Languages in the D&D Multiverses

[druid zook]

In the evolution of the Material Planes in D&D 3.x, there are countless worlds in an infinite material plane, as well as other alternate material planes reached by way of the Plane of Shadow. The Monster Manual shows many extraplanar creatures that speak"Common". In Faerun and Greyhawk, there are specific origins for the Common spoken in those locations. One wouldn't expect a native of Waterdeep to be able to converse in common in the Fee City of Greyhawk.

Why would outsiders learn an obscure language from a small area of a single world?
Why do dragons, elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Orcs, and all other creatures with racial languages not have dialects?

Has anyone here made house rules about this topic? Anyone want to share their thoughts?

[flappeercraft]

In the evolution of the Material Planes in D&D 3.x, there are countless worlds in an infinite material plane, as well as other alternate material planes reached by way of the Plane of Shadow. The Monster Manual shows many extraplanar creatures that speak"Common". In Faerun and Greyhawk, there are specific origins for the Common spoken in those locations. One wouldn't expect a native of Waterdeep to be able to converse in common in the Fee City of Greyhawk.

Why would outsiders learn an obscure language from a small area of a single world?
Why do dragons, elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Orcs, and all other creatures with racial languages not have dialects?

Has anyone here made house rules about this topic? Anyone want to share their thoughts?

To begin with, its on the name of the language. Its THE Common language and it also comes partly from depending on each creature. Creatures such as Devils need it as their job is to Corrupt mortals. Then come summons so they might've learned it as part of being summon/planar bound so many times which explains most Outsiders and elementals and it just goes on from there for Outsiders. Then a native of Waterdeep could perfectly speak in common in the City of Greyhawk, its called common for a reason, its the universal language of humanoids and other species. Its like English in the US and in England, its basically the same language but there will of course be some variations such as Color and Colour or Cookie and Biscuits but it is still understandable for either side. This also explains the learning of common and being adopted by gnomes, dwarves, eves, goblins and orcs since they deal with humans a lot as noticeable by the huge human population and Half elves/orcs existing. In addition dragons are mythical creatures known to be wise, intelligent and mighty, and they know a large amount of things which includes common as many creatures speak it and is known they need to know it because of dealing wityh adventurers, using their wealth, using their shapeshifting forms as humanoids and also partially explains the Half-Dragon breeds existence which is most common among humanoids along with that of Sorcerers which part of the fluff is that they have draconic blood.

[NOhara24]

Has anyone here made house rules about this topic? Anyone want to share their thoughts?

No, because you'll find that when your PCs can't understand something they're reading or hearing it's kind of a showstopper.

IE:

"Amongst the debris on the dusty and messy desk, you find an unsealed letter. Upon opening the envelope, you find that it is in a language you don't understand."

"...oh." *Player puts the letter in their backpack to never be seen again.*

"This creature shouts and screeches at you, it is visibly agitated but you don't understand what it's saying."

"...oh." *Player ignores the creature and finds someone who speaks the same language as themselves."

Unless I am looking to intentionally confound or put up roadblocks in front of my players, everything is in common. Most of the time, they're too busy tripping over themselves for me to have to step in.

[Duke of Urrel]

In the evolution of the Material Planes in D&D 3.x, there are countless worlds in an infinite material plane, as well as other alternate material planes reached by way of the Plane of Shadow. The Monster Manual shows many extraplanar creatures that speak"Common". In Faerun and Greyhawk, there are specific origins for the Common spoken in those locations. One wouldn't expect a native of Waterdeep to be able to converse in common in the Free City of Greyhawk.

Why would outsiders learn an obscure language from a small area of a single world?
Why do dragons, elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Orcs, and all other creatures with racial languages not have dialects?

Has anyone here made house rules about this topic? Anyone want to share their thoughts?

I feel your pain, Druid Zook.

I agree with Flappeercraft that the various fiends and celestials of the Outer Planes should all want to learn the language that is the most widespread on the Material Plane, because this is the way to persuade the most mortals to join their side in the battle for dominion over the multiverse.

But this doesn't solve all the practical problems with the Common Tongue. When the greatest human empire on the main planet of the Material Plane falls and is replaced by another, presumably the Common Tongue must change, and when this happens, the propagandizers of the Outer Planes must learn a new language to recruit mortals. For example, in the World of Greyhawk, I imagine that the Common Tongue was preceded in history by Old Oeridian, which was preceded by Ancient Baklunish, which was preceded by Ancient Suloise, which was preceded by Ancient Olman (of which Flan was considered to be dialect at the time). Before that, the lingua franca of the multiverse wasn't human at all; it was Draconic.

I once designed some adventures to take place in the distant past of the World of Greyhawk, at a time when the Common Tongue did not yet exist. I decided that before there was a Common Tongue, Old Oeridian was the lingua franca in my adventure setting. This meant that all creatures that would "automatically" speak Common in a modern Greyhawk adventure would automatically speak Old Oeridian in my ancient Greyhawk adventure. I also allowed all my players magically to speak Old Oeridian just as if it were the Common Tongue. This plan worked for its intended purpose. Still, it would have been odd to assume that the Common Tongue anywhere outside the immediate region of my ancient adventures was Old Oeridian. (In the east, it would have to have been Flan; in the immediate south, Ancient Suloise; in the farther south and southeast, Ancient Olman or Touvian; and in the far west, Ancient Baklunish.) Fortunately, my adventures didn't move my players very far in any direction, and none of my players asked any embarrassing questions. I did have my players move into a Flan-speaking region once, and this was intentional, but I warned my players before starting play that humans in different places would speak different languages.

The only general piece of advice I have is this. If you envision a world in which there is time travel, let your players benefit from a TARDIS effect, whereby their Common Tongue instantaneously becomes the Common Tongue of the world in which they arrive. Similarly, if your players ever magically travel from one multiverse to another, for example from Oerth to Toril or vice versa, let their Common Tongue instantaneously become the Common Tongue of the world in which they arrive. The various adjustments that your players will have to make in the new multiverse will be just hard enough to be fun. In contrast, having to learn a whole new Common Tongue doesn't sound like much fun.

Come to think of it, a generalized TARDIS effect might solve a lot of problems. You could make it a house rule that all creatures that "automatically" speak the Common Tongue speak it as an extraordinary ability, even if it is not their native language and they never had any opportunity to learn it. You could even disconnect this Common Tongue from all human history and make it trans-historical and trans-planar, universal and unchanging. (In short, assume that the Common Tongue works exactly as English works in English-language movies and TV shows.) This might actually make more sense.

[WhatThePhysics]

In the evolution of the Material Planes in D&D 3.x, there are countless worlds in an infinite material plane, as well as other alternate material planes reached by way of the Plane of Shadow. The Monster Manual shows many extraplanar creatures that speak"Common". In Faerun and Greyhawk, there are specific origins for the Common spoken in those locations. One wouldn't expect a native of Waterdeep to be able to converse in common in the Fee City of Greyhawk.
In my view, Common is like a lingua franca or pidgin, in that it's just a tool for translingual conversation. While many settings have alternative Common tongues, as you noted, some treat it as a tongue that transcends nations and continents. For the sake of argument, though, I'll assume there are variants.


Why would outsiders learn an obscure language from a small area of a single world?
To entice more souls to follow their philosophy, so they join their ranks in the afterlife. For all we know, only a fraction of the outsiders one encounters beyond the Material Planes speak a specific form of Common, and entire subsets may specialize their knowledge for a given world.


Why do dragons, elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Orcs, and all other creatures with racial languages not have dialects?
Languages used by long lived entities may evolve more slowly, and it's not useful for their cultures to diversify beyond the point of stability. Short lived entities probably have dialects, or maybe their numbers are smaller, isolated, or heavily influenced by long lived entities.


Has anyone here made house rules about this topic? Anyone want to share their thoughts?
I haven't made any house rules. In my setting, the entire world is basically a supercontinent, so there aren't many geographical barriers to produce dialects. Also, there are a lot of different creature types, and their equivalents of tribalist exclusivism tend to discourage them from defying cultural norms.

[Bronk]

Common isn't just a local language, it's a language spread across the planes, across time, spoken by gods and itinerant spelljammers alike...

[Aquilifer]

In terms of home-brewing, I've always been in favor of widening the number of socio-cultural cleavages in the relevant society. Especially to tone down the potential of 'race decides everything' that can crop up. For instance, in the campaign I'm currently running, there are hypothetically six different widely-used languages spread across the continent (although only three are regularly encountered by the party so far). Four of those are human-polity centered languages, but are also used by other races depending on geography and history. So, for example, given the 'fallen' nature of the scattered dwarven societies in the world, most use one of the human languages that it is closest to, with Elder Dwarvish being a sort of lost, religious language in most holds. Whereas for elves, there is both a special language for wood-elves and a utterly different one for high elves. The 'common' of the world is regional, not global, in scope.

As the adventurers have expanded their contacts to extra-planar beings and ventured farther-afield, language barriers have become more relevant, as such beings have no reason to know so many different languages. This has made the more knowledge oriented characters require a little more work when understanding works from different/old/far-flung civilizations. It adds a cultural flavor to the game, in my view, although I make a point of not over-stressing it or having it truly hinder plot movement.

[WhatThePhysics]

After perusing the System Reference Document, I found two interesting bits of info:

From the Tongues spell:

This spell grants the creature touched the ability to speak and understand the language of any intelligent creature, whether it is a racial tongue or a regional dialect.
From the Athach entry:

Athachs speak a crude dialect of Giant.
So, it seems the rules support the idea of dialects.

[Venger]

No, because you'll find that when your PCs can't understand something they're reading or hearing it's kind of a showstopper.

IE:

"Amongst the debris on the dusty and messy desk, you find an unsealed letter. Upon opening the envelope, you find that it is in a language you don't understand."

"...oh." *Player puts the letter in their backpack to never be seen again.*

"This creature shouts and screeches at you, it is visibly agitated but you don't understand what it's saying."

"...oh." *Player ignores the creature and finds someone who speaks the same language as themselves."

Unless I am looking to intentionally confound or put up roadblocks in front of my players, everything is in common. Most of the time, they're too busy tripping over themselves for me to have to step in.

Very good insights all, I definitely agree you should keep this in mind.

If it eases your mind at all, you could say what we know as "common" is a kind of constructed language, like lojban or esperanto that was created by a bunch of different cultures so they could talk to each other. since it's D&D, maybe someone cast an epic spell or similar, or a deity related to knowledge, community, or unity helped make it so.

[inuyasha]

If you want an alternative to Common, I'd look at Ravenloft, where each Domain (I.E. "country") has its own "Common."

[Venger]

If you want an alternative to Common, I'd look at Ravenloft, where each Domain (I.E. "country") has its own "Common."

like NOhara24 said, this just creates busy work for PCs, which players will likely ignore. I think OP wanted more of a possible explanation for an origin of common or what it is rather than to do away with it.

[Ashtagon]

In the evolution of the Material Planes in D&D 3.x, there are countless worlds in an infinite material plane, as well as other alternate material planes reached by way of the Plane of Shadow. The Monster Manual shows many extraplanar creatures that speak"Common". In Faerun and Greyhawk, there are specific origins for the Common spoken in those locations. One wouldn't expect a native of Waterdeep to be able to converse in common in the Fee City of Greyhawk.

Why would outsiders learn an obscure language from a small area of a single world?
Why do dragons, elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Orcs, and all other creatures with racial languages not have dialects?

Has anyone here made house rules about this topic? Anyone want to share their thoughts?

My take on it is that outsiders don't so much "learn" the language as have the natural ability to speak intelligibly to anyone nearby who has a language.

An overgod did it.

[BWR]

IMG there are more languages than you can shake a stick at. None of this 'infinitely large, amazingly old plane with an almost infinitely large variation of intelligent life and we all speak the same damn language'.
There is a reason you have spells like Comprehend Languages, Tongues and Share Language. If people want to travel outside their home country, they end up spending a ton of points on Linguistics (since we play PF), getting magic items with languages implanted, and using those spells.
I do however run with the idea of language families, and people who know one language may make a Linguistics check to see if they understand a related language without actually knowing it.

My players seem to enjoy this.

[ShurikVch]

There is a nearly complete list of D&D Languages (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Languages); the only missing parts are Truespeak and some too obscure racial languages - such as Worg or Ethergaunt

[druid zook]

You people are all so great! I appreciate and applaud the deep thinking everyone contributed to this thread.

In past campaigns, I replaced Common with"Interplanar Tradespeak" for all outsiders or elementals.

I guess it all depends on how you want to run the campaign.

Thank you, everyone, for your insight.

[Telok]

The rules are pretty dull.


Intelligence (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/intro.htm)

A creature can speak all the languages mentioned in its description, plus one additional language per point of Intelligence bonus. Any creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher understands at least one language (Common, unless noted otherwise).

99% of the monsters speak common.

[Venger]

The rules are pretty dull.



99% of the monsters speak common.

yeah. for the 1% that don't, if you can't just use tongues or comprehend languages, telepathy explicitly works on any creature with a language without you being required to share it (presumably you get the idea before it's shaped into language) easily obtainable by mindbender or the shedu crown

[Dragolord]

Outsiders and dragons and the like tend to be either telepathic or old enough to have spent decades or centuries learning every conceivable dialect of every known language. Those that aren't have the caster levels or gold for a Permanencied Tongues spell.