D&D 5E Literacy and Languages in your game

[Mercule]

I don't disagree with this, but...

If you're assuming a skilled (or experienced) DM to fix this issue, what do different languages bring to the table? That same skilled DM will be able to deal with it even if everything speaks Common, while a non-skilled DM is liable to have problems even with a wide range of languages.

It also takes players who care about the "benefits" brought be splitting the languages.

My degree is political science, philosophy, and history. I now work in IT. My players have degrees that include computer science, animal ecology, and English. They work in IT, food service, and labor. Trust me when I say that there are certain things that I find interesting and am skilled at bringing into a game that have no overlap with what my players are interested in.

I used to split out languages and make the regional customs important for certain scenarios. Some players really took to it, which was great. Others just found it baffling. In the end, the small pleasure I thought I'd get out of splitting languages wasn't realized and ended up being a detriment. I still do small variances in regional culture and lore (which makes the foreigner sometimes very valuable), and I have different "common" tongues for different continents/sub-continents, but it's more along the lines of European, Asian, Indian, Iberian, Middle-Eastern -- if that. Within a given Common tongue, there are going to be accents that give away birth/nationality, but that's about it.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't disagree with this, but...

If you're assuming a skilled (or experienced) DM to fix this issue, what do different languages bring to the table? That same skilled DM will be able to deal with it even if everything speaks Common, while a non-skilled DM is liable to have problems even with a wide range of languages.

Languages "silos" social encounters and player characters.

The ranger intimidates to the orcs in Orcish.
The cleric negotiates terms with a summoned celestia in Celestial.
The thief and paladin asks the elven lord's court for support in Elven.
The bard chats up the barkeep for quests in Halfling.

Instead of
The bard intimidates to the orcs in Common.
The bard negotiates terms with a summoned celestia in Common.
The bard asks the elven lord's court for support in Common.
The bard chats up the barkeep for quests in Common

 

[delericho]

Languages "silos" social encounters and player characters.

The ranger intimidates to the orcs in Orcish.
The cleric negotiates terms with a summoned celestia in Celestial.
The thief and paladin asks the elven lord's court for support in Elven.
The bard chats up the barkeep for quests in Halfling.

Instead of
The bard intimidates to the orcs in Common.
The bard negotiates terms with a summoned celestia in Common.
The bard asks the elven lord's court for support in Common.
The bard chats up the barkeep for quests in Common

And we're back around full-circle, because it very often doesn't silo encounters, because you end up with:

The bard intimidates to the orcs in Orcish.
The bard negotiates terms with a summoned celestia in Celestial.
The bard asks the elven lord's court for support in Elven.
The bard chats up the barkeep for quests in Halfling.

Because the character who is the face of the group is also the character who has invested in (or just been given by the system) knowledge of all those languages. Only it's even worse, because if it was all in Common then at least the ranger, cleric, thief, and paladin could interject in some of those encounters, instead of being totally excluded because they didn't choose the specific language.

Now, your previous argument that a skilled DM would split the party (or any of your other examples) is right - if the skilled DM does that then you have indeed got a situation where each character gets to shine. But in the split party situation they still get that chance to shine even if every encounter uses Common.

I just don't see what adding the different languages gives you that you don't get simply from having that skilled DM.

 

[Minigiant]

Splitting the party is one tactic.

There are others. That's my point. No one teaches DMs how to use langauge.

How do you make the Wisdom (insight) check vs the lying elf if only the bard speaks Elven and has 8 Wisdom?

How do you know that the orcs attack tomorrow if the bard isn't in the scouting party?

How do you know Lord Cantaloupe is incorrect if only the bard speak Halfing and the bard does not have proficiency in History?

What happens when the xenophobic or downright racist fey doesn't what to speak with a human bard whose people burned down a forest for farmland?

 

[Cristian Andreu]

I handle languages differently depending on the needs of the campaign. Sometimes, everyone speaks Common, such as when the campaign is meant to happen inside a single city/region and is very focused (unless it's purposely meant to be a cosmopolitan place). Other times, I go full detailed, with regional variants for every language and making constant use of a language-related skills to convey messages and understand ettiquetes and tones. Our current Planescape campaign was supposed to have a lot of this, but is usually rendered moot due to spells and magic items, so it's no longer a factor most of the time.

I learned to appreciate the effects of language barriers with 7th Sea, in which what and how you speak plays a rather important role and can create a very interesting set of challenges. In that game, players had a native tongue and then could get other languages at different point costs, depending on how foreign they are. If you speak Ussuran (Not-Russian), getting Eisen (Not-German) is cheaper than Vodacce (Not-Italian).

 

[Mercule]

Languages "silos" social encounters and player characters.

The ranger intimidates to the orcs in Orcish.
The cleric negotiates terms with a summoned celestia in Celestial.
The thief and paladin asks the elven lord's court for support in Elven.
The bard chats up the barkeep for quests in Halfling.

Instead of
The bard intimidates to the orcs in Common.
The bard negotiates terms with a summoned celestia in Common.
The bard asks the elven lord's court for support in Common.
The bard chats up the barkeep for quests in Common

Actually, my experience is that it's more likely to be:
The fighter player tells the sorcerer player what to have her character say to intimidate the orc in orcish.
The wizard player tells the cleric player what to have his character say to negotiate terms with the celestial.
The rogue player tells the fighter player what to have her character say to get support in the elven court.
The rogue and wizard players tell the sorcerer player what to have her character say to get quests from the barkeep.

Part of this is that players often play characters that can do things they can't. The guy who likes to play clerics is an incredibly likable guy, but a bit Epimethian. The sorcerer has a 20 charisma, with proficiency in Intimidate and Persuasion, but the player is a bit shy (and a twelve-year-old playing with a group otherwise in their 40s). The rogue player is a fantastic negotiator, but prefers to play the master of stealth. The players all have fun helping each other out and letting the characters shine. We like our combat Gamist and our non-combat Narrativist. If you prefer a more Gamist approach, then I could certainly see where that might chaffe.

Also, when I have run games using language silos, what tends to happen is that the bard or wizard is the only character (or player) who cares enough to learn anything beyond the basic/local tongue. It actually has made the game more likely to have a designated Face.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I do not usually tinker with languages, for the reasons noted by many above -- it adds complexity without a commiserate benefit in gameplay (for my groups, at least). I will tinker with it if it highlights a core concept of a campaign. Such an example is my current campaign, where I have languages that are difficult to learn (2 language slots for mastery, 1 gets you a pidgin version), and rare and common languages. However, to offset that, I shrunk the types of languages and added common alphabets to many meaning knowing one gives you a pidgin ability in similar languages. So, I get to have some cultural complexity with most characters being able to get by in most places while those that come from that culture or choose to spend resources on it have better results. This achieves my campaign goal of all races having a relatively common origin point while still having developed separate cultures. The difficult/rare languages achieve my goal of having Outsiders and the progenitor race being more difficult to approach/discover things about than normal. Given the campaign is centered on finding out what happened to the progenitor culture, why that culture ended in a world shattering calamity, and why there's an organization devoting significant resources to seemingly recreate that calamity, all of these changes directly aid the campaign goal.

TL;DR: If changing languages suits a campaign goal clearly, that's fine; if not, don't add complexity for the sake of complexity.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yeah language in a game is always gonna be goofy and unrealistic unless it's very complex.

And is making it any more complex than it is really worth it?

That said the OPs system looks fine.

Right, I think the DMs system is creative and well thought-out, I'm sure people who love languages and those smaller elements to be quite fun and immersive. It's certainly something a long-established group would handle better than a bunch of newer players.

 

[Li Shenron]

The main problem with all these language changes is that it discourages participating in the social pillar at all. It's like making half the combat challenges into monsters that can only be hurt by one member of the party, or worse by an npc. I get that realism is being served, but do you find it makes the game more fun? Or does everything just dissolve into either watching npcs talk or combat?

For me it hasn't been about the social pillar, but the investigation pillar.

Because most of the times, those who can speak, can also speak common, so you don't need orcish or goblinoid to parlay with them.

It's when you want to eavesdrop or intercept messages, that you need their language: spying on the hobgoblin guards to learn about their shifts so that you improve your chances at getting past them, glancing over written orders to learn what are the orc chieftain's plans....

I think I've seen countless times the scenario where the PCs listen at a door in the dungeon, recognize some orcish/goblinoid/infernal/etc. gibberish, then everyone browse through the neglected corners of their character sheet in search for the right language proficiency to get clues about what they are up, and make a plan around it

 

[Saeviomagy]

The idea is to get every PC in the social pillar instead of just the party face every time. If everyone has different keys into the social pillar then they can all have a chance to shine.

The issue is that before the bard just bludgeons the pillar so the DM decides to enter the pillar rarely.

A little social pillar, always in Common, and the face does all the rolling.
OR
A lot of social pillar, everchanging the language bias, and the everyone has to roll.

No, it means one person rolls each time, and they fail a lot because investing in the social pillar becomes prohibitively expensive. Why bother getting persuasion on my fighter if I didn't have the half dozen languages required to make it work?

The solution to this is to have a social system that encourages participation by the whole party, rather than exclude people who have told you (via their character decisions) that they want to be good at interaction. Having everyone engage in a pillar should make success more likely, not less. That is often a problem for every pillar except combat: the goal is to minimize failures, not to get more successes, which means exclusion is encouraged.

Instead of saying that a failed roll worsens an npc's attitude, simply have him worsen over time. Then the entire party can implore, lie and intimidate and make a positive difference.