POL Setting: Literacy automatic or no?

[JoeGKushner]

Along with thinking gold should be rare in a true POL setting, how about literacy?

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.

Opinions?

 

[frankthedm]

No default literacy in a POL setting.

 

[Merova]

Literacy is Good

While my gut response was to go against a default literacy, I ended up voting for literacy. Setting up any impediment to the standard avenues by which the GM may impart information ends up complicating the game in a manner that does not increase the overall player enjoyment. If I want to create a story element that depends upon the character's difficulty in understanding a text, I'll just design the encounter around an unknown language or cipher. In actual play, having rampant illiteracy among the PCs is just a pain. YMMV.

 

[Demigonis]

I think literacy is fine. I don't think the default campaign setting should worry about trying to complicate that, and besides it's something that can be easily house-ruled for any who feels the need to add that extra layer of complexity.

 

[Cabled]

An arguement could be made for either case, depending largely on how long things had been in "Points of Light" mode and how widespread and advanced whatever came in the age before was.

However, my experience shows that trying to force players to be illiterate is almost impossible...sooner rather than later it goes by the wayside as a complication that's not worth dealing with. My players would rather keep track of spell components than deal with illiteracy. All groups are different of course, and if you have players that don't mind working at being illiterate, then go for it. But as a default situation or not, I expect in most groups it would be tossed out fairly quickly.

 

[Voss]

Oh gods no. Unless the setting is industrial age at least, no one is going to take the time to teach the fieldworkers, peasants and laborers how to read. They just don't need it. Not even all the nobility will bother.
Wizards aside, what does the party really need to read? Who in the campaign setting is actually making time to make parchment or papyrus and scrawling out notes or letters to the one other person in a 50 mile radius who can actually read it? 5-15% of the population, tops.


No literacy at all may be a bit much, however.

As for languages... for me, Common goes out the window. Its a very sad shorthand, and I think it loses quite a bit if you can understand everyone around you perfectly well. I've got eight distinct human cultures with a some overlap in places. 6 different languages and 2 dialects isn't that bad. Plus maybe a High or Old version for 2 of them. But since one language will overlap the main 'civilized' areas pretty heavily, and be relatively common in some other areas, I don't think it will be all that bad.
I'm quite willing to give all adventurers two starting languages (+ int bonus and skill points, if they want) since they are one of the few people that travel widely.

Of course I don't have dozens of non-human races running around either, so the sheer level of random insanity isn't present in my homebrew. I think I still top out around 20-24 languages total.

 

[Dunamin]

While my gut response was to go against a default literacy, I ended up voting for literacy. Setting up any impediment to the standard avenues by which the GM may impart information ends up complicating the game in a manner that does not increase the overall player enjoyment. If I want to create a story element that depends upon the character's difficulty in understanding a text, I'll just design the encounter around an unknown language or cipher. In actual play, having rampant illiteracy among the PCs is just a pain. YMMV.

Seconded.

If it would add something to the particular adventure to deal with illiteracy I would bring it up, but that's just not something my players generally are interested in.

If it helps, you could say that the most recent major empire was very strict in enforcing most citizens to learn how to read and write a "common trade tongue" or an "imperial language". A stretch, I admit, but workable.
I would only apply it so far as to regions that might constitute a "kingdom", though, and heavily emphasize that there are dialects and variations that make some conversations a bit unclear.

 

[The Little Raven]

Heroes aren't podunk commoners, so I don't mind them being able to read.

 

[pemerton]

As for languages... for me, Common goes out the window. Its a very sad shorthand, and I think it loses quite a bit if you can understand everyone around you perfectly well.

Dave Noonan made a good argument in favour of Common in an old Design & Development column: it encourages more subtle play than just kick down the door and kill, because if the villains (be they Demons, Gnolls or whatever) are plotting in Common then when the PCs listen at the door they can hope to actually get valuable information.

I'm sure someone with good imagination can reconcile the metagame imperative with some gameworld plausibility.

 

[Szatany]

Literacy should be automatic, for PCs.

Most other characters in the world would be illiterate.