Language, do you speak it?

[shadow_archmagi]

I'm curious

Between "comprehend languages" "tongues" and "everyone ever knows common by default"

How many of you actually put any effort whatsoever into using languages in your world?

[Scarlet Tropix]

I try, although my party goes out of their way to have different languages on each character.

[Optimystik]

This is one of the cooler things about CDnD. I can type /e before everything my character says, for instance, and characters that know elvish will see what I type, while my speech is masked from everyone else a la WoW.

"Sin'u ama'nore."

So to answer your question, no effort at all.

[Xefas]

Well, generally, when running an adventure, there are circumstances where the game will be enhanced by the players not knowing a piece of spoken or written information, and circumstances when it would not enhance the game.

If it's the former, I just pick a language none of them know to have that information conveyed in. If it's the latter, I pick one that they know.

Language isn't a terribly interesting or useful mechanic in the game, I feel.

The exception being things like...a dwarven tomb. Everything is going to be in dwarven, whether a player knows dwarven or not. And yet, if its important to the progression of the players' enjoyment of the game for them to know what's written there, I will supply some means for them to figure it out, whether it be a partially translated tablet left by adventurers long ago, or a bard in town who's willing to be hired.

[Pika...]

I do quite a bit.

In fact, with humanity near extinction it has become a big thing. Payers, and no one, get common automatically, and eventually as the years in-game pass in my homebrewed setting it will not be available as a bonus language.

First time players play their PCs together, and for a few sessions until they work things out, they sometimes can't all communicate with each.

Had a Hill Dwarf in a party with a High Elf who was his traveling companion wh took Dwarven (the players were brothers), and the other player was a Wood Elf who did not know any language the Dwarf did. It lead to much roleplaying and humor, as the High Elf (the oldest brother by chance) had to literally translate back and forth between the other two players by being the inbetween out-of-character. It was funny for all, though that was the only session I got before schedule changes hit again...


You can see my houserules for the languages entry to see how I worked it:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123449

[Volkov]

In greyhawk common is like english in our world, it's a business language and is thus very widespread.

[DragoonWraith]

The first campaign I joined, my Sorcerer's backstory made a big deal about how he had gone out of his way to learn Undercommon, even though Drow and similar were fairly rare in the city he grew up in. Which worked great for his introductions to the party, which included a Drow.

We spoke to each other in Undercommon in front of a bunch of captives, too.

[Volkov]

Plus, not all DM's are Tolkien, we simply don't have the time and/or patience to invent an entire language to speak with all the various rules and pronunciations.

[Crow]

I use them quite often. While most people speak common (business language, as another poster said), my players find written text in all sorts of languages, especially in places that are old/abandoned.

[Zeta Kai]

I'm an incurable conlanger, so I put a lot of effort into my settings' languages. Of course, I also eliminated comprehend languages & tongues, & I rarely have a Common tongue, as I often eschew a lingua franca for a more interesting linguistic system.

[ericgrau]

We run into all kinds of other languages as we adventure, so we gotta understand them somehow. Heck, could just be a random comment from an NPC. You wanna cast comp languages and touch the NPC for that? So my bard took all of them. Then I got mildly annoyed when I found out about homebrew languages. So I've been taking those as I find out about them and level.

[Fhaolan]

I tend to use RL languages, badly translated, as substitutes for non-common languages. In many cases randomly picked, rather than for any real reason. French for elvish, mainly because elvish shows up a lot and I know French well enough to mangle it. Gaelic for Orcish, for similar reasons. Draconic is Manderan Chinese, very, very badly translated using a babelfish site, etc.

One of my players is a professional translator. Luckily she usually plays a bard-type *with* all these languages, so she can usually puzzle out my horrible grammar and syntax.

[Thajocoth]

One group I played with uses it for understanding NPCs who don't speak common. The other uses it more regularly.

[AslanCross]

If the PCs know the language, I just say it directly in English so I won't have to translate, although I make it clear that the speaker is using another language. If the PCs don't know it, I try to make up the lines that are being spoken. There's more of an effect on the players when they really don't know what's being said at all.

[thubby]

i do make some effort to make language matter. elves have no reason to use common in their homeland, and it behooves evil organizations to use uncommon languages, so some do.
if no one understands the language i simply state they don't understand, and if some do and some don't i either use a note or ask the relevent players to step out.

[Thurbane]

We've got a deep dwarf in our party who doesn't understand common - the other dwarf or halfling have to translate.

[Kol Korran]

i use languages, mostly when the characters go off to far different locations or meet mroe exotic creatures.

i am quite fond of what i call, for a better word, "half understood languages", which is basically languages that have something in common with languages the characters posses, but not entirely. this could be languages with a similar source, dialects, or a dead language that someone (usually the wizard), knows somethign about. the characters usually use intelligence check to see how much they can figure out of the language.

a side note: the gargoyles in my campagins are changed, and have religious significance, but they also act as an undirected powerfull divination tool, by scribing all kind of cryptic messages in their rooms on temples and so on. problem is- the gargoyles being what they are in my campaigns, they write their script in many languages at once. picking out the divination's result is a bit tricky, and knowing more languages serves well (the priests of the temples usually go far and wide to learn languages for this reason). if you're interested, check my sig and just scroll down.

the idea doesn't suit all players, but some enjoy it.

Kol.

[Myou]

I use it a apropriate - recently we had a narrow brush with giants that would have devolved into combat if the sorcerer didn't speak Giant.

This is one of the cooler things about CDnD. I can type /e before everything my character says, for instance, and characters that know elvish will see what I type, while my speech is masked from everyone else a la WoW.

"Sin'u ama'nore."

So to answer your question, no effort at all.

What's CDnD?

[Kurald Galain]

Between "comprehend languages" "tongues" and "everyone ever knows common by default"

How many of you actually put any effort whatsoever into using languages in your world?

When I want my players to, the first (and only) thing I do is remove "common" as a language. Instead, there's "human" language, which is e.g. the equivalent of English - many throughout the world speak it, but good luck making yourself understood in rural China.

[oxinabox]

As a party we normally try to cover every language.
Has any one else noticed that certain dms faver certain languages?
One of My DM's likes draconic.

I personally like to use Auran, (though that's becuase i like the food the Aurans eat, or more the alchol - this is the smoke collected from burning the finest wiskey).

Oh, the language of the Dabus, writings in the air.
I say it's not valid use of the Comphend written words ritual (4e)
Because it's a language not text, they may have there own textual language as well

[VKO]

I don't use racial languages in my settings because a lot of races live in mixed company.

Goblins etc. might still have their own language, but the "civilized" races (If you can call adventurers civilized) all know languages depending on their country.

There's a country based on honor and chivalry like France with almost kind of a Norse-sounding language, the quintessential trading country who was at one point at war with the next country I'll mention (Their language is based on English with a lot of strange slang words that are borrowed from either rhyming slang or what little I know of cockney lingo), and the war-waging people allied with the old Dwarven kingdoms. The warmongers have a rapid tongue kind of like Arabic but with softer consonants in some cases.

Elves I decided to go kind of Chinese with. They have a dialect that those not born in Old Elven lands usually learn, and then one that the elves born in the old lands learn.

Dwarves have one language but a couple of different dialects that can confuse some people (like southern US English and northern US English). Gnomes share this language.

Halflings adopt the languages of the folks they live near. They usually speak human tongues.

Hobgoblins actually have their own dialect they speak that most goblins don't know, but conversely the goblins have a sign language they developed to aid war veterans and aid ambushes (Drow sign language, but since drow can't be PCs I wanted to keep some part of it).

[random11]

It's no coincidence that in most movies and books, this problem is either ignored (all alien know English) or worked around (like the automatic translations from the TARDIS and the Babel fish).
Telling a story with several languages is very hard, and it get's even harder and more frustrating for RPG games, where the story is dynamic.

The only time I insist on the point, is when certain players choose not to be able to read or even speak the common language so they can take the extra points to other skills.

[Jack_Simth]

I pretty much always take a language or two for working with Summons. Auran, Terran, Aquan, and Ignan go very well with the Summon Elemental reserve Feat (Complete Mage). Celestial, Infernal, and Abyssal are also handy if you're planning on using Summon Monster (although technically most of them speak Common), and for a Druid, Sylvan is a good choice for the same reason.

[ShadowsGrnEyes]

i enjoy using languages. i'm in a game currently where one character doesnt speak a common language with most of the party and my character who speaks many languages (20 int) is the only one he can talk to without rough attempts at sign and gesture. But my character is crazy. . . so most of the party generally has to do things like rough gesture and sign which makes for hillarious rolle playing.

i also love to give people in games i run opportunities to diplomacy their way out of fights that might get a few pc's killed. . . IF they know the obscure language the monster speaks.

"OK who speaks Tuilvilanuue(<--raptoran language)? nobody? ok the 5 flying bird men with lances shout somthing at you which you don't understand, they look pissed. Roll initiative!"

[Saph]

I usually put points into Comprehend Language whenever I've got them spare. I love having a ridiculously long list of obscure languages on my character sheet.

It doesn't come up often, but it's lots of fun when it does.

[Kosjsjach]

There's a neat little item in the Magic Item Compendium on page 118: the pearl of speech. If you place it on your tongue, it's absorbed into your mouth "until you speak the proper command word to release it". It grants you the use of one specific language, and a 1/day command effect.

If one could reverse-engineer the item to just grant the use of a language, it'd make a terrific campaign item. The party's "face" could hoard them, or if you made them so they overwrote one (or all) of the user's existing languages, it could be used by slavers and the like to control their subjects (because they can't get rid of it without speaking the correct command word), not to mention some fun RP.

Instead of reverse-engineering the pearl of speech, you could just have a custom magic item that grants a +2 to Speak Language for a specific language (those with the skill on their class list will just have to suck it up); that'd cost 400gp, which sounds just fine to me.

[Ichneumon]

I once, as a DM, used a language for a NPC that only 1 PC could speak. I wanted the PC to feel a bit special as the player wasn't having much fun as many other factors I were playing against him. I couldn't make it work in such a way as that ALL player's had fun so I am not using languages any more.

[ashmanonar]

For the most part, my campaign has dealt in Common, because my PC's haven't left a broad fertile valley yet (at least geographically; they've already had to visit the Feywild.) It's a mostly-human area, with mostly Common spoken.

If they run into a small enclave of Dwarves I've been brewing up? They'll speak Dwarven, and possibly badly speak Common.

Written languages isn't so bad, because I gave the party wizard the Reading Spectacles (It saves me the trouble of writing gibberish text).

The party has dealt in Elven already (but at least one speaks it.) They've also dealt with a dead Common language that was spoken 1300 years before. Again, Reading Spectacles to the rescue.

So I guess I'm trying to be realistic with languages, without being obnoxious about speaking them. For instance, if they go to a certain area, they'll be able to learn the Norsish tongue that the natives speak with a little effort.

[Thatguyoverther]

I think it's pretty great to have the players interact with a NPC that doesn't speak common.

I usually pass notes tot he player/players that know the language and let them tell the rest of the party what's going on. It's even more fun in a horror setting or with a character that the party thinks might be double crossing them. They have to decide whether or not to take the translation at face value.

[Ravens_cry]

I have only DM'd once, but when I had the characters talk to some orcs, I asked if they were speaking orc or common to the orcs. The orcs would have been much more 'hulk speak' if they had been speaking in common. They still had a deep guttural voice when talking, though.