02-16-2018, 10:46 AM | #21 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
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02-16-2018, 11:07 AM | #23 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
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02-16-2018, 11:08 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
That nonsense is why I don't have racial languages. My old campaign was set in Greece, and everyone spoke Greek, because civilized people speak Greek?
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
02-16-2018, 11:32 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
Every sapient being starts with one spoken language and one written language (Blind characters receive Braille or take illiteracy while Deaf/Mute characters receive the appropriate Sign Language). The idea that each nonhuman race possesses only one native language is more than a little bit silly (especially since humans had nearly 7,000 languages at the beginning of the 21st century). It would probably be better to have every nonhuman race having multiple languages.
For example, the Iron Mountain Range dwarves would have Old Iron Mountain (their religious language), Middle Iron Mountain (their scholarly language), High Iron Mountain (the language of surface dwelling dwarves), and Low Iron Mountain (the language of underground dwelling dwarves). Each community of dwarves would have their own dialects within their language and the neighboring nondwarves would likely only learn High Iron Mountain because they would be unaware of the other languages. |
02-16-2018, 11:58 AM | #26 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
In GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, the assumption is the same as in the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game:
Most sapient (IQ 6+) beings understand a common language, imaginatively called "Common." Delvers can do so for free.The kinds of dwarves, elves, ogres, and whatnot who walk into town, take quests, and party up with likeminded looters are assumed to be cosmopolitan types who speak Common. You want to meet traditionalists who speak like they do in the Old Country? Go visit the Old Country. People there might even have a completely different racial template: "Yes, all dwarves here have crippling agoraphobia. Only the crazy ones without it ever leave the Iron Mountains!" You want to play a traditionalist who understands the Old Ways? Ante up 1-6 points for an extra language. Good luck convincing the GM it's "fun" to have Dwarvish or Sea-Elf Sign Language instead of Common like everybody else. Having every game session derailed by sitcom misunderstandings is not fun for most gamers, and is the meta-game reason why Common is common. Think of "town" as a modern-day metropolis. You don't expect your Jewish friend to speak Hebrew, your pal whose great grandparents left China in 1899 to speak Chinese, and that dude in IT to talk to you in machine code. There might be outliers who do – even people who can whistle to computers through modems – but that's noteworthy and unusual. If our metropolis is in, say, the U.S.A. or the U.K., we'd just assume everybody speaks English. Same thing with Common, even if you're a sea elf or an IQ 6+ fungoid or color out of space.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
02-16-2018, 01:07 PM | #27 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
Quote:
Quote:
* And no I don't just mean "proper English". i mean they are Native Spanish speakers. Most however do at least have English to Broken, but I've run into more than enough that weren't. Self-inflicted ghettos are terrible. ** Noting that I routinely meet foreigners who barely speak English. Which is different (which can make for an interesting side quest - Sahudese Fire Drill anyone?). But then Florida is a tourist trap, with Orlando being the most baited. That said however, I tend to agree with you that everyone in the group should have the lingua franca at at least Accented, or some means to get to that point. In Gwythaint's Northport game none of my four characters have the Common Tongue above Accented, three cannot read it, and one of those three can't even speak it! (but magic covers that last deficiency) |
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02-16-2018, 01:43 PM | #28 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
I've played that one character that didn't actually share a language with everyone else - it happened a bit by accident almost 20 years ago, and we decided to roll with it. The first session was made rather more exciting by the communication problem, and we immediately fixed it before the second session.
I really don't recommend it unless your group is face to face and your players like to play Charades second hand, via Gesture rolls.
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
02-16-2018, 01:53 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
In DF, you have to have a common language to avoid horrible consequences (thus the reference to Common). That being said, I think it would be hilarious to have the all of the signs in the dungeon written in Old Iron Mountain because the dungeon is an abandoned city once inhabited by the ancestors of the Iron Mountain Range Dwarfs before they were forced to abandon their home due to monsters. Would the party go back to town and hire the only dwarf in town who knows Old Iron Mountain? Will they attempt to go through the dungeon without knowing the dangers of the abandoned city?
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02-16-2018, 01:54 PM | #30 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [DF] Why don't sea elves have Speak Underwater?
When I talk of English-speaking metropolises, I mean something like NYC, LA, Chicago, DFW, or Houston in the U.S.A.; or Toronto or Vancouver in Canada; or London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, or Liverpool in the U.K.; or Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, or Perth in Australia. If you walk around a place of that scale in the anglosphere, you can reasonably expect to function in English all day. Just as important, you can't reasonably assume that clothing style, religious symbols, skin color, and other visible features mark someone out as likely not to understand you. There are always exceptions, but DF pretty much assumes that "town" = "place where Common is the lingua franca regardless of how people might look." That is, DF is set in the commonsphere and its towns are melting pots.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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