What's to be done about the languages problem?

[HuManBing]

I have the following language groups:

Baloch: Barovia, Gundarak, Intradevar (Invidia)
Vaasi: Nova Vaasa, Hazlan, Kartakass
Darkonian: Darkon
Paradel ("noble tongue"): Marésotes (Dementlieu), Cosabel (Mordent), Praquadie (Richemulot), Borca
Trecht: Falkovnian (low), Nortenmark (Lamordia)
Dvoryrech: Falkovnian (high - the homeworld language of Vlad Drakov and his family, Krynnish Taladas)
Tepestani: Tepest
Sithican: Sithicus (Krynnish Ansalon)
Valachani: Valachan

I run GURPS, so players can spend in-game time and character points to learn languages. Each language has three levels of skill: Broken, Accented, and Fluent. Literacy is a separate cost, mirroring spoken. Most languages take at least two weeks of intensive study to justify spending a single point in them, but some perks and advantages allow for faster learning.

Right now, my Ravenloft group has PCs who speak Darkonian, Paradel, Trecht, Dvoryrech, and Hua (essentially Mandarin Chinese). I can get by decently in French and Chinese, and with a lexicon I can fake enough German and Russian for RPG purposes.

Some of the language features actually lead to a lot of fun, when one player understands what an NPC is saying but the others can't. It also lends itself well to plot points - one Falkovnian officer let slip an ill-advised profane phrase, referring to Darkon as an enthusiastic concubine and the Falkovnian army as her keeper, and that became a catchphrase for a widespread popular uprising once the PCs repeated it enough times.

(The Falkovnian word for the fifth-column liberation operation was "Unternehmen Katzenpfote". Mircea Drakov made an ill-judged obscene joke with a semi-rhyming compound word beginning with "saftig-". The Darkonians were not pleased and it ended the hopes of a collaborationist interim government.)

[Dark Angel]

My funnier language moment is when the group is splitting of and running errands and what not and leaving the newly met Lamordian contact with the dour Tempestani ranger, both of whom lack a common language to communicate with. The players instantly saw the problem as they changed it around so the ranger would not "unsettle" the Lamordian. They know me all to well...

P.S-Also the Sithican thief/mage with an enchanted sword that allows charming, but she cannot talk to the many Falkovnian soldiers and emissaries to get out of the hot water they keep getting in, all because she cannot speak the language.

[Chaot]

My favorite story involves a Barovian PC who could not speak Borcan and was in Borca. Now, 90% of all Borcans can understand Balok, but would not speak it to the rest of the group (who understood it). When he would ask for them to speak Balok, the Borcans tended to say something along the lines of, "Oh, cannot speak Borcan, Baaarovian?" with as heavy of a French accent as I could muster with equal parts contempt.

As this and your other anecdote show, language differences can add a great deal to the game. I personally prefer more languages to fewer myself. Of course, it's relative to the scale of the adventurers. If you're globe trotting you're going to your going to have to concern yourself with language much more than not. When we're talking large scale I find the idea of a common language to be a bit eye roll inducing. Also, it's good to have the language discussion up front while people are making characters and give a bit if those language decisions need to be adjusted a little after play begins.

I'm not sure the question I have is answered here, though. How do you deal with the ongoing issues of people, especially Outlanders, having to know so many languages?

Mechanically? For characters native to Ravenloft you can change the rules so that languages are cheaper to invest in. For outlanders, decide how their language translates in regards to the demands of the given adventure.

I run using BRP so my hands aren't as tied as someone's running Ravenloft using a flavor of D&D are.

[Dark Angel]

Mechanically? For characters native to Ravenloft you can change the rules so that languages are cheaper to invest in. For outlanders, decide how their language translates in regards to the demands of the given adventure.

Many (2ed rules) domains have the natives speaking more than one language (Gundarak, Borca, Lamordia, Dementlieu for examples, some even as bonuses) while others are almost too insular to have much more to offer (Falkovnian interior area, Vorostokov, Tempest, Burning Peaks). Multicultural places (Darkon, maybe Sithicus) could allow cheaper proficiency slots for languages. It comes down to how you want to run your game, the scope of your campaign, and the reasonable expectations of the group. If I had a group where the players would be traveling to the Northwest Core from Sithicus, I would recommend they should take Borcan or Mordentish so they could at least communicate.

It would ultimately up to them and how they approach it. If the bard blows all of her slots on musical styles and composition and the mage with 7 charisma takes a whole bunch of language slots, guess how foreign relations would work out later? All these things have ramifications and I try to build and adapt my adventures to the character's skill set. Hell, I had a PC actually use the Rope Use NWP in a useful fashion for the assistance of a trapped ranger! Be up front with your players and not outright deceptive (I never told my group they were going to the Burning Peaks, but never refused them the ability to take Ancient Flan).

[Joël of the FoS]

IMC, most of the people on the core share a common language, plus they know a local tongue (the one specified in the RL books). Unless your PCs planned their languages as a group, to optimize the number of languages known within the group, that's I think the best way to do it. Otherwise, the game is slowed and it can be frustrating after a while.

But what local people speak can shift, depending on my goal for a specific adventure:

- in most areas, language isn't a problem, but people have a local accent. Adventure flows freely, without being slowed by the PCs' slow comprehension of local people.

- in some areas, mainly the island and some isolated places of the core, they speak only their regional language. So language in this case really is a problem and a cause of isolation;

- and another possibility: in some areas, while the locals know the common, they keep to their regional language, reluctant to speak common with those strange foreigners. Finding a person wishing to speak with the PCs can be part of the adventure, while most of the population refuse to collaborate (even if sometimes it's possibly for their own good )

Joël

[Mortavius]

However, it creates a barrier to wandering adventurers and the only adventure I remember talking specifically about language barriers is Feast of Goblyns, where the players find the language kinda similar to their own and figure it out before long. And I believe that language (or *some* song-writing language of Kartakass) was supposed to be a mesh of Vaasi and Sithican elvish. So the players automatically speak a language with elements of elvish and Vaasi?

I think part of the problem is you're mixing editions. Languages in Ravenloft weren't codified until 3rd edition. Feast of Goblyns is a module that was put out long before that, in the infancy of the setting. Sithican and Vassi didn't even exist as languages at the time the module was written.

There seem bigger problems however. If the 3rd Ed description of languages is taken, then when payers arrive in Paridon for 'Hour of the Knife' they're meant to start a murder-mystery investigation without knowledge of the language. Having a wizard replace all hir 1st level slots with 'Speak Language' (and assuming sie has the spell) then having hir speak for the group for the entire game doesn't sound like a whole pile of fun. [On a related note - why on earth do people bring food to Paridon if it's connected to Darkon only via a shakey path which sometimes wanders elsewhere? How do the Paridon people get enough food to survive?]

I think that's because the module itself focuses on the story, the murders. It doesn't want to assume that the PCs do or do not know the language, or the emphasis the DM puts on language in their games. I have run games where language didn't play a single part, because I didn't want to deal with that aspect.

As to food, the description of Paridon describes how they get their food; they have rooftop gardens and basically grow food in every free space they can. The predation of the Marikith and Dopplegangers lower the numbers of humans, and the domain seems to have enough to feed it's populace, if only barely. I would imagine most people in the domain have a rather malnourished appearance.

I also wonder if Demenlieu was suspected of being created by the Dark Powers instead of stolen from another world simply to make an explanation for why Mordent and Dementlieu and Richemulot all speak the same language (or language pair) - though why not suggest they're both taken from the same world instead?

There's more clues than that. The House on Gryphon Hill in Mordent was originally built by a Renier, a family now famous in Richemulot. How is that explained? We don't know for sure; it's one of the things that makes the setting interesting.

With all the secondary languages everywhere, if most PCs speak Balok and Mordentish then that's most of the Core they can travel, but they still cannot take part in many of the adventures in the island domains. Getting by in a new language is a 24/7 job which takes a skilled linguist some weeks, and learning a language with no similar roots to one's own can take months to get the basics. And if the various domains are from different worlds, their language groups are not related.

Not necessarily true. As trade with the islands has increased, there is going to be a demand for interpreters. I can see there being a few individuals in the domain who make a living because they can speak the languages of the foreigners. Plus, I see lots of role-playing opportunities for language break downs and troubles "What are they saying about us? Are they friendly or hostile?"

I realise the last point may not hit so hard for people who aren't fond of languages, but one doesn't need to be an expert on the subject to feel quite sharply how impossible it is for a group of people to 'pick up' an entirely new language.

If you play in Pathfinder rules, then Ultimate Campaign has codified guidelines for re-training, in which a PC could spend time re-allocating some skill ranks into Linguistics, and thus learn a new language. It's not instant, and if I was the DM, I would still say it takes time to become fluent (thus allowing for some misinterpretations in speech), but it allows the PC's to overcome a problem.

[Dark Angel]

I forgot about Hour of the Knife and those issues. I recall one of the NPCs to be used as PCs in the back had Silver Dragon as a language. What? First of all, it is not a language in my campaign (even my prime worlds), it is called Metallic Dragon Speak (as opposed to the other 2 major tongues, Chromatic and Gem). Second, there is no and, to my knowledge, has never been a silver dragon in the Demiplane. I am sure the dragon languages are not so common and universal to explain this. I did enjoy sounding like a Monty Python 'Old Woman' during the Paridon adventures. My players did not (especially when the teenage bar wench sounded like it too).

Weren't the Reiners chased out of Mordent and that created Richemulot?

[Mortavius]

Weren't the Reiners chased out of Mordent and that created Richemulot?

Falkovnia, and that was Claude and his kin.

[Black Knight]

I think that's [Hour of the Knife] the module itself focuses on the story, the murders. It doesn't want to assume that the PCs do or do not know the language, or the emphasis the DM puts on language in their games. I have run games where language didn't play a single part, because I didn't want to deal with that aspect.

As to food, the description of Paridon describes how they get their food; they have rooftop gardens and basically grow food in every free space they can. The predation of the Marikith and Dopplegangers lower the numbers of humans, and the domain seems to have enough to feed it's populace, if only barely. I would imagine most people in the domain have a rather malnourished appearance.

I forgot about that rooftop bit. I don't think it'll get enough food for everyone - it suggests that everyone can make a rooftop garden and work on it as a farmer - but it'll help the population feed itself. I think I'm going to stick to a 'floating city' interpretation where it floats around the Western Core, appearing to trade with people randomly, then vanishing.

The language thing doesn't seem an avoidable issue so long as there's a chance that a PC can ask 'what language are they speaking?' because everyone has to speak some language.

IMC, most of the people on the core share a common language, plus they know a local tongue (the one specified in the RL books). Unless your PCs planned their languages as a group, to optimize the number of languages known within the group, that's I think the best way to do it. Otherwise, the game is slowed and it can be frustrating after a while.

But what local people speak can shift, depending on my goal for a specific adventure:

- in most areas, language isn't a problem, but people have a local accent. Adventure flows freely, without being slowed by the PCs' slow comprehension of local people.

- in some areas, mainly the island and some isolated places of the core, they speak only their regional language. So language in this case really is a problem and a cause of isolation;

- and another possibility: in some areas, while the locals know the common, they keep to their regional language, reluctant to speak common with those strange foreigners. Finding a person wishing to speak with the PCs can be part of the adventure, while most of the population refuse to collaborate (even if sometimes it's possibly for their own good )

Joël

The common language solution sounds great for easy gaming, but I'm still worried that my campaign couldn't handle an intelligent academic outlander asking simple questions. Imagine someone comes to Lamordia. 'How old is this country?' he asks. The Lamordians explain they've been here for less than a century.
'How old was the country before that?' he asks.

So now, with a very simple question, I have to say that Lamordia came from a random advanced world and has a language structure close enough to the nearby languages to learn it (Chinese people sitting right next to French are gonna take more than a few decades for the local nobles to learn each others' languages, but educated Lamordians can speak Dementlieu). Alternatively, we assume Dementlieu's a French region, nicked from Earth, and Lamordia's German or English, also nicked from Earth.

Of course, the Dark Powers could have created some of these places out of nothing, but that seems a little odd. Firstly, the question of souls come up - it seems to go against the whole Gothic bit that these powers can just create human souls. And surely the inhabitants must have souls, or there's no crime in killing them. Also, if the inhabitants are mere creations, it undervalues their lives to the PCs.

Has anyone had 'that conversation' with the PCs? The one where someone in Dementlieu or another suspected created realm says 'Yea, it's the darndest thing - one day we ware trading with loads of cities around a full world, mostly speaking our language, and the next day the mists rose. Well, nobody returns from them, nobody sees their distant family, and then a year later, when we started to starve, the mists dropped again and there was another land. As it turns out we spoke the same language but we're not from the same world and our history doesn't match. That said, our history doesn't seem to go back that far - like we burned all the books before a hundred years ago and all record of them'.

I mean, is it just me, or is there something fundamentally wrong in some sense with that tale, with its history and linguistic maps, with its inherent treatment of people as Dark Lords' toys?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Second, there is no and, to my knowledge, has never been a silver dragon in the Demiplane.

Depends on if you consider the Shadowfell domains of dread to be part of the demiplane or not. Arantor, darklord of Monadhan.

Also note that Draconic in 3e is both the language of dragons, and the language of magic.

[Zilfer]

Second, there is no and, to my knowledge, has never been a silver dragon in the Demiplane.

Depends on if you consider the Shadowfell domains of dread to be part of the demiplane or not. Arantor, darklord of Monadhan.

Also note that Draconic in 3e is both the language of dragons, and the language of magic.

Yep and that's how I've always understood and played it... ^

[Dark Angel]

Second, there is no and, to my knowledge, has never been a silver dragon in the Demiplane.

Depends on if you consider the Shadowfell domains of dread to be part of the demiplane or not. Arantor, darklord of Monadhan.

Also note that Draconic in 3e is both the language of dragons, and the language of magic.

I was speaking from the 2ed sources, but given how disjointed a lot of that stuff can be (obviously) that hardly means as much. If I go back in time, I am bringing my DoD and all 5 Gazs with me. Show them how to get it streamlined much sooner! Time paradoxes be damned!

[Zilfer]

Second, there is no and, to my knowledge, has never been a silver dragon in the Demiplane.

Depends on if you consider the Shadowfell domains of dread to be part of the demiplane or not. Arantor, darklord of Monadhan.

Also note that Draconic in 3e is both the language of dragons, and the language of magic.

I was speaking from the 2ed sources, but given how disjointed a lot of that stuff can be (obviously) that hardly means as much. If I go back in time, I am bringing my DoD and all 5 Gazs with me. Show them how to get it streamlined much sooner! Time paradoxes be damned!

Haha! Don't forget Toben! DONT FORGET TOBEN!!!!

[Dark Angel]

Weren't the Reiners chased out of Mordent and that created Richemulot?

Falkovnia, and that was Claude and his kin.

Damn, I was close, but still way off...

[Isabella]

Weren't the Reiners chased out of Mordent and that created Richemulot?

Falkovnia, and that was Claude and his kin.

Damn, I was close, but still way off...

You're probably thinking of the Renier who took up residence in the House on Griffon Hill, only to quickly flee his estate afterward.