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Old 10-29-2017, 02:38 PM   #21
sir_pudding
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Default Re: languages of Ytarria

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
It takes only one Black Swan Event
Banestorm/Powers(the comic book) crossover? Where did that come from?
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Old 10-29-2017, 03:14 PM   #22
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Default Re: languages of Ytarria

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Banestorm/Powers(the comic book) crossover? Where did that come from?
Black Swan events are a concept that is quite widely used in discussions of why it's hard to predict the future. I'd run across them in several contexts without ever having heard of that comic book, and it's clearly what Vicky was talking about.
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Old 10-29-2017, 03:17 PM   #23
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Default Re: languages of Ytarria

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Black Swan events are a concept that is quite widely used in discussions of why it's hard to predict the future. I'd run across them in several contexts without ever having heard of that comic book, and it's clearly what Vicky was talking about.
Oh, I didn't realize it was a real thing. Nevermind.
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Old 10-29-2017, 06:56 PM   #24
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Default Re: languages of Ytarria

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
If the timeline's English is the same as 20th/21st century English, he should have it at Broken from his default from Anglish, yes. If the timeline's English is closer to the point of divergence (roughly 1000 AD, IIRC), then the default might be better, though probably not much better.



Actually, Language Talent does help with this. After 200 hours, everyone without Language Talent will be speaking brokenly, struggling to get their meaning across, while the character with Language Talent will be far more fluent - perhaps using odd idioms or occasionally mistaking some meanings, but still much better than the people without. Of course, the training rules are rather abrupt, going from essentially "you can't speak the language at all" at 199 hours to "you're fluent" at 200. As a GM, I'd probably allow a character with Language Talent to function at Broken after 100 hours of study, to smooth out that transition a bit.



I'd allow a Linguistics roll to improve your learning speed. Call it 5% for every point of success, up to 50% reduction on a critical.



Learning a language in a week or two is pretty cinematic. I don't think many people can achieve that. That said, if you implement my suggestions above, you could get kind of close. If you have Language Talent and have them get Broken comprehension at 100 hours, you could spend 8 hours a day being taught a language by a local teacher, and just being in a foreign culture counts as another 4 hours a day (see "Cultural Familiarity and Languages" under "Learnable Advantages", p. B294). So, that's 12 hours a day, meaning it would take about 9 days of that to get to Broken comprehension. If you could make a Linguistics roll and get a margin of success of 5, you could chip another 25% off that, taking it down to only 6-and-a-bit days.

Faster or better than that, and you'll probably want something outright cinematic or supernatural. Modular Abilities is a good one for this, or you could buy the Omnilingual trait presented in GURPS Supers, which is an Unusual Background that means you just happen to be fluent in every common or reasonably well-documented language in the campaign setting you come across.
It's a very cinematical campaign so i would accept a suggestion on this
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Old 11-02-2017, 04:12 AM   #25
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Default Re: languages of Ytarria

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It's a very cinematical campaign so i would accept a suggestion on this
I think that "you can learn languages almost but not quite instantly" is essentially Omnilingual with a limitation. You don't necessarily know every language the first time you encounter it, but if one becomes relevant you will know it before the next adventure without needing to spend additional character points.

I personally call this one Limited List -20% - you have to keep a list of the languages you know via Omnilingual, and specify how you add new ones to that list - but you can pick anything that is slower than one encounter. That was "connect to the net and take a few minutes to download a new language package" for what I originally meant it for, but "study for a day or two" is much the same thing really.
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Old 07-18-2018, 08:25 PM   #26
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Default Re: languages of Ytarria

As an extreme on language learning speed I watched a documentary that covered 9 talented linguists given a challenge: "learn as much Basque as possible in 24 hrs.". The language was chosen as both not similar to anything else and one that none of them knew.

Working together, they managed to get to basic conversational level in that 24 hrs. They were rated by a native Basque speaker who was a teacher.

A good example of the speed-learning rules in action. :P
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