[Roleplay] Common? I am not one who can speak this well

[hammymchamham]

So, be default all adventures know common. But does this mean they know it well? Has anyone played a charecter who maybe knew common, but didn't know it well? Right now I have a gray elf wizard who in his backstory has met 6 non-elves in his 145 years. How often would he have spoken common?
Right now I have sorta given him a strange accent (which is more a combination of many non-english accents and he mispronounces many words

So have you done this? How did you do it? Or... how would you? Just looking for some pointers?

 

[Dungannon]

Hey, it's your campaign, you can do what you want. I don't believe that everyone has to know common, it is just a game mechanic to make communication between pcs and npcs easier, imho. If you want an npc that can't speak it, I think that's great. Adds to the rp possibilities of an encounter, and gives the party a dilemma they can't hack their way through. Given that your elf is 145 years old and does have some exposure to the language, I think your giving him a passable understanding of most words and a heavy accent is quite good. It makes the players think about how to communicate with him without making it impossible. 'Course, if you wanted to get downright silly, you could give the elf an awakened parrot that acts as a familiar/interpretor.

 

[Eldorian]

I ran a game back when the PHB came out where one of the players was a barbarian that spoke a dialect of common. This lead to interesting lines like his famous pick up line, "Will you lay with me?" and his most common line, "grrrr..."


Eldorian Antar

 

[hammymchamham]

hmmmm, I like the idea of a parrot familiar, I am stealing that (thank you). Its not really my campign, I play in it, and the DM gets a huge crack out of it. I was thinking about having the raven familiar because of the speak language and have it speak elf, but dropped it since we only have one other that speaks elven (a half-elf). He is an evoker specialist, so he introduces himself as an "ewoker" (that was due to help from a fellow player). we're going through the return to the elemntal evil and


MINOR SPOILER

calls the moat house "the mole house"

FIN


And he tried to ask if the water is drinkable "Is the water... how do you say... feastable?"


Also in the game I am dming (A Realms game) I have no common. So it'll be fun when they go to areas which don't speak Chondathan...

 

[Joshua Randall]

My understanding of the whole "common" thing is to let the PCs communicate with each other. If you want to have a game world where the NPCs don't speak the PCs' common language, that could be interesting (although possibly frustrating for the players).

I do try to give languages names in my campaigns, and just because the PCs speak the common language doesn't mean everyone else does. Like in real life - a lot of people speak English... but a lot more don't!

 

[DWARF]

Ever seen "Snatch"? One Dwarf I plaed had a Pikey accent.

 

[Forrester]

So, be default all adventures know common. But does this mean they know it well? Has anyone played a charecter who maybe knew common, but didn't know it well?

I have not, but a player in my campaign does. She's playing a Dark Creeper -- a houseruled version of the old Fiend Folio race. Normally, Creepers don't know Undercommon . . . we made it such that she knows it, but barely. Specifically, she speaks Undercommon as though it were Dark Creeper . . . a very, very complex language .

If you'd like to see some Dark Creeper-->Undercommon poetry, check out the Story Hour in my .sig .

 

[Tsyr]

My current elf in a friends campaign. She comes from a tribal society (elves are tribal, native-american-esq people in his world)... Her common is patchy at best at times. Used to be almost none existant when I created her last year, now it's fine for day-to-day stuff... "fancy talk" on the other hand...

 

[I'm A Banana]

I love the idea...my only problem is thinking of fantasy accents. Somehow, dwarves speaking with scottish drawls and elves slurring with welsh or speaking french or lilting irish...halflings can get 'pikey', and gnomes...maybe a sort of italian?

Heh. AMusing ideas, anyway. But I think that not being able to draw the accents from anything but the real world is just limiting to my brain.

I like the idea, though. Run with that.

 

[Maldur]

For some reason Dwarfs ended up with russian names and acents in my games. Not irish-like.

Strange that