for languages to exist in D&D at all? Do I need to go on?

Every time I mention this people go into some sort of hysterical paroxysm thinking that I'm creating some sort of nightmarish experience for my players where they can't communicate with anyone. Hasn't been the case in any of my games, the vast majority of D&D campaigns take place in such small geographical environments that I find it particularly baffling that people feel the need for their "common" crutch.

 

[MGibster]

Which is perfectly fair, but one of the few gameplay mechanics that uses language is spells that require the target to understand you such as Command or Suggestion. But that becomes totally irrelevant when everybody speaks common, and is a sort of indirect power boost for those spells which kind of sucks, because I like Suggestion being able to do powerful things that is then balanced by not being able to target everything.

The 2024 version of Command removes the requirement the target understand the language. i.e. You can cast Command speaking Common on a creature that only understands Infernal and the spell will work.

I think that folks that really enjoy that sort of detail should absolutely lean into in their world building. But I don't think D&D as a product meant for mass appeal benefits from that sort of thing. I mean, we don't talk about different Klingon languages, even though the Earth languages are apparently all still active in the Star Trek future.

Again, you and I are of one mind. Like Harrison Ford said to Mark Hamill when he complained about a continuity issue while filming Star Wars, "It ain't that kind of movie, kid."

 

[Reynard]

A more immersive experience, a sense of verisimilitude, a piece of wordlbuilding that doesn't offend my intellectual sensibilities, an actual reason for languages to exist in D&D at all? Do I need to go on?

Every time I mention this people go into some sort of hysterical paroxysm thinking that I'm creating some sort of nightmarish experience for my players where they can't communicate with anyone. Hasn't been the case in any of my games, the vast majority of D&D campaigns take place in such small geographical environments that I find it particularly baffling that people feel the need for their "common" crutch.

It was literally just a question.