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<blockquote data-quote="willpax" data-source="post: 848161" data-attributes="member: 1602">In my campaign, there is no common tongue. I've altered language rules to have two &quot;levels&quot; of language proficiency: basic (functional, but stumblingly or with a heavy accent, and subtle concepts may be lost--one skill rank) and fluent (complete mastery--two skill ranks). Everyone with average intelligence and above is fluent in at least one language. There are four major linguistic families in which the languages are distant dialects of each other (think about the relationship between French, Spanish, and Italian). If you know one language in the family, then additional ones are regular cost. If you know no languages in a family, then you need additional skill points to learn it. I also have separate alphabet systems, requiring skill points to be spent for literacy depending on alphabet (and most classes are not automatically literate--I run a world pre-mass education). All of that would be nothing but a headache if it had no impact on the plot, but I've made sure that language matters. For the most part, their journeys have occurred within an area dominated by two branches of the same lunguistic famikly (and one that nearly everyone knows), but on three occasions they have had to deal with people who speak strnage tongues. That has made the bard a rather indispensable member of the group, as he knows languages in two families that no one else is familiar with. There is also one ancient language that serves as a kind of international tongue among scholars (the equivalent of Medieval Latin), but common folks don't speak it any more, so its usefulness is somewhat narrow unless you are reading in old scrolls and such.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="willpax, post: 848161, member: 1602"] In my campaign, there is no common tongue. I've altered language rules to have two "levels" of language proficiency: basic (functional, but stumblingly or with a heavy accent, and subtle concepts may be lost--one skill rank) and fluent (complete mastery--two skill ranks). Everyone with average intelligence and above is fluent in at least one language. There are four major linguistic families in which the languages are distant dialects of each other (think about the relationship between French, Spanish, and Italian). If you know one language in the family, then additional ones are regular cost. If you know no languages in a family, then you need additional skill points to learn it. I also have separate alphabet systems, requiring skill points to be spent for literacy depending on alphabet (and most classes are not automatically literate--I run a world pre-mass education). All of that would be nothing but a headache if it had no impact on the plot, but I've made sure that language matters. For the most part, their journeys have occurred within an area dominated by two branches of the same lunguistic famikly (and one that nearly everyone knows), but on three occasions they have had to deal with people who speak strnage tongues. That has made the bard a rather indispensable member of the group, as he knows languages in two families that no one else is familiar with. There is also one ancient language that serves as a kind of international tongue among scholars (the equivalent of Medieval Latin), but common folks don't speak it any more, so its usefulness is somewhat narrow unless you are reading in old scrolls and such. [/QUOTE]

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