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<blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 1191718" data-attributes="member: 158">Chonadathan in the Forgotten Realms will get you VERY far - though not all the way.Joshua has a great point - even in areas without the EXACT language being spoken, you can still get the &quot;gist&quot; of a related language. A good solution to simluate a language barrier would be to:1) Eliminate a universal language. Instead have one or two esperanto-like tongues used by most people, though not all.2) Create a simple &quot;language tree&quot; showing where each language descended from. Don't go into more than two or three demarcations.For every &quot;step&quot; away from a language, the hearer unstands roughtly one-third or one-quarter less of the speaker's language. You break down the &quot;gist&quot; of the message, and all language skills (bluff, gather info, diplomacy, etc.) get a penalty (i recommend -2 to -4).In other words, if you don't speak the language, you have to be a PHENOMENAL diplomat to succeed.For instance, for the Forgotten Realms, you might have the following. But keep in mind this is a ROUGH idea, not polished at all, and stolen from Shadowrun's &quot;Skill trees&quot; idea. Hopefully it will give someone a better idea and act as a springboard.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Henry, post: 1191718, member: 158"] Chonadathan in the Forgotten Realms will get you VERY far - though not all the way. Joshua has a great point - even in areas without the EXACT language being spoken, you can still get the "gist" of a related language. A good solution to simluate a language barrier would be to: 1) Eliminate a universal language. Instead have one or two esperanto-like tongues used by most people, though not all. 2) Create a simple "language tree" showing where each language descended from. Don't go into more than two or three demarcations. For every "step" away from a language, the hearer unstands roughtly one-third or one-quarter less of the speaker's language. You break down the "gist" of the message, and all language skills (bluff, gather info, diplomacy, etc.) get a penalty (i recommend -2 to -4). In other words, if you don't speak the language, you have to be a PHENOMENAL diplomat to succeed. For instance, for the Forgotten Realms, you might have the following. But keep in mind this is a ROUGH idea, not polished at all, and stolen from Shadowrun's "Skill trees" idea. Hopefully it will give someone a better idea and act as a springboard. [/QUOTE]

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