Ravenloft languages

[Serith]

I do hope I'm not intruding in asking this...

This discussion has focused on the variety of languages and how the specifics should be dealt with. In looking over the various languages in the Core (and the IRL ones used in Masque of the Red Death) one has to consider the possibilities of slightly understanding other languages due to which languages you have...Vis a vis Latin with Italian,spanish, etc. It seems to me that while detailed rules on specifics such as what languages one speaks is wonderful, how does it approach the relationships on languages...

Perhaps an introduction of a Linguistics skill or some such. Just a tossed out idea, as I don't have an answer myself.

btw first post on the board--Thank you very much FoS for the suitable place.

Serith

[wolfgang_fener]

Hi guys.

In almost 20 years of DMing the question of languages in RPG have been raised on a regular basis.

The main problem is if the pc can't understand and speak, how will they get around an adventure that is not just boring hack and slash ? My guess is this is the reason behind the idea of the "common" language.

We all know the concept of the so called common tongue is stupid but it is often a leser of many evils.

Now if humans speaks many different languages, what about the other races ? Does an elf from Forgotten realms speak the same "elvish" as an elf in Ravenloft ? You see, we're opening a can of worms.

My take on this is if it provide more enjoyment for all your players to add the realism of multy languages in your campaign, go for it. Otherwise, forget about it and just say that everybody speaks common with various accents.

Personally I do a bit of both. For exemple the cleric in my campaign is played by someone who is a professional translator with a personal interest for linguistic so I let him compose his spell casting prayers in latin (and grant extra experience for each new composition). It really adds to the game for everybody and we're all learning a bit of latin at the same time . Will I bother to figure out where latin come from in my FR campaign ? Certainly not unless it becomes important to the game. Actually he didn't even had to pay any points for that language, it is just a role-playing thing and if it ever become important (for speaking with another cleric from a far away church for exemple), then this pc will have gained this language for free thanks to his good role-playing.

Now why do I post about it is because I'm about to introduce Ravenloft to a new group of players so I have to make a choice. In any case I don't want to end up with only one pc being able to interact with foreign NPCs, it would be boring for the others. Maybe I wouldn't care if I had a bard in my game but I don't. For this reason my Ravenloft NPCs will probably just have funny accents (which my players always like).

Sometimes realism is less important than general enjoyment.

PS.: My first language is french so if some of you want to translate a few key sentences, just ask.

[Jester of the FoS]

There's one other problem with this. Who decides when a character 'fails' a speak languages check?
See, with the current binary system you either know the lanaguge or don't. You either speak it or fail. If there are ranks there are bound to be times when something complex is being spoken and someone needs to decide if its too complex to be understood or not.
At the moment it is in the hands of the DM to decide if its understood or not. This could easily lead to DM abuse. There is no system to prevent it.

DM: "You hear muffled voices through the wall, their harsh voices raised in anger."
PC: "I put my ear to the wall and listen. What are they saying."
DM: "Uh.... make me a listen check."
PC: [rolls a few dice] "29. Oh wait, 31 with that bonus. And you said their voices were raised."
DM: "Well... you makew out their voices but you can't understand them, they're speaking elven."
PC: "But I have two ranks in elven!:
Dm: "Oh... well, you needed three."

Rules aren't made for good DMs, they're made for the bad ones.

These rules also suggest all languages are the same complexity. I'd imagine draconic and elven are far more complicated than orc or goblin. And English is a hard language to learn opposed to Spanish or French.

[wolfgang_fener]

<<Rules aren't made for good DMs, they're made for the bad ones. >>

Great quote to remember.

In your exemple, If my players can understand the language and especially if I put some of my time to design the adventure and what the npcs are talking about, I will certainly not let the dice decide if I wasted my time or not.

This is one of the reason why I make many rolls myself behind the DM screen, often not even looking at the roled number. Of course this works well as long as it's not obvious to the players .

[Ail]

There's one other problem with this. Who decides when a character 'fails' a speak languages check?
See, with the current binary system you either know the lanaguge or don't. You either speak it or fail. If there are ranks there are bound to be times when something complex is being spoken and someone needs to decide if its too complex to be understood or not.
At the moment it is in the hands of the DM to decide if its understood or not. This could easily lead to DM abuse. There is no system to prevent it.

DM: "You hear muffled voices through the wall, their harsh voices raised in anger."
PC: "I put my ear to the wall and listen. What are they saying."
DM: "Uh.... make me a listen check."
PC: [rolls a few dice] "29. Oh wait, 31 with that bonus. And you said their voices were raised."
DM: "Well... you makew out their voices but you can't understand them, they're speaking elven."
PC: "But I have two ranks in elven!:
Dm: "Oh... well, you needed three."

Rules aren't made for good DMs, they're made for the bad ones.

These rules also suggest all languages are the same complexity. I'd imagine draconic and elven are far more complicated than orc or goblin. And English is a hard language to learn opposed to Spanish or French.

I had posted yesterday, but apparently the post got lost, so here it goes again (or rather, along the same lines).

First, what languages you find easy or difficult depend on your backround. I learnt Spanish and Italian without ever going to school on it merely watching TV and reading books and magazines, because I knew Portuguese and French already. But for other people, these languages, especially in isolation, may be really difficult. For someone used to English, for example, the verbal system of these languages is huge and no doubt complicated.

On the other hand, I bet I could learn Dutch if I knew German (with very bare notions of German I sometimes pick a line of Dutch text), but German is difficult for me.

On the other hand, English has always been easy. Must be all that watered down grammar and easy verbs.

Now, as for mechanics. I disagree with your example above, Jester. A listen check and a language-proficiency check are two wholly different things. Good, you roll a 31 to actually hear words, but now you have to understand them. So, you need a new roll in language proficiency. You can add +2 as sinergy bonus because you understood the sounds very clearly, but if you don't know the language it won't help.

Now, the points range for speaking languages should not be as demanding as that for riding a horse, for example, probably. We don't want to spend too many skill points in languages (I still think it should be a wholly different mechanics) so let's say that an average DC is 5.
With DC 5 you can understand everyday speech or, depending on yur view, the standard speech taught in schools (I really don't understand English crawling with slang or even spoken in popular accents that all sound like Scottish to me). Then, if you're hearing a very domain-specific text, make it a DC 8; a literary text, perhaps a DC 10. And if you're being insulted, make it a DC 2. We usually get that pretty easily.

Make it harder to write, for example, add +2 or +3 to the DC. As for how difficult it is to read compared to hearing, I guess it must depend on your education, but they must be comparable, so I'd leave the same DCs.

And there's, that explains why your character didn't understand what the elves said... or roll, and perhaps he did. I find it's a lot fairer.

Alex

[doctor-evil]

There's one other problem with this. Who decides when a character 'fails' a speak languages check?

For Jester's example above, I would say use a listen or deceipher script roll when there are difficulties in hearing or reading a language and then guage how well characters understand complex words by their ranks in language. I wouldn't use rolls for understanding languages as such.

You might be able to hear peasants chatter about turnips or two wizards talk about metaphysical properties of mists equally well through a door, but if you can only understand enough of the language to order a couple of beers in a bar, the PCs understanding of the latter will be limited.

Incidentally, if any of you in the US watched 'Deadwood' on HBO there are some great scenes with Al Swearegen 'talking' to Mr Wu and understanding him (he must have a high INT) even though Mr Wu can only say 'Swigin', 'San Fransisco' and a profanity in English.

BTW - failing a deceipher script roll. or lack of full understanding of a language in Ravenloft could lead to great plot twists and adventure hooks, just think of all the episodes in Buffy or Angel when they mistranslated prophecys and opposed the wrong bad guy, or summond a creature instead of repelling it etc etc.

[Stygian Inquirer]

Another problem with this system is that it adds a bunch more dice-rolling. I know that in my group, my players get so caught up in dice-rolling that it slows things down and it doesn't have the feel it should so I have made alternatives for it. For any other groups who do not like large amounts of dice-rolling and not enough plot, they may not like this language system.

And for those of you out there who say "How can you eschew lots of dice-rolling? It is in the PHB and DMG!" I say, Contained therein are not really rules, they are more like... guidelines.