Who actually USES alignment languages? How?

[Drowbane]

I think we used alignment languages for about 2.5 sessions...

And when I say "used" I mean wrote down on our character sheets and had no idea wtf it meant to speak "C/G"...

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Other: "Yes, I do". (Which isn't quite the same as "Yes, I did"... some of us do still play 1e as a living game!)

 

[Treebore]

I have turned it into a set of supernatural languages that is used by the holy/unholy classes to create their scrolls, to turn/control undead, etc....

In 3E they were called Infernal, Abyssal, celestial, etc...

 

[frankthedm]

Which would lead me to my next question; what does someone talk about in Chaotic Evil? What does it look/sound like?

If you were not chaotic evil yourself, hearing it would tell you the speaker should be killed, but that is about it.

Can I walk into a room and realize the guards are talking Lawful Neutral while the chamberlain is talking Neutral Evil?

Specifically no.

Myself I like the idea:

Good sounds like a Melodic Choir
Evil sounds Mëtäl!
Law sounds Monotonous reading of a bureaucracy textbook hybridized with binary
Chaos sounds like an unintelligible gibberish and mutterings

Dual alignments combine the two elements: Chaotic evil sounds like a record played backwards dripping with foulness.

 

[Treebore]

If you were not chaotic evil yourself, hearing it would tell you the speaker should be killed, but that is about it. Specifically no.

Myself I like the idea:

Good sounds like a Melodic Choir
Evil sounds Mëtäl!
Law sounds Monotonous reading of a bureaucracy textbook hybridized with binary
Chaos sounds like an unintelligible gibberish and mutterings

Dual alignments combine the two elements: Chaotic evil sounds like a record played backwards dripping with foulness.

The few times I have had players ask me what the supernatural alignment languages sound like these are examples of exactly how I tried to explain them. However, that is what they sound like, no one even knows what they mean, precisely, unless they are of that alignment.

Like a Cleric of Tyr can speak and fully understand Celestial, but if he "knows" Abysall and infernal, he does not know it in detail, he understands it well enough to get a general sense of what is meant. IE he recognizes that Glyph is in the infernal tongue and its over all intent is to snuff out a persons life force, but the cleric of Tyr does not understand each and every letter/word, because he can't. Its a supernatural language. IT is a language of magic, essentially. So the lettering may be waving, twisting, and appearing and disappearing at random before his very eyes. Only a Evil Cleric or unholy type person/creature could read it successfully, because part of its supernatural nature is that only for them will the letters/words stay still.

 

[pawsplay]

I think it had its roots in the Black Speech of Middle-Earth, and its counterpart, the various dialects of Elvish and Valar. It got goofy when they decided to make the language literally metaphysic and assume one for each of nine alignments, or even for each of Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic.

 

[Treebore]

I think it had its roots in the Black Speech of Middle-Earth, and its counterpart, the various dialects of Elvish and Valar. It got goofy when they decided to make the language literally metaphysic and assume one for each of nine alignments, or even for each of Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic.

It also has it origin in the bible, from the effects of the voices of angels to what the effects would be if you were to actually hear god speak.

 

[Shemeska]

And I didn't read the poll well enough before I voted yes. I assumed the poll was asking if you used racial languages for the various outsiders, like specific languages for LG archons, NE yugoloths, CE tanar'ri, LN parai, etc etc etc. I go crazy with the variety of those languages, but I'd never even heard of the type of "languages" the poll is talking about.

 

[RFisher]

All my groups basically just ignore them. We don’t explicitly house-rule them out, but we never actually use them either.

Although, I do remember some discussion of the matter back-in-the-day. We read something about how they couldn’t be used to detect alignment. That a character would never use the language in front of a character of a different alignment. We reasoned that, ergo, they’d almost never be used.

Gygax seems to have had a predilection for including gamish-bits that intrude into the setting more than I’ve ever cared for. Another example would be the “memory tablets” in Lejendary Adventure.

 

[CleverNickName]

I voted "Yes I did," because there isn't an option for "Yes I still do." Which is the case, whenever we play BECMI rules.

We treat it like innuendo, street slang, body language, and/or sign language, depending on the situation.