D&D General Languages suck in D&D.

[CreamCloud0]

I recall a table in 4e that said which languages were written in which scripts; I think we could easily make languages a bit more fun if we arranged them in language families and also by which script they're written in. Maybe if you speak a related language and a language in the same script, you get advantage on deciphering the meaning (which might be an investigation or insight check)?

2014!5e had something similar, where IIRC some languages like Orcish were based on Dwarvish, which was based on Giant. There was some interesting worldbuilding implications about how far the dwarven holds' influence could reach, having introduced their written language to so many different peoples.

I think Sylvan influenced Elvish script too.

i'd like something like this if we're trying to get languages to matter, consolidate most languages down into say, six-seven 'core language groups' plus common, and then common doesn't get bonuses to social interactions, it's this weird hodgepodge language that near everyone knows but if they have a choice don't communicate in,

alternately, i'd be interested in exploring languages as based more as representing social group dialects, 'thieves', 'noble' or 'merchant' aren't really different languages from common but the word pool, terminology, sentence structure and mannerisms+etiquette of speaking all add up and it more represents a familiarity with the norms of the social group so if your character doesn't know how to speak one then there's a very large amount of subtext happening under the surface and they're missing as much as the dwarven speaker in a crowd all speaking elvish.

 

[Hussar]

As a language teacher, I TOTALLY get what you're talking about.

But, and I'm sorry for the but here, at the table, languages become a huge PITA. There's just only so much charades players want to do at the table before it gets pretty stale. Is it realistic and whatnot? Oh, totally. Absolutely. It's just that it's not a whole lot of actual fun.

Running into a language barrier once in a while is fun and interesting. Running into it every single session or three because the campaign is mobile and you're traveling to different lands all the time, again, while 100% realistic and everything else, gets lumped into the same category as encumbrance and tracking food and water.

Never minding that the players will just bypass the whole thing with magic anyway. Some bright spark will take a telepathic character of some sort and poof, all language barriers disappear.

It's one of those ideas that seem really great on paper but, aren't actually much fun in play.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's an RPG corollary to the famous phrase "No plan survives first contact with the enemy", which is...
"No part of a DM's world-building survives first contact with their players."

A DM will spend oodles of time trying to build logical reasonings to entire hosts of various things in their campaign world. Their pantheons, their world maps, their economies, their naming conventions and countless others (including world languages). But as soon as you put that information in front of your players they show you without a shadow of a doubt that they don't give a CRAP about any of that stuff. You get a player presenting their new Gnome PC to this campaign whose name they've decided is "Farty McPoopface" and pretty much all your attempts at presenting a world's "verisimilitude" goes right out the window.

So yeah... from a world-building perspective it'd be nice if the language models in Dungeons & Dragons were a little more "realistic" (mirroring our real-world perspective)... but because none of that actually matters to the game that you and your players are playing (which the designers at WotC know to be true after 50 years of seeing it used)... at some point we either just gotta let it go or else "fix it in post" ourselves just for our own sake and satisfaction knowing full-well we are the only one who is ever going to care.

 

[Azzy]

For the more casual player, I don't think a more realist approach to language (among other things) would make the game more fun (and likely may make it less fun). Hell, a lot of players eyes glaze over whenever there's setting information.

That said, as a worldbuilding exercise and can be fun to think about but most people have very shallow understanding of language and linguistics. Language, religion, and culture are all tied together, and something that effects one typically influences the others and they all evolve over time, with isolation or contact and distance from neighboring cultures, with migrations, and environmental factors.

There are language families (like Indo-European, Iroquois, Altaic, etc.) where a group of languages all descend from a singular proto-language, but there are also language isolates (like Basque, Japanese, Sumerian, etc.) that are related to any other known language living or dead.

 

[aco175]

Catching up on the thread go me thinking about magic items and scrolls that use other languages. A scroll written in elf or orc or devil might be harder to a non-speaker to use. Same with using items with command words that use non-common language. Would there be a problem casting something if you pronounce a command word wrong? Would the scroll just fizzle if you try and cast it without knowing how to read the words correctly? These could just be more hoops for the players or punishment for casters as well.

 

[dave2008]

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.

I am just going to disagree with this basic premise. Languages in D&D are not intended to simulate anything what we have in real life. They are a game (gamist) convention for ease of play will giving a bit of flavor while making the game easy to play. Few gamers want to worry about the RL implications of language. If you and your group do - great! But don't expect the game to give you that. You will need to look elsewhere or do the work yourself.

 

[Steampunkette]

Me and Tolkien, over here, can not be the only linguistics nerds in Fantasy.

Will every table use it? No. But most tables ignore encumbrance and that's still in the book. Most tables stick with Common regardless of how flowery or over-dramatic their characters get with what is supposed to be a basic trade language which can't handle more complex or expressive material.

Just like encumbrance, most people ignore that.

Well. Let them ignore a -better- language structure, too. And have a better language structure for the linguistics nerds like me and JRR.

Hell. If D&D core rulebooks eliminated what "Most people ignore" from the pages it'd be a 30 page booklet.

 

[Azzy]

Me and Tolkien, over here, can not be the only linguistics nerds in Fantasy.

Will every table use it? No. But most tables ignore encumbrance and that's still in the book. Most tables stick with Common regardless of how flowery or over-dramatic their characters get with what is supposed to be a basic trade language which can't handle more complex or expressive material.

Just like encumbrance, most people ignore that.

Well. Let them ignore a -better- language structure, too. And have a better language structure for the linguistics nerds like me and JRR.

Hell. If D&D core rulebooks eliminated what "Most people ignore" from the pages it'd be a 30 page booklet.

I think it would be a good topic in a dedicated worldbuilding book.

 

[dave2008]

Agree 100%.

Further I can confidently say I've agreed with this position for 35 years! Because the first D&D setting I really got was Taladas, which had a primarily regional/cultural language-based system, and even simple rules for how knowing one language let you have some fluency in related languages. Here's a picture of the diagram:

View attachment 398967
As you can see it's not even complicated! One page!

The actual "rules" are basically that each "dot" means 10% less fluency, and you just use this as a guide for RP, it's not hard-and-fast. There's no Common language in Taladas either (though Auric is pretty well-positioned to give you limited fluency in a lot of languages). And the way the Kits are set up, you're very likely to know a language or two that's from the same region/culture (all the cultures in this setting are regional - none are divorced from locality).

Honestly, ever since then, 1990, I guess, I've thought every D&D setting and indeed most fantasy RPGs should have the same. It's not even a hard thing to do!

That is not a chart I want to use in my games. I much prefer the on/off ease of knowing if I understand what people are saying or not. I don't want that level of granularity in a game I play. Now, as a worldbuilder tool it is very interesting and for those that would like something like this I am all for it (probably in a non-core book or 3pp).

I do have a question, how does this % of understanding travel across languages and was their any guidance to how those % affect play.

• If someone who speaks Auric understands 30% of Gnomish, Hitchkel what does that mean? Any guidance provided? I am not a linguist, but that doesn't seem useful to me, but maybe it is - IDK.
• And how much Goblin Ilquar could I understand 40% of 30% so 12%? What does that mean?

 

[MGibster]

Me and Tolkien, over here, can not be the only linguistics nerds in Fantasy.

There's M.A.R. Barker and his world of Tékumel and somebody came up with languages for the Game of Thrones television series. Clearly you are not alone.

Will every table use it? No. But most tables ignore encumbrance and that's still in the book. Most tables stick with Common regardless of how flowery or over-dramatic their characters get with what is supposed to be a basic trade language which can't handle more complex or expressive material.

Heck, in the 2024 Player's Handbook, it says Common originated in Sigil. I guess that means Common is Common no matter where you go. I admit I don't know if this is a recent change or something they did years ago. In the Greyhawk boxed set from 1983, Common was a combination of Ancient Baklunish and a dialect of Old Oeridian.

Hell. If D&D core rulebooks eliminated what "Most people ignore" from the pages it'd be a 30 page booklet.

That might be for the best. Why have extraneous rules and whole levels from 11-20 that most people don't use?