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<blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 9607852" data-attributes="member: 18182">D&amp;D handles languages poorly, yes . . . it is one of the areas of the game that hasn't got a lot of attention as the game has evolved over the years. It comes down to the concept of &quot;race&quot;, which D&amp;D is moving away from, but still has legacy issues remaining.Germans speak German, Spaniards speak Spanish, Orcs speak Orc, Elves speak Elvish . . . in the real world, we conceive of Germans as a race of people who have a distinct language, in the fantasy world we (used to) see orcs as a race of people who of course have their own distinct language.Now that we are trying to decouple the ideas of &quot;race&quot; and &quot;species&quot; . . . Germans and Spaniards are different ethnicities of the human species, humans have multiple cultures and languages. If elves are also a species, do elves have different cultures and languages too?And how much of that goes into the core books? And how should we model it, to give a sense of verisimilitude but also keep things simple?I'm glad the TTRPG community is having these discussions, even if I don't particularly care for any of the solutions I've seen so far. Progress is being made.I'm hoping that the eventual 2035 revision to the 5E rules (or something a lot sooner) will lean into re-imagining the various &quot;subraces&quot; from past editions as different cultural, ethnic, and linguistic groups in the core rules. There would be no elvish language, but rather the wood elves, high elves, grey elves, and dark elves would all have distinct cultures, distinct ethnicities, and distinct languages.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dire Bare, post: 9607852, member: 18182"] D&D handles languages poorly, yes . . . it is one of the areas of the game that hasn't got a lot of attention as the game has evolved over the years. It comes down to the concept of "race", which D&D is moving away from, but still has legacy issues remaining. Germans speak German, Spaniards speak Spanish, Orcs speak Orc, Elves speak Elvish . . . in the real world, we conceive of Germans as a race of people who have a distinct language, in the fantasy world we (used to) see orcs as a race of people who of course have their own distinct language. Now that we are trying to decouple the ideas of "race" and "species" . . . Germans and Spaniards are different ethnicities of the human species, humans have multiple cultures and languages. If elves are also a species, do elves have different cultures and languages too? And how much of that goes into the core books? And how should we model it, to give a sense of verisimilitude but also keep things simple? I'm glad the TTRPG community is having these discussions, even if I don't particularly care for any of the solutions I've seen so far. Progress is being made. I'm hoping that the eventual 2035 revision to the 5E rules (or something a lot sooner) will lean into re-imagining the various "subraces" from past editions as different cultural, ethnic, and linguistic groups in the core rules. There would be no elvish language, but rather the wood elves, high elves, grey elves, and dark elves would all have distinct cultures, distinct ethnicities, and distinct languages. [/QUOTE]

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