[Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

... Dungeon Fantasy talks about discovering manuals in dead languages

I think, for DF, that just means you need to cast Gift of Letters (Magic p46).

As a player, I've run into weird alien writings in a space game, but they were the same kind of anti-cryptography that humans have invented for trying to communicate with alien races, and the only problem was the things they left out.

As a GM, in Infinite Cabal, the PC's reaction to a dead language would be to find a world where it hadn't died, and either get a translation, or learn the language themselves.

Years ago, I ran the vast CoC scenario Beyond the Mountains of Madness, where the players got all enterprising, and learned the Elder Things' written language (the original Lovecraft story At the Mountains of Madness claims this is fairly easy, and they had linguists and a cryptographer with them), aided by the Rosetta stone of the periodic table (lifted from Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky).

Unless you have short-cut magic, or something else that makes it easy, cracking an unknown language is going to be a big job, not easily contained within an adventure.

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I think, for DF, that just means you need to cast Gift of Letters (Magic p46).

Unless you have short-cut magic, or something else that makes it easy, cracking an unknown language is going to be a big job, not easily contained within an adventure.

Interesting. I was kinda thinking, just for giggles, how it would go down in GURPS. I imagine it'd be a long job, but I have no sense of scale... Wikipedia gives a time span of 19 years for a language that I'd consider relative alien (modest penalty) but with side by side translations that should probably help a big deal (similar bonus that cancels out the penalty.) It notes that confidence in the ability to translate wasn't high immediately, so it is probably a broken literacy; they believe that they deciphered the phonetics as well, which might give broken speech (or worse, broken speech in a theoretical dialect that doesn't actually exist.) Progress seems to speed up after this first breakthrough and then reaching accented from there didn't seem to be such a tremendous effort.

So, it could either be a very long task (It took 19 years of consistent progress,) a task with very steep penalties that requires taking extra time to make it remotely possible to succeed (It was a collection of Eureka moments on critical successes that lead to random rapid advancements,) or some kind of combination of both.

[Edges]

There was a linguistics master character in a campaign I ran once. He was a professor of linguistics with a skill level that was, I think, around 18.

He primarily used his skill not to identify languages but dialects. After speaking with someone for a few moments, he could tell where they were from not just by country but often where in the country. This was valuable for large counties like the USA. He would also often be able to discern the speaker's general socio-economic background. He was known to use Linguistics as a complimentary skill for Acting and (depending on the topic) Detect Lies. He could often see through the Acting of others with this skill. It helped that he also had Phycology and Anthropology (at around 14 or 15 each I think).

It was pretty impressive how much information the character was able to gather with just these few skills. Since much of the campaign centered around themes of deception and mystery, this character ended up being among the most effective.

[whswhs]

I think it can fairly be said that absent magic or superpowers or the like, if you run into a new language, you can learn it from living speakers, or you can learn it from a bilingual in a language you know, or you can never learn it. An exception might be made for languages that are related to languages you know, where you might guess at meanings; but absent common roots, there's just no way to figure out meanings.

See for example the still undeciphered status of Linear A.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

So, it could either be a very long task (It took 19 years of consistent progress,) a task with very steep penalties that requires taking extra time to make it remotely possible to succeed (It was a collection of Eureka moments on critical successes that lead to random rapid advancements,) or some kind of combination of both.

As a counter example, there are some languages that can't yet be properly translated. Etruscan is well-studied and somewhat understood, but the only remaining text is untranslatable. Or there's the infamous Voynich Manuscript, whose language is still untranslated.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Wait! If I can tell the difference between Swedish, Danish and Norwegian I''m rolling against Linguistics?

Assuming you're not a lot younger than I think you are, you've been exposed to a fair amount of Danish as a child and a teenager, so being able to tell apart Danish from Norwegian or Swedish is unimpressive. However, being able to tell apart Norwegian from Swedish would be Linguistics or something else that costs points.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

Wikipedia gives a time span of 19 years for a language that I'd consider relative alien (modest penalty) but with side by side translations that should probably help a big deal (similar bonus that cancels out the penalty.)

Which language is this example? If a script is structurally very different from any known to the would-be translator, that can slow things down a lot. Ancient Egyptian was still hard after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the recognition of its importance, in part because of the weird organisation of the written language.

So, it could either be a very long task (It took 19 years of consistent progress,) a task with very steep penalties that requires taking extra time to make it remotely possible to succeed (It was a collection of Eureka moments on critical successes that lead to random rapid advancements,) or some kind of combination of bot.

The Long Task rules seem to be for things where you have a fair idea of how long it will take at the start. Building a large structure, like a huge dam or an undersea tunnel, might well take that long.

Something like this might be something like "You need 10 successes at -15, with a roll every week, and an extra success needed to counteract each critical failure." You probably need to take extra time to get effective skill to 3, so that you can roll, and you may want to take more than that prevent your getting too many critical failures on failures by 10.

[Pseudonym]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Something like this might be something like "You need 10 successes at -15, with a roll every week, and an extra success needed to counteract each critical failure." You probably need to take extra time to get effective skill to 3, so that you can roll, and you may want to take more than that prevent your getting too many critical failures on failures by 10.

That is pretty much along the lines of what I was thinking, and to your other question, I thought the reason the Rosetta Stone helped so much was because of the fact that it had the same message repeated in Heiroglyphs, a different Egyptian script, and most importantly, Ancient Greek. You seem somewhat knowledgeable about this so sorry if I overestimate the value, but having something that basically says, "if you solve this puzzle, you will get this answer" sounds like a pretty big bonus to skill... though even with a huge bonus to skill, it was still probably a task on the order of a -15 to -10ish like you say.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

That is pretty much along the lines of what I was thinking, and to your other question, I thought the reason the Rosetta Stone helped so much was because of the fact that it had the same message repeated in Heiroglyphs, a different Egyptian script, and most importantly, Ancient Greek. You seem somewhat knowledgeable about this so sorry if I overestimate the value, but having something that basically says, "if you solve this puzzle, you will get this answer" sounds like a pretty big bonus to skill... though even with a huge bonus to skill, it was still probably a task on the order of a -15 to -10ish like you say.

I would be inclined to say, "If you don't solve this puzzle, you have a penalty of minus infinity."

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Just looking at things I do that might be linguistics. Certainly at dabbler at most, probably from default.

GURPS' Linguistics doesn't have a default.

Also, it's interesting to speculate about the Linguistics skill, as envisioned by GURPS, being reasonable to have in a medieval setting. I've come to the conclusion that it makes no sense, and so any amateur philologist will need a different skill to represent that kind of ability.