Thoughts on Common, and the Elimination Thereof

[Morgarion]

I am starting this thread because I want to hear the thoughts of players and DMs on the role of the Common human tongue in your games. I am working on a setting right now and I would like to scrap Common in favor of giving each human culture or ethnic group or whatever its own language, with some languages that are generally understood across regions where the group/state they 'belong' to is politically dominant (a la Russian in the CIS). Also, I think Elven will also be a more globally useful lingua franca.

Now, I recall running a game in the past where I introduced a character who spoke a language none of the PCs recognized. I think it was Sylvan, but one of the players made an erroneous leap and started groaning about local/regional human languages and how he didn't want to play a game without Common. The other players agreed. This complaint was moot at that particular point, but I had actually been interested in doing this. I'd even worked out a system for the difficulty of interpreting and understanding languages based on degree of genetic relationship, but that's tangential.

So, as I mentioned earlier, I'm curious on hearing some general thoughts on this idea. Do you appreciate the verisimilitude it can introduce? Do you find it a hindrance to enjoying the game? Ever seen it done really poorly? How about really well?

What do you think of the additional work it entails, such as accounting for ancient migration patterns in order to explain present distributions of speech communities?

In the interest of full disclosure, I would like to let you all know that I have a degree in linguistics and one of my personal passions is historical linguistics (particularly as it regards the Indo-European family), so I will do my best to avoid taking an arrogant or elitist tone. Even when you're so absolutely dead-wrong. :smallwink:

[Lord Raziere]

almost never comes up. at all. why would it? unless you are dead set on making it a plot point for some reason, I don't see why eliminating common and putting in "realistic" languages would help matters, when if your going to want them to do something anyways, you might as well make them understandable anyways, its not worth going to the trouble, unless your intention is to specifically make it so that the PC's either don't understand or only half understand people so that they either can't figure out what to do, or understand things wrong and therefore do the wrong thing.

I mean you can do this, but to me the only reason to do this is to add either a barrier to understanding whats going on or to make the PC's do something they normally would not if they actually understood what the NPC's said.

[zabbarot]

Morgarion, I believe we have a setting you might be interested in. Crossroads (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269334) is an alt-history 1750's America. Lots of language issues involved here and we're actually working on making sense of them over here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=297629). We're using the Pathfinder Linguistics skill as a base but there is definitely work to be done if you're interested in helping out.

[Tzi]

I personally never use "Common," as a universal language.

The main issue though is as a DM it creates a bit more bookwork for your worlds and one more thing to keep track of. Or for example how commonly spoken is a specific language in a region. What role does differing languages play in game. For example I had players on a stealth mission to help an forward army take a keep. However next to none of the players spoke the languages of the people holding the keep so they had no way of knowing precisely what they were talking about. Unless they blew a whistle or did something obvious, the players had no way of knowing if they had been spotted.

Differing languages can be fun, but you have to also think hard about the role of say magical languages. And non-Human languages. Do all Elves speak one absolute Elvish? Desert Elves? Sun Elves? ect ect ect? Do all Dwarves speak the same language? Is Draconic a real language? What is the language of spells? Could one carry out a conversation in Sylvan like ordering a pizza? Commanding an army?

In my newest setting most of the races at least have somewhat of a common language. Like the Tyr, being descended of humans and elves (Basically Half Elf the race) have Elvish as a sort of Latin. An ancient base language for which Tyr languages have relations with but are mixed with their human ancestral languages. So the relation is like that of Romanian, Spanish, Italian, French and Latin.

[Alexkubel]

I avoid use of common for one reason, it stops the players being very capable of getting the picture of the political climate quickly, keeping the campaign on track. I split the language in 2, High and Common, this means that only people who are rich or of high birth can control politics therefore meaning it is hard for commoners to seize power, and then I go further, high is very much the same across the world but common changes from region to region. usually based on major transport obstacles (e.g. mountains, deserts, seas, nuclear fallout) this means that for most of a campaign players will be knowing what people are saying unless they go on an epic adventure, the more modern the times the more realistic it is to use common as an language as transport barriers that halt trade become lesser so the people speak the same language more.

[Thunderfist12]

My Ragnos setting uses regional languages. There's a link in my signature.

Use only a few regional languages, and drop most of the racial languages if you want realistic linguistics.

[Eldan]

Common can make sense in some settings. In our world, Common Greek (notice the name) was spoken in half the world for a good thousand years at least.

It can work. What I'd probably do is create a kind of trade pidgin that is at least recognized in the entire setting. Because without one, gaming just becomes quite a bit tedious.

[Thunderfist12]

True: even Ragnos uses two such languages, and I had the intention of eliminating Common (I used Trader's Tongue and Trappertalk, the latter one being more common in the North). Players don't automatically have either, but they are worth taking if you travel out of the home regions.

[lsfreak]

My current setting is small, compared to what many settings seem to be: Korea, Britain, Greece, or Italy-sized. As such, I'm dealing with an area where a "common" is much more likely than a setting that spans a continent, or a whole world. It is made up of a patchwork of different clans, primarily from one of two distinct cultures from two distinct waves of settlement; their two languages function as "common." People who are geographically immobile, such as farmers, may know only the local language, but most people with mobility know enough of both of these to function wherever they are (skilled laborers, merchants, soldiers). Those who speak minor languages - dialects that were isolated early, relict populations, new colonies from elsewhere - are likely to speak only the language with which they have the closest contact, and in rare cases even that may be extremely fragmented.

As a result, while the language differences may come up, it's primarily a background issue, like in a more typical setting going to an ogre or gnome village and finding yourself too big or too small to be comfortable at a table, or noting the differences in architecture between regions. When it does cause problems, it's likely to be a fairly central point rather than a large, annoying side issue. If the players ever leave the region, they'll start having problems, but even then it's nothing three or four months of time-skipped immersion wouldn't remedy.

EDIT: Basically, my thoughts on language is that it should be present, but backgrounded. It adds depth to the world, but unless you have a setting specifically about exploring "new" lands, including it in the typical murder people, take their stuff campaign just ends up bothersome. Assassin's Creed 2/Brotherhood/Revelations, for example, uses language to add depth but avoids having it be a hindrance.

[Alexkubel]

it's always worth while having one language that is near universal but remember common sense isn't all that common, thats why I call it high, it is spoken by aristocrats, and therefor spoken by very few, I use regional languages but difficulty of understanding is based on regularity of contact between the areas.

if you have a massive ocean surrounding a continent then the peopl there will speak a vastly different language to lands on the other continent that are separated by a major river.

[Tzi]

it's always worth while having one language that is near universal but remember common sense isn't all that common, thats why I call it high, it is spoken by aristocrats, and therefor spoken by very few, I use regional languages but difficulty of understanding is based on regularity of contact between the areas.

if you have a massive ocean surrounding a continent then the peopl there will speak a vastly different language to lands on the other continent that are separated by a major river.

I think I've done something similar.

Well for one race (The most prevalent one) they all have separate languages based on regional divergences but all the languages have a common effectively dead root language.

It is akin to say how a French person and a Romanian person might not mutually understand each other but if both speak Latin (The root language) they could talk to one another.

So in my setting there's a mostly dead language (It has little day to day use) but can be used for international diplomacy. Government leaders, educated folks, and upper crust types might know it. But most don't know it beyond a few words.

[Yora]

My setting doesn't have a common language. Instead, all characters start with the language of their culture and if they live in the lands of another culture, they know the "local common tongue" as well.
When chosing additional languages, the players get information which languages are the most common ones in large parts of the world that have the best chance to be understood by people within that region.