[DF] Advice for first-time Dungeon Fantasy GM

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I don't want to "come up" with 7 different Langauges that my Scholar PC can speak and write Fluently, only to find out after the campaign is over, and I'm reading my notes, that the GM never made use of any of those langauges, not even once, and I've wasted 38 CP on them and on Language Talent. That's over 15% of the character creation budget!

That can happen regardless of what details of the world are fleshed out ahead of time; just because something is established to exist in the world doesn't mean it will be a factor in a campaign.

[Faolyn]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I don't want to "come up" with 7 different Langauges that my Scholar PC can speak and write Fluently, only to find out after the campaign is over, and I'm reading my notes, that the GM never made use of any of those langauges, not even once, and I've wasted 38 CP on them and on Language Talent. That's over 15% of the character creation budget!

Well, OK, there is that. For me, that was one of the few things I detailed, because I am picky with languages, although even there I said, well, Atamiran is the trade language in the north, but other counties have their own languages as well. So my players know that if they're from the north, sure they can learn Elven or the language of Wolfstead or Dun-amar (all smaller countries in the North) but Atamiran is the primary language in that neck of the woods (which in my gameworld, is a little under half the known world).

One of my players had, for a long time, three languages on his sheet: Atamiran, Dwarven, and "other," with the understanding that should he suddenly need to have always known another language, he can choose it when needed. He picked that because he didn't know what else to pick (he wasn't one of the players who invented world details for me, alas). Since its DF, I figured why not, as long as it was a relatively common language, like Elven or Goblin or not-Latin, rather than The Secret Language of the Exytradimensional Dragon-Kings or whatever, because that would probably be Unusual Background material.

If I was the player, I would have asked the other players what languages they took, and then I would have either asked the GM what sort of scholarly languages there are (and watched as the GM invented madly) or said something like, Ancient Elf-Runes is one of the primary languages that magical lore is written in; is that OK? and then gone from there.

[quarkstomper]

In my fantasy campaigns when I think a character should know more than one language -- and I frequently do; a holdover from a time when I was trying to create a campaign where everyone would come from a different era in history and so mutual intelligibility was important -- I'll either give a race-related language (e.g. "Elvish", "Orkish") or a generic place-holder to suggest the kind of language it is; (for example "Archaic" if I want an ancient language used primarily for lore, or "Oriental" if it is this world's cultural equivalent of Chinese.)

[LoneWolf23k]

For my Fantasy setting, I just went with the following languages:
-Westron (Common)
-Northern Tongue
-Southspeak
-Sahudese
-Darktongue
-Draconic
-Ancient


As for the general tone of DF, if I can return to that, I wondered about myself, until I came to think about World of Warcraft. It, too, is basically a "generic" dungeon fantasy setting, albeit with it's own distinct flavor and world elements. But while it can be downright silly at times (Gnomes and Goblins, I'm looking at you), it can also tell darkly tragic stories, like the tale of Crusader Bridenbrad.

[simply Nathan]

Mine has
- English (Spoken by everyone in the civilized world; if dragons, elves, or dwarves had their own languages in ages past, these are lost to history.)
- Goblinese (Written form only exists at Broken; this is the language of goblins, ogres, kobolds, lizardmen, or any other nearly-human monster that doesn't speak English like a giant or sphinx would.)
- Ancient (Only known to exist in written form. It's what all those pretty magical runes and stuff are.)

So I decided Language Talent was off the table, especially with those latter two being the sort to learn in play if desired for some reason (or maybe begin knowing Ancient at Broken, for a suitably scholarly dwarf or wizard). Always the option to include more if needed, but I can't really see anything beyond that being needed; unreadable text for old-timey magic items, gibberish for the monsters to yell at you, and the language you and your friends speak to each other in.

[Peter Knutsen]

Yup, that's all it takes. I'm not asking for rocket science worldbuilding here, but merely some coherent thought put into how the world, or at least the campaign-center subcontinent, is divvyed up linguistically, what Languages the various non-humans speak, and if there are any ancient dead/scholarly Langauges that may be of interest.