Dungeon Fantasy Language Murphy?

[Kromm]

Ultimately, nothing says that you can't give languages (or enchantment, or martial arts, or 1,001 other things) the "full GURPS treatment" in your campaign. I'm just pointing out that in a subgenre that reduces all of society to some abstract town where you can make a few success roll for cheap gear, it's a little bogus to worry about detailed languages. Generally, languages add fun mostly when they're obscure and the quest focuses on decoding them in order to cast the nifty scroll or get past the magic door. If it makes you happier, say that in DF everybody gets a common language and a racial/cultural one for free. My main objection is to charging points for a second tongue for nonhumans.

[Mark Skarr]

I don't even play fantasy games of a normal type let alone DF but I think the important thing here is:
If it's not important to the game, then why break a sweat over it?

If Dungeon Fantasy is D&D, powered by GURPS, then just gloss over it. Sure, let the Dwarf speak/read Dwarven. No, it doesn't cost anything, it's just fluff. The GM is still justified in saying "Nope, you can't read these Runes, they're Brooklyn-Dwarven, and you don't know that. You're still going to have to solve the dungeon my way."

When in doubt, roll and shout!

Going from Bruno's example:

GM: You see an Inscription in Ancient Dwarven Runes
Dwarf: Ach, I read it.
GM: You can't read Ancient Dwarven
Dwarf: But I'm a Dwarf!
GM: Yes, but Dwarves don't speak Ancient Dwarven, they speak common like everybody else for the past 400 years.
Dwarf: But, I'm writing my own epic poem, and those have to be written in Ancient Dwarven!
GM: I'll buy that for a dollar, gimme an IQ roll at -2, since this isn't poetry.
Dwarf: Okay. Oops, I only made it by one.
GM: You're pretty sure it says: "Oh, the cow is blue and in the big cheese."

[Flyndaran]

This whole discussion of inconsequential languages for background got me thinking. A perk that allows my character to swear in every known campaign language? I can't ask for simple help in Dwarven, but I know that calling one a son of an orc is not as bad as insulting their father's craftsmanship.

Sometimes useful as in a why is it so horrible to call an english speaking woman a female dog, but nice to call her a related vulpine.

[sir_pudding]

Also interesting, is the Feature of Reptilians that they can only learn non-reptilian languages at accented or worse. Does this mean that if all reptilians speak common like everybody else that they are Accented in their native language, or that Common counts as a reptilian language?

[Kromm]

The common language is a least common denominator for everyone. The reptilian feature mostly doesn't do much, hence its mighty 0-point value. Really, it just prevents reptilian PCs from being bards who learn obscure monster languages.

[vitruvian]

For DF purposes, it seems like it should be fine to make characters of nonhuman races or even distant cultures have Native in their own languages and Accented in the common tongue for free. For anybody that just needs to know more languages by concept (e.g., if you're trying to duplicate the whole mess of languages that old blue-box D&D elves knew by default), I might even allow additional languages to be taken as Perks rather than at full cost. Whether that would allow Broken or Accented use, I'm not sure yet. One would have to allow the templates that specialize in languages to do the same thing, of course...

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The common language is a least common denominator for everyone. The reptilian feature mostly doesn't do much, hence its mighty 0-point value. Really, it just prevents reptilian PCs from being bards who learn obscure monster languages.

I can dig it.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Kromm

If it makes you happier, say that in DF everybody gets a common language and a racial/cultural one for free. My main objection is to charging points for a second tongue for nonhumans.

That's a happy medium. An add-on -- the monsters and the savages don't know Common (or whatever you call it) beyond Broken/None, letting the GM make his "Big Snake -- Over Rock. Spits Fire Water" speeches.

[martinl]

Here's what I'm gonna try:

Every PC has Native/Native in their native cultural language. Unless players arrange it in their backgrounds, none of these languages match up exactly, although most default at -1 to other languages of the same race, and -2 to "related" races. Two halflings might speak "Lower Worchestershire" and "High Burrowtun." Two humans might speak French and Danish. (this represents a seething linguistic cauldron of fairly narrow extent.)

This is OK though, because every PC also speaks "Trade Tongue" at accented/accented. Due to the nature of the trade tongue, very few people other than professional merchants or scholars speak it at the native level. (The trade tongue is the bastardized descendant of an older imperial language, "High Phalutin" and defaults to it at -1. Folks interested in old lore often learn High Phalutin at native reading level.)

Another feature of the trade language is that while most polyglot assemblages end up speaking it to each other, nobody is artistic in it and nobody speaks it as their native language. (The few Phalutins to survive the collapse of the empire were eaten by a voracious dragon.)

Fun side effects:
Munchkins have 5 points of literacy to sell off.
Everybody gets to speak with a cheezy accent. (I find this fun.)
It's very easy to justify books, engravings, etc. in obscure languages.
Due to the racial defaults, someone with native level in a language can often decipher obscure writings, but perhaps not perfectly.
No bookkeeping, except on the voluntary level.
Keeps with DF silly language tradition.

[quarkstomper]

Totally irrelevant and off-topic, but "Dungeon Fantasy Language Murphy" sounds like the title of a Japanese manga. ("Y'see, Murphy is this cute sixteen-year old philologist who battles demonic forces using her knowlege of ancient spells...")