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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8264120" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't have much to add to what [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] said. But I thought I would paste this extract from Gygax's DMG (p 20), about the thief's Read Languages ability:This ability assumes that the language is, in fact, one which the thief has encountered sometime in the past. Ancient and strange languages (those you, as DM, have previously designated as such) are always totally unreadable. Even if able to read a language, the thief should be allowed only to get about that percentage of the meaning of what is written as his or her percentage ability to read the tongue in the first place. The rest they will hove to guess at. Languages which are relatively close to those known by the thief will not incur such a penalty.Gygax realised that it's not feasible to specify every past moment of a character's life and training. The BitD flashback mechanic sits in that same space of realisation. The only question is at what point do we insist on the linearity of play coinciding with the linearity of the passage of time in the fiction?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8264120, member: 42582"] I don't have much to add to what [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] said. But I thought I would paste this extract from Gygax's DMG (p 20), about the thief's Read Languages ability: [indent]This ability assumes that the language is, in fact, one which the thief has encountered sometime in the past. Ancient and strange languages (those you, as DM, have previously designated as such) are always totally unreadable. Even if able to read a language, the thief should be allowed only to get about that percentage of the meaning of what is written as his or her percentage ability to read the tongue in the first place. The rest they will hove to guess at. Languages which are relatively close to those known by the thief will not incur such a penalty.[/indent] Gygax realised that it's not feasible to specify every past moment of a character's life and training. The BitD flashback mechanic sits in that same space of realisation. The only question is at what point do we insist on the linearity of play coinciding with the linearity of the passage of time in the fiction? [/QUOTE]

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