infinite worlds and language problems

[nothri]

So I'm working on a homebrewed alternate earth in the Infinite Worlds setting. Called Pharaoh-3, the world diverged way back in the 1350 bc, where Akhenaten's older brother does not die and becomes the Pharaoh in his stead, making Akhenaten the high priest of Amun-Ra which allows him to introduce the Aten as a reform within the established state religion rather than a heretical rival. Long story short, the world experiences a increasingly larger series of Egyptian Empires with small intermediate periods between, Atenism playing the same role the Abrahamic religions play in our history (including several schisms over the millenia).

The lingua franca on this world is ancient egyptian, with several local variants based on a combination of egyptian and the original tongues of tribes and nations annexed into the empire. I basically assume the egyptian language plays the same role that latin does on this world in terms of influence. As such, there are several languages on Pharaoh-3 that simply aren't spoken on any other timeline known to Infinity.

Which finally brings me to my question. How do you handle language barriers like this that have either evolved from events earlier in the timeline or are just obscure languages in our history that a player is unlikely to assign to their character? Especially if your game is geared towards scouting missions that are the first to find new worldlines. Is there an elegant solution to the problem?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by nothri

Which finally brings me to my question. How do you handle language barriers like this that have either evolved from events earlier in the timeline or are just obscure languages in our history that a player is unlikely to assign to their character? Especially if your game is geared towards scouting missions that are the first to find new worldlines. Is there an elegant solution to the problem?

Make sure Infinity agents assigned to worlds with divergent languages either have supernatural means to master new languages or at the very least Language Talent and several PhDs worth of anthropological, historical, and linguistics knowledge that allows them to assimilate new cultures and languages somehow related to their expertise faster than anyone else.

After all, why would something with as close to infinite resources as Infinity bother to send anyone not uniquely suitable to the new world?

[Michele]

It's not a new problem, and I wouldn't say there are "elegant" solutions.

1. While this is the first Infinity exploration team arriving on Pharaoh-3, that doesn't mean nobody else has arrived there, maybe by unconventional means. They find someone who speaks Homeline languages and who has lived on Pharaoh-3 for long enough to learn Egyptian. Maybe the guy is stranded there and will be eager to stick with the team, in hopes to be able to get back. Or maybe he's preparing to stab them in the back, who knows.

2. The team arrives and something goes wrong. They're stranded there. In some way or another, they can have continued, daily contact with the locals - and thus lessons (maybe they are imprisoned, and the power that imprisoned them wants to be able to talk with them). Fast forward two months, and the characters have one point to spend, they'll have Pharaoh-3 Egyptian: Spoken (Broken). If you actually game a session for the time they spend doing this, they may have gained another point or two, which they can invest in Cultural Familiarity or other useful advantage or to raise the language from Broken to Accented.

3. The locals, or some of them, or maybe very few of them, do speak a language that is somewhat understandable to the PCs. For instance, a learned wise man speaks the local version of Ancient Greek, and one of the PCs speaks the Homeline version of it. It will still be very laborious, as the local version will have lots of variations and loaned Egyptian words, so that the effective communication level can't be above Broken. And the other PCs and most other locals will also need the two interpreters.

4. As per 2. above, but the roles are reversed. The PCs capture, or hire, or somehow recruit someone and teach him their language (again there's a couple of months to wait). But as per 1. above, they'll have to rely on him as their interpreter.

5. GURPS Advantages provide workarounds. Language Talent still requires time to be spent in learning, but you can reach good fluency faster. And there are the Modular Abilities.

6. Non-verbal Skills and Advantages may be of some limited help. Gesture, Body Language, Empathy etc.

[ericthered]

Language barriers are not trivial, and you eventually need to have someone sit down and learn the local lingo, which as stated, takes months.



For me the type of world visited is part of the campaign premise. I'll decide on an area of the world (and a time frame) that the games will be set in and ask players to build to those assumption. An "Ancient Near East" team is a perfectly valid idea, perhaps one of the more obvious ones. Such a team had better have at least one member with ancient Egyptian.



Language Isolates are one of my favorite tools in this situation. This is essentially #3. Are the Jews still around (I like to use them as a high-inertia people). What about the Greeks? The Armenians? Is a persian variant or Aramaic still around? Sanskrit? Chinese spoken languages have drifted quite a bit, but the written forms are quite ancient and have meaning.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Language Isolates are one of my favorite tools in this situation. This is essentially #3. Are the Jews still around (I like to use them as a high-inertia people). What about the Greeks? The Armenians? Is a persian variant or Aramaic still around? Sanskrit? Chinese spoken languages have drifted quite a bit, but the written forms are quite ancient and have meaning.

Assuming that scholarship and missionary work follows similar patterns on most worlds, there should be reference books for the languages the Egyptians encountered as they expanded, if only in libraries and archives.

One early priority mission for a contact team would be the "dictionary grab." Stealing or copying a handful of books from the Obscure Languages section provides a cross-check on mistakes in the sources and drifts from Homeline examples. Many books in the section will have titles in the target language, and so will be identifiable even if the Egyptian writing system has drifted too far to understand.

[Dustin]

Originally Posted by Michele

And there are the Modular Abilities.

This, if you need a solution pronto. Embedded neural implant for a language "chip" (actually reprogrammed via induction so as not to leave any ports visible in the skull).

Come to think of it, being the team that first travels there long enough to gather the language and enough of its idioms, in order to make such a chip possible, is a decent adventure hook. "Go there, live unobtrusively in a couple different cities and get exposed to speech from different social classes for 6 months. I'm sure the rumors of civil war are exaggerated."

[Flyndaran]

Learning montage. Over a couple months off screen have the group rapidly study the local language and culture.
Works great especially if the points spent will serve no purpose anywhere but that world line.

[Purple Haze]

There are contemporary speakers of Coptic, which has about a 60% overlap with Late Egyptian (1350BC - 700BC). If you assume the development of Demotic in 700BC, then our Coptic speaker can read and write too.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Dustin

Come to think of it, being the team that first travels there long enough to gather the language and enough of its idioms, in order to make such a chip possible, is a decent adventure hook. "Go there, live unobtrusively in a couple different cities and get exposed to speech from different social classes for 6 months. I'm sure the rumors of civil war are exaggerated."

This is a problem that comes up a lot in science fiction games too. The central problem is that realism isn't all that compatible with "adventuring". If you do it responsibly a first contact isn't *supposed* to be very exciting, and in any case it's not something the same team will typically do more than once. Because these guys are now the experts in this culture and have developed contacts with people in it. By far the most valuable thing they can do for your organization is *stay here* and continue to support your interactions with the contacted culture.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This is a problem that comes up a lot in science fiction games too. The central problem is that realism isn't all that compatible with "adventuring". If you do it responsibly a first contact isn't *supposed* to be very exciting, and in any case it's not something the same team will typically do more than once. Because these guys are now the experts in this culture and have developed contacts with people in it. By far the most valuable thing they can do for your organization is *stay here* and continue to support your interactions with the contacted culture.

Which is why PCs are often cast as the highly skilled operators who are called in to resolve a crisis requiring adventuring skills at violence and covert operations rather than merely clandestine intelligence gathering.

Yes, this means that realistically, the PCs should operate with the support of more traditional intelligence officers specialized in the area where they are sent and their network of local agents, but really, I see that as a feature, not a bug.