Topic: The lost art of conversation

[Spectre771]

I have another poser for you fellow GMs and players:

How much use do you give the skills of Languages Spoken and Read/Written in your gaming world?  Do you keep it simple with Human, Elf, Dwarf?  Do you add sub-groups like Low (Common) Elven, High Elven, Ancient Elven, Street speech, Thieves Guild, Northern Trading Language, etc.?

In RM2, there is a nice list of Magical languages (RMC-I  (RoCo-I) I believe) and there are the racial languages, and then there's Seoltang <sp> in the Shadow World Companion: Quellborne, but I've never had much opportunity to put those skills to good use.

RM2 has a lot of skills and lots of them are optional of course.  I know, some of you are surprised.   However, if one of my players purchases a skill, no matter how obscure or "seemingly" unimportant it may be, I try to find a way to work it into gameplay so the players can better fulfill their vision of their PC and they don't feel as though they've wasted DP on a skill.

I've had players take Architecture (burglar, thief, rogue types), I've had players take Athletic Games, Advanced Math, etc. because they had a vision for their PC.  Tactics was a tough one for me to work into gameplay.  The tactics usually come from the player's imagination.  If they rolled well enough in Tactics, I gave them a little GM hint, maybe as a written note that it may be better to stage an ambush here, or it looks like the enemy spell casters may set up there.

When it comes to Languages though, I don't really give it much use.  In the case of Seoltang, a trading language used in the northern reaches, I steered the campaign setting more northward and had the party spend lots of time in trading outposts and villages.

With the Magical Languages, they were helpful if a spell caster was trying to identify or get clues as to what magic they will be facing, but there were so many it was rarely used.  "I recognize some of those words.  These look like spells of healing.  I think these folk may be OK.  Those words look like something from a Death cult.  Let's not go that way."

I once threw in an Elven NPC who could speak the human tongue, but chose not to just to be a jerk, so the couple of players who really invested heavily in Elven language could get their money's worth.  When the Elf NPC was really feeling mean, he'd use language that would require the PC to have 9-10 ranks in Spoken or Read/Written and therefore too complex for the PC's to understand.

To make it a little more interesting in a different campaign, I had a Dwarf Hearth-King speak in very, very old, heavily accented Dwarfen so the PC with Dwarf speak still had a decent challenge trying to speak to (and to not inadvertently insult) the ruler.  But in all of these instances, the setting changed or the campaign came to conclusion and trying to find new and creative ways to allow the PCs use their rare skills was fun challenge for me as a GM. 

[intothatdarkness]

I tend to make fair use of language, in no small part because my world doesn't have "Common" at all. Reading also becomes a factor because some cultures don't have a formal written alphabet and are confused by the concept. Since I do a fair amount of modern setting stuff too, language factors in quite a bit.

Just thought I'd tack in some examples of how these are used. The two major languages are related to a degree, so a character fluent in one has half skill in the other (so a 7 spoken equates to 3.5 in the other, rounded down for more advanced concepts). It's also been interesting when characters interact with some of the smaller cultural groups. I've had players who were fluent in one of the northern tribal languages "play dumb" and pick up significant amounts of information because the natives assumed they could speak freely. We also had a pretty funny ad-lib 'adventure' when a character was misunderstood and ended up with directions to the city's best brothel instead of the main temple of a particular god.

Language can be fun to use. I never liked games that didn't make use of it, honestly.

[Witchking20k]

Great thread.  I dislike languages as skills and have many thoughts on this....but, not enough time to formulate them right now....lol

[jdale]

Like intothatdarkness, I don't have a common tongue in my setting. The PCs are actually from two different regions and several different races and there is no single language that everyone in the party speaks! (There is one that works for 5/6 though.) I find languages are useful for distributing story share -- the same person can't do the talking all the time.

In the game I am playing, it is similar. We are currently traveling on a foreign continent, the existence of which most of us only recently learned of, although two party members were secretly from there. So in many cases those character have to serve as our translators and it's a good reminder of the foreignness of the place. Some of the other characters know other languages that are relevant but socially awkward. The continent is elven so the main language is one that we knew of as a historical ancient language, but there is an elven region on our continent which was originally settled basically by hippie non-conformists (you know, draft-dodgers and tax evaders...). So what we know as the sylvan elven language is actually spoken on this other continent, but basically only by rural hicks and low class peasants. Our guides don't even like to speak it because it makes them sound uneducated.

I like the idea of local dialects and accents, but we haven't actually gone to that level. I would generally just treat them as number of ranks minus a small penalty rather than as entirely different languages. I do this already with ancient forms of current languages, and in my setting I've also defined which languages arise from which ancient languages and therefore which modern languages are related and to what extent (mostly permitting use of one at a rank penalty in place of the other).

[intothatdarkness]

I usually handle dialects in a way similar to jdale. There is an ancient language floating around that has elements of one of the surviving languages, and characters who can read that language have a very limited comprehension of the ancient tongue in its written form. This only really happens in my world in that single instance based on how the place evolved, but for a different setting I'd likely do what jdale does.

[Spectre771]

I like the idea of local dialects and accents, but we haven't actually gone to that level. I would generally just treat them as number of ranks minus a small penalty rather than as entirely different languages. I do this already with ancient forms of current languages, and in my setting I've also defined which languages arise from which ancient languages and therefore which modern languages are related and to what extent (mostly permitting use of one at a rank penalty in place of the other).

We handled the dialects in a similar manner in different campaigns, it really depended on the GM in all honesty.  The dialect required more ranks to comprehend, or another GM would say the dialect is so old, you really don't understand it; similar to understanding Latin.  All of us could probably pick out words, maybe recognize the root meaning of other words while not understanding the whole sentence.  Then hopefully end up in the temple and not the brothel..... then again, depends on what your PC worships!   

I do love the idea of hippie, non-conformist Elves though!  Self Discipline -40?  LOL

I tend to make fair use of language, in no small part because my world doesn't have "Common" at all. Reading also becomes a factor because some cultures don't have a formal written alphabet and are confused by the concept. Since I do a fair amount of modern setting stuff too, language factors in quite a bit.

I've handled one of the languages in one of my campaigns similarly.  I used Chinese characters for the language.  Helpful since I could read it and no one else could.  It made things fairly easy for me and plenty complicated for the players.  They tried to work out what the characters and they did OK.  It was really fun to watch them tackle it and try to come to a consensus on the words, the meaning, the sentence.


@Witching20K:  I'd definitely love to read your ideas on languages.  Please post when you get a chance!

[Voriig Kye]

In our current campaign one of the players decided she wanted to play a language expert (a Priest of Valris in Shadow World). So I ruled that spells that give automatic understanding of written texts and conversations would not be used in the campaign, to highlight the language skills and the importance of buying lots of ranks in lots of languages.
The character currently has more than 10 different languages from many continents, and I have started giving hints about recognizing the origin of one from another, or understanding basic expressions just on sounds because of the great variety of sounds and grammar structures in her head, like a "language lore".

[Spectre771]

In our current campaign one of the players decided she wanted to play a language expert (a Priest of Valris in Shadow World). So I ruled that spells that give automatic understanding of written texts and conversations would not be used in the campaign, to highlight the language skills and the importance of buying lots of ranks in lots of languages.
The character currently has more than 10 different languages from many continents, and I have started giving hints about recognizing the origin of one from another, or understanding basic expressions just on sounds because of the great variety of sounds and grammar structures in her head, like a "language lore".

That is an excellent approach.  I like that you rewarded her globally i.e.: no others were allowed to use spells to help, they had to invest DP just as she did to reap the benefits.  It makes her investment carry more weight to her and to the party, rather then just give her a bonus, or something that only impacted her PC. 

[arakish]

Throwing my two cents in, as others have posted, on all my worlds (Udava, Hakreun, and Onaviu), there was always an ancient FIRST language that developed from the "vinyari" (vin = to come before all others, yari = folk/people).

This language influenced all following languages.  However, this FIRST language usually ended up being lost in the antiquities of time due to the wars of dominion that invariably occur.

As others have posted, when this language is discovered, it is found to be father of all languages.

However, unlike others, this Father Language is as easily understood as a newly discovered "lost" language here on Earth, such as Ancient Mayan (which took decades for us to transliterate).  It literally has to be translated into the current language(s) spoken in the modern times.  I kind of used the Rosetta Stone as a basis.  Since this Father Language has been lost, without any kind of reference, it makes deciphering it problematic at best, to virtually impossible at worst.  If no living peoples of this Father language exists, just as with Ancient Mayan, it could take decades, perhaps centuries, to transliterate.

Thus, depending upon how "lost" this Father Language is, most often, none could read it.  Or, they think they can read it due to similar words, such as krok and krok.  However, then comes the problem of the words actually meaning two completely different things.  Krok in the modern language = cooking pot, where krok in the Father Language = the verb "to discover."

As for other peoples trying to communicate to each other with greatly differing languages (Marik vs. Tarmorin), I actually make the players "play" out how they get their "ideas" across.  A good example would be a cooking pot.  Players were forced to point to a cooking pot, say its word in their language ("krok"), then perhaps the others would finally get the idea.

For languages with vastly different dialects, I would have the players use their ranks in a language as normal skill bonuses to get their "idea" across.  A good example was my usage of using the term "horse hoowhee" up in the northern Midwest (extreme northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin) about 40 years ago.  Most people up there had no idea what I meant by "horse hoowhee" until I described it as:

Ever walk into a horse stables that have not been cleaned in quite some time on very hot AND very humid day in July?  When I did, I said, "Hoowhee!  What a smell."

Ever since then, horse hoowhee has been a nice way of saying horse s___.

It can also be applied to Bull Hoowhee, or just, "That is a big pile of hoowhee."

An example of vastly different dialects would be a PC having 8 ranks in a language, thus having a +40 skill rank bonus for communicating an idea.  Then add the stat bonus and other modifiers.

In our current campaign one of the players decided she wanted to play a language expert (a Priest of Valris in Shadow World). So I ruled that spells that give automatic understanding of written texts and conversations would not be used in the campaign, to highlight the language skills and the importance of buying lots of ranks in lots of languages.
The character currently has more than 10 different languages from many continents, and I have started giving hints about recognizing the origin of one from another, or understanding basic expressions just on sounds because of the great variety of sounds and grammar structures in her head, like a "language lore".

That is an excellent approach.  I like that you rewarded her globally i.e.: no others were allowed to use spells to help, they had to invest DP just as she did to reap the benefits.  It makes her investment carry more weight to her and to the party, rather then just give her a bonus, or something that only impacted her PC. 

I have to agree with this.  I have done the same thing in my worlds.  It also led to the "Universal Translator" special ability.  This was to account for those persons who have this uncanny knack of understanding a language just by listening to it for some time (usually several days).

rmfr

[Warl]

In my current game, Language has posed a moderate roll in the game. Though Everyone in the current game has made sure to have a Common language with the group (the game didn't start that way) now, they have encountered ancient forms of the areas common languages. If the game continues out of this area, Language will have greater and greater impacts. SO far though, the area is fairly mono linguistic beyond the ancient scripts.

I try to make Language more important and less hand waved.
Another thing I do is give an impact to ones level of speaking in a language in interactions with NPCs in the world.
If you just have a 4 speaking ability (able to understand common everyday conversations if spoken slowly) But you are trying to converse and negotiate with Nobles of the land? You are going to have a Much higher difficulty to any Diplomacy, seduction or other social interaction checks.
If ur speaking ability is Native rank 6, then your Not going to be penalized as much, But still would be Harder to succeed than i you have a speaking level of 7 or 8.

I basically Take the Difference in rank  Between the speaker and the Targets speaking level and apply that difference in increased difficulty in accomplishing the task.

And that works both ways.. If you speak the Language Fleuntly ( Rank 7) But your Target only speaks the language (or reads) at a Rank of 4, Then their is still a communication barrier, so I increase the difficulty fo the task 3 degrees.

[Justin]

I also don't have common tongue in my setting--no such thing exists in RL--but up until now all I do for language is make sure people have up to a decent speaking/reading rank, and then I leave it alone. Forgotten by the way side.

I plan on integrating it more in the future. How exactly, I don't know. But I plan on going through all the lore and practical skills and make it clear to myself (and then the players) what uses they have, and start using them more. For the most part players have been able to get by with just combat, magic, and stealth skills, but that doesn't actualize the kind of game I want to run.

[arakish]

If you just have a 4 speaking ability (able to understand common everyday conversations if spoken slowly) But you are trying to converse and negotiate with Nobles of the land? You are going to have a Much higher difficulty to any Diplomacy, seduction or other social interaction checks.

I also do this.

My Method:
Roll vs. Difficulty Difference (Easy to Very Difficult), adding all modifiers.  Number = one of two things.

• Percentage of ranks usable in skill (Result = 70; Ranks = 7; Usable Ranks in skill = 5 (7 × 0.7 = 4.9, round = 5).  Then determine new Total Bonus.
• Percentage of Total Bonus (Result = 70; Total Bonus = 74; Resulting Bonus = 52 (74 × 0.7 = 51.8, round = 52).

whichever is greater.

Skill in 1 above = diplomacy, trading, seduction, etc., etc.

rmfr

[Malim]

We made up some languages for Jaiman like this:

Languages of Jaiman

Theros   Common language of the GarlonMen in Wuliris.
Cladesbri   Secret language of the Gnolls in Northern Jaiman.
Erlin      Erlini elves (Common elven language sometimes known as Ithur). A distinct Jaiman dialect though.
Grimir   Dwarven secret tongue, never taught to non Dwarves.
Iylar      Language of the Iylari, a truly global language (Spoken iylar is very difficult for non elves, multiply cost by 4, and by 2 for half elves).
Tonak   Halflings.
Gnoll      Gnolls (Secret language, never spoken in front of non-Gnolls), also known as claedsbrim.
Melur      A mix of Zoridar and Rhaya  spoken by the Melurians.
Glumac   A written language only, mostly used by the Gnomes.
Plasi      Language of the Plasidarians.
Kad      Ogres (No written language, a variant of Rhaya).
Seoltang   Trading language of nothern Jaiman a variant of Rhaya, with more sophisticated number and measurement terms.
Rhaya   Comman Language og Jaiman, 7 distinct dialects .
Rhakai   Zorians, also known as Zoridar or Zori
Lasutt   Udahirs.
Thokot   Haidic people, also known just as Haidic.
Ranaka   Dûranarkies, a unusual murmuring tounge. Also known as Xaatyn (Rarely taught to non Dûranarkies).
Korsk      Language of the Saralins.
Myr      Talaths and Myri, a very complex, musical lilting language (Doubble cost for non-Talaths)
Yin      Yinka language, a hissing, whispering tounge, unrelated to any other Jaiman language
Laranian   Larian tounge (Variant of Zoridar).
Kayvis   Erlin variant with different alphabet, spoken by the Ky'Taari, sometimes known as Sicam.
Suluni   Language of the Suluni, similar to Seoltang in many ways.
Shulur       Underwater language of the Shuluri           
Lugrok   The crude tongue of the Lugrokies.
Gobli      A variant of Lugrok and Rhaya, spoken by Goblins.
Schnart   Garks (No written language).

And we work with ranks from 1-10 (11-20 is expert in language and can only be learned at i.e Nomikos)
We use language quite alot, player iwth low ranks in spoken will roleplay often in broken languages so that there can be misunderstandings etc.

[Jengada]

This thread is reminding me why I love Rolemaster players. I, too, like to make detailed language families for my campaign. I have them organized more or less formally so that degree of relationship between two determines how much one can understand of A if they know B, and B if they know A. They're not always the same.
I recently found a folder with the alphabets and writing systems from cultures I used 20 years ago, geek Christmas!

[Peter R]

If you are a real fantasy language geek you should check out Kwickham's blog http://worldofthefifthsun.blogspot.co.uk/

[kwickham]

I'm really into languages. My common language for the world isn't English. But in gaming of course I would speak using English.

I would use names of places, names of important objects, and NPC names primarily. Maybe I'd write out a script for something written or some runes. For speaking and hearing a foreign dialect, I would either describe how the voices sounded if they didn't know a language, and maybe say out a sentence or important phrases.

I make and alter languages in pairs creating a derived language so that it minimizes creation time.

For languages (dinghu) I have currently 715 terms for various languages: 625 common (kom-yo dinghu), 625 goblin (meron dinghu), 427 elvish (albiz dinghu), 427 orcish (okr-o dinghu), 211 dwarvish, 211 halfling, 191 fairy/angel words, 191 demon words.

[Jengada]

I'm really into languages. My common language for the world isn't English. But in gaming of course I would speak using English.

I would use names of places, names of important objects, and NPC names primarily. Maybe I'd write out a script for something written or some runes. For speaking and hearing a foreign dialect, I would either describe how the voices sounded if they didn't know a language, and maybe say out a sentence or important phrases.

I make and alter languages in pairs creating a derived language so that it minimizes creation time.

For languages (dinghu) I have currently 715 terms for various languages: 625 common (kom-yo dinghu), 625 goblin (meron dinghu), 427 elvish (albiz dinghu), 427 orcish (okr-o dinghu), 211 dwarvish, 211 halfling, 191 fairy/angel words, 191 demon words.

I glanced at your blog - that's a lot of work! I build proper names and the components that go into them for various languages, as they come up to the party. By components, I mean if a proper name means "Rock eater" I have the words for "rock" and "eat" or "eater" in the language. In a couple of cases I actually mess with declension or conjugation, or conversion from one part of speech to another. I have no idea how many words I have.
I do find that I have to keep my own passion for the linguistics in check during play. Telling the party "There's a florvus ahead, waving a churgle covered with blickster blood" doesn't really move the campaign along. That is, unless someone in the party is a blickster or has been looking for a +10 churgle.

[jdale]

Man, who doesn't want a +10 churgle? I mean, come on.

[Spectre771]

Man, who doesn't want a +10 churgle? I mean, come on.

Now THAT is a Geek Christmas!   

Jengada and Kwickham, fantastic work.  That's a lot of creativity and imagination to put into the languages. 

[Jengada]

Man, who doesn't want a +10 churgle? I mean, come on.

I now feel compelled to add a weapon called a churgle to my campaign. It may just be a dagger, but it's going to be called a churgle.