Harsh realism for languages

[Joseph Paul]

And most of our gaming experiences don't even get bizarre such as having to find common ground with methane breathing tentacled blimps.

I may work alien languages into a set of adventures dealing with exploration of ruins and a search for any sort of primer or keys to a species' language. Linguistics works in the background at this stage except for forays to places to get more data. A Champollion will break something free eventually and then we get to test it out. I like the periodic table as a clue to this.

SOP for alien ships showing up is to leave and take a circuitous route home. No sense in making contact in the rough as it were and risk calamitous misunderstandings.

if I need to introduce aliens sooner I might do a rapid progression play where PCs have accidentally had an encounter and aren't leaving anytime soon. Six moths later those working with aliens have some basics down.

[L.J.Steele]

An alternative is the real-world translator/fixer alternative -- the NPC who knows both languages and cultures at some level and serves as the intermediary. Typically in fiction, the translator has his/her/its own agenda.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

SOP for alien ships showing up is to leave and take a circuitous route home. No sense in making contact in the rough as it were and risk calamitous misunderstandings.

Also that way, if first contact goes pear-shaped (the new contacted species is ludicrously warlike, for instance), you're not giving a potential deadly enemy the location of your homeworld. That's part of the reason for the Cole Protocol in the Halo games (after contact with any Covenant forces, the UNSC craft is to take a series of completely random FTL jumps before heading for Earth or any major colony), and why in James White's novel Star Surgeon Sector General was the location of battle between the Monitor Corps and the humanoid-alien interstellar empire (the Jump coordinates for most worlds of the Federation are classified, and available only to ship pilots - but almost every spacegoing individual knows the coordinates of Galactic Sector Twelve General Hospital...).

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by johndallman

To species with any reasonable knowledge of science, the Periodic Table of the Elements is a cross-species Rosetta Stone….

This is a point that H. Beam Piper made forcefully in Omnilingual.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Varyon

In GURPS, I'd probably have characters rely on gestures, with rolls against the Gesture skill (or its IQ-based default) to get messages across. Note those you don't share a language with are also rather unlikely to share your culture, so Cultural Familiarity penalties are going to be in force. Vocalizations will undoubtedly be involved, so characters may eventually start to pick up smatterings of the others' language, perhaps enough for the two groups to develop a pidgin (which is probably a language that can't be purchased above Broken, but that the GM would be justified in letting characters purchase at a reduced cost - either in place of a skill in the Dabbler Perk or simply acquiring the necessary [1] with fewer hours of study).

Tangentially, I'm now tempted to try and design a character who, unbeknownst to him, has a psionic ability to be understood at the Broken level, so long as he speaks his native tongue clearly and loudly. Said ability would, naturally, be called GOLE - Good Old Loud English (I think that's the term I've seen used, but for some reason Google gives me no relevant hits). He may have a Delusion that everyone can understand Good Old Loud English to some degree.

Good Loud English? Sebastian Snow?
https://books.google.com/books?id=9o...d+loud+english

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Also that way, if first contact goes pear-shaped (the new contacted species is ludicrously warlike, for instance), you're not giving a potential deadly enemy the location of your homeworld. That's part of the reason for the Cole Protocol in the Halo games (after contact with any Covenant forces, the UNSC craft is to take a series of completely random FTL jumps before heading for Earth or any major colony), and why in James White's novel Star Surgeon Sector General was the location of battle between the Monitor Corps and the humanoid-alien interstellar empire (the Jump coordinates for most worlds of the Federation are classified, and available only to ship pilots - but almost every spacegoing individual knows the coordinates of Galactic Sector Twelve General Hospital...).

Which is the central problem in "First Contact" by Murray Leinster (1945), two ships meet and can't risk going home for fear of being followed. This story is where the phrase comes from.

And I just learned that, appropriately for this thread, it was also "credited as one of the first (if not the first) instances of a universal translator in science fiction."

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Which is the central problem in "First Contact" by Murray Leinster (1945), two ships meet and can't risk going home for fear of being followed. This story is where the phrase comes from.

And I just learned that, appropriately for this thread, it was also "credited as one of the first (if not the first) instances of a universal translator in science fiction."

Thank you. I was going to reference that story as well, but for the life of me couldn't remember it. And I believe that was indeed the inspiration for the things I did remember. :)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Culture20

Good Loud English? Sebastian Snow?
https://books.google.com/books?id=9o...d+loud+english

That's the one! Actually, I think I have that book packed away somewhere (found it incredibly cheap at a thrift store some years back), so that may well be where I read that. I suspect I conflated Good Loud English with Good Old Raisins and Peanuts (travel rations) to get GOLE, but I kind of like that version.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

This is a point that H. Beam Piper made forcefully in Omnilingual.

Speaking of Omnilingual it appears to be public domain now and you can get a free copy conveniently from the Kindle store.

https://www.amazon.com/Omnilingual-H...1YV1BRM1EDCW5Q

[whswhs]

In my current campaign, Tapestry, I've made repeated use of encounters with people who don't share a language. The PCs have dealt with them in varied ways: silent barter; finding someone who speaks a language they know; Gesture rolls; and more recently, use of spirit based magic to do an end run around language barriers (I'm not sure that allowing that was a good idea, but now it's a precedent). There is some gaming utility in nonlinguistic communication scenes. But it does limit the kinds of things that can be done in an adventure or campaign.