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

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by 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.

They also get into time crunches where they have to read something or get across a complex idea or read a keyboard quickly and sometimes even harder things like figuring out someone's name from a quarter second glance at their card. PCs don't just want languages, they want to be fully native in them for it to matter.

[Michele]

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.

Well, languages are my bread and butter, and as a GM I've seen multilingual characters in all-over-Europe campaigns. That said, you and your players clearly have a deep interest for the issue and find it satisfying - even more than me and my players. Others might have other tastes yet.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

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?

I'd say yes, even in the real world. You can order food and ask for simple directions, and get more or less what you wanted.

In a RPG, definitely yes.

[vicky_molokh]

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.

Ah, that. That is relevant. Though it does turn into a strange case of impersonation-capable characters having wildly different costs (that needs to be paid to stay competent) depending on the degree of relative linguistic diversity: a historical campaign restricted to one city will be similar in cost to a space opera campaign where everyone speaks Galactic Basic as a matter of course, than to a campaign in a small but very multinational state.

I suppose there will be a variety of different views on whether that is a good thing.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Ah, that. That is relevant. Though it does turn into a strange case of impersonation-capable characters having wildly different costs (that needs to be paid to stay competent) depending on the degree of relative linguistic diversity: a historical campaign restricted to one city will be similar in cost to a space opera campaign where everyone speaks Galactic Basic as a matter of course, than to a campaign in a small but very multinational state.

I suppose there will be a variety of different views on whether that is a good thing.

Of course it's a good thing because it's realistic.

OTOH, if the players like cultural diversity for the sights and flavors but don't want their "face" PC handicapped by "you're not one of us!", then the GM's good thing will be a magical or technological solution.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Ah, that. That is relevant. Though it does turn into a strange case of impersonation-capable characters having wildly different costs (that needs to be paid to stay competent) depending on the degree of relative linguistic diversity . . .

I'm willing to tolerate that. The cost of being impersonation-capable doesn't vary (very much) between characters in the same team, so it can be handled.

An example: in the occult WWII campaign I've been playing, most of the characters had English as a native language (one has Russian, another had one of the Sámi languages, but they both mastered English as a priority). The whole party can impersonate Germans effectively, some can do Russians, and a couple Poles, although they learned that more as a matter of Allied solidarity than for impersonation. A few have good French, and/or Accented Japanese. Impersonating Japanese people is hard work for them on the disguise front, so they've avoided that, to date. Some have American Sign Language, selected over British Sign Language because it's (apparently) easier to do with one hand. That's been good enough for the UK-based campaign, with substantial amounts of travel. Several of the PCs have Language Talent, bought in play, but I don't think they all have. One who did, but has left, supplied Finnish, modern Greek, and Italian.

I'm now starting up another campaign in the same setting, based in India. India has a lot of languages, and so do Burma, Nepal, Tibet, China and French Indochina. I'm not saying that Language Talent is necessary, but it is going to be a good idea.