No Common Language - comments?

[Goddess FallenAngel]

So, I was sitting there, working on my homebrew world and flipping through the FRCS. I love the idea of regional languages, etc - but dislike the idea of having a 'common' tongue. How often do we actually *use* those regional languages in a game? Or even racial languages, for that matter, since nearly everyone starts knowing Common?

I do not want to have a Common tongue in my homebrew world. Instead, I would have a 'Trade' language - but this would be more or less unknown by the general population. It would also be difficult to get any message across that does not involve trading terms, etc. Basically, it would be a merchant tongue (requiring some good roleplaying from the PCs to get a non-trading meaning across).

So what do you all think? I think that this would revise the worth of spells such as Comprehend Languages and Tongues, and would make all those additional languages you get from high INT scores useful. Also, I will be allowing the Speak Language skill to buy you 1 language per skill point (since it is a cross-class skill for everyone except bards, it normally costs 2 skill point per language).

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Is anyone currently playing a game where there is no Common language?

 

[Sertimon]

I like your approach to languages. I believe that it would work just fine. It's an excellent way to make spells such as comprehend languages or tongues more useful.

Depending on what kind of world your building, trading might also rely on whether the particular region uses the same measures for wealth: do they trade with coins or do they barter for example? If everybody trades with silver pieces for instance, the language barrier will have little to no impact on the game. At least that's the way I envision it, but don't hold it against me if I am wrong. I am no expert!

In my FR Almraiven Campaign I only use Common as just a 'trade language'. But it didn't have much impact on the game, because every player picked regional language in Calimshan: Alzhedo. So everybody could understand each other and no one really needed to use/rely on Common as a result.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

Depending on what kind of world your building, trading might also rely on whether the particular region uses the same measures for wealth: do they trade with coins or do they barter for example?

I never thought of that - yet another dimension to add in, as the different countries/kingdoms in my world have different currencies. Thanks!

In my FR Almraiven Campaign I only use Common as just a 'trade language'. But it didn't have much impact on the game, because every player picked regional language in Calimshan: Alzhedo. So everybody could understand each other and no one really needed to use/rely on Common as a result.

I can relate - that happened in the 1 game I played that had no Common tongue. In the campaign that I am building, however, the PCs will have to do alot of traveling, which is why I feel I need to iron out these details.

Thanks for the feedback, Sertimon...

Everyone else, keep it coming....

 

[neoweasel]

If you're willing to do a fair bit of extra work, you could list out most of the languages and figure out which ones are related to each other. If you know a related language, learning a new language takes half a rank. Otherwise, it requires a full rank. It increases the utility of Comprehend Languages and Tongues, and keeps the usefulness of the fact that Bards get Speak Language at half price.

 

[SylverFlame]

If you really want to mess with people's heads you could have "area specific" trade tongues. For instance, countries A, B, and C have a healthy history of trade. However, country D has not traded with those countries at all. In this case, there would be little reason for a trade tongue to evolve that incorporates country D, which instead has a trade tongue with country E.

This is definitely an overboard example, so it can likely be ignored.

Aside from the above, I like your idea. I'm doing something similar in my campaign world, but I'm using pidgen languages instead. For instance, the dwarven trade language has a lot of elements of dwarven in it, so you can somewhat speak to an average dwarf with it, but not enough to get across anything other than "Where's the inn?" I'm using it because I've had A LOT of occurances where players didn't have a language and it would bog down the campaign for a while and hurt the flow.

 

[CombatWombat51]

You could just drop the trade language idea all together. I'm not aware of any historical basis for an exclusive trade language (not that I'm any sort of authority). I did fine haggling with foreigners (er, I guess I was the foreigner) and we didn't share any languages. Sure, it wasn't large scale transactions, but pointing at stuff, showing cash, and using fingers worked fine. I can't say for sure, but I'd suspect that Common was just made up to simplify things, like those language translator thingies in Star Trek.

I think it comes down to the amount of detail you want in your game. Do you really want your players pantomiming all the time?

 

[shadow]

As a linguistics major, I hate the idea of a common tongue. Even in todays world of telecommunications and the internet, their is hardly a "common" tongue. As a result, my homebrew world has no common tongue. Each region has its own language. The closest thing to a "common tongue" is a dead language called Sarynth which is kind of like Latin. It is used by the church and nobility, but the average peasant or yeoman is unlikely to know it. As a result, speak language is an important skill (unlike most campaigns in which speak language is a useless skill, considered a waste of skill points.)
I've toyed with the idea of an optional language system that goes something like this: PCs buy ranks in speak language, which like every other skill has different degrees of proficiency. (After all the "you either speak a language or you don't" approach is absurd.) A native speaker has a number of ranks equal to some number modified by intelligence. When communicating with a speaker with more ranks in a language than you, you must make a speak language check to understand. (DC determined by the complexity of the message). The same goes when speaking with someone who speaks a different dialect.
I'm still working on the system, but I'll let everyone know when I get it done.

 

[the Jester]

'Common' means different things depending on where you are in my world: Forinthian, Strogassian, Peshan, elven or dwarven, or even other tongues if you're far enough away from the central area of the campaign.

 

[CCamfield]

I think it's a cool idea, but having played in another game with multiple languages, I think it's important to make sure that all the PCs share at least one language so they can all communicate with each other. If that isn't the case it can cause problems, even if there is someone who can "forward" the messages on.

 

[Coredump]

I don't know. I played in a Star wars game where not everyone could communicate with everyone else, and it was fun. You just had to have the right PC around to understand the wookie, or the droid, or whatever.

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