No Common Tongue

[talinthas]

THANK YOU!!

i'm glad someone finally agrees that common tounge is crap.

Linguistics is my main hobby ( i speak 5 languages, and read 7 more), and also being of indian descent, i can tell you that the concept of a common language just coming out of nowhere is bunk. The only way a common tounge exists at all is due to invasion. In india, for instance, English is the common, because a large foreign power invaded all the minor linguistic groups and forced the same language on all of them. Same with Arabic in north africa and the middle east, or latin during roman times.

I play dragonlance, and have a hard time believing that 300 years after a cataclysm wiped out the major empire that ruled both in power and linguistically that a 'common' trade language would still exist. Look at Europe. All the latin based groups evolved into their own languages after the fall of the romans. India is much the same, as is more or less every group post imperial fallout.

In my campaign, half of the fun is trying to communicate. My players come from an island that has been linguistically isolated for 300 years, and only now is coming to the rest of the main land. Trying to understand how modern Khur came from the ancient istaran they speak is fun =)

I also ran an adventure where the party went to an ogre city, armed with a book that translated goblin to ergot, while the party spoke solamnic.

See, Solamnic to Ergot is like dutch to german, and goblin to ogre is like japanese to chinese. Aka, a dutch person is in china trying to get by with a book that translates japanese kanji (borrowed directly from chinese, with a lot of similarity in raw meaning) into German, which is kinda close to dutch.

My players had a hard time, but the linguist in me was jumping with glee =)

Oh, and in my game, elves speak japanese, ogres hindi, etc etc. A lot of my group converse in japanese, so the little marking on their chara sheet saying they speak elven is actually meaningful =)

 

[Steverooo]

The Kingdoms of Kalamar setting uses the standard D&D rules for language, and has "Merchant's Tongue" as a common language that was largely developed by merchants. It can express fairly complex concepts, but is not truly a full language.

However, the KoK Player's Guide offers a Variant Language Skill System. The simplest explanation is that you get ranks in languages as in other skills. A rank of 0 means you have no knowledge of that language and cannot speak, read or write it. As the ranks increase, your speaking and reading/writing ability increases. At creation, a character has a number of language points equal to 1+(Int bonus x4). At each advancement, the PC receives 1+Int language skill points (and can also spend normal skill points on lanuages if desired), with a minimum of 1 language point per level.

For example, a rank of +5 means you are Competent and can converse in many everyday situations. You can read moderatly complex normal writings, letters, etc.

With a rank of +10 and +11 you're as fluent as a native speaker, and +12 and up grants you Mastery (for grand poets, writers and very unusual or ancient, dead languages).

Actually, KoK didn't invent this system. It goes back at least to ICE's MERP and RoleMaster... The only difference is the 1+INT auto-ranks. In MERP & RM, you got a number of skill points/level, and just spent them.

 

[DragonLancer]

I tried doing something similar once (i wen twith your option #3) but it didn't work. The characters were spending all their skill points on languages rather than skills.

At the end of the day, the common tongue is there to make things easier for the players, so I'd leave it be. Good luck.

 

[Rashak Mani]

I also don't like too much the notion of "Common" so I created a somewhat common language that was the language of a now dead Empire. Then there are languages that are similar... so two different people who had similar origins or cultural contact have 20%-30% or 70% similarity in language possibly. (Like portuguese and spanish)

You could add differences only by pointing out ACCENTs people have: "He speaks common very well but has this very awkward accent..." So immediately they figure the NPC is educated but from a little known country or region.

 

[Hand of Evil]

It is too much trouble not to have common. I have played around with it and have found it one of those details that I let side in a game.

 

[Umbran]

As a linguistics major, I hate the idea of a common language with no variation whatsoever.

As a physics major, I hated the idea of folks throwing around fireballs and having animals the size of dragons able to fly...

Actually, I didn't, but it illustrates a point - the fact that you do something in real life isn't a very good justification for changing game play. The game isn't real life, and imposing real life on it "because it is more realistic" is not a particularly good reason.

The question I think you should be asking is, "Are my players likely to enjoy this?" Yes, it sets up some interesting role-play situations. But it also sets up a repetetive plot complication that's could get tiresome ("What do you mean we cant talk to this guy either? Sheesh!")

Some players will find this enjoyable. Others won't. Go ask yours, and see what they think.

 

[Psion]

I split the difference myself.

I don't particularly care for the notion of a general "common" tongue, but I don't particularly care for some more in-depth treatments of language.

I treat the "common" language in the books as a placeholder for "the prevalent local language."

I do have a "trade tongue" and have been using it in my campaign for most of the time the campaign has been in existence (over 15 years). Essentially, trade tongue is a somewhat pidgin amalgamation of the major dialects of the two major languages in the "inner sea" region. It's really the local language of the major tradeport in the inner sea region, but the fact that it contains elements from the languages of the two major cultures in the region and that it is spoken in a port frequented by many travellers means that it is fairly widely spoken along the major coastal cities and traderoutes on the inner sea.

Backwaters and the opposite coast, however, do not speak the trade tongue so frequently. Even in regions where it is spoken, members of certain cultural and ethnic backgrounds frequently use the language to converse among themselves, so there is certainly the potential for me to make language a barrier if I feel like it.

 

[Gnarlo]

I play in the realms, and use the broad language groups in there for regions. There is no Common IMC, but if you are around the Cormyr-Dales-Sembia etc area, Chondathan will get you a looong ways. Every now and then a "ferriner" will pass through with a new language or accent and remind them there is a bigger world out there.

Draconic serves as my Latin, the dead, unchanging language of scholars and sages.

I also use different languages, or at least dialects, for my demihuman races depending on region. Hell, elves can't walk from one tree to the next without mutating into a new subrace, how can they all still speak the same language?

*edit - I've really got to stop posting when I'm too tired to get names right *

 

[Desdichado]

Of course, unless your game is fairly broad-reaching geographically, it's a bit of a moot point. Even in the middle ages, when languages were as isolated and fragmented as Europe has ever been historically, you could travel fairly large areas without having much more than minor dialectical differences.

Also, keep in mind that historically a language spread (as talinthas stated) is often introduced along with another population element (although not always "invasion" model per se) which tends to make large areas have fairly homogenous languages. Even as this breaks up into dialects and later distinct language through language drift, the close nature of the daughter languages means that you can do a lot with them. Looking at the large expanses of Romance languages today, for example, that developed from the "vulgar Latin" over the last thousand or so years, it's interesting to note that the languages are largely mutually intelligible still. For example, when I was in Argentina, I'd see stories on the news where Argentine reporters would be talking to people on the streets in Brasil or Italy and literally speaking Spanish to them and getting answers back in Portugeuse or Italian and everybody seemed to pretty much understand what was going on.

The same thing is largely true for the spread of the Slavic languages which occured more or less at the same time. For instance, I went to Prague a few years ago with my brothers. One of my brothers speaks Polish fluently and another one speaks Russian fluently. The Polish-speaking brother could generally hold fairly intelligent conversations with the Czechs by simply speaking to them in Polish and listening to their answers in Czech. My Russian-speaking brother on the other hand, had a little bit harder time, since Russian belongs to another sub-group of the Slavic languages and has a greater degree of seperation than Polish vs Czech, but he could do fairly well understanding basic concepts as well too. And even I, who speak no closely related language, was able to pick up some stuff based on ancient shared Indo-European heritage and more recent historical Latin loanwords.

I'm not sure how to model this in the game, but the point is, there should be some middle ground between sharply demarcated language barriers and the easily playable "Common tongue" phenomena. What I'd probably do for a continent sized landmass in a campaign setting, is have no more than two or three language "families." Assuming a character was fluent (probably native) in a given language, I'd allow him to make checks to understand any language in the language family and be able to at least get the "gist" of what was being said. As they spent more time in an area, I'd allow these checks to get closer and closer to the actual meaning, and I might eventually even give the player the language "for free" for RP reasons if they spend a fair amount of time using the language and getting used to the specifics of that language relative to one they already know.

For learning a language that's unrelated, I'd probably require them to actually spend points on it as they level up. It's a big deal to go and learn a completely different language from scratch.

This would effectively model my real life experience in learning Spanish as a native English speaker vs. picking up a lot of Portugeuse and Italian by working with speakers of those languages in Spanish. It would also satisfy the amateur linguist in me, add a layer of verisimillitude to the game, yet not sacrifice too much the playability of the game.

 

[Steverooo]

Common Really Isn't...

...Common to all, that is!

First there's Common, then there's the Oriental Common, then there's Undercommon, and...