Café de Nuit

I'm finally going to DM my Ravenloft game. I haven't decided yet how strict to be with the language rules. I like the fact that the realms of dread have no "common" tongue. (As a linguist, I've always felt that the universal pre-Babel common language was kind of absurd.) However, I'm a little worried that if I play too strictly with languages players will get frustrated. Admittedly, this could lead to some interesting role-playing situations (I have a player who really likes to role-play), but at the same time it could really bog down the game when players have to worry about finding interpreters everytime they travel abroad. What should I do about the language problems? How could I incorporate it into the game (leading to some nasty situations for the PCs:twisted:) but not bog down the game in details?

For now, my players are from Barovia and only went out to reach Invidia.

Language wasn't an interesting adventure plot driver so far, so I ignored it for the moment.

When language barrier will play an important role, it will. Not before.

That's the great part of being DM: you change the canon parts you do not need.

Joël

I agree. I never bother players with language barriers - that kind of thing slows down the game and detracts from the fun.

I've used langage barriers a lot but I'm still not too strict. Most of the times, an npc who speaks the PC's langage arrives. Or I let players have empty langage slots so they can pick up new useful languages during their travels.

There was a Dragon article two or three years back that contained a cool house rule for attempting to understand and use a new language almost immediately. To my horror, I never could find it again. It probably used a Charisma-based skill in a new way, but I never could figure out a substitute to emulate its deft solution. If it could be located (and posted), the rule should cover the times when you didn't specifically want to alienate the players, but also didn't want to introduce an interpreter.

I say that, if your players try to use their language skills inappropriately, or display improper grammar skills, strike their hands with a ruler.

Hello Shadow,
I am rather strict with languages, last night I had a session in which this first came up.

The players started out in Mordent and they all spoke Mordentish, with which they were able to understand the languages of Dementlieu, Richemulot and Borca, so at first they traveled there and they had no problems.

In last nights session, however, they entered Barovia for the first time. They had one PC among them who could speak both Barovian and the Gundarak language, but that PC left them for a bit, so they had a lot of trouble finding an inn and booking a few rooms and meals. One of the PC's had the moderns languages proficiency, so I made him roll for that for every bit of conversation they had. it was great fun. Every time he missed his check, he said something wrong or understood it wrong.

It went very well.

Jennifer

Jennifer wrote:In last nights session, however, they entered Barovia for the first time. They had one PC among them who could speak both Barovian and the Gundarak language, but that PC left them for a bit, so they had a lot of trouble finding an inn and booking a few rooms and meals. One of the PC's had the moderns languages proficiency, so I made him roll for that for every bit of conversation they had. it was great fun. Every time he missed his check, he said something wrong or understood it wrong.

Exactly - when it suits the mood of the adventure, please do it!

When you enter a new domain and language issue will not be fun, skip it.

(IMHO)

Joël

eye adore lanugage barriers. nothing make my players feal more alienated then when they cannot figure out where they are and cant even ask if danger walks the streets and lonely moors at night and if so were to get a room for the evening.

vipera aspis wrote:eye adore lanugage barriers. nothing make my players feal more alienated then when they cannot figure out where they are and cant even ask if danger walks the streets and lonely moors at night and if so were to get a room for the evening.

Oh, yes yes and yes! We don't even have a language which can be spoken by all 5 PCs at the same time!
It makes all the game more exotic, more xenophobic. And is so lovely to pronounce vaasi, falkovnian etc. And the loveliest of all: awarding to the players hand-written letters in french! (The problem: 4 of the 5 PCs speak high mordentish/montaigne but none of the players does!)

One fun way to shamelessly exploit the language-barrier, the better to foster player/PC paranoia, is to have no one in a domain speak the same languages as the PCs except someone they're suspicious of. If the local baron and his agents are the only ones the PCs can communicate with, yet the behavior of the peasantry hints that these men aren't to be trusted, the players will get the screaming heebie-jeebies from worry that they're being deliberately misled and manipulated ... even if the baron is actually telling the truth!

OTOH, throwing a ringer into the storyline -- like an NPC who actually can understand the PCs, but pretends not to; think of Sun on "Lost" -- is great for intrigue, and can have great shock-value as well.

Oh, yes, I've done this once with a Cyricist having cast tongues. It caused so much mayhem!

i like language barriers, but i've altered them somewhat:

Lamordia, Falkovnian, Darkonese = Old Oerth
Mordent, Dementlieu, Richemulot = Common
Borca, Barovia, Markovia, G'Henna = Balok
Kartakkas, Hazlan, Nova Vassa, Tepest, Valachan, Shadowlands = Vaasi
Shadow Rift, Sithicus = Sylvan

The easiest way to deal with the language barriers is have all the PCs share the same language of their home domain (say Balok for argument's sake) then make sure the bonus languages are from across the Core. One with Mordentish, one with Darkon, one with Vassi, etc.
The smartest person in the group (ie mage) should be easily fluent in 2-4 languages.

That way wherever you go one person can understand and the rest of the group has to go through them. If they're traveling just provide a convenient NPC guide or friend that can translate. But of course there is no way they know if he's being honest or not which adds some nice paranoia.

David of the Frat wrote:The easiest way to deal with the language barriers is have all the PCs share the same language of their home domain (say Balok for argument's sake)

It is funny you should say that David. In my campaign, the original four characters all came from Barovia or spoke Balok. Three of the characters have since died and been replaced. One was an outlander, who's common tongue just happened to be Balok, One came from Borca and therefore spoke Balok and the third came from Paridon but studied Balok in university.

I love the language barriers (as I am a linguist and have aspirations of becoming a translator, actually)! I use them to the utmost annoyance of my players because they are monolinguistic cretins for the most part. It was actually the players in this case that wanted to all speak a common tongue, in this case, Balok. This was actually fuelled by another player who had been in a modern campaign I had run and had done some very stupid things.

In the modern DnD campaign, I told my players that we would be starting in [insert random city in North America here], and therefore one of the players decided to try and pull a fast one on me and chose that his only language be German. Therefore he could not communicate meaningfully with anyone and he did this deliberately because I did not know any German at the time. Because of this situation, I took a German language kit out from my local library and learned a very little bit of German. Then whenever we had a session I would speak to that player only in German and he only speaks English. After a while he gave up and learned English so that he could communicate effectively. Due to his fear of ever doing that again, he has always promoted that the party speak a common tongue.