[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Language Talent and Omnilingual

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Are you advocating only learning writing once for both english and spainish, or are you saying most adventurers shouldn't bother to learn to write their foreign languages?

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For many settings learning Spoken only would be a very reasonable decision. For a historical TL3 game in Europe you'd need Written Latin only. and you'd be only so-so for that. Maybe add Greek (and still written without Spoken) if you were the group's "scholar".

The need for Written and spoken for 5 languages or Spoken only for 10 to justify Langauge Talent is something I've never actually seen in a game. Much less for 20 or 40 that you'd need for Omnilingual.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The need for Written and spoken for 5 languages or Spoken only for 10 to justify Langauge Talent is something I've never actually seen in a game.

I have. Here's the language list of one character from Infinite Cabal:

Arabic (Egyptian) at Accented.
Centran at Native.
Dutch at Accented.
English at Native.
Etruscan at Native.
French at Accented.
German (Austrian) at Accented.
German (Modern) at Native/Literate.
Greek (Classical) at Native/Literate.
Hungarian (Native language).
Italian (Northern) at Accented.
Latin (Ecclesiastical) at Native.
Minoan at Accented.
Phoenician (Carthaginian) at Accented.
Proto-Vasconic at Accented, spoken only.
Romany at Accented, spoken only.
South Slav at Accented, spoken only.
Spanish at Accented.
Turkish (Ottoman) at Accented.
Turkish (Raw) at Accented, spoken only.

He was a huge Hungarian man, usually armoured and armed with a greatsword. He needed to be able to seem friendly, but there was no point in trying to pretend to be a local. The languages he took to Native were the ones in which complex issues got discussed, except for Etruscan, which he wanted to preserve and teach.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I have. Here's the language list of one character from Infinite Cabal:

Arabic (Egyptian) at Accented.
Centran at Native.
Dutch at Accented.
English at Native.
Etruscan at Native.
French at Accented.
German (Austrian) at Accented.
German (Modern) at Native/Literate.
Greek (Classical) at Native/Literate.
Hungarian (Native language).
Italian (Northern) at Accented.
Latin (Ecclesiastical) at Native.
Minoan at Accented.
Phoenician (Carthaginian) at Accented.
Proto-Vasconic at Accented, spoken only.
Romany at Accented, spoken only.
South Slav at Accented, spoken only.
Spanish at Accented.
Turkish (Ottoman) at Accented.
Turkish (Raw) at Accented, spoken only.

Did you use all those languages or was the possible need only theoretical? It's the first case that would exceed my own experience.

I have of course played in settings where they had more than 10 languages bt the PCs never needed to speak all of them during the game.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Did you use all those languages or was the possible need only theoretical?

I don't remember Arabic, Austrian, Romany or South Slav being used, but all the others were, and many of them were acquired in play. The final stages of the campaign were carried out mostly in Greek, with some Phoenician and Proto-Vasconic. I found myself having to decide, for campaign purposes, what language groups Etruscan and Basque fell into.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I don't remember Arabic, Austrian, Romany or South Slav being used, but all the others were, and many of them were acquired in play. The final stages of the campaign were carried out mostly in Greek, with some Phoenician and Proto-Vasconic. I found myself having to decide, for campaign purposes, what language groups Etruscan and Basque fell into.

That sounds pretty cool, though not matching my own experience. I've had a few polyglot characters, ranging from four to fifteen (I thought *that* was a lot!) languages known. All of them were scholars (only one was a linguist), but most of those languages ended up just being dressing for concept sake. We just didn't play the kind of games where those things mattered much *shrug*

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Okay. Given that, on one hand, if you accept that languages are priced appropriately, the cost of Omnilingual is actually less unreasonable than that of Cultural Adaptability; it's rare for a GURPS campaign to have more than ten distinct cultures, but having more than ten languages is pretty easy. On the other hand, I think this points to at least part of the problem being the high cost of languages.

If I recall correctly, IRL has maybe ten total so it's not worth it there even as a globetrotter.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ericthered

What about capabilities though? speaking another language is fairly impressive, and adds a fair amount of functionality to a character. It should probably get cheaper the more you know, and language talent does that, but only after some pretty heavy investment.

That's a harder question, but will probably vary by campaign. A lot of the time it's probably a better investment to bite the bullet and spend those points on something else. E.g. a single language at full fluency is [6] without Language Talent, [4] with it, and for actual globetrotting one will spend easily dozens of points to cover a wide area. But in terms of achieving capabilities, it is likely a much more versatile solution to bite the bullet, spend the saved points on Wealth, and hire interpreters and/or translation equipment as TL permits (and enjoy other benefits of wealth).

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That's a harder question, but will probably vary by campaign. . . . But in terms of achieving capabilities, it is likely a much more versatile solution to bite the bullet, spend the saved points on Wealth, and hire interpreters and/or translation equipment as TL permits (and enjoy other benefits of wealth).

It depends on what you're doing. If you can be an outsider in the societies you visit, that approach works fine. If you need to masquerade as part of them, there's no substitute for speaking the language.

[Crystalline_Entity]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It depends on what you're doing. If you can be an outsider in the societies you visit, that approach works fine. If you need to masquerade as part of them, there's no substitute for speaking the language.

I think this is key. If you don't mind being seen as a foreigner, there are other, more cost-effective solutions to not speaking a language. If you want to appear as a native, you almost have to invest the points in language and cultural familiarity - maybe multiple languages, in times and places where that is common. This gets expensive very quickly, and whilst "realistic", might not be much fun for some gamers (of course, others might really enjoy the verisimilitude).

How good is translation technology nowadays? I can get apps for my smartphone which translate written and spoken words into another language; are they good enough to be considered "Broken" fluency yet?

[Icelander]

PCs are especially prone to have to pretend to be someone they are not, so they are much more likely than random tourists to actually need to know foreign languages, regardless of how good real-time translation software becomes.