POL Setting: Literacy automatic or no?

[Kahuna Burger]

Illiteracy the default, literacy costing one skill point for a language you speak and automatic for all spoken languages for wizards and bards. (languages like abysmal and celestial you should have the option of only reading/writing and not speaking it.)

But I favor more complex language rules anyway.

 

[WayneLigon]

If it's going along the lines of 'savage' and 'isolated', having everyone speak common, much less having a common language to read, seems... lazy.

I always assumed that 'everyone can read' really means 'every PC can read', or maybe even 'every PC class can read'. not that Joe Dirt Farmer can read.

That rule might as well stay around, since otherwise all it will do it cause people to spend their skill points or whatevers on making sure they have a common language in the party and that all of them can read. When everyone is going to do it anyway, might as well make it a default.

 

[heirodule]

There definitely needs to be some kind of ancient script that is immune to "comprehend languages". It should always require a Decipher Script roll, and the GM can give more or less detailed information depending on how good the roll is.

 

[Drammattex]

Your choice, says I.

Thematically, I think a non-literate world is best. However, it's a pain in the @$$ to keep track of in-game (like languages - an element that is perpetually forgotten or abandoned for the sake of fun).

 

[drothgery]

I voted "Literacy is fine", but with exactly the same caveats.

Yup. PCs are literate by default; NPCs are literate or not as the plot requires.

 

[The Human Target]

I'm not really looking for super complicated language/literacy rules, but I like the idea of having literacy be based on class/race and then maybe having to spend skills or feats or something to the effect to buy them otherwise.

Its a new edition, with a new theme. I say go for it.

 

[Belorin]

I voted for literacy due to the fact that not just PC's should be literate, but NPCs as well on a case by case basis. Shopkeepers and merchants should have at least the rudiments of literacy, maybe not the workers in the field but some may want to better themselves or have fallen from higher stations, etc.

Bel

 

[Stoat]

PC's should be literate.

NPC's should be literate or not on a case by case basis.

Miserable human dirt farmer covered in mud? Illiterate

Cultured Eladrin Knight from the depths of Fey? Literate

I'm also in favor of some form of "common language." IMC, such languages are more or less understood on a continent-wide basis. Moving from one continent to another might cause a language problem, moving from one country to another usually does not.

I hope that Comprehend Languages is out altogether.

 

[kennew142]

I would like to add my support for the PCs are literate, but most NPCs are illiterate position. If a player wants his character to be illiterate for RP reasons, I'm totally supportative, but it should be decided by the player. I usually assume that anyone (NPC) whose job requires it is literate, while most of the remainder are illiterate.

I've never bought into the idea of common as a universal language. That's just the historian in me. In my campaigns there are languages that many people speak. All of the folks living in the former Livonian Empire speak Livonian. They may even call it common (the medieval/late antique Greeks called their language koine - which means common). Folks from other areas would only speak it, if they were engaged in some enterprise that required them to deal with foreigners.

 

[GreatLemur]

If literacy only costs a single skill point (assuming there is some corresponding currency in 4e), then illiteracy as the default isn't much of a burden. It's just interesting.

I've also gotta speak out against Common, although I admit that's a much riskier thing to remove. I just think it might actually be fun to have language barriers that actuall mean something, so that the PCs occasionally have to resort to things like gestures, drawings, and ritualized trading procedures.